GENERAL RELIEF is commonly regarded in the United States
as the last line of defense against destitution. Needy people
who are eligible for special assistance, Farm Security grants,
WPA, CCC, or NYA employment, are, so long as appropria-
tions for these services hold out, usually given such types of aid.
However, since funds available for these programs are fre-
quently far from sufficient to meet existing needs, and since rules
governing eligibility for aid under them preclude aid to many
needy people, general relief very often must be relied upon to save
resourceless families from destitution and demoralization. Be-
cause of this fact it would appear that the nation's program of
general relief, like the innermost ring of defense surrounding
an important military objective, should be fully organized and
strongly fortified against any eventuality. Instead, it is the na-
tion's worst organized, most ineptly administered, and least ade-
quate relief program. "Chaotic" and "haphazard" are terms justi-
fiably applied to it.

Speaking of the administration of general relief, William
Haber, professor at the University of Michigan and chairman
of the National Resources Planning Board's Committee on Re-
lief Policy, declared in 1940:

On the basis of a reasonably adequate understanding of the experience of
most of our states, I have no hesitation in saying that, with the exception of
some of the large cities, management of direct relief is as chaotic today as it
was in 1933; that the genuine need of hundreds of thousands of people in
many areas of the country is not being met; that funds are inadequate; that
administration has discarded all the progress of six years of reasonably good
experience; that political manipulation is as rampant as ever. ¹

In further denunciation of general relief administration as it
was in 1940, C. M. Bookman ( executive vice chairman of the
Cincinnati Community Chest, and also a member of the National

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