William K. Divers Oral History Interview, February 12, 1970

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

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This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened September 1971
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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HESS: Mr. Divers in checking your scrapbooks last week, I found several clippings of interest and I would like to start off today by quoting from one. It was a clipping from the South Omaha Sun of March the 21st, 1940 giving some of your background. Some things I think we had better check on. It says:

“Mr. Divers assisted in drafting the limited dividend housing law enacted in Ohio in 1932, and the Ohio housing authorities law enacted in Ohio in 1933, which was the first housing authority law enacted in the United States.”

What can you tell me about the background of the what came to be the first housing authority law enacted in the country?

DIVERS: I'm not sure that the report is correct. I do not recall whether Ohio was the first housing authority or New York State had the

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first housing authority law. I do know that Ohio did not if it did not have the first one, it had the second one. You know of my interest in housing, and my connection with housing, and I was brought into this by Ernest J. Bohn who was subsequently the executive director of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority. Ernie Bohn, as he was widely known among public housers, was very active in housing legislation in Ohio, and he solicited my support, which I .gladly gave, from the southern part of the state, and he had he was widely known and respected and active politically in the northern part of the state. And together, we were successful in rounding up enough support for this law to get it enacted. At that time, legislators were quite willing to pass legislation which had any prospect of creating jobs and improving economic conditions. And it was not difficult,

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really, to get legislation through. Our principal problem was an educational job, to explain the legislation to the appropriate committees, to answer their questions and to follow up to see that it was passed in suitable form to perform the functions we proposed. Actually, I would describe my part in this as minor compared to that .of Ernie Bohn and some others who worked on the legislation.

HESS: A11 right, fine.

At the end of our last interview we were discussing Mr. Nathan Straus, Administrator of the National Housing Authority, and had mentioned Mr. Leon Keyserling and David Krooth, the general counsel and the assistant general counsel of the National Housing Authority. What can you tell me about those two men?

DIVERS: Well, Leon Keyserling is a lawyer who has

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become rather widely known as an economist. He was the general counsel of the United States Housing Authority. He had worked with Senator [Robert F.] Wagner in having the housing legislation passed and subsequently was selected as general counsel by Senator Wagner and Nathan Straus. Keyserling was one of the most able men that I have ever run into, in or out of Government. He had some faculties which I wish I had.

HESS: What were those?

DIVERS: I have seen him dictate a twenty or twenty five minute speech to his secretary, read it over once, and make a few corrections, and then get up, and without a note, deliver it word for word. He had a remarkably photographic memory and once he saw this on paper and had dictated it, he was able to reproduce it word for word,

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HESS: In what areas did you disagree with him? On what particular program, plans, or perhaps methods of carrying out those plans?

DIVERS: Well, I think that Mr. Keyserling was primarily interested in promoting programs with which he was identified and where he was prominent. I tried at all times to take an overall view and to try to work in any programs on which I was working with other Government programs, and frankly, to consider the interest of the public as being the prime factor in all of the decisions that were made. I think that

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too seldom is that position taken in Government that even today we see Government agencies that are pushing their own programs hard with reference to other Government programs or other Government agencies and not putting the interest of the public first in their deliberations.

HESS: Do you feel that there were times that Mr. Keyserling did not put the interest of the public first?

DIVERS: I would say this, that he probably put the interest of the public first as he saw it, and I put the interest of the public first as I saw it, and we didn't see things the same way.

HESS: Can you remember an illustration of a particular program you were both interested in that might show some of the differences that we have been discussing?

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DIVERS: Oh, I think I can. I think one example stands out in my mind. This is the question of the amount of subsidy that would be used to reduce rents in the low rent or low income housing which was being produced by the local housing authorities under contract with the United States Housing Authority. The United States Housing Authority was granted, by Congress, a limited amount of dollars and these dollars could be used either to reduce the rent, for example, on a hundred thousand units paying fifteen dollars, or fifty thousand units paying thirty dollars a month, and the more the subsidies were used to reduce rent, the lower the income of the families you could serve. I felt that Congress had given us a directive to serve the lowest income families that we possibly could serve, and at that time there were ample families who met those requirements,

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and we were thinking primarily in terms of widowed mothers who had children and who had to work and, at that time, were lucky if they made twenty five dollars a week. We were thinking in terms of families where the principal wage earner might have been injured in an accident and was unemployable either for life or for a period of several years. And I was in favor of using the number of dollars we had to reduce the rent as much as possible and to reach the lowest income families we could reach. Mr. Keyserling and some others in the Authority, who prevailed I might say, felt that by using a limited number of dollars they could spread the program and maybe build twice as many units. I felt it was more important to build half as many units to reach the lowest income families possible and I felt this way for another reason. I felt that by

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serving the lowest possible income group, we couldn't possibly have any conflicts with private enterprise. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure, but this decision by Keyserling and his and the people who agreed with him may not have been the beginning of the end of the popularity of the low rent, low income housing program, because . . .

