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agencies and received adjustments on 542. The PUL was also willing to take direct
responsibility on questions of relief eligibility; by early 1934, PUL had won
representation as the "radical viewpoint" on the Committee on Standards of the
Council of Social Agencies.

PUL's program also called for developing "self-help" projects, run by the
unemployed themselves.   Because only a minority of its initial membership
received any relief (28% at the end of April 1933), PUL moved rapidly to devise
ways that the unemployed could provide for some of their own most basic needs.
Using a donated truck, surplus foodstuffs were picked up from central marketplaces
and various food processing concerns, distributed to the PUL locals through a
vacant warehouse secured from Johns Hopkins University, then disseminated to the
unemployed throughout the city. In the first quarter of its food program, April
through July 1933, PUL distributed $2943.55 worth of food to unemployed
members and non-members. By the end of November 1933, food valued at
$5,060.22 had been dispensed. The league also arranged to take over vacant houses
from the Pennsylvania Railroad; PUL members were to renovate these houses
themselves and they were to be occupied by the unemployed. By the end of April
PUL had received eighteen houses, nine for Black families and nine for white
families.   By the end November it had received 50 houses, 25 of which were
already reconditioned and occupied by 31 families — a total of 119 people. PUL's
self-help efforts were so successful that, at the end of November 1933, the
organization proclaimed that it had returned $9.85 in donated labor and goods to

•y

the genera] community for every $1.00 in cash donations that it received/

In addition to the economic needs of the unemployed, the PUL sought to
meet education and cultural needs of jobless workers.   From the beginning, the
league demanded that the government set up adult recreational and educational
facilities. It instituted its own programs in these areas during its early months by
providing speakers on economics ami cuitcm affails to its local*, by sponsoring