The Giveaway Grocer

Many a fire station, church basement or community center across the U.S. last week presented a scene more suggestive of the Depression than of the most prosperous year in U.S. history. Lines of citizens edged slowly up to makeshift counters, walked out with armloads of milk, butter, flour, or more than a dozen other food stuffs--all for free. The giveaway grocer: the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Such scenes help explain why the Government's huge stores of agricultural surpluses have recently been dropping at a surprising rate. While the school-lunch program got more than $100 million last fiscal year, the fastest-growing part of the domestic disposal program is the handout program to welfare and needy families: last fiscal year $90 million worth of food was given to 3,100,000 people in 36 states. More and more states are hopping on the bandwagon; only last month New York signed up to receive its share of the free groceries.

Big & Bountiful. Although Government surpluses have been doled out to the needy since 1933. the present program bears little relation to the nation's economic state. The program got its big boost in 1954, when Kentucky's Democratic Senator Earle C. Clements and Virginia's Democratic Representative W. Pat Jennings opened the floodgates with a bill providing that surplus food be made available in coal-mining areas with high unemployment. Since then the amount of free food has jumped tenfold, a total large enough to compete with grocers in many towns, bountiful enough to favor many who could hardly qualify as needy.

Pennsylvania, the leading consumer of Government surpluses, last fiscal year got free food for 867,337 people in 58 of its 67 counties. Sixty of Mississippi's 82 counties draw Government food; $325,000 worth was distributed to 102,000 people in September, and the state expects twice as many people to line up by January, popularly known as "furnish" (handout) time. From July to September this year, 224,566 Michigan residents got 4,371,000 Ibs. of free groceries worth $1,220,000. In Arkansas, some 17% of the state's population gets the handouts.

Charity in a Taxi. County boards decide who gets the food on the basis of income or special need, and issue certification cards. But after the institutions and regular welfare recipients who automatically qualify, the definition of "needy" becomes surprisingly liberal. In Pennsylvania this year, free food worth $5,000,000 went to striking steelworkers. Drought and disaster areas also benefit from free Government food, and even counties that have had good crops for years share equally in the program with their less prosperous neighbors.

Many officials complain that "lowincome" families drive up to food distributing centers in taxis or new cars. Said one: "When I saw one man stuffing that food into the trunk of his brand-new automobile. I figured that something was wrong with the system." W. A. Moore, who oversees distribution in Pulaski County. Ark., says that about half of the people on the county's free-food rolls would be removed if they were investigated, but there are not enough county workers to check on them. Taxpayers--and politicians--have learned that opposition to the program is extremely unpopular. The program has other faults and inequalities; e.g., a Mississippi family of four is eligible only if its income is under $100 a month, but a Michigan family of four can get free supplies if its income is under $265 a month.

Battle for Survival. In many states stores have been enlisted (at payment of 10-c- to 15-c- a recipient) to distribute the surpluses. Participating stores have noted some rise in sales of fresh meat, vegetables and fruit, which are not on the surplus list; the landfall of free groceries apparently encourages many to improve their diets with food they could not otherwise buy. But the majority of distributions are made through public channels, and are, in effect, competition for local grocers. Small grocers, fighting to survive the inroads of chain stores and supermarkets, have already felt the press of the Government's burgeoning program. Wholesale grocery sales in Arkansas have dropped about 14%, and grocers blame at least half the drop on the surplus-disposal program. "We think the free groceries have cut into business." says W. Earl Fitzgerald, executive secretary of Michigan's Food Industry Committee, "but we distribute them as a civic gesture."

Some retail groups, such as Arkansas Retail Grocers, want the Government to junk the present distribution system and substitute a food-stamp plan under which needy families would be provided with stamps that could be turned in for groceries at retail stores. Grocers would redeem the stamps with the Government. They argue that a stamp plan would be cheaper and make it easier to keep the cheaters out, but thus far, the Department of Agriculture has cast a cold eye on the plan, and Secretary Benson has called it "unfeasible." Chief reason: a stamp plan would not necessarily drain off major surplus items, might become a permanent relief measure.

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