HESS: Who did it become unpopular with first? Homebuilders?

DIVERS: Well, I suspect that it was always unpopular with some homebuilders and FHA was also nibbling at the heels of the low income housing program and trying to demonstrate how they could build housing which was suitable for low income families, but the National Association of Real Estate Boards was one of the principal opponents. I guess the United States Savings and Loan

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League was also in that category. I think if the leaders of all these businesses could have been brought together with the Housing Agency in one room, and the press was not present, that they probably could have agreed on a set of objectives which all of them could support.

HESS: Why wasn't that done?

DIVERS: Well, I guess one of the reasons is that it's seldom done in Government.

HESS: Is that a failing of Government in these programs?

DIVERS: I think so. I think so. I think that there's too little cross fertilization between private business and Government, and I'm happy to see that a program is under way now which I read about recently in which three hundred to five hundred Government employees would go

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into jobs in private business each year, and three hundred to five hundred private business executives or junior executives would go into Government for periods of eighteen months to two years. I really think that many of our troubles arise out of the lack of effort by Government to draw the business community in, I mean that the whole effort now is being made to draw the community into Government planning and I think it's just as important that we draw the business community in. After all we're all proud of the achievements of American business and it seems to me that it only makes sense to make use of them as much as possible in connection with Government programs.

HESS: Who were a few of the individuals that saw things the same way that Mr. Keyserling did on the housing matter that we were discussing?

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DIVERS: Warren J. Vinton, who was the chief planning officer, I think, of the United States Housing Authority, was the principal supporter of Keyserling, and I think that Jacob Crane who was the assistant administrator for construction felt the same way that I did. Dave Krooth was in the Keyserling camp and I don't recall any other people who might have been in the line up. You mentioned Marion Beers who was an assistant to Nathan Straus and who was quite active in the early days, but I think that she played less and less important parts in any policy decisions that were made from time to time.

HESS: What were her general duties? Do you recall?

DIVERS: No, I think that I'd just be guessing. I'd say that in the early days that she was an assistant to Straus and undoubtedly he delegated some minor decisions to her. I think she was also an appointments secretary for the administrator

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and, perhaps, social secretary as well and handled a lot of affairs for him both in and out of Government.

HESS: And we have mentioned Mr. David Krooth several times. He was assistant general counsel. Did he have any other duties other than just working for Keyserling?

DIVERS: No, I don't think he had, but I think that Dave Krooth was primarily responsible for all of the legal work. Keyserling oversaw the legal work, but was primarily interested in the overall policies of the agency and their relations with Congress.

HESS: Was Keyserling, at this time, looking at things more as an economist rather than a lawyer?

DIVERS: Well, I'd say that maybe one-third economist,

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one-third lawyer, and one-third politician. That's about as closely as I can describe it.

HESS: And one of the other gentlemen who worked fox the Housing Authority at that time was Robert C. Weaver, who since has become we1l known in housing. What do you recall of Mr. Weaver at that time?

DIVERS: Well, my principal impression is that I did not have many contacts with him, but that he was very pleasant, very cooperative, and we always seemed to see eye to eye on the subjects of mutual interest that we, discussed. I don't recall ever having had any difference of opinion with him, but my recollection is that he was what was called the racial relations specialist at that time.

HESS: The Adviser on Negro Relations.

What problems arose along those lines

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during this period of time?

DIVERS: Well, the principal problem was the problem of occupancy of the new dwellings that were built to replace slums which were cleared. And also the problem of who would occupy dwellings in projects which were built on vacant land. First of all with reference to slum dwellings, since the blighted areas, or slum areas, which were cleared were usually in the core of the city, you would think that they might be occupied primarily by Negroes, but you want to remember that back in the late thirties it was--the Negro population in some northern and western cities was very, very small, a very small percentage of the population and that the mass migrations of World War II and post-World War II period had not yet occurred. It was in the core areas of the southern cities, and the border cities, that the Negro families

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predominated in the slums and the blighted areas. The local housing authority was primarily responsible for picking the site of slum clearance and low--rent housing projects, and in Cleveland, for example, they might pick several sites. One might be one in a Negro slum and one in a white slum, another in a suburban slum. And then the question would come up as to who was going to occupy these units and I think, at that time, it could pretty well be shown that the need was equally great between the low income white families and the low income Negro families. And, consequently, they usually followed one of two procedures. Either they would put back on the site, a percentage of whites and a percentage of Negroes equal to the percentages that had been cleared from the site, or they would put them back on a basis of relative

