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No. 4 -- 1334 .North wester n Un iversit y Library T H E W O P. K S P P. 0 G P. A M -- Works Progress Ad8 inistrati on For Relea s e at 10:30 p.m. Friday, October 9 , 1936 "Dolla rs and Sen s e" P.adio Address by HAP..P.Y L. HOPKINS Works Progress Ad~i nistrator on the 11 P.oosev el t Progress" program from Station WJSV, Earle Builc1. ing , Washing ton, D. C., 10:30 to 10: 45 p . m., Friday, October 9, 1936. Broadcast Over Nation-wide Colnmo ia Hookup I am going to talk toni g~t about the Work s Progress Admi nistration and not about politics. But if ever a major agency of 6 overnment was used as a political football, WPA is being used as one now. And I bel ieve any fair-mina.ed listener will grant me the right to discuss with you some of the good things an~ some of the bad things and s om e of the :prepos terous t h ings "'.hich are oeing said abou t it. Fortune Magazine, that blueb lood of Ame rican periodicals, conducts a nationwide poll of public opini on every three mo nths on current ques ti ons. In its October is sue, Fortune reveals the findings of its survey on the ques tion of r elie f and the program of the Works Progres s Administrati on. Fortune finds the Am erican p eop l e overwhelmingly opposed to dir oct r eli ef, or the dole, and in favor of jobs created by t ho Gavernm ent. begun with that. But Fortun e has only It also finds--and I am sure t his wi ll astonish a great many who read or hear it--that the American people definitely b olieve, on the whole, that the WP.A. projects in their own communities have b een effici ently run, and that the unemployed on those pro,jects have be en pretty well trent ed. How cn.n t his be? The newspapers and magazines of many of t he nation's greatest financial powers have been hammering away indefinit ely on t h e inefficiency, politics and brutality in WPA. barrage of fantastic charges. Political enemies of the program have kept up a Ye t the first national survey bas ed sp e cifically on WP.A., and conducted bY . a . ma~azine whose chief audience is the rich and the powerful, D1g1t1zed tly Original from NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY No. 4 --1334 fir;.r'ls the m~n i n t he street r Pas onahly well 1?atisfi ed with tLe work e> f the p r ogram. I will admit that the outcome of t h is survey wa s a great c::>mfort to me. I knew t ha t the hundr eds of pro.4ects v1bich I have seen pE rs onally are sound , and I knew th e caliore of the men who are admin i ste ring ou r prog ram. I kn ew t ha t the local offic i a ls of t h e c cnmtry ir.ho have ori ~inat e d anc:i. spo!lso red our work p roj ec ts are __, 'JVervrhelmingly enthusiastic over what they a re F,ettinp:. We have in our files thon ~ sani s of lett ers fro m t hese l o cal officials, of all political faitLs, praisinf; t he work i n t he ir own l ocaliti e s. But I was not sure that, d esp it e the flo od of mi s- r ep r e s entat io n a n d ri cli cul e, t h0 average man had y e t had ti me to ,judge his own local public im~ r ovements and find them good . I sup:n ose th e anvil chorns rmst have hamme r ed t oo hard and done its ,job too well. Th e knock e r s must have knocked too often, and wit h too little support f rom t he facts in t he case. In thi s whole program, which emb races ri ,..,r·r ly one h1mdred t h ousand projects, the critics have snecifically attacked v e ry few--sev e ral hundred, or les s than one half of one pe r cent. In most cases t he s e have b een l one;-range attacks, by n evr s- pa!Je rs in new York or Chicago , or :9oli ticians in Washington, on l ocal project n in Colornd.o or New Me xico or Fl ori da . And in virtually eve ry instn.nc e t hey have r e- sult ed in heated local d e f en s e and endors ement of the projects in th e loca,liti e s where t hey we r e bei ng carried on. This i s t he old st ory of t he bandits in South Ameri c~ . the town which you are visiting . '?hey are neve r in They are alwa:rs ,just over th e hill, out of ~ght , but the t ovmspoo}')l e can t ell you s ome ver-;,,r int eresting st ori es ab out th em . ,so ove r th e hill, bu t you will not find them. They ar e s omewh ere els e . dogg li ng and the waste are always s omewhe re els o . th is trick will say to you, 11 You may The 1Joon"- The citiz en who has not realized Oh , the WP.A p rojects he re in my town are us e ful and ben e ficial to th o wl:.ole col!'munity. Tl1er e is nothing wr :m g with t hem. But they must be p r e tty t e rri1Jle in other parts of the country, f r om what I read in the papers." So much for t rie locRl angle. All I asK of the man or womA.n who wRnts to judg e WPA, and what th e workers of WPA have done to increase the nati onRl W81'1,lth, is that he exarr.ine cri ticnlly the wo rk that h as Deen don e in his own comrr.unity and Da$e his verdict on w:b.at