APPROACH OF WINTER

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 93, 17 October 1934, Page 11

APPROACH OF WINTER

AMERICA'S PROBLEM

MILLIONS ON RELIEF

THE GOVERNMENT PLANS

(From "Tha Pest's' ReprcsciitaSivaj

NEW YORK, September 2b".

Eivo million families, averaging four persons, are to bo budgeted for in the relief administration during the coming winter. Tho problem h?is been heightened by tho addition of 750,000 families robbed by drought of means of subsistence. These latter must be borno on the. relief rolls for two years until they get returns from the next crop. The immensity of the problem is seen in the expenditure involved— £360,000,000 for the first year, ended May 30 last. Of this sum, tho Federal Government contributed 75 per cent., the States and local authorities sharing tho remainder. The. Government is gravely concerned about the future. It is becoming more difficult to iiuance such a huge outlay. Canada has boldly announced its determination to establish unemployment insurance, following closely the English model. Hero, too, it is felt that relief is not a permanent solution. Plans are already being discussed for unemployment insurance, oldage pensions, workmen's compensation, and health insurance. Tho administrators of relief have been at pains to counteract the conviction that people on relief are in the pauper class. In order that recipients might justify in their own eyes, the aid given, the civil works programme was undertaken. For the first time, millions were provided with suitable employment under conditions satisfactory to themselves, at a cost regarded as economically sound. This programme carried the nation through the severest winter in a hundred years. MEASURES FOE SELF-SUPPORT The next step was to divert surplus wheat and surplus pigs to replenish food supplies of those who had gone without meat and other foodstuffs. Men relief recipients were divided into three classes, urban and rural needy and industrially stranded communities. JTor each group an attempt was made to provide that form of aid which would place tools in their hands by which they could carry on themselves. Relief expenditure, per unit, has grown rapidly, due to the raising of relief standards, the greater dollar cost of work relief, rather than direct relief, and tho provision of livestock feed, as well as necessaries for families in the drought area. About 1,650,000 families aro now receiving their relief through wages earned by somo member of the family on works relief. That is regarded as not sufficient. New kinds of work projects are being devised. In rural centres, by investing in a few weeks the amount of relief that would bo given over a period of months, farm families havo been, provided with . cows, chickens, seeds, fertiliser, insecticides, tools, and equipment, enabling them to get the greater portion of their meals out of tho soil. Several thousand families are thus becoming self-supporting. Drought relief is being handled largely on the basis of work relief. Emergency water supplies are provided, additional wells drilled, old ones deepened, dams and reservoirs built for future use. Stream diversion and other water conservation projects seek the same end. Another programme is concerned with moving people stranded in communities whero mines or industries have closed, or where people aro trying to eke out an existence on submarginal land. This work is slower, involving many intricacies of land laws nnd humnn ties. But it is hoped it will provide a stable curative.