REORGANISING.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20508, 9 January 1935, Page 1

REORGANISING.

Shake-up of New Deal Bureaus. RELIEF PAY ANOMALIES. (By PAUL MALLOX.) WASHINGTON, November 23. A sharp shake-up is coming in the New Deal. It will be called a reorganisation, for the sake of appear ances, but it will encompass an extensive realignment of the bureaucratic set-up. One of the inner struggles, which no one is supposed to know anything about, is being waged between Messrs Ickes, Moffett and Hopkins. They are tugg.ng at the fiftj'-six widely scattered bureaus relating to housing. The result of that struggle mav be that rising Frank Walker (the ordinator) will came in and take them all over. \\ alker has been working on housing privately for several weeks, unknown to anyone except himself and President Roosevelt. If he does not take over the whole show*, he will at least be the guiding genius in reorganising it. The relief set-up also will be revised, as will the P.W.A.. The A.A.A. will get off lightly, but the N.R.A. will have its horns. pulled in. The redealing this time is going to be more deliberate. The idea behind it is to get things started on a permanent basis. Change of Policy. Reliefer Hopkins is the fastest stepper in the Administration. He can do a Virginia reel so swiftly that you cannot detect, with the naked eye. that he has even moved. That was the technique employed in the recent change of F.E.R.A. policy on the 30-cent minimum wage. The order was issued on November 19, but it did not get into the newspapers until, three days later. Mr Hopkins did not say so, but the cause of the order was his investigation of relief conditions in the south. He found on his personal tour that there was an actual shortage of unskilled and domestic labour, because that class of labourers (largely negroes) could get more money for less work in the I.E.R.A. This condition was rather serious in the cotton and tobacco. areas of the south, and also in the onion growing and beet sugar districts elsewhere, and employed workers were howling because the 10s a day going to those on relief work was more than they received. It is not a new situation. Mr Hopkins fought a telegraphic duel with Governor Talmadge, of Georgia, about it last year. More recently, Mr Ilopkins met with a group of business men in Mississippi. He said to them: "All right, if we cut the Government wage to one dollar a day, will you give these people jobs?” The business men said they were afraid they did not have the jobs. ou admit, then,” Hopkins replied, that it isn’t our wage that keeps you from hiring the men.” Something happened to make Mr Hopkins reel around a few days later. Someone Higher. There can be no question that the about-face was directed by someone higher than Mr Ilopkins. In all previous similar cases he has brought up such subjects at his regular staff meetings. The wage subject was not brought up. The first his staff knew about the order was when it came from the mimeographic room. Liberals will howl, because they have always insisted with Mr Hopkins that the New Deal was establishing a new standard of living by a high wage scale. It will now mean lower relief wages throughout the south, but it may mean an increase in other sections, where the prevailing wage scales, now to be followed bv the Government, are much higher. It is another indication of the elimination of unsatisfactory policies in the quietest possible manner.—N.A.N.A. Copyright.