PART II REHABILITATION (continued 2)

Transportation 809 4.0 42 2.1

Tools 284 1.4 92 4.7

Total 20,241 100.0 1,962 100.0

The next table shows the amounts disbursed in principal and in subsidiary grants, according to the nature of the rehabilitation given.

TABLE 41.—AMOUNT OF PRINCIPAL AND SUBSIDIARY GRANTS, BY NATURE OF GRANTS

Nature of grant PRINCIPAL GRANTS SUBSIDIARY GRANTS ALL GRANTS

Amount Per cent Amount Per cent Amount Per cent

Household furniture $ 937,641.99 32.8 $ 80,347.98 52.9 $1,017,989.97 33.9

Business rehabilitation 860,934.80 30.2 11,502.40 7.6 872,437.20 29.0

General relief 433,342.70 15.2 53,166.15 35.0 486,508.85 16.2

Housing 564,986.15 19.8 2,314.70 1.5 567,300.85 18.9

Transportation 47,181.07 1.7 1,735.70 1.1 48,916.77 1.6

Tools 9,792.35 .3 2,945.85 1.9 12,738.20 .4

Total $2,853,879.06 100.0 $152,012.78 100.0 $3,005,891.84 100.0

It should be mentioned in connection with these percentages, that kits of tools for mechanics and artisans were distributed by the Los Angeles Tool Fund in addition to the 376 cash grants for tools noted above; also that the amount given for housing as stated in the table does not include the camp cottages[143] given to camp families.

These two facts explain the comparatively low percentages for these two forms of rehabilitation. The 15.2 per cent of principal grants given for general relief indicates roughly the amount of relief work that had to be done by the Rehabilitation Committee in connection with rehabilitation.

Table 42 shows that under the title “Housing,” relief in sums of $500 or more was granted to a larger number of persons than under any other classification. The 450 families reached by these larger grants are 26 per cent of those aided to rebuild. With but 31 exceptions they received no aid other than housing. Business rehabilitation stands next, but the families reached under the second classification are scarcely more than 3 per cent of the number in the business group. Twenty-two of the large grants for general relief were made by Sub-committee IV.[144]

TABLE 42.—AMOUNTS GIVEN TO APPLICANTS RECEIVING $500 OR MORE, BY NATURE OF PRINCIPAL GRANT[145]

Nature of principal grant Number of cases Amount granted Average amount per applicant

Housing 450 $289,989.90 $644.42

Business rehabilitation 162 86,250.34 532.41

General relief 35 19,579.90 559.42

Total 647 $395,820.14 $611.78

In 576 instances the sum given was for a single purpose; in the business group, in 71 instances for two or more purposes. For example, in 28 instances the money was for business only; in 40 for business and for household furniture, for the expenses of an illness, or for some other subsidiary purpose. In the housing group, in 131, the money was for building only; in but 31 instances was it for household aid or general relief.

The highest grant for housing was $1,230.40, the highest for business, $1,100, but the latter included a tuition fee for a member of the family. The largest grant for general relief was $1,045, which included the expenses of a long illness.

In addition to the cases presented in the table there were two for household aid which came to $500 and $600 respectively as a result of duplication, in the one case through the United Irish Societies, and in the other, through the confidential committee.

To complete the picture, we present the grants and refusals passed on by sub-committees and by the Rehabilitation Committee during the fourth rehabilitation period from November 4, 1906, to April 9, 1907. The object of this presentation is to show the proportion of applications passed on without the intervention of a sub-committee.

TABLE 43.—APPLICATIONS FOR RELIEF PASSED UPON BY SUB-COMMITTEES AND BY THE REHABILITATION COMMITTEE, WITHOUT ACTION BY A SUB-COMMITTEE, IN THE PERIOD FROM NOVEMBER 1, 1906, TO APRIL 1, 1907, BY NATURE OF THE APPLICATION[146]

Nature of applications for relief Appli- cations passed upon Appli- cations passed upon by sub- commit- tees APPLICATIONS PASSED UPON BY THE REHABILITATION COMMITTEE WITHOUT ACTION BY A SUB-COMMITTEE

Number Per cent of all appli- cations

Household furniture 5,647 5,099 548 9.7

Business rehabilitation 3,414 3,095 319 9.3

General relief 2,873 2,504 369 12.8

Housing 1,788 1,690 98 5.5

Transportation 144 93 51 35.4

Tools for mechanics and artisans 48 31 17 35.4

Total 13,914 12,512 1,402 10.1

4. THE RE-OPENING OF CASES TO MAKE FURTHER GRANTS

It was the aim of the Rehabilitation Committee to make final disposition of each application for a specific object by means of a single grant. This it succeeded in doing in the cases of 17,560 (86.8 per cent) of all applicants aided. Before the other 2,681 applications were finally disposed of, 5,777 grants had been made, usually at the rate of two grants to a case. Three grants were rarely made, although there were exceptional cases of applicants who received three or four different kinds of aid in five or six separate grants.

