U.S. UNEMPLOYED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 553, 9 June 1933, Page 7

U.S. UNEMPLOYED

terrific problem MILLIONS BEING SPENT ANNUALLY IN RELIEF. A NATIONAL EFFORT. In a country with 12,000,000 unemployed, spending this year £250,000,000 in relief, the car'e of the needy presents multiple prohlems. As in tlie case of Canada, a uniform system has at last emerged as a result of a conference of all the Sfcates, with dupiication -and waste measurably reduced. The national effort this year centres on relieviing individual cases by means of gifts of food and clothing. Neither the United States nor Canada .have yet adopted public works programmes as relief measures, owing to Budget emergencies and the difficulty of financing them. In other words, both countxies are obliged to be content at tlie moment, if their relief policies precent actual starvation. This, in greater relative measure in the United States than in Canada, because the ratio of unemployment to population is approximately twice as great. The soup kitchen and bread line, which were a f eature of the era following the last bank crisis' in 1907, have not been developed during the present crisis. In the generation that intervened, the standard of living has been raised to the point that such means of charity are now considered humiliating, both to society and the individual sufferer. Relief is now so organised that it goes to the home, on the theory that the family is not an empty stomach' but a social unit, to be conserved. The Measure, o'f Relief. There is now a nation-wide application of the family budget yardstick of relief; that is, based, not on stark necessity, but on what a family shonld have, according to its size and the age of its members, in order to maintain its health and morale, and enjoy J a minimum of decent living in a cerj tain environment. For a type A faJ mily there is allotted a type A budget | of relief; for a type B family, a type B budget, and so on. This system evolved from the failure of the public relief bureau system, manned by inexperieneed "white collar" workers, taken from the ranks I of the unemployed. For instance, in ' this city, 69 public bureaux sprang in- » to being practically overnight, distri- : buting 3,000,000 dollars a week. It : was soon found that those henefiting . most were the chronically-indigent; ; there was no proof that this openpurse policy was reaching truly deserving cases. The leaders of the trained social welfare agencies were 5 called in, and the family budget plan was adopted. i Last year, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, operating undeT Federal authority, loaned 300,000,000 ' dollars to municipalities for relief 1 purposes. A Bill now before Congress involves a. direct Federal appropriation of 500,000,000 dollars. There is yet strong opposition to direct Fede- , ral relief, believing that the situation i should he handled by the States and ' municipalities. In Canada, from the : outset, the Federal Government shoul1 dered its share of relief cost, believi ing the problem could he more easily solved by an equal . distribution between the three authorities. " H*' » 1