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populations in the city, or relative populations in the low income group. And usually any of these were satisfactory to us and satisfactory to Weaver. The only problem arose where you would go into a city and clear out an area which was primarily white, but had some, a 10 percent Negro occupancy, and the local housing authority might want to put 100 percent white families back into the project, and this is where Weaver came in and would file his report and we’d look into it and probably insist that they put at least as many Negro families back in this project as they had there before they cleared it.

HESS: Can you recall a project that he may have worked on? Did he work on the Sojourner Truth in Detroit?

DIVERS: I don't know whether he worked on the Sojourner Truth project. I think that by that

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time possibly he may have been working in the War Manpower Commission rather than in the Housing Authority.

HESS: This was a little later.

DIVERS: This was a little later. I want to mention at least two things that I was intimately connected with during my time in the United States Housing Authority and which were novelties as far as our office was concerned, and the housing program, and maybe as fax as the Government was concerned. The first one was the so called cooperation agreement which was required between the Federal Government and the local government. This was an agreement that provided, among other things, that the local government would eliminate a number of unsafe and unsanitary housing units equal to the number o£ housing units that were going

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to be built. And this was a requirement and a Federal legislation, and had to be done in order to qualify for Federal financial assistance. The next thing was that the local government had to make a continuing contribution to the project, to the cost of the project, in terms of the annual rent and this was usually done by agreeing not to charge any taxes, to make it tax free. Now, the local government usually was willing to make the project tax free, but they wanted to charge for some local services that had to be rendered like water, sewer, and some other services. Obviously they were going to continue to educate the tenants' children in the schools, so they could not they in effect reduced the taxes subsequently without making the project free of taxes for all the services which were going to be rendered. And the first such agreement

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was negotiated by me with the city of Youngstown, Ohio and they were the first ones to execute, to authorize--have the city council authorize, and the city officials execute such a cooperation agreement with the Federal Government. Subsequently, because I had negotiated the first one, I was called upon to negotiate a lot of other ones including the first one with the city of Los Angeles which was one of the big housing programs they had. And I also negotiated them all through the Midwest with Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, a lot of other cities in the Midwest.

Another thing is that these housing projects were financed with loans from the Federal Government. The Federal Government was authorized to lend them the money to build the projects and the minimum rate at which the Federal Government could lend them the money,

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at that time, was one-half of one percent above the cost of money to the Federal Government. I believe, at that time, the cost of money to the Federal Government was two and a half percent and the minimum rate at which the money could be loaned to the Housing Authority was three percent. Warren Vinton, whom I mentioned before—no, the director of the Syracuse , New York housing authority, whose first name was Sergi (Grimm), came to Washington and saw Mr. Straus and tried to explain to him what program that he thought would reduce the cost of money to the local housing authorities and also reduce the construction cost to the Federal Government. Straus referred him to Warren Vinton; Warren Vinton referred him to Jake Crane; Jake Crane referred him to Keyserling; Keyserling passed him along to Krooth, and Krooth passed him along to me. Sergi spoke

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with a very decided accent and it was difficult to understand what he said, let alone understand what he meant. But he had an idea, and I listened for a long time and it finally got through to me. He was proposing that instead of lending money at 3 percent that we agree to lend the money if the Housing Authority called upon us at some future date. The Housing Authority could then issue their notes in anticipation of the loan we agreed to make, and these notes would be tax exempt because they were the notes of political subdivisions of the state. And being short-term notes instead of long term obligations, they would probably sell at a low rate of interest. And actually, we went along with this plan and then I went back and explained it to Krooth and Krooth explained it to Keyserling, and Keyserling explained it to Crane, and Crane explained it

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to Warren Vinton and Vinton explained it to Straus. I mean that we went back through the whole line and finally everybody agreed to it. Then we found out there was a constitutional amendment going into effect in New York which would have an adverse effect on what we were proposing to do, and we only had about ten days in which to go through with this plan.

So, we got the Chemical National Bank in New York interested in buying these notes, and their lawyers, and the lawyers for the Syracuse Housing Authority came to Washington and we all worked night and day for seventy two hours, about, and got out the necessary papers, advertised the notes for bids and got a bid of sixty-nine hundredths of one percent. Now, the advantage of this was, that by the Syracuse Housing Authority borrowing money at roughly two-thirds of one percent instead of

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three percent they saved two and one-third percent, and this money, the interest that the Housing Authority had to pay was capitalized into the cost of construction of the housing project as is done with any project of this type, so that if they borrowed their money for an average term of one year during construction, and they saved two and one-third percent on the cost of construction, and since this was a program of several billion dollars, why, we wound up saving over two percent of several billion dollars in connection with the cost of this housing program.

