The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-10-09

" source number 1.
 Digging into these textbooks to see what lore they reveal about the governments far-flung services of information. press-agentry, publicity and or propaganda, youu will find some funny things. Also, you will be struck by what you don't find, for the code of the departmental budget officer Is never to tell anything un- less you have to.
 Consequently, to mention the first example at hand, when Congress man Richard B. Wigglesworth of Milton, Mass, asks Federal Hous- ing Administrator Abner H. Fergu- son to give us the best estimate you can of what you want to spend m the collection and dissemination of information, whatever name you use for it," the good director obliges by citing the size of his department of education (29 people, payroll $75,- 300) and his public relations office (l8 people, payroll $66, ,20O) ard then mentions the number of fms pro- duced, radio programs sponsored and press releases given out, with- out going into detail about the costs. The total budgeted for this one little division, however, is revealed as $232,37
 Incidentally, the work of this agency in radio shows how the net works and Independents get milked for time on this government stuff. In one year, FILA sponsored 16 chain broadcasts of IS minutes, and 48,532 Independent broadcasts, representing a total of 7798 hours. The value of this free time for government ad- vertising was $9S6,80O.
 And so the sorry trail goes, from one federal department to an other. WHY? WHY? WHY?
 Why should the Tennessee Valley Authority, admittedly one of the best single accomplishment of the government since the last war, have to hire Al people and spend $215, ,OO0 year on public relations2
 Why should the Social Security Board need a public relations staff of 133 people at a payroll of $S8 ,946 a year? To say nothing of the other 40 peope preparing pamphlets at cost of $lS5,6lS. The total is $274,- 559.
 Why should the Federal Loan Agency need a budget of 42O2, ,l89 for public relttionsP
 Why should the Department of the Interior need $l2s,6S3? Biggest why of all-why should the Federal Works Agency report international service expenditures of S708,824? This was the largest item in @ report made by the Bureau of the Budget at the request of Congressman Jones of Ohio. Larger even than the reported publicity expenditure of the Department of Agriculture.
 When WPA is asked about this, 1t starts pointing in other directions; WPA is the largest agency of the government. At one time 1t had 5000 900 men on its rolls. Now 1t has only million, but its activities reach into every state and 1t has a Job of explaining to the people what its projects are and how they im- prove the community or tie in with defense. Also, there Is the unfavor- able publicity of the leaf-raking period-not WPA's fault--to over- come.
 Many of WPA's projects were in- formational in character. Newspaper indexes to be made for public librar- les. Guide books and historical re- search work. White-sollar projects of this sort added to the total and unemployed writers have to eat, the same as unemployed bricklay- ers."
 WPAs information headquarters in Washington estimates 1t gets about 10000 requests for informa- ton, by mail and telephone. It has Q mailing list of about 800 maga- zines and publications, and nobody gets anything uness he asks for 1t. The Washington staff now numbers 20.
 The WPA press section is greatly reduced now, but in WPAS boom days many of the more populous states had publicity sections that were dandies. The story was told in Ohio that an inspector coming through was quite disappointed to find that the state publicity director was covering his projects with only two men and a photographer. In New Jersey, there was a organization of 40 or more. Couldn't the Ohio man build up his organization? He took the hint, and did.
 The impression should not be gained or given from incidents like this that every department of the government has ver-expanded pub licity departments. There are good reports to make, as well as bad. THE BRIGHT SIDE
 Senate and House press galleries, from which comes a big share of the Washington news, handle their public relations job with staffs of five men each. They are there to help correspondents, radio and pie ture men keep track of committee meetings, hearings and congreSsion- al press conferences. They keep cop- ieS of new bills. They serve as a clearing house of information. But they issue no handouts.
 Department of State, with only a $28,000 public relations budget, has a Division of Current Information of five. Of the 568 press releases is- sued during 1940, PTS dealt with the war emergency, and were legitimate news. There is one man in the divis- ion who prepares radio bulletins which are broadcast by the Navy radio service fn the IS IT S ann-