National Reports
SHELDON, JOSEPH KAHN, COURTNEY
National Reports Polio Vaccine Snafu in New Jersey By Joseph Kahn N. Y. "Post" staff correspondent New Jersey's "free" polio vaccine program has been on the wrong track. Its timetable--loftily...
...Despite the doctors' boycott and much confusion, 139 of the state's 561 communities requested free vaccine to go ahead with their clinics...
...Some called the program a step in the direction of "socialized medicine...
...His success formula has not included the drastic reforms desired by some, but it has quite often refreshingly approached city problems from viewpoints other than political...
...In a desperate move, state health officials have called in all surplus vaccine from municipalities that have given the first shot and have vaccine left over...
...This is how it happened: Free vaccine, covering about one-third of a state's requirements, is allocated by the Federal Government according to population needs...
...Finally, the disgusted health officer sent the vaccine back to the state...
...The great majority refused...
...The municipalities spread the good word and it didn't take long for parents to find out that shots would be available at no charge...
...It's only a drop in the bucket," said a health officer...
...At this writing, the mess is growing by the hour...
...A close look at the basic Hynes vote strength shows why...
...Once NBC showed signs of internal weakness, gang politicians who had never been able to secure its endorsements gleefully hastened its exit with loud attacks on "do-gooders...
...The rest have had to wait...
...By this time, with druggists and doctors heavily supplied, there was only enough vaccine left for 71 towns...
...He said he was ashamed but he couldn't persuade one doctor in the area to give the shots...
...Currently there is little optimism that this can be answered in the affirmative...
...It has been shown that about one-fourth of the general population uses free clinic facilities under normal daily living...
...In Bernardsville, a town with 1,200 eligible children under 15, the free program was on one day and off the next...
...Meyner said at the end that he was hopeful for a "more adequate program," but he didn't say how he proposed to get it...
...The Powers faction easily corraled the same voters who stuck with Curley in and out of jail...
...He sounded hopeless...
...Then the bomb dropped...
...They have too often heard street-corner demagogues accuse suburbanites who spend their work day in Boston of "milking" the city in the daytime and then retiring with their spending money to the bedroom suburbs at night...
...And it is Hynes's sympathetic attitude toward business interests--no matter where their owners live--that has brought perhaps more rejoicing in the suburbs than in the city proper over his re-election to an unprecedented third term...
...Mayor Hynes now has warded off three attempts by Curley or his imitators to reclaim Boston City Hall...
...Powers took the overpopulated, tenant areas, where personal political machines and gang politics are a major factor...
...About 200,000 cc's are needed for first shots...
...This division is in sharp contrast to New York, where the full supply is going to the free public pool...
...Some City Councilors have admitted privately that on some issues they merely decide which paper to support rather than weighing the merits of the issue...
...Some newspapers appear convinced that there is more for them to gain by selecting a political issue and making it a newspaper issue...
...Hynes's unmistakable conservatism has long attracted the minority Republicans in the nonpartisan Mayoralty fights...
...The city has 38,342 registered Republicans, 214,693 Democrats and 109,355 independents...
...He first rose to prominence when Republican Governor Bradford and the Massachusetts Legislature appointed him in 1947 to fill in for Mayor Curley while the latter was a temporary resident in the Federal penitentiary...
...The absence of major scandal from the Hynes administration has reduced what little pressure there has been to form a new civic group, even though the usefulness of such a group is not questioned by the Mayor himself...
...It collapsed when NBC leaders used their power for personal political gains...
...Requests from communities are coming into the state at the rate of five a day...
...The Garden State's troubles began when its advisory board on polio decided to follow a traditional distribution policy based on past experience with other biologicals...
...But this neighborly interest always stops short of accepting the oft-proposed merger of Boston with the towns and cities of metropolitan Boston...
...Many directed their members to stay clear of free shots except for the "medically indigent...
...Hynes was dominant in the home-owner sections of Boston...
...This approach has been pursued to the point of sending out reporters and editors to act as legislative lobbyists on issues the newspapers deem most important...