HESS: That's a big savings when you get to working with money like that.

DIVERS: Well, they're still doing it too. I mean, in other words, it's been done on the entire housing program and--Sergi Grimm is the man's

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name--and he was responsible, he was the gentleman who had the idea originally that saved all this money.

HESS: Where is he today, do you know? Is he around here?

DIVERS: I think he's probably retired. You want to remember that I was a young lawyer in those days doing business with a number of men who were middle aged and since I'm sixty-four and will be sixty-five in April, most of these people I'm talking about have long since retired.

HESS: One other man who worked for the U.S. Housing Authority at that time was Lee F. Johnson, assistant to the administrator. What do you recall about him?

DIVERS: Well, he was from Colorado and he was a friend of Senator [Edwin C.] Johnson of

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Colorado (not a relative, but a friend). Lee was a protege of some Senator from out there who was very much interested in safety in the mines in Colorado. I forget who it was. But Lee Johnson had--principally had charge of liaison with Congress and spent most of his time up on the Hill, and he had a tough job because, I explained to you before that Nathan Straus was a fine man, but his relations with the Hill were not the best and I think that Keyserling had kind of worn out some of his friendships by promising things for several years which hadn't happened, and as a result Lee Johnson was--had had a real tough job. Lee later resigned and became head of the National Public Housing Conference which, I think, later changed their name and included slum clearance, urban rehabilitation, as well as housing and I suspect by now Lee may have retired. I haven't

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seen him for several years.

HESS: How did he go about his duties of congressional liaison? Was it more in testimony before committees or was it in . . .

DIVERS: No, Keyserling did all the testifying--and Straus--did all the testifying before committees. Johnson's was more in terms of trying to get votes for legislation which was necessary for a continuation of the program. After all we had an annual appropriations bill for administrative expenses in addition to other things and we had a staff of a couple thousand people and it was--I think that the program was kind of slow getting started and Congress was very much interested in WPA and relief programs that seemed to have a more immediate effect and the real estate interests were always lobbying against any more public housing, so that Lee Johnson had a real tough

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job selling Congress and keeping them sufficiently sold, and if it hadn't been for Roosevelt, the housing program probably would have died on the vine.

HESS: Did he use his good relationship with Congress to help push the . . .

DIVERS: I'm sure that he did and that's the only way it got through, but you've also got to remember that Roosevelt's interest was not--Roosevelt's influence was not nearly so great in the later years of his term as it was at the beginning. At the beginning, all he had to do was suggest something and he'd get it, but later on people began to question his programs. And in addition to that, Roosevelt was one of the men who foresaw the United States involvement in World War II and prepared for it and by 1939 and 1940 I think Roosevelt was more interested, and properly so, in preparing this country for involvement

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in World War II than he was in domestic programs. And as we got into 1940 and '41, we became defense housing minded and began to provide housing for war workers rather than for low income families.

HESS: On that same subject, I found a clipping in your scrapbooks, and from 1940 dealing with military housing, and the clipping was as follows:

The U.S. Housing Authority may ask President Roosevelt, probably next Tuesday, to approve direct allocation of USHA funds to the War and Navy Departments for construction of 3,950 dwellings to house increased personnel and civilian workers at ten Army and Navy posts.

This would be an entirely new procedure for USHA which heretofore has made loans only to local housing authorities for slum clearance and low-cost dwellings.

Authorities said that USHA legal staff was working overtime studying the question of outright grants, because of a bottleneck in housing facilities at key posts.

DIVERS: I think this was a ploy, Mr. Hess, I think

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this was invented by the United States Housing Authority to get the job of building all the housing for Army and Navy installations and war workers and so on and so forth. They knew that we were--that civilian housing was going to be stopped for all practical purposes and I think that this was just an effort by the staff of USHA to get for themselves the job of building the housing rather than having it done by other Federal agencies.

