Federal leadership in distress relief — federal credit to states whose resources are exhausted

We advocate the extension of federal credit to the states to provide unemployment relief wherever the diminishing resources of the states makes it impossible for them to provide for the needy

That admirable document, the platform which you have adopted, is clear. I accept it 100 percent.

Blanket endorsement of every plank.

when we get the chance, the Federal Government will assume bold leadership in distress relief.

I say that while primary responsibility for relief rests with localities now, as ever, yet the Federal Government has always had and still has a continuing responsibility for the broader public welfare. It will soon fulfill that responsibility.

All agree that, the first responsibility for the alleviation of poverty and distress and for the care of the victims of the depression rests upon the locality

Above and beyond that duty of the States the national Government has a responsibility.

In other words, my friends, our long-range objective is not a dole, but a job.

I not only reaffirm it, I go a step further and say that where the State itself is unable successfully to fulfill this obligation which lies upon it, it then becomes the positive duty of the Federal Government to step in to help.

I believe that there are many ways in which such reduction of expenditures can take place, but I am utterly unwilling that economy should be practiced at the expense of starving people.

Let me make it perfectly clear, however, that if men or women or children are starving in the United States -- anywhere -- I regard it as a positive duty of the Government -- of the national Government if local and State Governments have not the cash --to raise by taxes whatever sums may be necessary to keep them from starvation.

As to "immediate relief," the first principle is that this Nation, this national Government, if you like, owes a positive duty that no citizen shall be permitted to starve. That means that while the immediate responsibility for relief rests, of course, with local, public and private charity, in so far as these are inadequate the States must carry on the burden, and whenever the States themselves are unable adequately to do so the Federal Government owes the positive duty of stepping into the breach.

FERA made direct federal money available for relief.

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) made direct cash allocations available to states for immediate payments to the unemployed.