Federal Relief Programs and Policies

Report Outline
Federal Government and Winter Relief, 1934–35
Federal Relief Through the Winter of 1933–34
Federal Relief Operations Since March, 1934
The Continuing Problem of Unemployment Relief
Special Focus

Federal Government and Winter Relief, 1934–35

Recent statements by President Roosevelt and his advisers indicate that a new federal relief-employment program is in process of formation. For the emergency employment supplied last winter by the Civil Works Administration, wholly out of federal funds, the new program will seek, so far as possible, to substitute semi-permanent or permanent employment on self-supporting or self-liquidating projects, financed in part out of private funds. The program, as outlined by the President and later by Relief Administrator Hopkins and Public Works Administrator Ickes, will include the establishment of rural industrial communities and subsistence homesteads, slum clearance and general housing projects, and a large variety of other undertakings such as grade-crossing elimination and works for the conservation of natural resources.

Expenditures under existing programs of the administration for the relief of unemployment had totaled $3,606,000,000, or about $29.35 per capita, up to October 15, 1934. Of this sum about $2,515,000,000, or 70 per cent, had been expended for relief in various forms, and $1,091,000,000 for public works, including housing and subsistence homesteads. The existing public works program has been a disappointment to date. At the present time it is affording employment to only about 600,000 workers.

Administration spokesmen have estimated that a total of $5,000,000,000 to $7,000,000,000 may be expended under the federal government's relief-employment program during the next twelve months. It is hoped that some $2,000,000,000 of the total will be supplied by private loans, guaranteed in part by the government, under the new National Housing Act. The self-sustaining and self-liquidating features of other parts of the program are expected ultimately to reduce the net expenditures of the government for unemployment relief and thus to contribute to an eventual balancing of the federal budget.