Word: nya
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Congress, caught in an election year with a paucity of real issues, is beginning to wield the economy axe on those agencies which it considers nonessential to the war effort. Included in that category are the NYA and CCC. Senator McKellar's Committee on Education and Labor is now considering a bill which abolishes the two and saves about $310,000,000. Despite strong Administration pressure to kill the bill, there is a very good chance that it will be passed by a Congress anxious to "get something done...
This measure is at best hasty and ill-advised. From a short-range viewpoint, it is directly detrimental to the war effort. The training of skilled laborers in NYA schools is undoubtedly a war activity, for without those skills the basic defense industries would be forced to close down. CCC boys are admittedly of military age, but few Congressmen have dared to assert that soil erosion and wastage of natural resources are of no bearing on wartime supply problems. Considered in its longterm affects, the bill is even more foolish. Several tens of thousands of college students are directly dependent...
...threat is especially great in the small colleges and universities, many of whose student bodies would be almost totally obliterated by a sudden stoppage of NYA funds. At harvard and the larger colleges, the direct effect is not so serious, but to the men who are in need of assistance, the money makes a great psychological difference. Few of the 340 men now working on NYA at Harvard would be forced to leave College if it were abandoned. Many of them, however, are given a valuable sense of certainty by signing a contract which assures them a certain...
...hostile Senate and a suspicious House gang up on the two agencies, the direct and indirect losses cannot be quickly or easily recouped. It is difficult to resist the urge to prune a group whose members do not vote, but it may be wise to remember that NYA and CCC beneficiaries will not be minors forever...
Aubrey Willis Williams, National Youth Administrator, veteran defender of boondoggling, changed his tune about NYA. Said he: "Sewing rooms, arts & crafts, music, recreation projects, school lunches . . . have got to go. . . . We must get rid of every soft spot that smells." He asked his aides to get "very, very tough...