Going, Going, Gone . . .

Going, Going, Gone. . .

Payday jitters hit 300,000 Washington workers. Congress was late again with the salary money.

Just a few months back (along with some 75,000 like him) the new civil servant had landed in the Capital, his fever patriotically high, his eyes star-spangled, his shoes freshly whitened. He had pitched in to help win the war. Things looked different now. Now he cursed his Congressman, his tortured sinus, his lumpy boardinghouse bed, the humid streets, the dismal food, the bus service. Mostly, this week, he brooded about his tardy paycheck.

Veteran bureaucrats merely shrugged, wryly wished the fledglings a "happy fiscal new year." Oldtimers well knew that if Congress abolished one Government job, there would be another across the street.

Down Went OWI. Congress finally gave OWI's domestic branch $2 3/4 million. (They had asked nearly $9 million.) No money was allowed for publications, posters, movies, field operations. Probably some 700 OWIsters would be fired; notice went out to close shop in twelve regional and 36 field offices, where OWI has coordinated all U.S. war information.

Said the Portland Oregonian's stunned Edwin Palmer Hoyt (TIME, July 5), the new OWI domestic director: "I came here because I believed that this job could be done along simple lines, like you'd run a newspaper. God damn."

Out Went WPA. Death came quietly to the noisiest, most fought-over agency conceived by the New Deal: Work Projects Administration. Set up in May 1935 (when the U.S. had nine million unemployed), WPA was given $10 1/2 billion to spend. It hired 8 1/2 million people who raked leaves, leaned on shovels--and built 77,000 bridges, 644,000 miles of roads, 116,000 buildings, 800 airports. Now some 292 workers have until next September to get the microfilmed records neatly rolled into 135 steel file cabinets.

Out Went NYA. The National Youth Administration asked for $47,800,000. It got $3 million with which to liquidate itself by Dec. 31.

Mothered by Eleanor Roosevelt, shepherded since 1935 by ex-WPAster Aubrey Williams, NYA spent $646 million training 16-to-24-year-olds, latterly for war production.

Out Went NRPB. For ten years, finding money to run his National Resources Planning Board has been a tougher & tougher fight for eightyish Frederic Adrian Delano (who is touchy about being the President's "Uncle Fred"). Since 1933 Chairman Delano's little group has studied U.S. manpower and natural wealth, authored the "American Beveridge Plan" for social security. Survivors: 32 helpers.

Spry Uncle Fred sat in his office last week, and snapped a rubber band. He was melancholy. Said he: "If an institution stays around for ten years, it has probably done all it can do. . . . I plan soon to go to Alaska again to gather some data for the War Department. . . . The work? It is bound to come back again, of course."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.