The fourth direction of cooperation was the organization in such States and municipalities, as was deemed necessary, of committees to organize local employment, to provide for employment agencies, and to effect relief of distress.

The result of magnificent cooperation throughout the country has been that actual suffering has been kept to a minimum during the past 12 months, and our unemployment has been far less in proportion than in other large industrial countries.  Some time ago it became evident that unemployment would continue over the winter and would necessarily be added to from seasonal causes and that the savings of workpeople would be more largely depleted.  We have as a Nation a definite duty to see that no deserving person in our country suffers from hunger or cold.  I therefore set up a more extensive organization to stimulate more intensive cooperation throughout the country.  There has been a most gratifying degree of response, from governors, mayors, and other public officials, from welfare organizations, and from employers in concerns both large and small.  The local communities through their voluntary agencies have assumed the duty of relieving individual distress and are being generously supported by the public.

The number of those wholly out of employment seeking for work was accurately determined by the census last April as about 2,500,000.  The Department of Labor index of employment in the larger trades shows some decrease in employment since that time.  The problem from a relief point of view is somewhat less than the published estimates of the number of unemployed would indicate.  The intensive community and individual efforts in providing special employment outside the listed industries are not reflected in the statistical indexes and tend to reduce such published figures.  Moreover, there is estimated to be a constant figure at all times of nearly 1,000,000 unemployed who are not without annual income but temporarily idle in the shift from one job to another.  We have an average of about three breadwinners to each two families, so that every person unemployed does not represent a family without income.  The view that the relief problems are less than the gross numbers would indicate is confirmed by the experience of several cities, which shows that the number of families in distress represents from 10 to 20 per cent of the number of the calculated unemployed.  This is not said to minimize the very real problem which exists but to weigh its actual proportions.

As a contribution to the situation the Federal Government is engaged upon the greatest program of waterway, harbor, flood control, public building, highway, and airway improvement in all our history.  This, together with loans to merchant shipbuilders, improvement of the Navy and in military aviation, and other construction work of the Government will exceed $520,000,000 for this fiscal year.  This compares with $253,000,000 in the fiscal year 1928.  The construction works already authorized and the continuation of policies in Government aid will require a continual expenditure upwards of half a billion dollars annually.