FAMILY NEEDS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 120, 24 May 1933, Page 15

FAMILY NEEDS

MILLIONS IN RELIEF

* —— AMERICA'S UNEMPLOYED

A NATIONAL EFFORT

/ In a country with 12,000,000 unemployed, spending this year £250,000,000 in relief, the care of the needy, presents Biultiplo problems. As in the case of Canada, a uniform system has at last emerged as a result of a conference of all the States, with duplica- j tiou and waste measurably reduced. The national effort this year centres, on relieving individual cases by means of gifts of food and clothing. Kcither the United States'nor Canada have yet adopted public works programmes as relief measures, owing to Budget emergencies and the difficulty of financing them. In other words, both countries are obliged to bo content, at the moment, if their relief policies prevent actual starvation. This, in greater relative measure in the United States than in Canada, because the ratio of unemployment to population is approximately twice as great. The soup kitchen' and bread line, whicli were a feature of the era following the last bank crisis in -1907, have not been developed during the present crisis. In the generation that intervened, the standard of living has been raised to the point that; such means of charity are'now considered humiliating, both to society and the individual sufferer. • Relief : is now so organised, that it goes to the.home, on the .theory that the family is not an empty stomach but £ social /unit,;to bef conserved. THE MEASURE OF BELIEF. '•The!1* isVnow:: a, uatidn-widc- application^- theVifaniUy budget yardstick of relief; that is, bajed; not on stark necessity, but on what; a family should have, according to its size and the age of its members, in tforder to maintain its health and; morale, and enjoy a minimum of decent diving in a certain environment, -For a type A family there is, allotted;'a type A budget of relief; tor a type B family, a type B and so on. This system; evolved'from the failure of the public.;relief bureau system, manjiefl «by 'inexperienced "white collar" workers, taken from the ranks of the. unemployed. For instance, in this city, 69 public bureaux sprang into being, practically,,, overnight,. distributing 3,000,000 dollars a week. It was : .soon found that those benefiting most wero the chronically-indigent; there was.no proof that this open-purse policy was reaching ' truly deserving eases. The leaders of the trained social welfare agencies were called in,, and the family budget plan ,was adopted. ■ Toast year, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, operating under Federal authority, loaned 300,000,000 dollars to municipalities for relief purposes. A Bill now before Congress involves ,a [direct Federal appropriation of I 50p,000,000'dollars. ,T,hero is yet strong opposition to direct Federal relief, believing that the situation should'be handled by the States and municipalities. In Canada, from the outset, the Federal Government shouldered its share of relief cost, believing the problem could be more easily solved by an equal distribution between the three authorities. . .'.- "