he finds. Othe r communities are not ess entially different. workers and the work will drun p retty even in quality \vherever they are inspect ed. D1g1t1ze by Original fro ni NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY The No. 4 - 1334 - 3 - Political enemies of this program have made repeated and se nsational charges which have Cl!p tured nati onal attention in the press. charges, the answer never got the same attention. cvershadows the later stories of his ac quittal. It mnttered not how absurd t:r.e · Th e st ory of a ma.n's arrest always Here's a sample: Th~ P.epublican National Cot11rnittee charged that we had wasted fciur hundred thousand dollars on a big improvement in Cleveland by changine the plans when the .J, work was half done. It was utterly false. There had been no change in plnns ~fter the work was begun, and the city officials of Cleveland l~astened to sRy so. The current situation in Pennsylvania is typical. We have refuted by aifidavi t dozens of wild charges by Willin.m Hard and his crowd, but the parade of scarecrows goes on. They talked about a 11 defen.ted political candiclate 11 in '\YHkes- Barre until ho was revealed to be a defeated P.enublicA.n candidate. And where is Harry Ball, the engineer so widely quoted in criticism of WPA? He now is employed by the Sun Oil company, and by Joe Few, the P.e:publican leader in P ennsylvr-min.• Who, indeed, nre the saintly gentlemen in Pennsylvania who 11,re crying politics in W'FA? They are the saintly Mr. Grundy, the saintly Mr. Mellon, and thos e paragons of nonp~.rti san ethics. Pew and Owlett and McClure. Here I s another case: P.ecently the P.epublicA.n Nation.q,l Committ ee is:;ued a blast 1'l.bout n. half-hour of "expensive radio tim e" which VvPA had purchased on sixtyone stations to spread propagnnda about the program, Th_e truth of thr1.t story is that over three months ago, on June 20th, two days after Congress had made its new 13-ppropriation for WfA, som e of our key officials took tho air to i nform our admini~trati ve staffs in every state of the Union concerning the rul e s and regulations governing the new :program. The big laugh A.bout this politicnl howl of 11 oxpensive radio time 11 lies in the fact t: iat the time was grFtciously donnted, without charge, by the sixty-one stA.tionsJ The politicA.l charge which had the most laughal1le baokfire was the ztory :printed in New York to the effect that WPA had built some fine cement sidewalks in the little town of ArcHdia, Missouri, and. that the town WA.s so small that the sidewalks would be of greater service to the cows of the community than to the people. The very thought of this was so amusing to the Republican National Committee that it sent a camera crew all the way out to Arcadia to take motion pictrues of the cows using the sidewalks. The local people were pretty bitter about the purpo~e of the camera crew as s0on as they found out about it, A.nd the town marshal even made so Digitized by Original from NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY No. 4 -- 1334 - 4 - bold as to ask ther:1 t o leave. They d i d . They ,,ent t en mile s down the r oa d where, for $2 5, 00 they :persuaded a farmer t o truck six cow s i nto t he t own at five o ' clock the next mo rning and hE: r d th em on t o the sid ewalks; and they paid another nonr es id ent $1.00 a minute t o dr awl a little sp ee ch ab out how much th e cows wer e enjoyi ng the WPA sidewaU::s . I have no doub t that t his woul d have been another of the ir little national scandals but for t he fact that in Arcadia there was a cl ever country correspondent of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, who pl ayed up the whol e st ory, wi th names, dates, and prices. P.ight now you ar e r eadi ng in a r,reat many newspapers that WPA i s keeping workers fr om returning t o private employm ent. The charge was r epeat ed this week by E. J. Harding of the Ass oc iat ed General Contract ors. He is the same Mr. Harding who made the same general charge three month s ago, and when we asked him to gi ve specific instances in support of the charge, he appar ently i ad none. plied. At least he never r e- But above and teyond all referenc e to individuals, I ask you t o judge in th e r eal m of your own common s ens e whether the ave rage American particularly one with a family, is going to cling to a part-tirr:e government job that pays him forty or fifty doll a r s a month when he has a chanc e to ge t decen t p ri vate empl oym9nt on a f ull-time basis. One more ridicul ou s instance of this type of thing and I will l eave the case with you. J, N. Darling, a crusader for conservation, charged publicly that WPA was spending millions of dollars f or malaria contr ol in Main e, althour,h Maine has not · had a malaria case for one hundr ed and fifty years. The chat'ge was