HESS: Were you ever in on a discussion when that was

DIVERS: Well, I don't know. I'm sure that I was in on discussions, I usually was and that's the impression that I have. Actually, I don't know that I can recall the chronology exactly, but the Army and Navy began to build their own housing. The housing which was made available was not

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made available to the United States Housing Authority. It was made available for defense housing and was put under John Carmody who was the head of Public Works at that time, and one reason I know is that Carmody asked me to negotiate agreements with the cities for the military housing as well as for the civilian housing. And we also negotiated rates for electricity and gas and other utilities--water, whether it was furnished by the municipal utilities or whether it was furnished by private utilities. And usually we got a wholesale rate for utilities in these housing projects which reduced the utilities substantially, I mean almost half of what they might be if everybody had it on their own meter. It was a great saving to the utility company too because they didn't have to--they'd put in a master meter instead of having to meter all of the--and read every

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month, read all of the meters. So, I became involved in the negotiation of contracts with municipalities and with the local utilities on all housing projects that the Government was building, whether they were being built by the Army, the Navy, Federal Works Agency, or Housing. And then there was a Division of Defense Housing which was set up under Clark Foreman and I don't even know who was paying where I was getting my paycheck in those days. All I know is that I continued to do the same job and .

HESS: That was in 1941 wasn't it when you . . .

DIVERS: Yes, that's right. And this was done and along about that time the President signed an Executive order which may have been 9070, which formed the created the National Housing Agency and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board was abolished

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and put under a single administrator. FHA was put into the National Housing Agency and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board was put in and the United States Housing Authority, and the Division of Defense Housing, the Federal Works Agency Housing, and so on, and at that time I continued to do the work with reference to utilities and local agreements, agreements with the local officials, public officials, and then subsequently, they set up regional offices and asked me if I would take the one out in Cleveland which at that time covered the states of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee as I recall.

HESS: West Virginia.

DIVERS: I guess it was West Virginia instead of Tennessee.

HESS: Instead of Tennessee.

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DIVERS: Yes.

HESS: All right. Before we move on with that, can you tell me what kind of men that Clark Foreman and John Carmody were? What do you recall about those gentlemen?

DIVERS: Well, John Carmody was an engineer. He was and all I can say is that he seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I mean he conducted his office efficiently. He made decisions promptly and it was a pleasure to work for him. I think that he--I would call him a first-class public servant and I know that the only times that I ever saw him was when he would ask me why there was a delay in something, which I think is the appropriate function of a boss during a defense program, but we got along very well together as I did with Clark Foreman. I think I might say without any--it may seem immodest, but I'd

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say that my work was proceeding so close to schedule compared with the work of other departments and divisions, that usually I just sat in on conferences and listened to all the troubles that other people were having.

But while I was still regional director of USHA for the Midwest--no I guess it was--yes, USHA did do some housing, I mean they did do some defense housing. They did it on the theory that the housing would be built, used for defense workers, there was a great need, and then subsequently it would be converted over to low income housing. And they wanted to show how fast they could do it and I remember that we had a site selected and we had a permanent project to be constructed out of brick, as it was planned, and in the interest of speed we went to frame construction of five hundred dwelling units at an average cost for these

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units of about twenty-five hundred dollars and that they were done in less than six months. The whole job was done in less than 180 days.

HESS: Where was that site?

DIVERS: This was in Illinois. I think it was at Rantoul and it was done for a munitions company. Munitions companies were the first ones to feel the effect of rearming and so on. I mean they had to get some supplies and munitions. This--I think it was Rantoul, it could have been down at--around--well, I'd have to look at a map to find out, but it was down on the Mississippi River. It was down around Alton, East Alton, Wood River. There's a big United States arsenal on an island there in the river--Wood River I think it's called. And this was housing to be used in connection with this United States arsenal. They began expanding their production at the Government arsenals before they got around to

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letting contracts for the construction of new plants by the private munitions manufacturers.

HESS: Was that satisfactory construction to move from brick to frame like that? Did they hold up?

DIVERS: Well, I never heard of any complaints.

HESS: Was it during this period of time that you were involved with the Sojourner Truth housing project?

DIVERS: It was around that time and I am glad you asked because the Sojourner Truth project was a permanent project. It was built for low income housing as I recall, but it was converted to war housing during the course of its construction and so when it was ready for was going to become ready for occupancy--I mean, when it was nearly ready for occupancy, the question came up as to who would occupy it. And it was in a

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predominantly Polish neighborhood. I'm not sure whether it was in Detroit or in Hamtramck, but it was--it was not downtown Detroit. And there was a lot of local hard feeling about whether it would be occupied exclusively by whites or whether it would be a mixed project of whites and Negroes. I think that you want to remember that back in those days that mixed projects were not looked upon with any great favor by a great majority of the citizens and we were a little bit ahead of our time in some respects. As I recall, the Detroit Metropolitan Housing Authority first recommended to us that the project be a mixed project based upon the population of the city of of Detroit--based upon those ratios--and we agreed with their recommendation even though there was a lot of pressure, shall I say, from other influences there in Detroit to not go along with them. But we took the position

