if either of these bills is passed that the administration will veto them or will pocket them. That is a real danger. It is a danger that the Senate can not overcome completely, but I for one do not believe that any man would take it upon himself alone at this stage in the American history to veto bills such as these that would give jobs to myriads of people and in doing so would lift the American people out of this rut of depression into which they have fallen. If there is a veto, the veto may be overcome. It may not be overcome, but if it is not overcome, it will not be the responsibility of all of the Senators and all of the Congressmen. The Senate will have done its duty, or at least a large part of the Senators will have done their duty, and the country will feel that they have in the Senate, that they have in the House, they have in the legislative section of the Government at least, men who are their friends and men who are trying to live up to the obligations that they took upon themselves when they accepted public office.

I need not impress upon you again the seriousness of the situation throughout the country. We have evidence of it in abundance right here in town, and every time I leave town and go out into industrial cities, and I have to a great deal, I find everywhere the same situation in greater or less degree facing the people of every city and every State. They are blue. They are depressed. They do not know where to turn.

Congress, I know, can not do everything that is required in this depression. The depression can not be lifted completely by an act of Congress. The business men, the unions, the men in the trade associations, and the economic organizations generally will have to do a great deal, but Congress can do considerable and what it can do it seems to me it ought to do.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. James Myers.

Will you please give your full name and address?

STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES MYERS, OF NEW YORK, FOR THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES IN CHRIST

Doctor MYERS. My name is James Myers, of New York, of the Federal Council of Churches in Christ. My address is 105 East Twenty-second Street.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you please proceed in your own way to present your views on this problem?

Doctor MYERS. Mr. Chairman, it is my conviction that our very form of Government is facing a supreme test at this moment, not only as to its ability as a democratic form of government to act quickly and wisely enough to balance the Budget, but also as to its ability and its determination to care for the millions of unemployed people who should be its chief concern.

I do not consider this a partisan issue and it seems to me that if Congress adjourns without dealing with it adequately that both parties will be morally culpable.

I should like to say that in regard to Federal aid, it seems to me that Federal aid, both for unemployed relief and public works, is absolutely essential and ethically justified because, as you will hear more, and you have heard a great many times, there are a great

many communities which are unable financially to take care of the situation. Places where whole industries have broken down, such as the bituminous coal industry, rural sections, places where banks have failed and where tax limits have been reached and so on.

I have visited in the course of the year a great many of these and I am very apprehensive of what is going to happen if something adequate is not done, and, secondly, the Federal Government alone has got sufficient taxing power and sufficient credit resources to handle the widespread calamity which is national, as this one is.

Then again, it seems to me only fair that there should be national Federal aid because of the fact that the profits of industry in this country are not confined or distributed locally. You go to some local place where there is a great factory and of course the wages are paid there but the dividends are not paid there. They are paid all over the United States. Our profits are distributed on a national basis and it seems to me therefore only fair that the nation as a whole should help to bear this burden of distress.

I want to point out that there is no principle involved or at issue in the demand for Government relief. I think there has been some misunderstanding of that matter.

We talk about the Government not going into charity. There is no principle involved in this matter of Government relief because, as a matter of fact, governmental sources are already bearing the chief burden of relief.

According to statistics gathered by the Children's Bureau and the Russell Sage Foundation, 70 per cent of all relief in 1931 which included mothers' aid and old-age pensions, 70 per cent of this relief came from Government sources, only they were local governments, States, cities, counties, and smaller units.

Now, I submit that that being true we have no question of principle involved. The Government is doing relief, only it is the local governments, and what does that mean? It means that the heavy burden of taxation for relief is falling locally on real-estate owners, on home owners, about whom we are talking so tenderly, on small merchants and on farmers, and they are being unfairly burdened for relief work which is being done largely from Government sources.

It seems to me that it is only fair to spread your relief nationally as profits are spread nationally, in order to take care of this situation. In regard to a large and adequate public works program, I do not need to recount again that leading economists and engineers and students of government are in favor of this method, as perhaps the most constructive method of all.

I might say that the churches for three years have been pointing out the advisability of this kind of a program and hoping for action. I should like to read a short statement, which it seems to me was particularly significant, because it was gotten out last January following a great conference held the year before by three great national religious bodies. This statement was gotten out by the Federal Council of Churches joined with the department of social action of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and the social justice commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. It reads as follows:

We believe that immediate and adequate appropriations should be made available by national as well as local governments for such needed and useful public

works as road construction, development of parks, elimination of grade crossings, flood-control projects, reforestation, and the clearing of slum areas in our cities. If such a governmental program be undertaken now we will face the months that lie ahead with prospects of work for a large number of the unemployed and consequently increased purchasing power which will stimulate all business. The economic wisdom of this proposal has been attested by leading economists.

I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the very great difficulties that Congress and the administration face and the complexities of this situation. I appreciate the moves and efforts toward stabilization through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and through our willingness to enter into an international economic conference, which it seems to me is very essential.

I hope I may say in passing that the Government may adopt a 5-day week, as a reduction of hours in that way, instead of a pay cut. I mean an actual 5-day week as an example to industry to follow.

