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700 a Day. Their privations nowhere approach those of Asia's (or even some of Europe's) submerged millions—yet the wretchedness of America's poor is accentuated by the opulence of the society that surrounds them. More than 7,500,000 Americans live in rat-infested tenements or tumbledown shacks that are officially—and euphemistically—classified as "dilapidated"; 1,500 U.S. citizens still die yearly from diseases caused by malnutrition; 6,000,000 subsist on free Government surpluses. In today's society, the nation's 11 million functional illiterates are relegated for life to the precarious ranks of the poor.
Paradoxically, it is the neediest who are helped least by the welfare state. The majority of the poor reap no benefits from social security, unemployment insurance, or the right to unionize. Farm subsidies mostly enrich the prosperous; the poorest farmers, with 40% of the working spreads in the U.S., account for a scant 7% of farm income.
Public housing has brought the poor more eviction notices than new apartments, and slum dwellers scornfully refer to urban renewal as "urban removal." While Washington lavishes $18 billion a year on a galaxy of welfare programs—to which state and local governments and private philanthropies add another $15 billion—only the crumbs reach the bottom of the heap.
By official Government standards, a single city dweller is poor if he earns less than $1,540 a year—a level that exceeds West Germany's average per capita income of $1,358, and seems opulent beside Spain's $342. To determine the precise borders of poverty, the U.S. reckons that a man could have three adequate meals a day for 700 if he bought nothing but Government surplus foods. The minimum also includes a sparse allowance for rent, clothing and other necessities; in the case of a single farmer, who can obtain cheap food, the minimum is $1,080. The poverty line is $3,130 for an urban family of four, $2,200 for a farm family. Only 30% of America's 32 million poor are nonwhite—but that 30%, mostly Negro, represents half of the entire non-white population of 20.9 million. Some 13.9 million children under 15 live in needy families. One-quarter of the aged, and half of all families headed by women, are poor.
Acronyms Aweigh. As far as Congress was concerned, the most compelling argument for the anti-poverty program was that it could ultimately transform chronic "tax eaters," in Johnson's phrase, to new taxpayers. Even before it received congressional approval, Shriver had started gathering staffers and ideas. "How in the hell do you fight a war on poverty?" he asked everyone within earshot. "What do you do?" Laboring up to 16 hours a day, the anti-poverty warriors were shunted all over the capital, found themselves at one point in the basement morgue of an ancient hospital, at another in what had once been a hotel of shady reputation. Finally, they moved into a new eight-story office building off Connecticut Avenue that was immediately dubbed "the Poor House."