Table 44 shows the extent to which re-opening occurred.[147]

TABLE 44.—NUMBER OF RE-OPENED CASES BY NATURE OF FIRST GRANT

Nature of first grant Total number of cases RE-OPENED CASES

Number Per cent of all cases

Household furniture 9,552 1,299 13.6

Business rehabilitation 4,524 540 11.9

General relief 3,787 657 17.3

Housing 1,212 62 5.1

Transportation 799 37 4.6

Tools for mechanics and artisans 367 86 23.4

Total 20,241 2,681 13.2

The form of aid through which the greatest proportion of cases was disposed of by a single grant was transportation. Of these but 4.6 per cent were ever re-opened.

A single grant for transportation was effective in so high a proportion of cases because the applicant as a rule was being sent where work awaited him or to relatives pledged to furnish him a home.[148] The re-opened transportation cases are mainly those of persons who could not adapt themselves to life in other communities, and who returned to San Francisco and were given household furniture or business rehabilitation. Housing was a form of aid offered principally to self-supporting families; hence those whose first grant was for housing were usually wage-earners whose income sufficed not only to furnish the house, but to pay part of the expenses of building it. Business cases were usually re-opened, not for aid for other purposes, but for additional aid for business,—a legitimate demand where circumstances showed that an applicant was threatened with failure for lack of a small amount of additional capital.

There seems to be no reason in the nature of things why a first grant of aid for household furniture should not have been conclusive in a greater number of instances. Families were required to present fairly definite plans before being given aid to re-establish their homes. If they could have been dealt with more liberally in the beginning, there would have been less re-opening. Most of these first grants for furniture, however, were given between August 20 and November 1, and were inadequate. Although at the time they were treated as final, later on, especially during January and February, families who made request were given an additional grant for furniture.

General relief is in its very nature indeterminate. It is not surprising, therefore, to see that one case in six returned for additional assistance. Some of the families were given intermittent care until June, 1907, and then became charges of the Associated Charities and the other regular relief agencies.

Grants for tools were nearly all given very early in point of time, and were for small amounts. They averaged but $34.71. Such of these applicants as later applied again were considered eligible to receive grants for household furniture, or were assisted to build homes, on the same basis as though they had not previously received aid. The same is true of many families who early received small amounts of general relief. When they succeeded later in forming definite plans they were given grants for household furniture, for housing, or for business.

It is evident that in any disaster so great that months are devoted to the work of reconstruction, a number of families must be dealt with at least twice and some must be carried through the entire period that the wonted relief work of the community is superseded by the unwonted. Even though action taken on an individual application be regarded as final, there will be many re-applications, some because there is the craving for another slice, some because there is a planning to make good use of aid that is being offered in new forms, and others because there is the facing of a new family crisis. In each instance, as a rule, there must be a re-investigation, which means that the time of investigators and of committeemen is drawn in part from the consideration of current cases. All cases suffer corresponding delay. As was to be expected, the greater number of re-openings were in the first three periods of the rehabilitation work. Of 912 household grants made before the end of October, 1906, only 175 were filed away to remain “closed.”

How could the re-opening of cases have been in part obviated?

First, by avoiding the mistake of filing a case as “closed” when it was unfinished.

Second, by supervising the expenditure of money given for a definite purpose to persons of weak wills or poor judgment, and by making the grant, if the state of the funds permitted, sufficient adequately to meet the purpose. To illustrate: 371 families received grants for furniture, and 461 for business rehabilitation, each in two allotments. In some of these cases, because of the withholding of the funds, the first grant was inadequate. In others, the money was spent to poor advantage or for purposes other than the original intention. The Rehabilitation Committee in making business grants hesitated to hand an applicant more than the average business grant of $250. If provision from the start could have been made to have business grants expended under the supervision of trained workers, larger sums could have been safely placed to the credit of the applicants, many business failures would have been averted, and the call for second grants avoided.

