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Footnotes 1279
took command of public welfare agencies, making them accept their workers on the
relief rolls when they were not in need of their services, and making them turn them
back to work as soon as there was any work to do.
It seems that in every country where large-scale public relief has been introduced,
employers have been against it because of their interest in having an abundant labor
supply competing for low wages. It goes without saying that such an attitude has been
prevalent in the South, where planters have shown in so many other ways (social
sanctions for “tenant stealing,” laws against “enticement of labor,” remnants of peon-
age, and so on) how far they can go in order to secure absolute command over the
services of “their Negroes.” We have run across this several times during our field
work in the South.
“The conventional attitude of the landlord was that the tenant, and particularly the
share-cropper, was dependent on him for direction and aid. More than nine out of
every ten landlords interviewed stated that it was one of the functions of the landlord
to maintain his tenants, if possible, in times of distress. At first sight it would seem
difficult to reconcile this statement with the fact that approximately 8o per cent of the
landlords actually wanted their tenants to get on relief. The contradiction is partially
explained, however, by the fact that 50 per cent of the landlords reported financial
inability to care for their tenants ... a considerable number of unscrupulous landlords
used government relief as a means of furnishing their tenants with goods which could
and should have been furnished by themselves. On the other hand, nearly 40 per cent
of the landlords who had tenants on relief were opposed to governmental aid for their
tenants on the grounds of its demoralizing effects upon them. . . . Among the landlords
who had no tenants on relief, more than 70 per cent stated that they objected to relief
because of its demoralizing influence on the tenant.”*
Caught in the middle were the local social workers. In the beginning, comparatively
few of them had much of a professional background, but the proportion of trained
workers has gradually increased, and practical experience must have given many others
an outlook rather different from the prevalent one. Under such circumstances, almost
anything could happen. 7’he treatment of the. Negro is a matter of chance. A good social
worker, for instance, can treat Negroes and whites on a basis of equality. In the cities,
where professional standards are higher than in rural areas, the chances of giving
Negroes something approaching their just share is, of course, much greater. Even there,
however, it may well happen that welfare workers are hampered by politicians.
In the beginning of November, 1938, Sterner visited the Department of Welfare
in Birmingham, Alabama. Negroes and whites were received in segregated parts of the
offices. The statistical data revealed the higher relief needs of Negroes, but, nevertheless,
a large proportion of the clientele was white. Just after this, there was reported in a local
newspaper an interview with a member of the state legislature who claimed that he had
found evidence of discrimination against whites; Negroes, he said, could go into the
department and get what they asked for, but a white applicant had a hard time getting
a fair hearing.
Relief grants, during this period, were much lower in the South than they were
elsewhere. In July, 1935, for instance, the national average benefit per case per month
* Harold Hoffsommer, Landlord-Tenant Relations and Relief in Alabama, Federal Emer-
gency Relief Administration, Division of Research, Statistics and Finance, Research Bulletin,
Series II, No. 9 (1935), pp. 1 and 4.
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