President Roosevelt's Programme
In his Message to Congress President Roosevelt announces his far-reaching plans for further action in pursuit of National Recovery. His proposals fall under three heads :—A national programme for setting employ- able people to work : the provision of security by insurance : and the provision of better homes by a big drive for abolishing the slums and building houses. The work involved in the last part of the Programme will be one of the items in the first. The task which the President has set himself is to get rid of the palliative of mass relief to the unemployed, and to provide for an estimated number of 5,000,000 workless people by setting those of them who are employable (8,500,000) to useful work, leaving the remainder to the care of their respective States. What he proposes then is nothing less than to find jobs for this vast army of individuals, using them in slum clearance schemes, housing, rural electrification, re-afforestation, prevention of soil erosion, road-making, &c. ; and whilst setting the departments to this gigantic task simultaneously to make good the deficiencies in those services which America has neglected in the past.
