Word: lasser
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Master showman of Relief is David Lasser, president of the Workers Alliance of America. Last week in Washington, Showman Lasser produced a tragedy in 50 acts, designed to show the Administration and Congress that instead of cutting WPA rolls the U. S. should furnish more jobs at better...
Present for the opening in smoky, smelly room No. 506 at WPA headquarters were Deputy Administrator Aubrey ("Keep your friends in power") Williams, Assistant Administrator David K. Niles. Before them David Lasser interrogated 50 WPA workers brought on for the occasion from 26 States. One & all declared that WPA wages are too low to keep body & soul together, that they would leave Relief like a shot if they could get private jobs. They also attested that whether or not Reliefers are becoming a permanent class in the U. S., they are certainly becoming a caste apart-shunned as poor credit...
More gravely than if he were picking Miss America, David Lasser had his witnesses choose Mr. & Mrs. WPA Worker of 1938. As the No. 1 Missus of Relief, they named Mrs. Stanley Jorgensen of Provo, Utah. Provo merchants had chipped in $100 to pay her way to Washington so she could ask for more WPA money to go into storekeepers' tills. Mrs. Jorgensen's husband supports her and two children on $44 a month, of which he pays $15 for rent on a single room, $18 for groceries. A Mormon, Mrs. Jorgensen said her church's famed...
...Alliance prod is political action. Last week David Lasser claimed large credit for purging Manhattan's Congressman John J. O'Connor (see p. 72). He cried: "Shall we engage in political activities? My fellow delegates, we are in political activities!'' Whereupon the convention offered its support to Franklin Roosevelt for a third term if he wants one and resolved: "Bread and Progress are of greater concern to us and to the American people as a whole than so-called traditions...
...impression which David Lasser would like to erase is that the Alliance wants to perpetuate Relief. He and his board declared: "Those whom we represent do not desire to help pile up Government deficits: do not desire to remain on the Government payroll one day longer than necessary. . . . We . . . understand that a works program and relief alone cannot solve our economic problems or end unemployment and insecurity. Such Government aid can but mitigate the suffering...