SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
Febraaiy 21, 
1954. 
Dear Dr. Schraitt: 
I am going to start this letter this afternoon, although I know that 
I Shan H finish it. It may run along for two or three days before I mail it, 
for you won*t get it any sooner anyway. 
Your long letter came from Panama today, and was I glad to see it! 
I have wished a million times that it was possible for you to write. Your 
letbers from Guayaquil cajne last week, and the postcards from the same place 
arrived this morning. 
My last letter to you was written January 31, nearly (or all of) three 
weeKs ago. I am veiy sorry that I did not write again. The fact is, I wasn’t 
paying much attention to the passage of time. The matter of Civil Works exten- 
sion was so uncertain that I thought that I would mxsHX wait to write until 
I could tell you something definite about it. No official word came and I 
kept waiting, until the first tiling I knew you were in Guayaquil and on your 
way to Panama, and then there wasn’t time to get another letter do?^ there. 
About Civil Works, here’s a blow for you, and, believe me, it was a 
blow for all of us. All Civil Works projects in Washington (and perhaps 
throughout the country, I don’t Know) ended at four o’clock yesterday. Mr. 
Graf’s office got the official notice at a quarter of three yesterday afternoon. 
It was terrible* The papers had been full of stories that it would be extended 
to May 1st, or April 10th, and at one time Congress tried to pass a bill con- 
tinuing it until January, 1955. Hopkins, the man in Washington here who is 
at the head of the C.W.A., had been planning to cut dom the persorxnel, but 
the idea was that the people were to be dismissed from time to time until by 
May 1st they would all have gone. Then, like a thunderbolt, came the order 
yesterday to dismiss everybody yesterday afternoon. I have heard that Hopkins 
decided that the best v/ay to cut down the personnel was to dismiss every one 
and then reassign those that were to be kepton. However, all projects have to 
be re-approved, and as yet the Smithsonian project has not been approved. 
?/hatever the reason for the wholesale dismissal, it was rotten treatment to 
dismiss them like that on a half hour’s notice after allowing the papers for 
days to publish stories that indicated that they would be continued. 
Also, they say that Civil ?i(orks will make some effort this time to 
ascertain which people are the neediest. Before they reassign people to their 
old jobs or to new ones they will investigate and see if the people really 
need it. That will cut out our sorority friends, I am afraid. In fact, yester- 
day when Mr. Graf’s office phoned me the news, they told me that they had a 
message for, Miss Spangler to go see a woman at the District Building about a 
