SERVICE PROBLEMS OF AMERICA

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5278, 14 December 1946, Page 3

SERVICE PROBLEMS OF AMERICA

r HOUSING AND JOBS , j PEACE AS CRIPPLING AS 4VAR. 1 Difficulties faced by veterans in trying toi find housing and jobs, obtain ^an education and set up in business are described in the quarterly report of the twb New York City veterans service centres. According to the findings of the eenjges, loeated at 500 Park Avenue, and at 105 'Cou'rt Street, Brooklyn, j veterans are learning that peace can I be as crippling as war. The report cites the cases of 409 men who came to the centres from May to June, 1946, as representative 'of veterans with "'immet needs." t These men would have been completely readjusted had they been able to find adequate housing, jobs, education or business, Mrs. Anna M. Rosenberg, chairman ofdhe Veterans Service Committee, declared in making publie the report. Nearly all of the 409 had at least one question that went beyond the scope of the hydra-headed problems they brought t'o the service centres," the report says. " 'Have I won a war and lost a chance — a chance to earn a living and make a home, to get an education and build a business?' Manpower tc Citizens. . "The answer, in the months ahead, will have to come from a community that has a continuing interest jn the veteran's readjustment and the will to provide organised help productive of positive results. . . If public complacency and laclc of interest are permitted to drive the veteran through discouragement into disaffection, the community will have lost its greatest opportunity to convert the finest of its manpower into the finest of its eitizens." The report stresses that while the 409 men were not pieked as having problems typical of the veteran population as a'whole, "we do know they were not alone in encountering civi-lian-created obstacles to their plans and hopes." The findings of the service centres are corroborated by similar studies by the Community Service Society, the Roman Catholie charities of New York, and the Jewish Social Service Association, the report says.

Greatest Problem-W crk. ■Seventy-seven of the group studied had employment as their greacest problem. Three-quarters of this group had dependents and more than half had education of at least hig'h school level. Yet 54 of these veterans had been unable to find work. "The depression decade taught us j what unemployment — even in a period when to be unemploy,ed was not nscessarily an admission of failure — d'd to th5 personality of those who are unemployed," the report continues. "TodayT, the situation is even more fraught with danger, since this is the period of the greatest employment in Ameriean history. "The group of men who came i"o the centres for help with employment hau already beg'un to feel this. F or ty-one ' of them needed help in other areas as well. Failure to obtain employment was undermining their total adjustment." Man-Made Difficulties. Of the 51 veterans who came to the centres with problems eentring about education, 23 said they could uot be . admitted to any college in New York City. The centres' business consultants assisted 43 men whose main difficulty was "connected with business ventures. Twenty-three veterans were having a hard time obtaining merchandise. One veteran with 11 years' experience in nianufacture of clothing tried to establish his own business. He obtained a favourable price ceiling from the Office of Price Administration and a good priority from the Civilian Production Administration for the purchase of material, but could find no distributor or rnanufacturer who would honour his priority. "Failures in business are a part oi' eeonomic life," the report emphasises. "Normally a man who fails can )ook to himself for the cause. But these veterans face business difficulties not of their making." .