John R. Moot '43 worries about Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty."

"The whole program can become totally discredited, If too many politicians grab hold of it, it becomes nothing more than a big pork-barrel." The possibility of failure also Moot: "There is an immediate danger of 'Overpromise.'" It would be more than demoralizing, he says, "to work in employment programs with 100 kids and then be able to place only 10 per cent of them jobs."

Moot's fears counsel caution, and chairman of Cambridge's "Citizens' Committee on Implementation of the Economic Opportunity Act," that's what he has given the City.

This is why Cambridge hasn't been making headlines with its achievements in the war on poverty. Only one application for federal funds has been submitted to Washington: a request for $60,000 to pay for a full time executive director and several assistants (the large anti-poverty committee of more than 40 people is completely voluntary). Even if the application were approved tomorrow--it won't because it's been bogged down in Washington for more than a month--the committee wouldn't have anybody to name as executive director. It's still interviewing candidates.

There is a high concentration of low income families: 15.3 per cent of Cambridge families were living (in 1960) in abject poverty with annual incomes of less than $3000 as compared to 11 per cent for the Boston Metropolitan area. --from Economic Opportunity Information Kit, given to all members of the City Anti-Poverty committee in Decembebr.

But the slack pace is deceiving. From an original field of eight candidates for the job, the committee has selected four for more intensive interviewing, including a two-day visit to Cambridge for each. Only one of of the final candidates is a local man; the others come from St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and New York.

And despite Washington's silence on the initial $60,000 request ("we haven't even received a postcard," Moot says), the committee will dispatch two more applications to the capital this week. If approval comes back before mid-June--and the very tardiness of the requests and the slowness in Washington make this an imponderable--the committee hopes to have three pilot projects underway this summer:

* a pre-school program for some 600 youths from low-income areas;

* "neighborhood youth corps" for about 100 teenagers from these same areas. The youths would work no more than 32 hours a week for social agencies or for the City (as aides in the recreation department or the school department, for example). They would also receive special counseling; the overall purpose: to provide the money and the incentives for them to continue school and to prepare them for eventual entrance into the job market;

* some sort of summer school program for June graduates from the City's high schools to help acquire job skills that testing this spring shows they lack.

For each project, the committee has had to send Washington monstrous applications, ranging from 40 to 50 pages long. Some observers remark that the projects should have been selected faster, and the applications prepared sooner, in order to assure federal funds for the summer.

But as members of the committee point out defensively, Mayor Edward A. Crane '35 hesitated for more than two months (from September to December) before naming the full committee. This wasted valuable time. The very size of the committee itself inhibits speedy decisions: the group includes representatives from Cambridge's many different elements--local neighborhood residents, professional social workers, representatives of the two Universities, and delegates from the City administration.

The committee's diversity provides a basic strength, its members argue. "Sure, the City could have moved a bit faster," one if them says, "but you'd have had to do it with a few individuals running the whole show. ..You might get your money faster, but you'd have missed something. You would have to get the community interested in a program that had been planned for them."

Ban Politics

Moot also believes the committee's size and diversity provide a protection against political intrusion. Intentionally, the mayor appointed no City Councillors or School Board members. "It's one step removed from politics," Moot observes, adding, how-ever, that there is" not one City Councillor that hasn't got a good pipeline" to the committee. But that doesn't bother him, because he says that politicians possess "communication channels to the people that can feed ideas and reactions to us so that we don't go completely off base." What he does not want is a poverty program in Cambridge dominated by politicians.

If Washington gives the go-ahead for everything the committee has asked for, Cambridge will be running only "pilot" projects this summer. Moot explains this caution: "Getting the wrong programs started could be a problem... Once you create something, it's hard to kill it, although you may have decided it's not a good program and you want to put your resources elsewhere."

The committee is still playing around with a lot of ideas it would like to incorporate in future programs. One major theme, for example, is "community participation"--as much as possible. To make this verbal pledge reality, committee members would like to include more local residents on specific subcommittees and hire local people as aides in some of the poverty programs. (This would have the additional effect of transferring more income to those who need it.)