Detroit Federation Head Warns Against Danger Threatening Social Service Standards

In an address for the Jewish Radio Forum, over Station WMBC, yesterday, Kurt Peiser, executive director of the Jewish Welfare Federation, sounded a warning against the endangering of social service standards as a result of “a wave of relief-consciousness going through our groups.”

Reviewing existing conditions in social service agencies, Mr. Peiser expressed opposition to the establishment of public soup kitchens and urged that as long as it is possible no kitchens should be established “if we wish to assist people in keeping a high morale during these trying times.”

Discussing the manner in which the Detroit Department of Public Welfare co-operated with the Detroit Federation and prevented the so-called “cafeteria or soup kitchen” from being established in the Jewish districts, Mr. Peiser said:

“A number of these kitchens have been started in the city but out of consideration for the higher standards employed in caring for Jews by Jewish family agencies, the Department of Public Welfare has permitted those Jewish families which come to them for relief to receive assistance from them on a food check basis as heretofore. The Department, however, promised that should it become necessary to establish a kitchen, the dietary laws would be observed. Those in charge agree with us that as long as it is possible no kitchen should be established in the city if we wish to assist people in keeping a high morale during these trying days.”

Continuing, Mr. Peiser sounded the following note of warning against endangering existing agencies as a result of the relief-consciousness of Jewish groups:

“May I sound a note of warning at this time. There is a wave of relief-consciousness sweeping our groups. This endangers the standards of social service of all of our institutions, a work which has been built up over a period of years. Can we afford merely to undertake the feeding and sheltering of people without thinking of their leisure hours and expect that over a period of time the net product will be an asset to our citizenry.

“Our recreational center, our educational department, our personal service workers; all those social service functions included in our general social service program, rounded in order to improve living conditions and the standards of life for those in our charge, must be maintained at the highest level possible under these distressing conditions. While we think in terms of feeding we must also think in terms of our souls and of what we shall do with the children who cannot possibly find their time occupied. Just this note of warning that our minds be not entirely occupied with a relief-consciousness.”

Mr. Peiser does not predict a very bright future. “Even if by some miracle we were to get up tomorrow morning to find ourselves in a state of industrial and trade normalcy,” he stated, “we in social work would continue to feel the after-effects of the depression for years to come.”

“The prospects for the Jewish group that is potentially the concern of the Federation are not bright,” he continued. “We must be aware of the steady squeezing out of the lower middle class, the small store and shopkeepers, the peddlers and the artisans, by the great mercantile houses and chain store combines. Apparently the tide of economic progress is against the small trader and independent shopkeeper—he is gradually undermined and left economically stranded; “declassed” to use a phrase coined by the Soviet where this process has reached its tragic limits. And what about the sons and daughters of the immigrant Jewish parents who keep shy of the tailoring shop and clothing store and flock instead to the universities and thence into the liberal professions? Our young doctors, lawyers, dentists, and accountants are finding ever increasing difficulties in their respective fields on account of competition and over-crowding. The university graduate, frequently with a degree of Doctor of Philosophy, who cannot make satisfactory economic adjustments, is even today a not unfamiliar figure to many of us.”

“There is one silver lining in the clouds of the present depression. There is more intelligent thinking being done now on the subject of unemployment than ever before in the history of the country. We no longer regard it as a visitation from heaven. We no longer look upon the unemployed as shiftless, lazy vagabonds who are loking for a chance to escape work,” Mr. Peiser stated.