I want to deal with a subject which is not included in our instructions. The subject is the administration of relief. In any report on Massachusetts you must have information about the administration, which is so definitely and blatantly bad that it has become an object of disapproval (if not disgust) for both the unemployed and the controlling classes (businessmen etc.). In the often repeated words of the unemployed, “They're all in this together—the politicians and the relief people.”
It seems that our administrative posts are frequently assigned on recommendation of the Mayor and town Board of Aldermen. The administrator is a nice inefficient guy who is being rewarded for being somebody's cousin. Second: instead of having a unified FERA set-up which would care for both work and direct relief, the direct relief is handled by the Public Welfare which is a municipal biz and purely political in personnel. I can't very well let myself go as I should enjoy doing about the quality of these administrators; they are criminally incompetent.
In one town the FERA investigators (who are supposed to be doing some social work) are members of the Vice Squad who have been loaned for the job. Usually there is only one investigation at the office (follwed by a perfunctory home visit) to establish the eligibility of the client for relief. I can't see that these questions do anything except hurt and offend the unemployed, destroy his pride, make him feel that he has sunk into a pauperized substrata, becoming merely a number; something anonymous who will presently be more or less fed.
I think this is a wretched job: wretched in every way. Politics is bad enough in any shape; but it shouldn't get around to manhandling the destitute.
Now about the unemployed themselves: this picture is so grim that whatever words I use will seem hysterical and exaggerated. I have been doing more case visiting here; about five families a day. And I find them all in the same shape—fear, fear driving them into a state of semi-collapse; cracking the nerves; and an overpowering terror of the future. These people are probably (by and large) more intelligent and better educated than the unemployed I saw in the south—which isn't unfortunately saying much. The price of this intelligence is consciousness. They know what they're going through. I haven't been in one home that hasn't offered me the spectacle of a human being driven beyond his or her powers of endurance and sanity. They can't live on the Public Welfare grocery orders. They can't pay rent and are evicted. They are shunted from place to place, and are watching their children grow thinner and thinner; fearing the cold for children who have neither coats nor shoes; wondering about coal.
And they don't understand why or how this happened. There are some cases in every locality of unemployables; people who have lived for two or three generations on the Welfare. (Why aren't there sterilization laws? All such cases are moronic, unequipped physically or mentally to face life—and they all have enormous families.) But the majority of the people are workers, who were competent to do their jobs and had been doing them over a period of years ranging from a dozen to twenty-five. Then a mill closes or curtails; a shoe factory shuts down or moves to another area. And there they are, for no reason they can understand, forced to be beggars asking for charity; subject to questions from strangers, and to all the miseries and indignities attached to destitution. Their pride is dying but not without due agony.
I get these comments constantly: “We can't live on that $12 [family of ten]—we're going to starve—and my husband can't find work—he's out every day looking— and I get afraid about him: he gets so black . . .” “If anyone had told us a year ago we'd come to this I'd have said he was a liar; and what can we do.” “It's a terrible thing when decent people have to beg.” “We always tried to be as honest and decent as we could and we've worked all our lives; and what has it come to.” “What's the use of looking for work any more; there isn't any. And look at the children. How would you feel if you saw your own kids like that: half naked and sick.” “It seems like we're just going backwards since the last two years.” “We can't go crazy; we've got the kids to think about.” “I don't want to ask for nothing. I hate this charity. But we haven't got any shoes; do you think you could get us something to put on our feet—just a pair of rubbers would do . . .”
I could go on and on. It is hard to believe that these conditions exist in a civilized country. I have been going into homes at mealtimes and seeing what they eat. It isn't possible; it isn't enough to begin with and then every article of food is calculated to destroy health. But how can they help that; if you're hungry you eat “to fill up— but the kids ain't getting what's right for them; they're pale and thin. I can't do anything about it and sometimes I just wish we were all dead.”
Health: the Welfare nurses, doctors, social workers, the whole band, tell me that t.b. is on the increase. Naturally; undernourishment is the best guarantee known for bum lungs. The children have impetigo—as far as I can make out dirt has a lot to do with this. Rickets, anemia, bad teeth, flabby muscles. Another bright thought: feeblemindedness is on the increase. Doctors speak of these people as being in direct degeneration from parent to child. My own limited experience is this: out of every three families I visited one had moronic children or one moronic parent. I don't mean merely stupid; I mean definitely below normal level intelligence, fit only for sanitariums.
Again, due to unemployment and also to prevalent low wages (all these mill hands and shoe workers are working part-time; and their wages are not more—and often less—than relief), families are evicted from their homes. So they double up, in already horribly over-crowded houses. The result (my sources are labor leaders, social workers, doctors, nurses) is increased nervous disorders; and the nurses who work in the schools speak feelingly of low scholarship; the nervous state of the children—involuntary nervous gestures, sex perversions, malnutrition, increased t.b.
Again I can only report that there are no organized protest groups: there is only decay. Each family in its own miserable home going to pieces. But I wonder if some day, crazed and despairing, they won't revolt without organization. It seems incredible to think that they will go on like this, patiently waiting for nothing.
