Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 December 1941 — Page 17

FRIDAY, DEC. 5, 194]

The Indianapolis

FINDS LOAFING ON NYA DEFENSE JOBS

Reporter Goes to Work in Ohio Plant and Discovers Paid Pupils Are Lazy and Teachers Despondent; Few Rules Are Enforced.

By PAUL BLANCHARD JR. CLEVELAND, Dec. 5.—For me, the National Youth

Administration's work-training program meant little work|

and less training. In all the time I worked at an NYA machine shop here, 1 averaged three hours a day of loafing. Yet the machine ghop is the most strictly disciplined of all five plant departments. | One Negro fellow worker said, “I don’t care what kind| of work I do, so long as it’s easy.” From a machine shop instructor) came the comment: “Not a single one of them comes in here to work.| They are too lazy for that. | At a staff meeting for all the | Cleveland Press, a Seripps-higher-ups I overheard the state-|

| | Howard newspaper, sent a . ’ y y y tal » ment: “i don’t see why any respect | | member of its staff to enroll able person would stay in this

place.” with NYA for such training. Called Waste of Time Here is his story.

Self pity, bitterness and cynicism are rampant among all classes of FOREST OWNERS

plant workers. NYA’s work-training program is a waste of skill for in‘Must Apply for Classifica: tion by Dec. 15 to Get

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the course of an investigation which has led it to conclude that NYA's defense training program "a 60-million-dollar boondoggle," The

is

structor, a waste of time for pupil, and a waste of money for those who pay. taxes, I came into the machine shop during “related training” week. A Board of Education employee lectured to newcomers briefly, giving us the very bare fundamentals of machine work, Then I was put on $1 A « a machine. i My job that day consisted of cut- an Acre ating. ng, Hing STd (rile oles Ma Landowners interested in having small piece of tin. been completed in two Hours. I was| tracts of three or more acres listed told to take my time, and spent five as classified forest land must have hours at it, applications for classification on My instructor was. obviously bit-|g:e by Dec. 15 in order to: receive ter about the situation. Capable as| he was, he could hot stir my fellow tax benefits in 1942, Conservation workers to ambition. Their laziness Commissioner Hugh A. Barnhart irritated him, their apathy cancelled said today. : his skill. Land classified as forest land is _K. To Be Late subject to taxes at a valuation of 0 ’ only $1 an acre, under a 1921 law. I was 75 minutes late the second mach tract proposed for classificamorning and entered the shop | tion must be inspected and other ; £ » kind. rirequirements of the law met before without eviptann op A » ye [it can be accepted and certified to was put to work on a “Cc p “the county auditor as subject to the gide a Negro girl whose main inter- | low taxes. Mr. Barnhart said. est, when she wasn't talking, was a! The law permitting the low taxes | was designed to encourage the re-

comie book.

“production” work was seemingly | forestation of farm woodlots and OO Tor machine 1nd hot suited to agricultural pur“related | Poses. Such land must be closed to | grazing.

the same groping for knowledge that I saw in training.” This time, however, I was| supposed to have learned enough) from the previous period to produce] things. I was not alone in my confusion, During my second day in the machine shop I participated in several of NYA's unscheduled bull-sessions.| To share in these conversations) each worker violated two specific] rules—against smoking in the build- | ing, and leaving your machine,

“Unconscious” Holds Job |

At one of these conferences I learned the story of “Unconscious.” He had been with NYA in three different plant departments, had proved himself incapable of everything he had tackled. He could not write ‘his name clearly. He could’ not punch his time-card, after six

weeks of trying. Yet “Unconscious” was kept on the NYA roll. I found out from the instructor, that the defense training I was do-| ing paid 31% cents an hour. | Several times during my third] day of work I tried to get help from | the shop instructor. He was busy | all the time, and said he would be there in a minute. I spent 180 minutes standing by my work bench| awaiting his help. No one seemed| to care whether I worked. | “I used to punch in my time-card, go home and come ‘back to punch | out in the afternoon,” a little Negro | youth said. “When they finally) caught me, they put me off the pay | roll for four days! Can you imagine | that, for something that small!” He complained some more, then put out his cigaret. We returned to work for another half hour. |

Works Very Slowly

One day I was put on a grinding machine, My work was to grind] spooth the surfaces of “V-blocks.” 1 spent eight hours finishidg four of | them when I could have done a dozen in six hours, The rest of the |

time I used to see how much work! other departments were doing. Woodworkers do non-defense work on the second floor. I saw them doing very little work at all. For every nail they drove, they spoke 1000 words. I visited the third floor, where workers are paid to finish sheetmetal lockers produced in the cellar. Their main occupation was socializing, with an occasional touch of work to make the hours go by faster.

acres of privately-owned land in the ls forest land. |

{30 per cent of which probably will

There are approximately 120,000

Butler University’s Y. W. C. A. will hold its annual doll show next Wednesday through Friday in the “Y” room, Jordan Hall, The Y. W. C. A. offers dolls for sale at the dean of women's office and the various women’s organfzations of the university buy the dolls and dress them for the Doll Show contest. Proceeds from the sale of the dolls are used by the Y. W. C. A. to clothe an underprivileged child. Miss Betty Jane Krueger and

Coeds Clothe Yule Dolls

Betty Jane Krueger (left) and Dorothy Herman.

