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Show Straightening Out WPA By JOHN T. FLYNN ' experience with relief is being ' planned hastily. The president is playing With tha Idea of county boards. But on examination all he has In mind is more or less voluntary boards of cltisens who can receive complaints and look Into them. This means exactly nothing. Tha whole subject of relief needs now to be approached intelligently and with an understanding that it is to NEW YORK-Early In the session ses-sion ef congress ths question of relief reform rt the present systemwill sys-temwill be In order. And already al-ready the administration Is making mak-ing some hasty plans. The problem splits into two questions. First, who hss been responsible for the political scan-da scan-da la which have befouled the W P A? Second, how Is thia agency to be managed in tha future? Neither, qucation should be aveided. On the question of responsibility, re-sponsibility, there is little room for argument. Harry Hopkins waa head of the WPA. But Harry Hopkins is not the political leader of the administration. He ia and always has been a welfare worker with whom politics has been a secondary sec-ondary intereet. He haa been extremely ex-tremely close to the president. He would not dare undertake any political activities on his own Initiative.' Tha political leader of this administration ad-ministration is tha preaident. Harry Hopkins and Jim Farley have been. In politics, merely his messenger boys. Whatever Harry Hopkine did h did with the full knowledge, and beyond a doubt, at the specifio direction of tbe president. One Maa Only ta Blame If there Is any blame there la only one person to blame and that is Franklin O. Roosevelt Everybody Every-body knows that Ta put Harry Hopkins in the commerce department depart-ment and suppose that has changed ths situation at all la preposteroua. Now, on the question of future administration. It ia now perfectly perfect-ly obvious that what Is being planned In spit of four years of remain for many a year, though in changing degree. At least a few things are known. They were known before the administration ad-ministration went into power. One ia that the authority which raises and provides the money should spend it. Nothing could be more fatal than to have the money come from the federal government and spent by the stats governments. Loral Communities Must Contribute Another is that the communities in which the money is spent must also provide a part of it. The people must feel the burden. The . spending of money must not be a source of local prosperity, flowing flow-ing in from outside from some unknown source. That makes for extravagance, folly, corruption. A third ia thst relief money can b spent by only one kind of an erganization a professional organisation, or-ganisation, recruited by the most drastic civil service operations. It Is an Insult to the Intelligence of the people to recruit a spending pereonnel by the grossest political methods and then heap them all into civil service. The statesman who cannot see the folly of committing com-mitting his spending for relief to a political militia Is doomed to the most ignominious disaster. It haa never failed. What does this all meant It ' mealia complete reconstruction of the whole relief approach and machine, local contributions upon an established formula, with national na-tional administration by a wholly new and professionally organised personnel and tha entire cost paid out of taxation.' Copyright, 1939, for Tha Telegram |