On May 28, 1935, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia spoke about unemployment and economic conditions in the United States at the Annual Meeting of the Welfare Council of New York City. The following is a transcript of his remarks.
This question of relief in its present magnitude is one that seems baffling and difficult. There are some who say that it came suddenly upon us. To that I do not subscribe. Anyone with any vision or with any understanding of the economic condition of the country and the pace we were going could tell some ten years ago that a crash was inevitable and that we would have a large number of men and women unemployed in this country.
Waiting to enter the Municipal Lodging house, Department of Public Welfare East 25th Street, November 22, 1930. Photographer: Eugene de Salignac. Department of Bridges, Plant & Structures Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
When we suggested in the peak of the so called period of prosperity that we provide a national system of unemployment insurance—and this was in Congress back in 1924, 1925, and 1926 – we were ridiculed, called radicals and destructionists and were told of the amount of gold that the American working man had in his teeth!
We are still approaching it as if it were something temporary. I suppose many of you here have stiff necks from looking around the corner for prosperity to come back. We must realize sooner or later that we will soon reach a new normal. With the revival of normal business and industry we know now or at least it should be known that all the employable men and women would not be employed. Our productivity in the factory or from the soil is such that we can produce everything which this country could consume without employing all the men and women unemployed today. That being so, what we must do sooner or later is to adopt some plan, either to create the necessary spread of employment or some means to care for the surplus man-power that we know we have.
In the meantime it becomes necessary to take care of these millions of people in the country who through no fault of their own find themselves in need.
Relief for the Unemployed, Christmas, showing distribution of food, 23rd Precinct, December 24, 1930. Photographer: Eugene de Salignac. Department of Bridges, Plant & Structures Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Under our form of government of course I necessarily find very often this conflict of jurisdiction or division of responsibility – the state, the national government and the municipality or county as the case may be. The person who is in need is very little concerned with the source of relief. He must have it. I remember during my days in Congress when we sought to get federal aid for the people in drought-stricken areas of Arkansas, we were told of constitutional limitations – and we have them in Congress today – that it was not the function of the federal government; that belonged to the Red Cross. Then the Red Cross came before our Commission and testified. I went down to listen to them. Instead of listening to a humanitarian, we listened to an adding machine. They told us about the families to be supported in Arkansas on $2.50 a month, told us about the cornmeal.
I repeat this because I do not think you have any idea of what some of us suffered during that period in seeking to impress upon our national government the necessity of bringing relief to those people when their state and county were unable to do so. Now we have gotten beyond that point. The federal government is furnishing relief. I always felt it was the highest function of government to preserve life. That is what the federal government is doing now. I appreciate it, first, because I lived through that period of resistance of any appropriation from the federal treasury, and second, because – having had the responsibility for nearly one and a half years, I do not know what would have happened in this city without the aid of the federal government. We have been investigated and re-investigated. That is all right. I do not object to it at all. I have started too many investigations myself as a legislator to object to anyone else’s.
Who is to do this job? That is not so important, as long as it is done well. I expect Mr. Wardell (Allen Wardell, Chairman of Governor’s Lehman Commission on Unemployment Relief) will make some very useful and constructive suggestions based upon our actual experience. In a few days we will embark on a new system and it is inevitable we should have changes from time to time because it is all so new to us.
Another system commencing July first will be to get as many people on work relief as is possible. That is sound. The question has already been raised as to the latitude to be allowed the person on home relief, whether or not he is going to take a work relief job. I do not know. We can make that as difficult or as simple as you want. How many of you have seen “Thumbs Up?” I suggest everyone here go to see it. Someone wants to order some small cards. He goes into a printing office and it is suggested that a meeting be held at Union Square, one at Madison Square, and then a march!
Now to me it is very simple. Nobody is forced to work who does not want to. If you are going to start saying, “I am very sorry” and you approach a man timidly and say – “I beg your pardon, would you care to take a job?” – he is not going to take it.
We are going to have a great many jobs – I don’t know how many. They will be offered to the recipients of relief and they will be drawn from the relief rolls and put to work. That is all there is to it. The Supreme Court of the United States reduced the standards of wages yesterday. I believe the work projects will not be run in competition with private employment. Why do we make it so difficult? It is all so very simple in England. Some of you have attended the boards of review there. I have sat with them. They came up on the charge of not genuinely seeking employment and the employment service appears and says -- “Yes, we have offered a job to this person on this date, refused; offered again, refused; offered again and refused.”
Work relief program. Track Removal on 66th Street and 2nd Avenue, looking west, January 9, 1935. Borough President Manhattan – Civil Works Administration Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
I repeat – these projects will not be in competition with private employment. The wages have been fixed in accordance with the available funds and the number to be provided for. The city and state will have to continue to look after the unemployables. We do that now. Superannuated workers are receiving the old-age pension. Widows with children are receiving aid from the Board of Child Welfare. As I see it, if this system functions properly, we will know exactly how many unemployables we have to take care of in this city.
