The program of public works provided for in the Recovery Act launched the Federal Government into a task for which there was little time to make preparation and little American experience to follow.  Great employment has been given and is being given by these works.

More than two billions of dollars have also been expended in direct relief to the destitute.  Local agencies of necessity determined the recipients of this form of relief.  With inevitable exceptions the funds were spent by them with reasonable efficiency and as a result actual want of food and clothing in the great majority of cases has been overcome.

But the stark fact before us is that great numbers still remain unemployed.

A large proportion of these unemployed and their dependents have been forced on the relief rolls.  The burden on the Federal Government has grown with great rapidity.  We have here a human as well as an economic problem.  When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence.  The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre.  To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.  It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy.  It is in violation of the traditions of America.  Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.

The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.

I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves or picking up .papers in the public parks.  We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination.  This decision brings me to the problem of what the Government should do with approximately five million unemployed now on the relief rolls.

About one million and a half of these belong to the group which in the past was dependent upon local welfare efforts.  Most of them are unable for one reason or another to maintain themselves independently—­for the most part, through no fault of their own.  Such people, in the days before the great depression, were cared for by local efforts—­by States, by counties, by towns, by cities, by churches and by private welfare agencies.  It is my thought that in the future they must be cared for as they were before.  I stand ready through my own personal efforts, and through the public influence of the office that I hold, to help these local agencies to get the means necessary to assume this burden.