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Show i 'rfl Washington Ms ii lean's 'Good Govmimenf Plea V fcnored by Washington Press s C - ft -jukPf Jl3.vor's C,i,ioIsm of ,Mif Ailininistration a;? Praoticos Neplooteil as Mayor LaGuardia ; Furnishes Usual Newspaper Copy. Py WILLIAM BI1UCKART '.. .vN(- Service. National Tress RUg Washington, D. C. .K'UNCTON.-It has come to S:- Ua"ite blit tor mayors of : li ,ni pernor of slates to :,lin W WhiSton for ap-' ap-' .(ore congressional com- Tho' aPP!r as out ot Ultf ps r"X- ru-Jh to Uie capitol: testify C 'committee; repair to a ho-T ho-T jnd hold a press conference V a lot of publicity, and go , They usually come for 'jl '"r.t thins-money. 4 a.jes to Washington, there-' there-' iave become fashionable as a "., game. And if. as a result ' i words of alleged wisdom t from the lips of the self-: self-: purveyors of people's t'-"s, new checks should be ."vT.inS from the United States i t-v-'"'ah," they say. "we got j , ;:: you." ! rve naSc in mayors and gover- 5 .. especially mayors, has grown I j jiejvv that it is seldom news, ex-f ex-f "..-"for the mayor's home town; r frankly, the news writers de-f de-f cie -fra as being worth about a j dozen from a strictly news ircSat I don't mean to neglect -T governors when I stress the -"rier of mayors. It is a fact that e: --.-e are more mayors who come, :::: -sblund and a bouquet to toss to :, --selves later, than there are ,r; ;.7e.-o.-s. It is just like the fact X. ii there are more freshmen in k : -M school than there are graduates -:m college, because hundreds of zsi cr:p by the wayside. hm Flays I Mief Spending Ticse preliminaries ought to ex-uji ex-uji why the appearance here the -t' day of Mayor Daniel W. Hoan j;. i Milwaukee, Wis., failed to get : uriag like the attention it de--rred from the press. Now, Mayor j' Li; is a socialist. He is, however, : individual who thinks about city :.: ;;rat:on along many practi-v: practi-v: i fces, thus differing ffom the r;e run of mayors who are con-- con-- :iTcd only with re-election or a riiical promotion. The mayor ' : to testify, but the mayor ns't in the capital city just to :;g !cr money for Milwaukee. He i ! sense things around here which ::i a believed were wrong, as national c: ;cy. and he talked about them, the Milwaukee mayor, in sub-:e: sub-:e: you fellows are spending a i cJ money for relief of the desti-you desti-you are wasting a lot of that -'7, and it ought to be stopped. c-gnt to be stopped because you nlerung the states and the cities is i3 habit of coming to Wash-fir Wash-fir ;?:n 'or money and more money, j :i -3 are, therefore, getting out of a habit of justifying to the people .. r'-eir communities the necessity r; enenditures they are making and a": " their VT are using. In oth-" oth-" ;"5:rds, you ought to make the ' and the cities kick in with a i'iiter share for the support of .- -ssonreliet and force them again '-1 recognize that taxes must be paid ;--wsted, as well as proper use of, Ani' more important than 'S -;g else, you ought to put this ; -a business on a pay-as-you-go ('.? ;;s and stop getting further into -Jl. 5; 5'5e were nt Mayor Hoan's . A of course. Yet I have pre-D pre-D ;:f them as substantially what I I testimony meant, and seldom, -recent years, have I heard bet- sf" '.;se !Pken to a committee of r'.;CSS' To me. it was almost .. ;-Jiiig testimony, the more so be-" be-" Was offered while another A 0 Was looking ial Presi- 6 -,;sevelt's request for $1,750,- n I ,;! relief ta toe next year- W (wd be said just here that Mr. S5 NVf? appeal or e annual s st Ssopration was- r appears 11? ttf it is all he will ask for. J-ill"! 4056 who exPect that ; Jt"'cia conSress next winter for 71 wt!JCy aPPrPriation when the rjll "lected sum runs out 1 n. 7f Sfafe, Shirk ftj? Xt'Pomibilitie, V t'-iUHOan aPPeared to beUeve I ire, d 0f 1116 states were, and :i rmg Uleir responsibilities. f H t0 0me t0 Washington H tat Congressional committee V t h " PeP'e are destitute and i tan- . " money to care for H it ouIm f.rom the mayor's be" t fce mayor be observed that f tone to ,l a?d the governors are sythev "ly 0f how much fr t:l asan Pay out w'thout hav-i hav-i k W the'r Wn taxPayers - teder!are not t0 be concerned and h P0UCy relief mat-. mat-. 