Emergency Relief Construction and Self-Liquidating Projects

Report Outline
Provisions of Emergency Relief and Construction Act
Relief of Destitution and Emergency Employment
Self-Liquidating Public Works Projects
Reforestation as an Employment Measure
Slum Clearance Through Limited-Dividend Corporations
Appendix
Special Focus

Provisions of Emergency Relief and Construction Act

Following a long contest between the President and Congress, the compromise federal emergency relief and construction bill under the general authorship of Senator Robert F. Wagner (D., N. Y.) was finally enacted on the last day of the session and was signed by Mr. Hoover on July 21, 1932. It provides for direct relief in the sum of $300,000,000, and for unemployment relief and promotion of business recovery by directing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make loans for the construction of self-liquidating projects of various kinds.

Title I of the act, for “relief of destitution,” specifies that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is empowered to make available not more than 15 per cent of the $300.000,000 to any one state or territory, “to be used in furnishing relief and work to needy and distressed people and in relieving the hardship resulting from unemployment.”

Title II, prescribing “Loans by Reconstruction Finance Corporation,” authorizes the financing of public works, semi-public works, and certain corporations in the construction of self-liquidating projects not in excess of an aggregate of $1,500,000,000.