Dorothy Herman are co-chairmen of the affair. Miss Herman is shown holding an authentically dressed Aztec Indian doll. Prizes are awarded for the best dressed dolls in the contest. Judges will be Mrs. Glenn Maynard, chairman of the Y. W, C. A. advisory board, Mrs. Merwyn G. Bridenstine, John Scott, Dr. Daniel S. Robinson, president of the university, and Elizabeth B. Ward, dean of women. Dolls which are unsold by the Y. W. C. A. will be given to children at Riley Hospital.

tate which has been classified as 1 |

WASHINGTON IN NEED OF MORE POLICEMEN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (U. P).— “Healthy and intelligent men between 22 and 32” are needed badly by the Washington Police Department, Congress recently authorized the addition of 100 policemen to the Department which at present is hard pressed to keep abreast of this rapidly expanding city. In addition there are 18 vacancies. But there are only 38 rookies in the police school and only 50 names appear on the civil service register,

be rejected.

Miss Mary Duffy, a senior, will sound the keynote of the student peace conference in her address, “America’s Peace Aims,” at Marian College tomorrow. Students from eight colleges and several high schools in Indiana and Ohio and members of the Catholic clergy will speak at the conference. Among them will be the Rev. Fr. Vincent Mooney, C. 8. C,, director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference Youth Bureau. Father Mooney will discuss “The Relationship Between the National Federation of the Catholic College Students and the Student Pesce Federations.” The conference will open with a

solemn high mass celebrated by the

Rev. Fr. J. J. Doyle, college chaplain. A student choir will give the Gregorian Chant and a supplementary offertory composed by Sister M. Vitalis, O. S. F, of the Marian College faculty. Solemn benediction

America's Peace Aims Topic Of Student Conference Here

of the Blessed Sacrament will close the conference at 5 o'clock. The scope of the discussions and aims of the all-day meeting is indicated by the titles of addresses: “Membership in a World Community,” by Charles Dudley of the Cincinnati Newman Club; and “Responsibility For Remote Causes of War, Consequent Upon Membership in a World Community,” by Miss Patricia Egan of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College. Williath R. Seidenfaden of Xavier University, Cincinnati, will discuss “The Status of the United States in the Present War.” The Rev, Fr. Joseph B. Tieman will preside at the closing session when the general subject will be “Inter-American Relations as a Contributing Factor in World Reconstruction.” “The Most Rev. Joseph E. Ritter, bishop of the Diocese of Indianapolis, will be a conference guest. Father Doyle will welcome delegates.

URGES HONESTY IN PROPAGANDA

Impaired Public Confidence In News Lessens Morale, Creel Says.

CHICAGO, Dec. 6 (U. P). = George Creel, President Wilson's World Way information director, called for an honest “American propaganda policy” today and warned that impairment of public confidence in the news “lessens morale quickly and oftimes fatally.” Mr. Creel contributed a article on “Propaganda and Morale” to a symposium on national morale by 17 leading social scientists in the American Journal of Sociology.

“War is the people’s business and deep concern,” he said, “and not the personal enterprise of admirals and generals. Bad enough in peace time, blindfolds are criminally stupid in a national emergency. In a democracy, nothing is more imperative than that the people be given full and exact information.”

Cites Churchill Candor

Mr. Creel cited Winston Churchill’'s “Blood, Sweat and Tears” phrase as an instance of “candor” that laid “bedrock foundations” for British morale, “Does anyone imagine for a split second that the Germans can take it as the English have taken it?” Mr. Creel wrote. “No, for thel* morale is built on lies, and when the tide of battle turns, the Reich's civillan population will curl up just as it curled up in 1918. “Nothing is more certain than that German reverses will cause it (collapse of the German war machine) to happen again, for what Goebbels puts out is not propaganda in any true sense of the word but

tom-tom beating and tribal incantations.”

USE YOUR

$

Ro

Laziness Is Catching

Before I left the NYA plant alll

the young men in that department; were shifted to the sheet-metal shop in the cellar, thus separating them from the girls. The reason for the shift was “too much social life” I found discontent and laziness predominant everywhere, Student laziness led to instructor despondency, which in turn led to instruetor failure to teach properly. It was no secret to anyone that NYAS original six-cylinder program was clicking now on only one, Of course there were a few who profited from NYA's course. They did it with books. One intelligent youngster told me, “You can’t learn anything here, If you read library machine books and then practice here what you have really learned, you can get somewhere” Not more than 20 per cet of NYA trainees have the ambition to profit at the shop through outside selfeducation,

For the rest NYAS seemingly

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