DOLE WASTE REVELATIONS IN NEW YORK

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1935, Page 14

DOLE WASTE REVELATIONS IN NEW YORK

YEW YORK, which is spending £4,000,000 a month on relief projects, has been in the throes of a tragi-comic investigation into charges of bureaucratic wastefulness and extravagance. • A committee, struggling between laughter and tears, heard the evir dence of Professor J. Kraemer, of New York University, who with the aid of a staff of 200 people, each earning £5 a week at the taxpayers’ expense, has been engaged in a “cartographic project” which in the last 12 months has cost the city £58,038 0/10 in pursuance of this “relief” work. The professor testified that his staff and charted “the movement of peoples in the second millennium” and studied “the modern distribution of cranial shapes.” They had also prepared relief maps of Europe and Africa, including excavations at Kish. They had laid out in addition the ancient trade routes between China, India, and Rome, besides translating a German book on Mediterranean geography and another book on ancient Egyptian beer-making. These and numerous other, erudite yvorks, the professor thought, vrere

valuable to the city taxpayers, and he remarked that men who were placed on relief work ougnt to have work they liked and work they could perform efficiently. , Another witness was Dr Irving Lorge, who testified that he had ■.charge of a relief project, and that his work consisted in conducting some 500 experiments on the manner in which adults learn, on their interests, their intellectual ability, and physical condition. Some of these experiments were carried on with the aid of a “learning machine” which cost £3OOO. Still another witness, Michael Weintraub, revealed to the committee that he was employed by the city as an “enumerator,” his duties being to ascertain from housewives how many chickens, ducks, or geese they purchased, and at what intervals. He called on housewives, kept a record of their income, their children, their servants, and boarders, if any, and of the num- • ber of eggs they purchased. For. performing this work Weintraub'engaged 100 assistant enumerators.

; ..The work of “enumeratio .i”- he ; said, had so far cost'the city £22*202.