The FERA relief cases do not feel that FERA is charity; it's work. Badly paid to be sure; but then it's only three days (or less) a week, and they're used to low wages for part-time. The Public Welfare cases, on the other hand, present a different problem. Where you have the shattered nerves, despair and fear (signs of life still) of the FERA people; you have apathy and listlessness in the Welfare people. I think this is due to the fact that their living standards are even lower; that they feel themselves irrevocably pauperized; that they hate the indignity and humiliation of the Welfare treatment, and that by the time they get around to applying for Welfare they have given up all hope and are pretty finished human material.
The labor leaders and social workers tell me there is a distinct decline in living standards as from a year ago. I find that the foreign born (or one generation American) reacts better to hardship than the native. The reaction of the native to these circumstances is demoralization and nervous breakdown. (It's very interesting: what used to be a phrase for rich neurotic middle-aged matrons is now on the lips of all this working class.) Whereas the foreigner attempts still, despite homelessness and poverty, to maintain his home; and the women somehow keep alive their pride in what few possessions remain. This is not true of the lowest-class Latin worker, with a large family; but there I think economic conditions have (after a long struggle) beaten them out of a strong natural tendency to care for the foyer. The natives’ homes are going quickly to hell; both from the material point of view (filth and decay) and from the moral point of view—the family ties melting under this strain.
I'm giving you this picture as I have been able to see it and though the eyes of the people (supposedly informed) with whom I talked. Grim is a gentle word: it's heartbreaking and terrifying. And I feel that as long as these people go on reproducing in such quantity, we can't begin to cope with the situation. Now, we are only feeding a third of
the people needing relief; and inadequate food, bolstered up by odds and ends of clothing, and fuel, is all we can give. (Not always that.) Men of fifty and over have given up hope; for them there is no future. But what is most frightening is the young (between the ages of 18 and 25): they are apathetic and despairing, feeling there is nothing to look forward to, sinking into indifference. (By the way, the majority of v.d. cases in county clinics are patients of this age group and class.) I cannot write too feelingly of the physical condition of small children.
Concerning mills and shoe factories: (Lawrence is out of this—they scooped up about three million dollars worth of government orders and business is booming at the moment.) Labor relations seem quite good here. Which is a definite change from the South and from our point of view, as it concerns the mental state of the worker, this is cause for thanksgiving. There is none of the widespread Southern worker's persecution complex (largely justified there) : fear of being fired for joining the union etc. But the mills are on their last legs: cost of production having mounted, so that market prices are below manufacturing costs: therefore no orders; there-fore either shut down mills (the state is studded with factory and mill skeletons) or curtailment of hours. The workers do no get the Code weekly wage simply because they work two or three days a week. The mill owners here seem to feel very keenly the misery of their worker but they also feel there isn't much they can do. After a certain amount of red writing in ledgers, they are bound to fold up. (That's their story.)
The shoe industry is in a frightful state. The problem does seem to be unionized labor; which is to say that this being the stronghold of the shoe unions, the employers cannot compete with non-unionized factories in Maine, New Hampshire etc., as sweat-shops, where the minimum NRA wage1 is automatically the maximum. Factories are moving wholesale to Maine, New Hampshire and other non-unionized areas. The factories here are running erratically, often for a few weeks until an order goes through, then with several weeks’ wait or time-marking.
It fills both the workers and the unemployed in this area with astonishment that there is nothing for shoe factories to do; but none of them have shoes to put on their feet and are facing winter with husks of shoes bound up in rags. . . .
I'm not thrilled with Massachusetts.
1National Recovery Administration
Camden, New Jersey
April 25, 1935
My Dear Mr. Hopkins:
I have spent a week in Camden. It surprises me to find how radically attitudes can change within four or five months. Times were of course lousy, but you had faith in the President and the New Deal and things would surely pick up. This, as I wrote you then, hung on an almost mystic belief in Mr. Roosevelt, a combination of wishful thinking and great personal loyalty.
In this town, and I believe it is a typical eastern industrial city, the unemployed are as despairing a crew as I have ever seen. Young men say, “We'll never find work.” Men over forty say, “Even if there was any work we wouldn't get it; we're too old.” They have been on relief too long; this is like the third year of the war when everything peters out into gray resignation. Moreover they are no longer sustained by confidence in the President. The suggested $50 monthly security wage seems to have done the trick. They are all convinced that $50 will be the coming flat wage for the unemployed, regardless of size of family. They say to you, quietly, like people who have been betrayed but are too tired to be angry, “How does he expect us to live on that? Does he know what food costs, what rents are? How can we keep clothes on the children?”
Formerly everyone used to ask me about the President, used to speak admiringly of him. He is rarely mentioned now, only in answer to questions. Local labor organizers and local unemployed council leaders say that if he were up for election tomorrow he would lose. They explain this by saying that labor feels the NRA has let them down and the relief clients feel there is no hope for them; industry will not take them back and relief is going on, as a mere sop to starvation.
I bring this up not because I think the politics of it will interest you (if in fact it has political significance) but because it is important in understanding the unemployed now. They used to be sustained by their personal faith: this belief made a good many things easier to bear and I think appreciably contributed to keeping them sane. Having lost that, their despair is a danger to themselves if to no one else.