1 rCfp, are a11 too willing to ibiHt, t0 their own re-1 re-1 Ct slrvL" y aPParently have h- 'gan: "Pull Uncle Sam's it Mother i it 51 the samayr was around town s here p 6 that Mayor Hoan tIStVork vaSMayor La&uardia f,'ic wher y seems to know becJ6, 'the Little Flower" ,Jlte as a l0gued- Politically. He 'A ' RePublican C mber 0f conBfess as n- That is, he was a Republican when ho came In. but he wandered around Into three or four dirterent political parties and seems now to be anions the bell wethers of the American labor party. Anyway, Any-way, the New York mayor Is a great little testifyer In favor getting nil of the money for Now York city that is possible so K,ng ns it comes from the federal treasury. Mayor LnGuardia Is a great favorite fa-vorite among many news correspondents corre-spondents in Washington. He Is what is called "good copy." That Is to say. he always is ready with comment com-ment on well, on about any subject, sub-ject, Ticture it for yourself; if you were a writer and had to have stories sto-ries for your next edition and you found the mayor of a great city willing will-ing to talk. Mayor LaGuardia will talk, a-plenty! Let there be no misunderstanding mis-understanding about that. LaGuardia's Statement Politically Expedient Surely, then, a casual reader can understand why the comparative statements of mayors of two great cities had the effect on me that I have attempted to report. One of them giving consideration to the future fu-ture of the nation as a whole, a statesmanlike examination of a paramount par-amount policy; the other apparently thinking only of protecting the political po-litical hide of himself. So, I say that Mayor Hoan's testimony testi-mony was almost sensational, while Mayor LaGuardia was singing the same old refrain of "gimme, gimme." gim-me." AndJI believe thoroughly that the words of the Milwaukee mayor will sharpen the wits and stir the courage of those men and women in congTess who are seeking an honest solution for the relief problem that is now scarcely less repulsive than a festering sore. It was quite by coincidence of course that Mayor Hoan's observations observa-tions should have come about the time that a house subcommittee should have unearthed some evidence evi-dence concerning uses of WPA money mon-ey that actually stinks. I do not know about the truth of the evidence, evi-dence, but it is a matter of official record now. A subcommittee investigator presented pre-sented statements to the effect that WPA money was used to build lakes in Tennessee "without reference to the need for recreational facilities considered on any statewide or community com-munity basis." The statements were attributed to a member of the Tennessee Ten-nessee fish and game commission, and the investigator's conclusions were that the money had been diverted di-verted in this manner in order to increase the value of real estate held by several politicians. The investigator and his sources of information named ex-Senator George L. Berry and Gov. Prentice Cooper, of Tennessee, as holders of land which benefitted by the WPA-built WPA-built lakes. This is the same Senator Sena-tor Berry who sued the Tennessee Valley Authority for a million dollars dol-lars or so on account of damage claimed to have been done by construction con-struction of one or more of the TVA dams. The then member of the United States senate charged that some "of his marble quarries were under 50 feet of water as a result of TVA dams. Move Started to Publish WPA Salaries As a part of this general WPA use and misuse of millions of dollars. Rep. Joe Martin of Massachusetts, has started a move to find out how much money is being paid to those who run WPA. He has introduced a resolution to have the WPA headquarters head-quarters here supply the house with a complete list of salaries paid under un-der WPA. You know, there have been many charges tossed about concerning the salaries paid out of WPA funds and the lack of work done for them. In other words, Mr. Martin wants to know some facts why only about bu cents our 01 eacn WPA dollar ever gets down the line to the poor devil out of a job and with a wife and children to feed. This action on the part of Mr. Martin seems to link into contentions conten-tions long made that numerous politicians poli-ticians have placed their pets in WPA top jobs where, if need be, they could be quite influential, politically. polit-ically. Mr. Martin tried to obtain the information about Massachusetts, Massachu-setts, but Col. F. C. Harrington, WPA administrator, refused to make the facts public. He contended that disclosure of the salaries would be "embarrassing to those who receive them." Mr. Martin told the house, however, that federal salaries should always be a matter open to the public and he believed there is no more right to secrecy about WPA salaries than about the salary of the President or a member of congress. con-gress. It will be interesting to see if the house votes the order to make the list public, but it will be more interesting inter-esting to see the amounts of those pay checks. (Release-' by Western Newspaper Union ) |