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the sunmer as a relief work project on a county-wide basis - the first application

of the idea to be made anywhere in the United Stateso To carry out this idea re-

quired entire cooperation and united efforts of Federal and State governments and
several County departments • .

The first steps toward a realization of this plan for a united attack on the

problem were taken at a conference held in June, 1933, in the office of John Ro

Quinn, chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Among those present

besides MI-o Quinn were: Ray C. Bran1on, State Emergency Relief Administrator; James
K. Reid; Kenyon Scudder; Judge Samuel R. Blake of the County Juvenile Court; A. c.

Price of the County Welfare Department and Kenneth S. Beam of the Coordinating Councils,

At this conference a plan was agreed upon for the employment of workers in re-
creation and delinquency prevention work, to be paid a relief budget wage from

County-matched funds of the Reconstruction Finance Corporationo As a result, the
Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Recreation Project Noo 821, was inaugurated on

July 6, 1933.

The theory was that educated men and women could well be transferred from

manual labor to which they had been assigned to earn R. F. Co relief, to tasks

which they were better qualified to performo It was reasoned that it was senseless

to waste the talent of trained men and women in manual labor when they could be

enlisted in socially important work for the same R. Fo c. wage. So it was decided

to send them into areas of the county where juvenile delinquency was prevalent, in

an effort to eliminate, by sociological methods, gangs of youthful law-breakers
0
The Los Angeles County Recreation Department was unanimously selected as the

logical county agency to organize, coordinate and operate the plan. Mr. James K.

Reid, head of the department, entrusted the active leadership to two men, Virgil

Dahl, already a member of his staff, and Major Arthur H. Miller, formerly District

Representative on the staff of the National Recreation Association for New York,

Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and organizer of county-wide recreation systems in

those states.