compl e te- ly erroneous, and was r efuted in full in a puDlic statement by the United States Surgeon General. The r ef uta t ion was print ed two months ago, shortly after Da rling made the charge. Yet, only t he other day whil e I was traveling in th e West1 the.re was Colonel Frank Knox sp eaking in the State of Washington and electrifying his listeners with the scandalous charge t ha t WPA spent milli ons for malaria control in Maine. I ·prefer to think that the s e men and their publications simply are ignorant of the true facts, but it's a little difficult. Colonel Knox made t wo sp eeches in Maine last mon th, in Lewi ston on September 3 and in Waterville on Sep t ember 4, Why didn't he tell his fake story about Maine malaria control th~, t o the people of Maine? Why did h e wai t until he got to the St?.te of WashingbW,bzetH~yf a r away as h e could get on de~gi rt.ftWM, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY I tpink the ans wer NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY No. 4 -- 1334 - 5 - must be obvious to anybody. He knew what he was doing. But certainly f or the grea.t mass of American people it is just a matter of information versus misinformation. I'd like you to think of that, if you will, when you read the political charges every few days about the great propaganda machine of the WPA. At the same time you will be reading charges that we won't give out facts. The P.epublicnns · must have got their signals mixed, for only last week we got a let t e: from the Nation&l Committee thanking us for information we have given them. The hostile p oliticians use the 11 heads I win, tails you l ose 11 method on us. If we don't talk about the program they roar about our sinister policy of secrecy. And when we do talk about it, we're circulating vicious pr opar,anda with the taxpayers' money. We don't worry too much over that. It's part of the game. But I will hazard the statement that we have sp ent pr oportionat ely less effort and money to inform the public about WPA than has been s:r ent by any comparable agency in the history of American Government. Sometime s I wond sr if that is not our greatest error - not from a standp oint of avoiding p ersona l criticism, but because of the bitter injustice which it has permitted to be heaped on the heads of millions of distressed Americans, That's the cruel thing, and the one I r esent most. The unemployed had no choice but to take our jobs and do tlrn ir level best. Thoy weren 1 t always strong or well fe~ or warmly clothed or even us ed to the work. Under the circumstances they did magnificently. It seems to me that t he v1ay they fought this thing through to success and. real achi evement is a whole lot mor e truly 11 .American11 than the way some of our more fortunate citizens ridiculed thorn 1'.''hile they were in a tough spot. Per- haps if we had taken the time to toll our story often er and more fully, the vicious parade of bad vaudeville joke s nbont shov el l errners and malcontents might have been avoided or at l8ast reduced. People used to j oke in the same way about the Ford cnr, until the performance of the car made the jokers ridiculous. all their jokes about WP.A workers quick, Their works are rapidly becoming a reality. You can't laugh off 130,000 miles of fa.rm road s. 6,200 schools and 5,700 parks and 550 airports. 7,GOO water and sewer systems. Well, the boys hnd better get in There's nothing convul-sing about Ttere 's hardly a giggle in all But there is health and happiness Rnd national wealth Thousands upon thousands of good people are now returning to private employment bece.u se WP.A let them 11 keep their hands in 11 , and gave them better health and education Digitized by Original from NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY no. 4 -- 1334 - E - a,nd family life when they were down. Millions of citizens who never lost their jobs will profit every day of their lives from the nublic facilities available today which they would not have had but for 0mergency workers. To my rr,illions of associates in WPA, I just want to say this: D·Jn 1 t be too wuch disturbed by these political slurs and r eflections on your character or your W')rk. The V8st majority of the American p.=,ople don't believe them. There is growing, tangible pro -J f that this nation is r,,fusing to be stampec1.ed by a d.ark cloui of manufactured fantasies in far places • .And to the American people I offer a sirnpl 0 sporting pr oposition: J udge WPA just as critically as you plfiase, b11t judge it on the basis of your own WPA :pro.jects, that you can se e with your own eyes. own community. G'.) ann. see the i :.mroveJJ;ents in your iVe will rest our case on what you finr'J.• 0 Digitized by Original from NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
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