and meat. I went to him and told him 

 to take it or else get off the job. This 

 offer was later withdrawn due to some 

 change in the management of the farm. 

 The other man had to get off our WPA 

 project. 



"I have had farmers come to me and 

 say, "d— n the WPA, I can't hire any 

 help,' but sometimes you find they don't 

 want to pay anything. One wanted help 

 for $1 a day and asked the man to bring 

 his own lunch and work from daylight 

 to dark. I don't think that's fair pay for 

 a good man who can do farm work." 



Seely was town clerk before he was 

 elected road commissioner. He is one 

 of the busiest men in Will county. He 

 publishes a weekly newspaper, the Man- 

 hattan American, writes up the news 

 items, gets the advertising, sets the type, 



Erints the paper and mails it. In the 

 aseball season he also manages the Will 

 County Farm Bureau baseball team which 

 invariably comes out at or near the top 

 in the annual state championship race. 

 In Seely's opinion the WPA projects have 

 held down local relief taxes. "If it 

 hadn't been for WPA we probably would 

 have had to double our township levy for 

 relief," he said. "We levied 30 cents in 

 1935 but nothing in 1936 because we had 

 plenty left from the year before." 



In 1935, he says, there were 27 or 28 

 men in the township in desperate need. 

 Most of them had lost their jobs as farm 

 workers or had lost their farms. They 

 were on relief before going on WPA. 

 Drouth, chinch bugs, low prices and 

 other factors were responsible. Some 

 were crowded off their farms by mergers, 

 by one farmer getting control of more 

 land and using power machinery to farm 

 more acres per man. 



"We have too many farmers farming 

 too many acres," said Seely. "There's 

 a lot of that going on around here. And 

 the fact is, very few who are farming that 

 way have been successful. They get all 

 their capital tied up in machinery and 

 then if the price goes down, they lose 

 everything. You can make money if 

 everything goes .right on a big farm but 

 you can lose it fast, too. Around here 

 the farmers who are getting the best re- 

 sults are on 160 to 240 acres. Nearly 



all our farm sales have been the result of 

 farmers being crowded off the land. Of 

 course there are farms for sale, but few 

 tenants have enough money for the down 

 payment." 



Seely says men work much better when 

 they are given a job they feel is really 

 constructive. "Our men show more in- 

 terest when we jump from ditching to 

 building catch basins and concrete 

 bridges," he said. "If WPA projects 

 were all operated honestly we could get 

 twice the work done for the money spent. 

 The first year (1935) we built two 

 bridges in zero weather. The men didn't 

 complain. We had to put up canvas and 

 use salamanders to keep the cement from 

 freezing. That's the only time we had a 

 fire. My wife made coffee and we kept 

 it hot in a big lard can over the fire. 



"I don't doubt that there are a lot of 

 men on WPA who don't belong there. 

 If they put only the needy on the payroll 

 it wouldn't hurt us a bit. You know 

 under the rules you are entitled to so 

 many non-relief workers and that's where 

 there's a chance to pad the payrolls. The 

 bosses can put their political friends on. 

 We have had only one non-relief worker 

 in Manhattan township. Rural people 

 are more independent. They don't want 

 to go on relief. They try to make their 

 own way. That isn't true to the same 

 extent in the cities. Down at Joliet they 

 have WPA strikes. The men try to 

 dictate to the formen." 



Seely will tell you that the most help- 

 ful work he and his WPA force have 

 done is to improve drainage. "You know 

 if you dump a load of gravel on the road, 

 everybody sees it and thinks he's getting 

 something for his tax money. But you 

 can put $20,000 into drainage and very 

 few will notice it. Yet drainage is 

 fundamental in road building. We had 

 a bad corner near Frank Delany's farm 

 on Route 44 south of Manhattan. It was 

 always under water after a heavy rain. 

 When the state put the hard road in, 

 they didn't go deep enough with their 

 culverts. The tile were below the cul- 

 verts and they soon filled up. I found 

 one 12" tile, one 8", one 6" tile and two 

 4" tile plugged up. As a result about 40 

 acres were flooded. The drainage 



HOCK AND CONCRETE CATCH BASIN 

 "37 of these in the township" 



ditch was filled with brush, too, on the 

 other side of the railroad track. We got 

 after that, opened up the tile, fixed the 

 outlet under the hard road, deepened and 

 widened the ditch, and you should see the 

 difference. 



"Last year some of the adjoining land 

 raised the first crop in years. Farmers 

 and tourists are not bothered any more 

 going through water up to the radiator 

 on Route 44. We had to get a dredger 

 up from Dwight to deepen the ditch but 

 our men did most of the work cleaning 

 out the brush." 



WPA help has enabled Manhattan 

 township to get much more road and 

 bridge work done than would have been 

 true without it. The services of a com- 

 petent project engineer have been very 

 helpful. The township has been levy- 

 ing about $3700 a year, collecting about 

 $3200 from the 33 cent road and bridge 

 tax. A special 17 cent hard road tax was 

 recently voted to bring the levy up to 

 around $5900. During the past four 



WPA WORKERS IN WILTON TWP. 

 "ditching at 10° above lero" 





^-^: 



BOB SEELY SETTING TYPE 

 "On Thursdays the paper must go 

 to press." 



PART OF SEELY'S WPA GANG 

 "I couldn't hare picked 25 men 

 who could do any more work." 



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