From Warm Springs last week President Roosevelt drove to nearby CCC Camp Meriwether. In the yellow pine mess hall he received a cake 18 in. tall, congratulated woodsters on having "the most artistic camp I have ever seen," and concluded: "I hope that Congress, when it convenes, will continue the Civilian Conservation Corps for another year."
Same day in Washington Secretary of the Interior Ickes, PWAdministrator, revealed that he had allocated all but $150,000,000 of the $3,300,000,000 public works fund. He, too, forecast further emergency expenditures by the Government next year, when he declared: "I wouldn't be at all surprised if Congress is asked to provide us with additional funds." He estimated that he could use another $1,500,000,000.
Also last week the Government's latest relief agency, Civil Works Administration, whelped with the aid of a $400,000,000 grant from the public works fund, was distributing its pay checks, thus removing 1,183,438 jobless from local charity roils. These men had been required to work for their dole on small emergency projects.
Thus was the stage set for Alfred Emanuel Smith to let fly his second broadside on the Administration in two weeks. With his blast on "baloney dollars" still ringing in the country's ears, he cracked down in an editorial in his New Outlook on President Roosevelt's favorite relief projects —Public Works and Civil Works. Slashed Editor Smith:
"Half way between a lemon and an orange is a grapefruit; half way between a public work and a relief work is a civil work. Up to now the Federal establishments, only recently scheduled for consolidation, have been increased to include an AAA, an FCA, a PWA, an FERA an NRA, a CCC, a TVA, an HOLC, an RFC*—and now we have a CWA. It looks as though one of the absent-minded professors had played anagrams with the alphabet soup. The soup got cold while he was unconsciously inventing a new game for the nation, a game which beats the crossword puzzle—the game of identifying new departments by their initials.
"The reason for the new CWA is, however, as clear as crystal. ... It was set up because the Public Works Administration had broken down. Instead of acknowledging the failure of the Public Works Administration and reorganizing it along sensible lines to insure action . . . this crazy, top-heavy structure is being left as it is and out of it is being created the new Civil Works Administration. . . . This program certainly cannot benefit the heavy industries. It cannot produce much that is valuable between now and Feb. 15. It will certainly lead the localities more and more to dump their entire relief problem on the central Government. It will certainly discourage the private building industry. ... It will certainly cause men who are now loafing on made work with nothing to work with or at, to loaf more hours. ... It will certainly afford an alibi for the incompetents in the Public Works Administration [who] can now take a long winter's nap."