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that the local people knew the situation best; that they had planned the project; that they let the construction contract, they were going to manage it; and that this was not a Federal program, but it was a program with Federal assistance and that the decision was up to them and so long as the decision was not wholly irresponsible or without foundation that we should go along with their judgment. Well, shortly thereafter they changed their minds and passed a resolution to the effect that it should be in effect would have made it an all white project. And if we were going to be consistent with our position, we almost had to take the position that this was their decision, and it was up to them, and since this had formerly been a white neighborhood, why, we couldn't argue with them.

A few weeks later they changed their mind again and went back to their first position, and all hell broke loose. There was a lot of

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picketing and pushing and shoving and so on and so forth and eventually and we went along with them, and it was of sufficient interest that the White House reviewed our decision, I might say, but agreed with our position. And eventually the Michigan National Guard had to be called out to carry out the effort that the Detroit Metropolitan Housing Authority Detroit Housing Commission it was called of the Detroit Housing Commission, to put some Negroes into the project. This was a long time before Little Rock, but it and it may have been the first time that the National Guard had to be called out in order to provide an integrated facility.

HESS.: On this general subject of integrated neighborhoods and adequate housing, just what is the relationship, what do you see as the relationship between inadequate housing for low income groups and domestic unrest, riots and so forth?

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DIVERS: Well, I suppose that it's a contributing factor. I don't know how to answer that because it's so complicated, the whole thing's so complicated. I would say that all the housing that I had anything to do with was really designed for working people rather than people who were on welfare and was for the lowest paid employed people. And people who--and these people who we were trying to serve were people who'd had misfortunes, either financial or physical, but they were still actively interested in providing a home for themselves and their family and they were industrious. And they were just as industrious about taking care of their home and taking care of the grounds of the project, and so on and so forth, so that I really never had experience with a group of tenants who abused a project, damaged it, where there was a lot of vandalism and where that some of the tenants were

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in fear of their safety from other tenants. And I think that, I don't know--you see at our--I think that as far as we went, when I was with the Housing Authority was, that we would permit a percentage of welfare recipients based upon the percentage in the community, so that it would never get over 10 percent, you might say, of the occupancy of the housing project and the same things would still apply to them. Actually, some of these people had to be taught how to live in a project which had a flush toilet, and a bathtub and a stove, gas or electric stove. Many of them were accustomed to outhouses. They were not accustomed to bathtubs. And a small percentage of the tenants we took in had to be taught how to use these facilities and how not to abuse them.

HESS: What can be done when you have a tenant that persists in abusing property?

DIVERS: Well, we were able to put them out. And we

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put them out. And I think that probably the reason that low income low-rent housing has fallen into its present state of disrepute is because management was not sufficiently tough at the beginning. They didn't get rid of the one bad apple, and some of them were maybe too interested in, or too influenced by, social workers, and so on and so forth, and they didn't operate it like a housing project should be operated in my opinion and, as a result, the people didn't take care of the project and it's too bad because it's given this type of housing such a bad name that it's practically been stopped.

I'm sure that you've read the stories of housing projects in New York where the people commit nuisances in the elevators and so on, and where the stairwells have to be screened because people were throwing garbage down the stairwells, and they have had to put guards on the elevators so people wouldn't be robbed or

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assaulted on the elevators going to and from their apartments. So, I'm sure, I'm quite confident, that it's a small minority in these housing projects, just like it's a small minority in our cities, that has caused trouble. And it's because we haven't been sufficiently insistent that this small minority follow the rules of society that we're having the trouble in the housing projects and in the cities. I don't think that we'll see any improvement until we reverse that trend.

HESS: Greater police protection and also more responsibility on the part of management?

DIVERS: And a smarter Supreme Court.

HESS: I see. You were regional representative of the National Housing Agency, as we have mentioned, for an increasing number of states in the Midwest from 1941 until 1945, correct?

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DIVERS: Yes, I mentioned the four states that I was originally representing.

HESS: Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia and Kentucky in ’42; and then Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin were added to that number in ’43 and Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Missouri and Nebraska in 1944.

DIVERS: Yes, did you mention Iowa?

HESS: Yes. Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Missouri and Nebraska in 1944.

What were your main jobs, What were your main duties other than the ones that we have discussed?

DIVERS: The sole duty was to work with the military and with the War Manpower Commission to provide housing wherever needed for the production of guns, ammunition, tanks, airplanes, and all the other things that were necessary including hush-hush projects like the one down

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in Tennessee, the atom bomb . . .

