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Like any other potent social medicine, government assistance to the needy often causes unpleasant side effects. The welfare state means new security for the millions who do not share the nation’s affluence. But it also means public intervention in private lives, job-shirking relief chiselers who loaf at government expense, and tax burdens that soar higher every year. Can the side effects be nullified without crimping the cure? Last week one city answered with a resounding yes —and in the process, Newburgh, N.Y., gave the nation cause for some sober second thoughts on the use—and misuse—of civil charity.

Once a Hudson River whaling port and a headquarters for George Washington’s colonial army, steep-sloping, tree-shaded Newburgh (pop. 31,000) has long been a shopping center for the green and pleasant fruit farms that prosper in the rolling hills of Orange County. Since World War II, most of the farms have been serviced by migrant workers, mostly Negroes from the Deep South, who drift from harvest to harvest during the long summer. Inevitably, many migrants have settled in Newburgh; since 1950 the number of Negro residents has risen 151%, even though the city’s overall population has dropped 3%. Poor, ill-trained and badly educated, Newburgh’s ex-migrants find it hard to get year-round jobs in a town with little industry. The stubborn discrimination of the North has forced them to congregate in four waterfront districts that police bluntly call “the trouble wards.” The area is now a classic slum, going from bad to worse; during the past three years, the assessed value of property on Newburgh’s downtown streets has dropped $945,000.

Down by the Riverside. Appalled by the growing decay, Newburgh’s city council last fall went looking for a businesslike city manager. The council’s choice was brash, balding Joseph McDowell Mitchell, 39, who had already served in administrative jobs in Culver City, Calif., and Marple Township, Pa. Mitchell ordered a survey of the welfare program, discovered that Newburgh’s relief expenditures —$983,000 out of an overall city budget of $3,134,000 for 1961—came to more than the city spent on police and fire protection. He seemed shocked to learn that most of the money was going down by the riverside. Worse still, unless costs were cut, the city would have to forego a big urban renewal project or face either a deficit or a tax hike. So last month Mitchell and the council put together a tough new 13-point code aimed at stopping relief chiseling. Among the code’s provisions: a three-month limitation on relief payments, except for the physically handicapped and the aged; unmarried mothers who bore any more illegitimate children would be cut off from assistance; whenever possible, food and rent vouchers would be issued instead of cash; able-bodied males on relief would have to work 40 hours each week for the city building-maintenance department; newcomers who settled in Newburgh without specific job offers would be limited to one week of relief payments.

Though the new code pleased most of Newburgh, it angered the State Board of Social Welfare, which reimburses Newburgh for 33% of its relief costs. A special investigating committee protested that at least two provisions—the three-month cutoff, and the discrimination against unwed mothers—violated both state and federal standards, warned that the Federal Government might withhold as much as $200 million in annual welfare payments to New York State if Newburgh put its new code into effect. The board also questioned whether Newburgh was as badly off as Manager Mitchell claimed. The city’s welfare costs, according to state figures, were lower than those of comparable cities. Mitchell claimed that 5% of Newburgh’s population was on the dole; the state estimate was 2.9%, slightly under the state average of 3.05%. According to Mitchell, a large slice of Newburgh’s welfare money has been paid to recent immigrants; state experts noted that the city had actually spent only $1,395 in the past two years on relief assistance to newcomers.

In No Mood. Backed up by a tide of approving mail from across the nation, Mitchell was in no mood to back down. When Newburgh’s own welfare director admitted that he, too, thought the code illegal, Mitchell and the city council forced his resignation, appointed a more pliable acting commissioner, ordered a departmental shakeup. Mitchell denounced investigating state-welfare officials as “Gestapo agents,” and fortnight ago he put his code into effect. Last week he carried his fight to Washington, and waded deep into the choppy waters of Republican politics.

Invited to the capital by Republican Congresswoman Katharine St. George, Mitchell starred at press conferences, explained his code to a crowded meeting of the far-right Human Events Political Action Conference, found other interested listeners in conservative Republican Senators John Tower of Texas and Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater was particularly entranced. The Newburgh program was “as refreshing as the clear air of Arizona,” the Senator declared. “I would like to see every city adopt the plan. I don’t like to see my taxes paid for children born out of wedlock.” Goldwater also took the trouble to deny that his remarks had “anything to do” with a potential rival for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination—New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who gingerly denounced the Newburgh plan before going to his Venezuelan finca for a vacation. At week’s end, with the state preparing to fight Mitchell’s code in the courts,* even Newburghers were beginning to wonder whether the plan was necessary after all. In the first muster of male reliefers last week, only one man (of the three who showed up) was eligible to work his 40-hour stint for the city. But whether or not his code is needed, and whether or not he makes it stick, Joe Mitchell and Newburgh have already made a lasting impression on the welfare state.

*In an off-the-cuff opinion, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff announced that at least work-relief programs were within the law, made no judgment on Newburgh’s other code provisions.

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