Volume III
Number 31
Entered it aeroad-
THE STATE
December 28
A Weekly Survey of North Carolina 1935
'«er. Jane 1. 103S. »1 the PoMoOce at RaM(b. Korth OaroJlna, oeder the Act of March 3. 1879
Unwanted Men
THIS, in our opinion, is one of
llie most thoughtful articles we
have publislitMl in a long time. It
deals with what is one of our
great problems of today.
By W. O. SAUNDERS
THE very idea of taking million?
off relief rolls and giving them
work nnd wages in place of a
dole sounded good to me. I guess it
sounded good to most of us. That’s
what the Works Progress Administra¬
tion, set uji Inst summer with a work¬
ing capital of more than four billion
dollars, promised to do.
Xo more CWA, whose only notable
and surviving contribution to tlm
progress and well being of the nation
was the construction of some half a
million brand new privies in rural
America. Xo more ERA with its store
houses of flour, salt pork, canned l>eef,
work shoes, hickory shirts and overalls
free for tho indigent and indolent, and
a few days of non-productive labor
contrived to try to save tho face of
the administration without actually
accomplishing anything that might in¬
terfere with employment in private
industry.
Full-Time Jobs
The WPA was to change all that.
Xo more handouts of food and cloth¬
ing from government stores; no mon¬
cash for direct relief, but a full-time
job 20 days n month and seven hours
a day with a subsistence wage for
every employable household head in
America who couldn't find employ¬
ment in private industry. The goal:
3,500,000 employables to be engaged
in useful and permanent public works
by Xovcmbor 1, 1935.
I say it nil sounded good to me, and
when I was offered the position of
Supervisor of Labor Management for
the First District, Xortli Carolina
WPA, I didn't sneeze at the offer. I
had never been on a government pay¬
roll. wasn’t hankering to put myself
under obligation to party leaders, nnd
the job offered me looked n bit onory.
Rut here was an opportunity for an
adventure in what promised to he a
worthwhile public service and I reor¬
ganized my private business and went
adventuring. So far it has been a
highly interesting and informative ad¬
venture, but by no means a happy one.
I am getting an intimate first hand
glimpse of an unemployment problem
that threatens to bedevil the statesmen
and taxpayers of this country for a
good many years to come. I have
come face to face with unwanted men.
Plenty of Unemployed
In tho files of my office are approx¬
imately 5,001) relief cases embracing
fourteen northeastern Xortli Cnrolinn
counties. Here is a fair cross section
of that vast army of 10.000,000 to
14,000,000 jobless Americans. An in¬
timate study of these relief cases in
my district— which are doubtless typ¬
ical of any equivalent number of re¬
lief cases anywhere in America
brings me to the heart-breaking con¬
clusion that no great and enduring
public works program can be nceom-
| dished by “relief” labor.
A religious revival recently was held
in 0Ur town. A hundred volunteer
workers got together at seven o'clock
one morning and by nightfall they had
built a pine-board and timber taber¬
nacle to seat 3,000 people. CWA or
W. 0. Saunders is editor of “The In¬
dependent,” Elizabeth City, and con¬
tributor to a number of national mag¬
azines. He is supervisor of Labor
Management for the First District,
North Carolina PWA.
ERA labor would have been three to
six months completing such a job.
PWA labor would do better, but could
not do the job at half the cost it
•'ould he done under a private contract.
Why?
People Who Don’t Fit
The answer is that the vast major¬
ity of the jobless in America jii-t don't
lit into our highly specialized, system¬
atized and mechanical industrial
structure. Most of them are unem¬
ployed because private industry ran
find no profit in their labor. They
constitute a disturbing army of mi-
wanted men with whom America mu»t,
sooner or later, reckon.
Take this cross Section of the some
5,0»i) jobless with whose cases 1 have
familiarized myself over a period of
more than three months, and probably
ninety per cent of them will fall un¬
der one of the following classifica¬
tions:
1. The too old to work.
2. The constitutionally defective — ■
