Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 18, Number 41, DeMotte, Jasper County, 10 September 1948 — Lay Welfare Cost Increase To Food Prices [ARTICLE]

Lay Welfare Cost Increase To Food Prices

Irate Taxpayers Told By G. G. That Grocery Store Is Answer To Their Tax Increase Indianapolis, Ind., Sept. 8. Irate taxpayers who want to know why so much money is needed for public welfare at a time of high employment may find the answer at the grocery store. The Indiana State Chamber of Commerce, Security Department has concluded a survey entitled “Where Do We Go From Here?” —an appraisal of the Hoosier trend in public welfare and township relief programs. The survey found that inflation in food costs was the major factor contributing to the high annual public aid expenditures. That 129 per cent increase in the cost of food between 1939 and 1948 not only hits the wage earner; it also affects the aged, the blind and dependent children. The Chamber of Commerce investigators opined that there will not be any large decrease in the number of persons now receiving aid —107,393 in Indiana for the last month on which tabulations were complete. (May). Back in 1940, there were 489,159 persons receiving public aid. The Chamber reported: “Most persons who either want to work or are able to work are employed. It must be remembered that those on public assistance rolls by the very nature of their dependency—age, blindness, infirmity, illness—are in almost all infitances ‘unemployable.’ It is more likely—that baring war and the frenzied activity which accompanies it—small increases will continue to be recorded until such time as the Old Age and Survivors’ Insurance program becomes more fully effective and begins to provide for many of those persons who might otherwise be forced to depend on some type of public aid.” The Chamber of Commerce advocated that this federal old age and survivors insurance program, to which both wage earners and employers contribute, be extended to cover groups of workers now left out. These are the self-em-ployed, domestics, agricultural, governmental and several other groups. The report added that legislation at a state level could not greatly change the picture, and lauded the Indiana Welfare Act as “one of the better welfare | laws in the country.” However, | the Chamber of commerce survey | commented: “We are not in sympathy with

the so-called ‘confidential nature of public records’ sections of the act, but changes in the federal social security law must be made before this feature of the Indiana law can be altered. The survey said that total public aid in Indiana in 1947 amounted to $26,562,260. Back in 1940, when nearly four times as many people wer£ on welfare rolls, the cost was* $28,581,570.

FALL FATAL Petersburg, Sept. B.—One youth was killed and another hurt today in an 18-foot fall when a scaffold on which they w r ere working collapsed. The dead youth was Halben Wy. att, 19, son of Denzil Wyatt of Kansas, Ind. Harold Loveless, 19-year-old son of Roy Loveless of Petersburg, suffered a broken leg, cuts and bruises.