HOUSING: Sammy the Sweeper

One of the biggest New Deal messes has been the housing program. The mess finally got so frightful that even Franklin Roosevelt, who can stand more clutter around him than most men, waved his arms and shouted for his chief housekeeper. Rotund little Judge Samuel Rosenman grabbed dustpan and broom and waded in.

Sixteen government agencies-for planning, building and financing houses-were heaped together in a formless pile. Somewhere under all this trash was a record of eight years of peacetime housing bungling, of a year and a half of defense housing bungling. Hundreds...

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