The present economic condition has brought many other loads and burdens to the city. We are troubled, as you all know, in caring for the sick. Our hospitals are overcrowded with the increasing load and demand upon us all the time. By reason of the economic stress, we find that private hospitals are having an increasing burden also, and it is impossible to add to this burden. I am seeking to do as much as I possibly can on preventive work. We are seeking to construct and operate a series of health stations. We want to establish clinics of contagious and infectious diseases and do more preventive work. That is not as easy as it seems, because we have to meet opposition from the profession, opposition from organizations and other associations and progress is not as rapid as some of us would like to see it.
We are going to continue to carry on this program of preventive medicine on a very large scale in the hope that thereby we can meet the hospital problem that is pressing us at this time. We have three hospitals completed, without the funds to provide equipment. An application was made to the federal government for a loan but that was not granted. We already appropriated for the equipment of Harlem Hospital last Friday and will borrow the money for it. We are pressing as rapidly as we can for the Queens Hospital and hope to be able to get funds for the construction of an additional hospital on Staten Island to take care of the charges which they now have on Randall’s Island.
As to the organization of the relief problem – as I stated, when I took office, I found it was a temporary makeshift organization and it is that now. Were it permanent, naturally it would be under civil service. In the personnel of that organization – and it is a very large personnel – any executive would find trouble in either seeking to control the appointments or refraining from doing so. There was one thing I insisted upon and that was that the organization would be non-political. I cannot tell you what tremendous pressure has been brought to bear on me from many sources for appointments. When I selected the Commissioner of Public Welfare, I gave him the responsibility of selecting his personnel. If his selection is good, the credit is his. If his is bad, the responsibility is mine and I have taken it. I do not permit any political member to control that organization and I refuse to build up a personal machine from that organization.
Sidewalk encroachment, West 16th Street, Manhattan, ca. 1935. Borough President Manhattan – Civil Works Administration Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
I saw in the papers a few days ago, that some person said there were still some employees from the old administration there. I was very glad to hear this. I would not have made some of the selections William Hodson, Commissioner of Public Welfare, and until recently, Chairman and Executive Director of the Emergency Relief Bureau, made, but once I gave him the responsibility, it was his to make the appointments.
We are going to have more trouble and will continue to have more trouble, because everyone who does not get a job is sore, and everyone who is fired has a story to tell. You can imagine how it is with an organization of 14,000 people. We will continue to do the best we can.
My political friends downtown tell me there is one organization that is even more potent than our politicians and that is the social workers group. I never knew there was so many of you in the whole world!
The home relief work will be materially reduced as we increase the work relief. I am going to recommend to my director of relief and to the Emergency relief Bureau, who I hope will recommend to the T.E.R.A., who will recommend to Mr. Wardell, who will recommend to the Governor, that everyone on home relief will have to report at certain intervals at the employment offices to find out if there is an available job. And I do not mean private employment offices. I do not believe it is unfair to require some amount of work from everyone who are receiving relief of one kind or another, except the unemployables.
I am so tired of hearing about those chiselers. I do not know whether they are there or not. I tell you that I think every relief worker who states that there is a certain percentage of chiselers ought to be sent out in his district to find them, or be fired.
All these systems of relief are temporary. It is the job and the responsibility of the leadership and the statesmanship of the country to find a permanent solution. The permanent solution must be uniform throughout the country. We cannot establish high standards of family life, sanitary conditions, employment liability and insurance and child labor laws in the State of New York if some other state is going to operate in competition against us. You cannot have a State economy and a National economy. You cannot take the constitutional limitations and construe them in 1935 in the same light that they were construed 75 years ago. You cannot leave the destinies of the American people in the hands of any tribunal no matter how well meaning it may be. We are either going to have a representative form of government or not. If Congress does not carry out the wishes of the American people, they have the complete control in sending a new Congress two years later.
If our constitution does not permit of proper regulation of our industrial system; if it does not permit of regulating it so that the willing working men and women of this country can get a job; if it is so to be construed that we are to have 12,000 people in the country on the relief rolls all the time – then the thing to do is to amend the constitution, to meet the situation.
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, City Hall, n.d. Photographer: Bob Leavitt for American Magazine. Mayor LaGuardia Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
There is the problem of providing adequate labor conditions throughout the state, particularly in the employment of children. We here so much about the tyranny of the federal government coming into the home and taking our children. I will trust the federal government. I would sooner trust the federal government to take care of my children than I would the owner of a southern mill.
We must have uniformity. We must have national uniformity in the old age pension system. We must create the spread of employment by fixing the hours of labor. Intra-state and Inter-state? Yes. When the constitution was drafted and ratified, when you had thirteen separate, distinct colonies, without railroads, when it took two or three weeks to go from Philadelphia to New York or from Philadelphia to Washington; when there was no telephone system, no telegraph system, then you had intra-state problems.
Today we find that unemployment down in Georgia affects workers in New York. Today we find if the farmer in Iowa and Kansas is not working and cannot get enough for his produce, the needle-trade worker in New York City will suffer.
The whole country has been woven into one economic fabric and the quicker we realize it and the quicker we so adjust ourselves to meet that situation, the quicker will we get out of our present problems.