...There was much namecalling by medical men and union men, but nothing tangible was achieved...
...The question now being asked is whether Hynes supporters can find and build up a successor---when Hynes retires, as is anticipated for 1960--who will combine administrative honesty and competence with vote-getting appeal...
...Windfalls were in the air...
...The NBC encouraged qualified candidates to seek municipal office and supported specific programs for governmental reform...
...Physicians jumped in before the average family knew there would be a free program...
...These groups are apt to leave politics to others until a time of crisis, such as the final excesses of the Curley regime...
...Vincent J. Butler, put it this way: "All that we're saying is that the Federal Government has no right to drop a load of vaccine in here and say, 'You have to inoculate these people regardless of their ability to pay.'" Paul Krebs, president of the New Jersey State CIO, charged the State Medical Society and the State Health Department with a "boycott against the children of our state...
...A voluntary control system allows each state to determine its own distribution pattern...
...Curley endorsed Powers...
...Several societies told their doctors to "cooperate" in the free programs...
...Boston newspapers took some note of this dismal situation, but didn't take up the trumpet for another NBC...
...He asked Governor Robert B. Meyner to reverse the allocation system to prevent $12 million from going into the pockets of "greedy doctors...
...The doctors called up their patients and lined them up in assembly-line fashion--at about $5 a shot...
...Naturally, the doctors got a large number of cancellations for inoculations...
...The need for a city-wide group was especially apparent in the last election, when so few persons sought the job of school committeeman that the preliminary election was dispensed with...
...In other words, although a "means test" is forbidden under the Federal law, families were to be divided into the haves and have-nots...
...For six years, the Hub has been relatively free of the unrefined type of politics practiced by the Curley following for over a quarter of a century...
...And if lethargy continues among those who have the ability, time and resources to form a chic group, municipal offices in the next few years at least will be divided among small-time politicians who operate best when the public cares the least...
...Its timetable--loftily conceived to immunize all children from 1 through 14 with maximum speed--has become a jumbled mess...
...It didn't take long for the medical overlords to act...
...The Hynes coalition of home owners, Republicans and conservatives is not easily transferable...
...Election statistics likewise confirmed the continuing support of Hynes by Republicans, although both Hynes and Powers are registered Democrats...
...Hynes was City Clerk at the time...
...An outspoken crusade by one paper sometimes prompts other papers to join the opposition...
...Nor do the suburbs want to have to contend with Boston's "gang politics...
...The towns asked local doctors to give the shots at schools and public clinics...
...When New Jersey doctors and pharmacists were given the green light by state health officials, they madly stocked up on the vital fluid...
...During the early years of the Hynes administration, a non-partisan good-government group, the New Boston Committee, flourished in city elections...
...Governor Robert B. Meyner called a public hearing to "clarify" the situation...
...Its president, Dr...
...In the November election, the Mayor defeated State Senator John E. Powers by 124,477 votes to 111,394...
...A large number of doctors said they were willing to give free inoculations if children pleaded hardship and lined up outside the City Hall...
...The Boston administration of Mayor John B. Hynes has never resorted to this political line so adeptly woven by such political warriors as former Mayor James M. Curley...
...Lethargy Overtakes Boston Voters By Courtney R. Sheldon Boston Suburban communities encircling Boston dearly love to advise their mother city on how she should run her affairs...
...Few non-Bostonians want to shoulder the responsibility for correcting conditions which have brought on a burdensome tax rate and somewhat stagnated business expansion...
...The State Medical Society, representing 21 counties, made the doctors' position quite clear...
...Soon after the commercial vaccine was gobbled up, the state notified local health officers to go ahead with plans for free public programs...
...Others waited cautiously for deliverance by their medical societies...
...So, with these statistics planted in the minds of the board members, they confidently recommended that 75 per cent of the state's vaccine supply should go to private doctors and druggists and the remainder to clinics and free programs...
...So far, only about 8,000 cc's have been gathered up...
...The Hynes administration will probably have to proceed without either the aid or the prodding of a "good government" combine...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 49