HESS: Oak Ridge?

DIVERS: Oak Ridge.

HESS: Did it make any additional problems when you were trying to build such a large complex that was so hush-hush? Were there times that you really couldn't tell people why you wanted so much material for something like that?

DIVERS: Yes. We took hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of houses out of New Albany, Indiana and shipped them down to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Just cut them up in sections and shipped them down there which was the fastest way of getting in there, and material was short and we didn't need them any longer at New Albany so we shipped them down there and all we knew was that there was a lot of manufacturing going on down there,

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and we didn't know what was being manufactured. I suspected that because everything was going in and nothing was coming out, that it must be some unusual type of high explosive, but that's the closest that I ever came to being aware of what was going on down there. It was just my own suspicion.

This was a very interesting period of my career. I spent a lot of time with military. I went around to camps, stayed in the Bachelor Officers Quarters, in the BOQs, and traveled by all sorts of conveyances around the clock and also met quite a few large industrialists, including one of the Fords. I forget his first name now, I'll think of it in a minute. He was the one who died from undulant fever, the fever that you get from drinking unpasteurized milk.

HESS: I'm not sure which one that was. It wasn't the son, Edsel was it? That's just a stab in the

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dark, I really don't know.

DIVERS: It could have been. But anyway, one of the biggest problems we had at this time was to provide housing for the bomber plants that Henry Ford was building out at Willow Run, Michigan, near Ypsilanti. And the Detroit Housing Commission wanted to build--well first of all I'd say that the War Production Board and the War Manpower Commission wanted this plant built in Detroit because then it would be close to the manpower pool that was needed. A lot of automobile workers were absorbed in making tanks and airplane wings and engines and so on and so forth, but there was still a pool of skilled labor that was available in Detroit. Materials were scarce and gasoline was scarce, rubber was scarce and they didn't want to move people any further than they had to in order to get them into factories to produce the tools of war. Some way ox another

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the decision was finally made that this plant could be placed at Willow Run and the story that was told at that time was that Henry Ford had most of his interests in Dearborn, Michigan which was in Wayne County Detroit, and that he foresaw that after the war there would be a lot of unemployment and there would be a lot of high taxes and problems and one thing and another and what he wanted to do was to have this plant over in the adjoining county which included Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and the University of Michigan and a lot of nice homes and so on and so forth and he could foresee that he would have a lower tax rate by putting a plant over there which he hoped to convert to civilian use after the war and he wouldn't pay for the unemployment of the people who lived in Detroit and worked at the bomber plant.

Well, the bomber plant was a long time being built and the UAW-CIO began to yell about

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needing housing out there which there is no doubt they needed. A lot of housing was needed there. And this was in my region and the Government decided at first to build 2500 houses out there and the UAW saw this as an opportunity to have some low income housing after the war for people who might be employed in the Willow Run plant. So they asked that it be a permanent construction and this was argued around for awhile. And in the meantime, the War Manpower Commission was increasing the estimates of the number of employees that would be occupied in this one factory, and 1 forget what their top figure was but it was over a hundred thousand employees. And they could not provide rail transportation, the railroads could not provide transportation back and forth from Detroit, they thought that it would be impossible to provide gasoline and rubber for them to commute back and forth, and

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everybody in the Government decided that the thing to do was to build housing for them out there, particularly since it appeared that they would have to recruit a good number of these employees from other parts of the United States and you'd have to provide housing for them when you brought them in.

Well, I guess that books have been written on the subject, but I might just hit a few of the high spots. It was a horrible experience. I think it probably was the most fouled up bureaucratic experience all the way through.

We had absolutely no cooperation from Henry Ford. He and his labor man [Harry Herbert] Bennett, I forget Bennett's first name. We wanted to put the housing as close as possible to the plant for purposes of utilities, roads, and we saw where we could these employees could walk to their work. They could put it

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within a half a mile or so and the property was owned by Ford, and we had the right as the Government to go in and have it surveyed, and we sent our surveyors in and they put their stakes down and Henry Ford came out and pulled their stakes out. He didn't want anybody down there. It was choice land and he wanted to keep it and put cows on it or something of that kind. This was interesting because you remember Ford's peace ship back in World War I. Well, in World War II he might as well have been sending a peace ship out for all the good he did, because I suppose you remember that by the time they got the Willow Run bomber plant finished, the Government had cut back their bomber production by about 80 or 90 percent and they really never did need or use this facility and also didn't need the housing really. I mean when it came right down to it, the whole thing was just a great big

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fiasco.

