Men
off the Road
by Gertrude Springer
Photographs by Lewis Hine
September 1934
The future of the whole transient
relief program is anyone's guess. Unless a drastic change in
the policy of the FERA occurs its continuance at least until
mid-winter seems assured. Up to July 1 it had cost the round
sum of twenty and a half million dollars and was then running
to about $3 million a month. The number of persons for whom
it has cared in one way or another, admittedly but a fraction
of those believed to be on the road, rose steadily from 110,180
in February to 192,288 in June. The turn-over of cases runs
about 33 percent.
At present the FERA foots the
bills and lays down general policies while delegating administration
to the states. Many social workers protest this decentralization
of responsibility on the ground that the transient problem is
national and that under the existing settlement laws only a
national program, nationally controlled, can deal with it. State
controlled programs cannot, they say, be freed from local politics
and prejudice. The end result will be, they fear, that the transient
will be thrown back on the road as a parasite and a menace to
orderly community life.
The camps are still frankly
experimental. Many thoughtful people see in them the logical
beginning of a new kind of institution which they believe to
be an inevitable sequel of the dislocation of people under the
depression. They see farm colonies for old men, obviously unemployable
under competition, so organized and run that the work of the
men, slow-paced though it be, will contribute to their own support
and yield measurable values to the community. They see other
camps where men of broken work-habits may be built back to such
psychological and industrial competency that they can stand
up to competition and be absorbed by local industry or in public
projects. And they see still others, following the experience
of the CCC where youth without work, escaped from paucity of
opportunity at home, may be conditioned and trained for a stable
way of life.
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SEVERAL states are gradually
shaping their transient camp programs within this framework,
less from an articulated philosophy than from the lessons of
experience. The point at which the camps—at least the half
dozen in New York and New Jersey which I have seen in action—do
not meet the formula is at their point of outlet. At the point
of intake is a pretty clear basis of selection of the men whom
the camps may reasonably be expected to benefit. The camps themselves
are robust and realistic with a developing understanding of
how to hold men long enough to influence them But what of the
day when a man, his body sound and healthy, his initiative and
self-confidence recovered, is ready to take hold of his own
life again? At present he just goes—to such chance as he
may be able to find for himself.
Every camp points with pride
to men who have gone out and found thernselves jobs in the neighborhood
but I found little evidence of purposeful planning of facilities
for that integration into community life and occupation which
is the desired end result of it all. This is not easy, for the
settlement laws raise barriers, there still are not enough jobs
for the folk with families who never left home, and in spite
of the good showing made by the men in camps most towns are
still resentful of transients. The root of the whole difficulty
is that the transient is unattached to any unit that fits our
social pattern. This very quality subjected him to exploitation
when casual labor had a market. It now practically blocks him
from employment and, except for the transient service, even
from relief.
Until facilities for job-finding
are open to the men for whom the camps have done all they can
there is a weak link in the chain of reconstruction. The National
Reemployment Service would seem logically to be that link, but
in reality it is not. Even when it registers these men without
established residence they go to the bottom of the employment
ladder with veterans, local family men and local unattached
men crowding the rungs ahead of them. However the job-cards
are dealt the transient, so far, has drawn the joker.
As we drove away from the hill-top
camp the boy whose folks are called po' white trash looked up
from his planting to wave a cheerful goodby. What, I wondered,
will become of him. No one knows, himself least of all. Probably
the camp will not hold him much longer—perhaps it should
not. Perhaps his new-found habits of work and personal responsibility
will stand up and he will find a foot-hold in a world still
grudging of opportunity to such as he. Perhaps they will not
and the easy road to the jungle will call him back. But with
health and initiative recaptured the cards are not as heavily
stacked against him as they were. At least he has a chance,
and I, as a common or garden taxpayer, am glad.