Third, by opening earlier the Bureau of Special Relief. If the Bureau had been started in May instead of in August to give emergency aid in money as well as in kind, it would have released the Rehabilitation Committee from the need of considering the granting of petty amounts, and would have left it free to concentrate effort in its own field. To illustrate: The Rehabilitation Committee before the middle of August made 480 small cash grants for general relief, and 373 for tools. The Bureau could have handled these quickly and effectively by giving help in kind or in cash to an amount of $50 or less. Later, when plans for permanent rehabilitation had been made on the one hand by the Rehabilitation Committee, on the other by the families themselves, the way would have been clear for the more weighty decisions. The quick exchange of records would have meant that the facts held by the Bureau were available as the basis for further investigation.

The length of time elapsing between application and grant was seriously studied by the reviewers. The results need not be given in detail. It should be noted that delays in a time of emergency must not be judged by the standards applied to the normal work of a relief society. The time elapsing between applications and grants varied materially with the period of the relief work. In the first period, extending from May 5 to July 7, 1906, the proportion of grants made within three weeks of the date of application was larger than in the second, the period of accelerated applications, extending from July 7 to August 20, 1906. During the third, the period beginning August 20 and ending November 4, 1906, the proportion of grants made within three weeks of the date of application was smaller than during any other period of the relief work. The proportion of grants made six weeks or more after the date of application was at the same time much larger in this period than in the earlier periods. In the fourth period of the work, extending from November 4, 1906, to April 4, 1907, the proportion of grants made within three weeks of the date of application was smaller than in the first period, but much larger than in the second and third periods.

During the first period of rehabilitation work, the burden of care fell on the army as well as on the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. It was the time when the people were not ready in large numbers to make application for rehabilitation. Only 1,843 applied during the nine weeks. During the second period of six weeks, 6,479 applied to the central and to the seven section offices in which were working the newly organized force of investigators. If any standard were to be upheld, deliberation, which meant delay in dispatch of cases, had to be in order. When in the third period of ten weeks the number of applicants was but 2,872 and the force of investigators, case reviewers, and committeemen had had time to get on a sound working basis, the episode of the withholding of the eastern funds caused a partial paralysis of decision. In this period the long delay in making grants is a reflex. In the fourth period of twenty-two weeks, during which the number of applications was 10,994, when retrenchment was not the key-word, the sharp reversal of policy makes any testing of relative speed impracticable. The cumulative effect of working conscientiously together brings the power to dispatch cases. Whether the relative dispatch would have been greater or less in the fourth period if the district plan had been adhered to can be answered either way merely by a conjecture. Two facts must be borne in mind: First, no physical suffering resulted from delay. The emergency cases were always handled with rapidity, first through the camp commanders and the staff at headquarters, later through the Bureau of Special Relief. Second, mental suffering did result from delay, but to be thorough, rehabilitation work must be carried out with deliberation.

5. VARIATIONS IN AMOUNTS OF GRANTS, AND REFUSALS

There is first presented a table classifying the grants for different purposes according to amount of grant.

TABLE 45.—GRANTS FOR REHABILITATION BY AMOUNT AND BY NATURE OF RELIEF GIVEN[149]

Nature of Grant GRANTS OF Total

Less than $100 $100 and less than $200 $200 and less than $300 $300 and less than $400 $400 and less than $500 $500 and over

Household furniture 4,708 4,460 721 63 4 2 9,958

Business rehabilitation 1,018 1,730 1,402 420 156 162 4,888

General relief 2,307 1,420 619 114 37 35 4,532

Housing 92 333 743 102 67 450 1,787

Transportation 729 106 22 5 2 2 866

Tools 358 21 — — — — 379

Total 9,212 8,070 3,507 704 266 651 22,410

Per cent 41.1 36.0 15.7 3.1 1.2 2.9 100.0

The table indicates the amounts allotted to individuals for the various forms of rehabilitation, and brings out striking differences in the sums required for different purposes. Of the 9,958 homes furnished, 9,168 (92.1 per cent) were refurnished at less than $200 each, and 4,708 of these (47.3 per cent of the total) at less than $100. The larger sums, $200 and more, usually mean that a family having spent its first furniture grant for some other justifiable purpose was later given a second furniture grant, or that the so-called furniture grant included $50 to $100 given for clothing and incidentals. Single sums given for a double purpose have been classified under the predominant purpose. Thus the numerous grants reading “Household Furniture and General Relief” have been classed as household grants; $300 or over was involved in less than 1 per cent of the grants so classified.

Grants for business were much larger than those for the household. More than one-half (56.2 per cent), to be sure, were for less than $200, but 15 per cent were for $300 or more, and of these, 3 per cent received $500. Seldom was the grant more than $500.

