"Alphabet Soup"

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."

Many an oldtime Smith admirer has felt that the Brown Derby was rapidly losing the common touch since his withdrawal from active politics, was growing reactionary and bad-tempered as the New Deal unfolded. Yet even these erstwhile friends had to admit that Al Smith retained his salty gift of phrase when he concluded his attack thus: "Some of my readers. may ask why others have not pointed out these dangers in the CWA program. The answer is very simple. No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas."

Hardened to recurrent criticism of his Public Works Administration, Secretary Ickes picked up an obvious political club to strike back at Al Smith: "It is impossible to satisfy any man who is nourishing a grudge as the result of disappointed ambitions. Mr. Smith is permitting his resentment against the Administration to run away with his judgment. He is apparently under the illusion that the coining of sarcastic phrases and the hurling of epithets will be misunderstood by sober-minded citizens for sound reasoning. The Civil Works Administration was a logical development of the public works program. It was designed to take up the slack in employment that the Public Works Administration could not hope to reach."

Declared Civil Works Administrator Hopkins: "If putting 4,000,000 men to work puts me in the grapefruit business, I'm delighted to be in it. I learned the word baloney from Al and I suppose the term 'sour grapefruit juice' is his too."

* AgricuItural Adjustment Administration, Farm Credit Administration, Public Works Administration, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, National Recovery Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps or Commodity Credit Corp., Tennessee Valley Authority, Home Owners' Loan Corp., Reconstruction Finance Corp.

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