Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)

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work cannot find employment, either in their own profession, or in some other job: they are unable to provide a livelihood for themselves and their families. The burning problem of unemployment is of world-wide concern, of the wealthy United States and the most powerful states of Europe as much as our poor, small, mutilated country. While, however, the majority of the European countries fight the unemployment resulting from the economic crisis by means of tremendous financial sacrifices and sophisticated social welfare measures and systems which are thoroughly prepared and constantly reviewed, all that has been done in Hungary so far is simply an attempt to relieve the misery caused by unemployment by a major extension of ordinary public welfare measures, because institutional, consistently organized measures in this field are still wanting. The welfare measures of the authorities are an attempt to provide, through voluntary and charitable contributions, at least the conditions of a stagnant minimum for those unable to support themselves without public assistance.

.. .In the winter of 1931-32, the distress which grew parallel with increasing unemployment confronted both the national government and the local public administrative authorities with tasks of great difficulty.

... The winter activities of the municipality for the relief of distress consisted of twentytwo types of relief, on which the city spent 4,300,000 pengős in the period from November 1st 1931, to March 31st 1932. The welfare registers of the district magistracies recorded 37,051 families on October 1st 1931, receiving relief, 60,237 families on January 1st 1932,68,482 on March 1st 1932, and 63,321 families on June 1st 1932. Subsistence for these distressed families had to be provided if not entirely, then for the most part through public assistance. If these figures are multiplied by the usual average multiplier 3.5, we are faced with the shocking fact that 230,000 people are in need of relief in Budapest at present, which means that almost every fourth person is in need of help from the authorities. If we compare the sums spent for the relief of distress during the five winter months with this figure, we see that the municipal measures for relief were incapable of providing even the miserable minimum for large masses in need of help, for on an average, the total sum of relief received by one family was 70 pengős, and for a single person 20 pengős, during these five months.

Converted into days, one family had to live on a daily average grant of 46 fillers and a single person on 13 fillérs. Housing, heating, clothing and food are the basic necessities of every family, and from the very low average sums mentioned above the municipality was only able to satisfy one of these needs, or one other. As a result the conditions due to the continuing economic crisis, private charity, working hand in hand with the municipality, was unable to give any substantial relief to people in distress, left with no other possibilities of subsistence.

Consequently the winter activities of the municipality for the relief of distress meant only as much help to those in need of it as would save them from death or starvation in the strictest sense of the term; but it was unable to save them from the slow destruction of their health, manifesting itself in the increasingly weakened resistance of the organism, exhausted by hunger and cold, and in a steady decline of working capacity.

... The position was greatly aggravated by the danger I had already indicated in the aforesaid enforcement order, issued on October 31st of last year, to the effect that relief granted to able-bodied persons over a long period of time without services rendered in

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