HESS: Did the real estate interests of Detroit, were they in opposition to building the houses because they wanted their houses in Detroit used?

DIVERS: No. No, they, so far as I recall, they never raised any objection at all to what we were doing out there, particularly when the delays became such that we finally had to go to temporary housing, and finally wound up building dormitories for most of the people out there. And what happened was that we scheduled a certain number of dormitories for single people and a lot of these workers who came in turned out to be single. They didn't bring their families with them, for a variety of reasons. And we wound up with dormitory accommodations for maybe twenty-five thousand

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single men and women, and including cafeterias, busses back and forth to the plant, and so forth and so on--and those were the principal facilities that we used.

HESS: Was there some fear among the local residents that the housing might turn into a slum after the war?

DIVERS: Yes. Yes, that's Washtenaw County, and the people of Washtenaw County, including a lot of top executives in the automobile industry who lived out there, were very much opposed to the housing, and they were right in their forecast that it did become a rural slum.

HESS: And in your scrapbooks I found a clipping where you and your boss John B. Blandford, Jr. who at that time was administrator of the National Housing Agency, testified before the Truman Committee on this matter. Can you recall that?

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DIVERS: Yes, I recall that. I also recall that Mr. Blandford did about 99 percent of the talking and the only thing that I said really was I mean, Blandford was a very able public administrator, very likeable man, very hard worker, and he was quite aware of the details of everything that was going on and he knew in his own mind all of the information that the members of the Senate could possibly want to know.

HESS: Do you recall Mr. Truman was there the day that you testified?

DIVERS: It seems to me that he presided. I think he presided. This was not one of the standing committees; this was one of the ad hoc committees that Congress set up, it was the--first called the preparedness committee or something like that, War Production Committee or something. What was it, The War Investigating

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Committee--the Committee to Investigate War Practices or something like that.

HESS: The National Defense Program.

DIVERS: Yes.

HESS: Was this the first time that you had ever seen Mr. Truman?

DIVERS: I believe so, I mean that--I believe so.

HESS: Was his special counsel Hugh Fulton--do you remember Mr. Fulton there at that time?

DIVERS: Oh, I remember him very well. He was a former prosecuting attorney as I recall. I had been an assistant prosecuting attorney and I not only didn't have anything to hide, but I was anxious to cooperate with them in any possible way to further the war effort and I--so we got along all right. Fulton was over and interviewed me

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a couple of times and I think we even met out in Detroit, and out in Ypsilanti.

HESS: What was Fulton's view? Did he want to see the housing constructed at the plant?

DIVERS: Fulton wasn't in it at that time. In other words it was after the decisions were made as to the location of the housing and how much was to be built and things of that kind and I think that the investigation into the housing was collateral to the investigation into the lack of production at the Willow Run bomber plant where hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and they still hadn't got out an airplane.

Henry Ford's idea was that you could build airplanes the same way that you build automobiles, that all you needed was a big enough assembly line and you could run them down and he

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was gong to produce a bomber a minute. This involved the making of machines for presses that were twenty-five times the size of any parts that they had ever manufactured for automobiles. And then the airplane was more complex, it had more parts, and they had never done it before this way, and as a result there was an accumulation of all the delays that you could think of, and finally I think they gave up this idea and got around to--the War Production Board insisted on them following the conventional methods for construction of airplanes. And, as a result, they first began to make parts for other airplane manufacturers, eventually got around to making subassemblies.

I talked to Bennett--I never talked to Henry Ford it was impossible to get along with him. They would never make an agreement and never keep it. Bennett kept himself armed in his

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office.

I finally made the arrangements, I forget how, to have the matter of housing for the Ford Motor Company employees delegated to Edsel Ford. And I went out to Detroit and I had lunch with Edsel Ford and some of the other Ford executives. I think [Charles E.] Sorensen was one of them at that time, and never had any trouble from that time on. Edsel Ford was very cooperative, understood our problems and we tried to understand his and we got along fine from that time on.

I also had a lot of interesting meetings with the housing committee of the UAW-CIO. They had a housing committee that had --and the CIO asked for, I might say demanded, participation in the design of the houses. We met with them all the way through, I mean every step practically; in site selection, selection of architect,

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selection of planners. This was a city we were planning, really, I mean when you think of the ten thousand dwelling units and accommodations for thirty thousand single people, you know I mean this was, we were talking about over a hundred thousand people. Utilities, roads, schools, stores, everything. It's a big project. Bigger than any of the planned cities that you talk about now. mean that Reston, or Columbia or places like that, I mean are chicken feed.

HESS: We are just about down to the end of the reel.