Speech to C.W.A. Conference in Washington.

MY FRIENDS, I will tell you an official secret. Harry Hopkins wrote out two and a half very excellent pages of suggestions as to what I should say. They are on the desk. I subscribe to his sentiments one hundred percent. But, I am not going to read them. You will see them printed in the papers tomorrow morning.

I do not want to talk to you officially, but unofficially and extemporaneously. First of all, I want to thank you for coming here.

This group, representative of the entire country, has in its hands to accomplish something that no Nation has ever before done. As you know, during the past eight months we have tried honestly and practically to face a problem that no other Nation in modern history has ever been confronted with. We have heard a great deal of unemployment on the other side, in England, in France, in Germany and in other places, but at no time in any one of those countries has the unemployment situation even approximated the unemployment situation in the United States last spring. You can figure it at twelve or fourteen or sixteen million, or whatever you like—on the basis of population that is a larger percentage of men, women and children out of work and in many cases starving—in most cases suffering physically and mentally—a larger proportion than anywhere else.

During these months a great many of our unemployed have gone back to work. The number has been estimated variously at from three and a half to five million. The actual figures make very little difference because there are still a great many, still millions out of employment and this particular effort in which you and I are engaged at the present time is to put four million people from the list of those still unemployed back to work during the winter months so that we can honestly say as a Nation that this winter is not going to be like last winter or the winter before.

I like to stress not only the fact of four million, but also the fact that of those four millions of people two million are today on what we might just as well call, frankly,. a dole. When any man or woman goes on a dole, something happens to them mentally and the quicker they are taken off the dole the better it is for them during the rest of their lives.

We hope we can recruit two million from the ranks of people who perhaps ought to have been on the dole—perhaps people who were too proud to ask for assistance. In every community most of us know of cases—many cases—of families that have been living along, barely subsisting, yet too proud to go and ask for relief. We want to help that type of American family.

Now this work is really and truly a partnership—a partnership between the Federal Government, the State Governments and the local governments- a partnership in which each one of those three divisions is expected to and is going to do its share. This $400,000,000 is not going to cost the Federal Government any more money, because we are taking it out of the large public works appropriation of $3,300,000,000. It is using a portion of that fund in a very practical way.

We might as well be perfectly frank—it has been exceedingly difficult honestly to allot the entire sum of $3,300,000,000 to worth-while projects, every one of which has had to be scanned by local authorities, State authorities and finally by the Federal Government. With this allotment, somewhere in the neighbor. hood of $2,800,000,000 has been allotted, leaving only about $500,000,000 that is still to be allotted, most of it to local public works.

! believe the question was raised this morning as to the transfer of some of the projects to which allotments have already been made by Public Works, and I have been asked by the Governor of Wyoming to clear up that point. It is possible that certain allotments already made by Secretary Ickes to Public Works may be transferred to Mr. Hopkins' Civil Works Administration.

The process, I am told, will be to have that request made to the original person who did the allotting—in other words, the Secretary of the Interior—and if he approves of the transfer, it will then be made to the Civil Works Administration under Mr. Hopkins. I think that straightens out the question the Governor of Wyoming raised.

Just one word more—and I am sort of talking in the family. We have heard a good many charges and allegations that have been made in regard to relief work—the same kind of charges that were made when I was Governor of New York—charges that politics were entering into the use of public works funds and of emergency relief funds.

I want to tell you very, very simply that your national Government is not trying to gain political advantage one way or the other out of the needs of human beings for relief. We expect the same spirit on the part of every Governor of every one of the forty-eight States and on the part of every mayor and every county commissioner and of every relief agent. I would like to have the general rule adopted that no person connected with the administration of this $400,000,000 will in any single case in any political subdivision of the United States ask whether a person needing relief or work is a Republican, Democrat, Socialist or anything else.

I am asking you to go ahead and do your share. Most of the work will fall on your shoulders. Most of the responsibility for the practical application of the plan will fall on you rather than on us in Washington. I can assure you that Mr. Hopkins, Secretary Ickes and all of the people connected with the Federal Government are going to give you cooperation in putting this plan to work quickly.

Speed is an essential. I am very confident that the mere fact of giving real wages to 4,000,000 Americans who are today not getting wages is going to do more to relieve suffering and to lift the morale of the Nation than anything that has ever been undertaken before.