Grants for general relief in 82.2 per cent of all cases were for less than $200; in 50.9 per cent for less than $100.

Housing[150] is the form of aid that called for the largest individual grants. About one-fourth, 23.7 per cent, were under $200; 41.6 per cent were between $200 and $300; and one-fourth were $500 or over. The sums granted for transportation and for tools, on the other hand, were very small, 84.2 per cent of the former and 94.5 per cent of the latter being for amounts under $100.

TABLE 46.—GRANTS AND REFUSALS TO APPLICANTS WHO POSSESSED RESOURCES, BY AMOUNT OF RESOURCES

Amount of resources Total number of applicants Applicants to whom relief was refused APPLICANTS TO WHOM RELIEF WAS GRANTED

Number Per cent of all appli- cants

Less than $100 785 73 712 90.7

$100 and less than $200 673 71 602 89.5

$200 and less than $400 1,235 162 1,073 86.9

$400 and less than $600 770 144 626 81.3

$600 and less than $1,000 576 143 433 75.2

$1,000 and over 1,271 480 791 62.2

Not stated 922 201 721 78.2

Total 6,232 1,274 4,958 79.6

To summarize, 77.1 per cent of all grants were for less than $200, and of these more than half, or 41.1 per cent of the entire number, were under $100. The grants of $200 to $299, constituting 15.7 per cent, are made up principally of sums for housing and business. Grants of $300 and over constitute the remaining 7.2 per cent, and most of these were for business rehabilitation or housing. In the study of business rehabilitation that follows in Part III, it will become evident that the number of comparatively small business grants included some failures.

A glance at Table 46 shows that to possess resources other than income did not in itself render applicants ineligible for relief. Of the 6,232 property owners that applied, 4,958, or 79.6 per cent, received aid. Though the percentage of refusals was higher among those with the greater amount of resources, 791 persons, 62.2 per cent of those with $1,000 and over, received aid. Under the grant and loan plan[151] aid to build was conditional on ownership of a lot, and the success of a business plan was usually felt to depend on the applicants’ having something to supplement the grant asked for. Small property owners with small incomes who did not intend to rebuild, needed household or other aid, and there were some property owners who could not, if they would, have their holdings converted into cash. In fact, the persons aided who had resources were, in general, those whose resources could not or should not have been used for refurnishing or for current expenses; those refused were the few who had available cash savings or who had been so fortunate as to receive their insurance money early enough to make an independent start. A thousand and one special considerations and facts entered to make a classification of this group of cases a call for a digest of each case. Such a digest is not practicable in this limited Relief Survey. If made, it would be an index of the individualizing work done by the Rehabilitation Committee. It may be safely said that the Committee rarely erred on the side of generosity. The immediate lesson to be learned is that the presence or absence of resources is only a factor in rehabilitation. No generalizing policy of grants and refusals can be built upon it.

In Table 47, 5,284 refusals of aid are classified by the reasons for refusal and the nature of the applications.

TABLE 47.—REASONS FOR REFUSAL OF REHABILITATION, BY NATURE OF APPLICATION[152]

Reasons for refusal APPLICATIONS OF EACH SPECIFIED NATURE REFUSED Total

House- hold furni- ture Busi- ness reha- bilita- tion Gen- eral relief Hous- ing Trans- porta- tion Tools

Not burned out 13 12 71 56 6 11 169

Not in need 180 87 165 42 6 20 500

Has collectable insurance 115 53 34 5 3 1 211

Is earning wages 837 113 183 74 21 122 1,350

Can work 150 82 102 13 45 38 430

Relatives can aid 35 15 45 4 9 5 113

Other members of family already aided 13 20 2 7 1 .. 43

Already aided 187 136 95 96 4 6 524

Has savings 442 191 107 169 7 22 938

No plan 22 5 15 2 3 1 48

Plan not approved 9 131 23 66 40 .. 269

Plan not definite 9 32 7 10 10 1 69

Applicant for transportation can well work here .. .. .. .. 31 .. 31

Advices from applicants’ proposed destination unfavorable .. .. .. .. 10 .. 10

Not in business before fire .. 94 .. .. .. .. 94

Not successful in business .. 3 .. .. .. .. 3

Character defective 100 75 58 13 12 6 264

Has not complied with committee’s requirements 47 43 28 52 24 2 196

Committee has no funds (August to November, 1906) .. 22 .. .. .. .. 22

Total 2,159 1,114 935 609 232 235 5,284