Remarks to Directors of the National Emergency Council.

I am glad you have undertaken this very great task. As you know, we have felt for a long time that it was necessary to tie in, in some way, the entire emergency program which, in its many ramifications, we have been undertaking from time to time. We felt also that this work of disseminating information and preventing the crossing of wires, had to be done through decentralization. That is why you are here. You are the great decentralizers for the Federal Government and, in a sense, also, you are the coordinators between the Federal Government, the State and the local governments. That being so, I think that probably the future success of this program is more in your hands than in the hands of any other group.

Frank Walker, as National Director, has explained to you the various responsibilities you have. If you do not mind, I want to give you a few personal observations, based on certain experiences-four years in Albany, war work here during the Wilson Administration, and a certain amount of experience in the last few months.

One of the most difficult tasks that I know anything about is to avoid the results of certain perfectly normal and natural human impulses—impulses based on selfishness, impulses which take certain forms well known to most of us, such as trying to get special authority or special credit or individual applause or aggrandizement. Another thing we run into is the thought on the part of some people, of trying to make political capital out of relief work, out of the building up of what is in many ways a new relationship not only of government to citizen but also the relationship between employer and employee—the problem of taking care of human needs. Where we have fallen down in these past months, I would say in about 90 percent of the cases, the falling down has been caused, quite frankly, by individuals who try to get either personal or political credit out of something that ought not to have either of those factors in it in any shape, manner or form.

This work has nothing to do with partisan politics—nothing at all. A great many of you are Republicans, a good many are Democrats; quite a number do not belong regularly to one party or the other. We are not the least bit interested in the partisan side of this picture.

We do want you to be absolutely hard-boiled if you find any local person within your own States who is trying to get political advantage out of the relief of human needs. You will have the backing of this Administration 100 percent, even if you hit the biggest political boss in the United States on the head in carrying out this general program. It is important for the country to realize that relief— the carrying out of the principles behind the National Recovery Act, the carrying out of public works and all of the other ramifications—is based on a conception that is far beyond local politics or the local building-up of either a political machine or a party machine or a personal machine.

That is one of the things you will have a hard time in fighting. I think you will be able to get the help and enthusiastic support of at least 90 percent of the people within your own States if that idea can be thoroughly and completely fixed at the very inception of your work.

People are going to rush to you with all their troubles. That will relieve us in Washington very greatly.

You will require extraordinary patience and long hours and a smile at all times in carrying out the policy not just of the Administration in a narrow sense, but the policy of what I think is the overwhelming majority of the American people today. We are all behind this broad program, with few exceptions. We think it has done good. We believe we are on our way. We believe it is working out pretty well in all sections of the country.

I was interested in talking yesterday to the president of one of the greatest railroads of this country. I asked him how his road was doing. His reply was that while his road was carrying more freight and more passengers, the important fact was that the freight they were carrying revealed increases in every single classification of freight. That is the best illustration of the fact that we are building up economically in every section of the country, including practically all industries.

We know the human factor which enters so largely into this picture. We are trying to apply it to all groups needing aid and assistance and not merely to just a few scattered or favored groups. That is why we want from you the kind of information and kind of reports that will keep us in touch with the broad picture in every one of the forty-eight States.

I wish I could sit in with you in all the meetings you are having. When you return to your home States, you carry my very definite and distinct blessing. I hope you will not only keep Frank Walker informed, but through him, you will keep me in touch with the problems as you find them. Let us also have any suggestions you may have to make so we can give additional help from this end whenever necessary.

It has been fine to see you. Perhaps later in the spring, after you have been at work five or six months, we shall have another meeting in Washington.