I have been following the unemployed Leagues and Councils closely. First I must say that I think our local administrators are a droll bunch psychologically, in relation to these protest groups. Put any man in authority and he suddenly becomes an embryonic capitalist, an employer of labor. The similarity in relationships between relief administrators and dissatisfied relief clients and industrial magnates and dissatisfied labor would be laughable if it weren't sad and revolting. The Camden administrator now, in effect, is refusing to recognize the rights of labor to organize. (Humorous violation of 7A.1) He does not want to deal with the unemployed Councils or Leagues through their chosen representatives, but says that he will see any man individually, and discuss with him his personal complaint. There is a strike going on amongst the unemployed in New Jersey; I don't know the extent of this strike. Relief headquarters minimize it, and relief clients, in meetings, brag about it. The reason is that relief clients get a 20% bonus for doing work relief, and they get their money in cash. The way they have figured it out, they are working for that 20% bonus only and they regard it as sweated labor. The whole thing is hard to understand—you have to start from the original principle that society owes a man a living and that he has a right to relief. Therefore, his relief food order is not a gift, it's his inalienable heritage, not to be considered as part of his pay.
They are very confused in their talk. (The Unemployed Council meetings are deplorably rudderless, but more of that later.) They talk about lowering the wage standard of their brothers in industry, by accepting these relief wages. They talk about the laxness of supervision on the work relief projects and say it isn't a job; it's an excuse to put in cash-paid parasites as supervisors, foremen, timekeepers, etc. They say that the object is to get as many men loafing on projects as possible, so that friends and political appointees can get these supervisory jobs with cash salaries. They talk of the waste of money and how it affects the taxpayer. (A long rambling speech about how “we aren't taxpayers you say, but every time we buy food or clothing we are paying taxes, and our children will have to continue to carry this burden.”)
The meetings themselves are an eye-opener. They are sad and dispirited, with the speakers trying very hard to get up a little enthusiasm from the audience. Obviously the principal lack is a lack of leadership. The men who head these organizations are all semi-literate (local boys, I don't know about the big shots, but am going to find out.) They are reasonable, baffled guys. With one exception: a sinister personage whose home I visited, a definite misfit (physically and mentally) in any society. It is to be noted that a large proportion of the unemployed have swung away from him saying he's “radical.” Most of the reasoning and emotion of these people passes comprehension; why not be radical, for God's sake, they have every excuse. They are as Tory in their way as the Chamber of Commerce.
In all cases, the whole Unemployed Council performance seems particularly sad and futile; but I think it serves an admirable purpose. To wit: it gives these people something to do, keeps the leaders busy, gives the followers a feeling of belonging somewhere; someone is interested in them, they realize that they have neighbors, other people in the same miserable boat. This cuts the danger of helpless solitary stagnation, somewhat avoids the tendency to stay at home alone and rot in despair. The meetings take the place of entertainment (the movies, a pool room, a saloon), and are their only chance of having any social life.
At one big meeting I attended the high point of the evening was a prize drawing: chances were a penny apiece and the prizes were food: a chicken, a duck, four cans of something, and a bushel of potatoes. At the risk of seeming s
lobbery, I must say it was one of the most forlorn and pitiful things I have ever seen in my life. These people had somehow collected a few pennies (what money was left over after the prizes had been bought was to pay for gasoline for a ten-year-old car which drove the chairman around to meetings.) They waited with passionate eagerness while the chances were read out, to see if they were going to be able to take some food home to the family. The man who won the duck said, “No we won't eat it, my little girl has been asking for a bunny for Easter and maybe she can make a pet of the duck. She hasn't got anything else to play with.”
There will, I presume, be a growing tendency on the part of those who administer relief to take sides either with industry or labor, depending on their personal prejudices, emotion and background. I have already noted this, in a haphazard way, and in Camden the issue came up clearly. A strike is pending in the New York Ship Building Corp. It will probably take place around May first, and will be a strike for higher wages primarily. The administrator was wondering what to do: should he give relief to the strikers, was their case really good, weren't they being paid enough anyhow? This somewhat clouds the original issue which is to give good to those who must have it and have no other means of obtaining it. One is tempted to point out the extent of FERA subsidization of private industry in that county, by the giving of supplementary relief to people employed in private industry but not making a subsistence living. One might also note that FERA preserves a fine labor market for these seasonal industries, which casually lay people off knowing they can always get them back when they need them. In fact, when I asked the manager of Campbell Soup how his workers lived during the long pull between tomato seasons (August to December work period approximately), he said, “Oh, they go on relief.”
The administrator here tells me that business is in a bad way. The three big local concerns are Campbell Soup, RCA Victor, and New York Ship. Victor's has been laying people off steadily, and has closed down its print shop permanently. New York Ship is laying off and the strike will help. Campbell's is in its annual slack period, but will reach peak employment (about 4,500) in August, when tomatoes are in season. Campbell's, so I am told, has an annual payroll of about three million dollars and an annual profit of about ten million dollars. In any case, it is not in a bad way; but is the only industry that thrives.
The View from the Ground Page 3
