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Newspaper Page Text
COURAGE THAT IS DESERVING OF PUBLICITY BY JANE WHITAKER It may be that your idea of courage and mine will differ, but I want to pay tribute to a man I consider most courageous, Dr. Rufus White, chair man of a commission appointed more than a year ago to investigate the problem of the 125,000 men who were then unemployed in this city. The evidence of the doctor's courage was displayed at a meeting of hoboes migratory workers men who often have not a place to sleep, nor enough to eat simply because they cannot get work. They had assem bled to try to find some solution of the unemployed problem. Dr. White was asked to address them. The doctor was plainly an tagonistic. ' He began by saying he had not come there to make a speech, but had really attended because he had been told that the hoboes intended to attack the mayor's commission. "And I was quite right in my surmise," the doctor said. "While I was sitting in the rear of the room a young man came over and sat down be side me and started telling me what he thought of that commission. When he was through I said to him: 'I am very glad to have your opinion; I am chairman of that commission, and i the young man wasn't phased at all. "Every moment I have been ex pecting someone to say something from the platform about the same commission, and, as my time is lim ited, I am going to anticipate by mak ing a defense of our work." Right here, the doctor switched off to tell the men, many of them job less, homeless and hungry, that he was quite in sympathy with the working man, and, in fact, had once worked himself before he became a minister. He even facetiously sug gested that he might have made a better carpenter than a minister. Then, referring back to his griev ance, the anticipated attack on the commission, the doctor said: "Having been informed- that there were 125,000 unemployed in Chicago, Mayor Harrison appointed a commis sion to study the situation. We re ceived so many letters asking us to find jobs for people that, as, chair man, I asked: 'What is the business of this commission? Is it to find jobs?' "We said jobs should be found, but this is probably not the thing we can do best. Besides, there are scores and scores of relief agents who oaght to look after this work. The thing for the commission to do is to study the reasons for people being out of work. "We investigated labor employ ment bureaus. We drafted a bill fash ioned somewhat on the basis of the great employment systems in vogue in England, Germany, etc. "We sent the bill to Springfield. Gov. Dunne said he would do every thing in his power for it I cannot say why nothing was done. It was sent down by the city council. Just at that time when there ought to have been a strong committee to lobby for it, I was obliged to go to Panama. No committee went down to look aft er this bill. I think some pressure was brought against it. "This commission did what it thought it was appointed to do." And the doctor left the hall. It seems to me that a man who has the courage to stand up and tell hun gry, homeless, jobless men that he and the commission appointed by the mayor have discharged their duty when they looked up a few statistics, drafted a bill for bureaus of employ ment similar to those existing in countries where the labor problem Is admittedly worse than ours, and sent the bill to Springfield, where there was opposition from the employment bureaus that today prey on the un employed, without anyone to see that iqtWd'4ii