Trainman News

GOP Salk Plan
Will Not Work
Say Laborites

A PA I ROUNDUP

Labor spokesmen had only one answer to the insistence of the Eisenhower Administration on a voluntary program for distribution of the Salk vaccine: "It won't work."

Both AFL and CIO representatives have been working for weeks in an effort to get the administration to accept federal responsibility for the proper and fair distribution of the vaccine among the most needy age groups.

In this they have had strong support in Congress where bills have been introduced giving the President "stand-by" authority to intervene if voluntary methods fail.

Largely as a result of the bitter disappointment of labor and of social service groups, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Oveta Hobby came up with a program of distribution.

This still placed reliance on the promises of medical groups and druggists that the program would be carried out fairly.

It called for allotment of vaccine to the state in accordance with their child populations and it back-tracked enough to ask for $28 million federal funds to help needy states buy vaccine, where no money had been asked before.

For labor representatives, this was a bitter disappointment. The request for an appropriation was welcomed, but the programs still kept the federal government outside the control picture and offered no guarantee that federal controls would be set up. They had hoped that the administration, at least, would accept stand-by controls. In that they were disappointed, too.

Secretary Hobby, appearing before the Senate Labor Committee told Chairman Lister Hill (D-Ala). said that she didn't even want stand-by controls. Senator Hill wanted to know what harm it would do to have stand-by control authority, but Secretary Hobby still insisted that she didn't want it now.

Charges that the administration has been "bungling" its handling of the vaccine program are growing stronger in Washington.

Sen. Herbert Lehman (D-NY), was sharply critical of Secretary Hobby's handling of the program, in particular declaring that her department had made no advance plans for handling of the vaccine and had delayed taking any action until two days after success of the vaccine had been announced.

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn), told a radio audience that President Eisenhower was responsible for a "horrible job" on the Salk vaccine program.

"It was one of the worst and needlessly bungled programs I have ever seen," he declared.

CIO Pres. Walter P. Reuther, in a statement before the President announced the new program, urged Congress "to step in and insist that effective safeguards are set up" to insure fair distribution. He, too, blamed Secretary Hobby for inaction and delay.

"Mrs. Hobby had no plan ready on April 12. -She has no plan now. She proposes no plan that can properly be called a plan," he said.

"It is the plain duty of Congress to establish a single and simple national plan of priorities and to finance the purchase and distribution of the vaccine to the extent necessary to make certain no child shall be denied inoculations because its parents can't pay for it."