Now, the church forces, as I take it, do not presume to lay down detailed methods and techniques to be followed in these matters. These things must be worked out by statesmen and economists and engineers but I do feel that it is distinctly within the sphere of religious forces to point out the grave conditions that obtain and what they mean in terms of human life, and to point out also, Mr. Chairman, the moral responsibility of the Nation, and I may say a major responsibility, to care for its own. Only so, Mr. Chairman, does it seem to me that this very form of government under which we live and which we are pround of, only as it meets this moral responsibility as a nation to care for its own, only so shall we demonstrate to our own citizens and to the world that we are really a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor.

The CHAIRMAN. Rabbi Israel, will you please give your full name and address to the reporter for the record?

STATEMENT OF DR. EDWARD L. ISRAEL, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL JUSTICE OF THE CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS

Rabbi ISRAEL. My name is Edward L. Israel, Baltimore, Md., chairman of the commission on Social Justice of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you proceed in your own way please?

Rabbi ISRAEL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am the third of the representatives of the great religious bodies of this country who come to you in a plea for a Federal relief program and for a program of public works.

Now, you may ask why the concern of religious organizations in this solely economic problem. The reason for that has been given to you in the closing words of my colleague, Mr. Myers, but I may add that we have discovered, if we did not know it before, we have discovered in this economic crisis in which we now exist that there is an indissoluble connection between a health of body and a health of soul, and that if we are going to allow the economic sources of the land to degenerate, to become the prey of injustice, to become the prey of starvation, then all of the cultural and all of the spiritual

efforts that we make to stabilize our civilization amount to nothing and can be swept away in a moment. It is in the interest of the preservation of the spiritual values in American life, of which we talk so fluently and for which we do so little, as well as in the name of justice for the suffering masses, the millions of our land that we of the religious bodies are here before you, and after all, we recognize the fact that this crisis is not what we might call an act of God.

We have the instrumentalities of plenty. We have the resources. We have the ability. We have the energy. We have the man power whereby a strong and sound and decent economic life could exist in this country.

We live in the present crisis because of the incapabilities or the unwillingness of human beings to administer the universe in an intelligent, decent, and just manner, and so it becomes the responsibility of man and man has chosen government as a means whereby he can administer the social forces of life. And so, very logically, we come to you, the representatives of our Government, in order that justice and decency may be achieved in our present situation.

I need not take your time to go into detail or give testimony about the relief situation. Certain politicians have tried to conceal from our eyes the tragedy that stalks in our midst.

Only recently the Governor of Maryland said that there was no need for relief in Maryland; that they were able to cope with the situation, and an investigation of impartial social workers, not politically minded people, not radicals, but very conservative social workers, ascertained the fact that at least in six counties of Maryland, and possibly in many others, starvation was stalking and there were no funds with which to cope with the situation.

The city of Baltimore is giving $50,000 a week for relief because the social agencies are bankrupt, and the city of Baltimore can not long continue within the powers that only one city has to cope with this situation.

It becomes a national crisis. It becomes a matter for Federal aid. Now, as to the public-works program, you have had, from Mr. Myers, the record of the indorsement of this program by the religious bodies.

A justice of the United States Supreme Court said recently that we face an emergency even greater than any emergency caused by war, and we have to think of it in that term. We have to think of it not in terms of the bond market or the obligations to certain financial interests. We do not consider those responsibilities when the life of our Nation is at stake and we pour millions upon millions and more millions of dollars into the preservation of our national assets and what we regard at the moment to be the safety of the citizens of our land. Well, from the lips of a United States Supreme Justice we hear that we face just such an emergency at the present moment, and it is a challenge to some of the physical resources of the country to meet that emergency for the benefit of our country and for its stability.

An official of New York State has estimated that if $132,000,000 were spent in public works, as a result of various turnovers would employ 150,000 men, and now you can readily see, upon the basis of that sound economic statement, what this bill if passed would do in diminishing the ranks of the army of the unemployed and putting our Nation upon a sound basis.

Let me say, too, whatever may be the objections of business organizations, that business is paralyzed. I have spoken to leaders of business in the course of my work and all that they do is come with a plea, "What can I do?"

One man, the head of a great steel corporation, said to me the other day, "We have to lay off 1,500 more men. I do not want to do it, but what can I do?"

That plaintiff plea is all that you get from business. Well, we can not look to a plaintive plea for leadership. I will grant you that the leaders of our business life do not want to throw people out of work. I grant you that they would do anything in their power to employ people, but when they drop their hands in powerlessness what other recourse is there, regardless of financial responsibility, but to come to the very center of this group that is concerned with the life of our Nation and say, "You must act. Amid the paralysis of private enterprise, you must do what business is unable to do in stimulating the forces of production and distribution and giving millions of men the inalienable right to work for a livelihood."

In the course of my travels around the country I have had certain people ask me, "Have you ever heard in the history of any nation that it has reached a sort of an economic impasse without revolution?"

No, I have not; and yet I have enough love for and faith in the organization of American political life that it offers the first possibility in the history of human governmental organizations to change out of an economic impasse by the ordinary measures of decent government. The question is whether we are going to use those measures, or whether we are going to give to the world an example that our protestations of a flexible democracy are mere hollow words.

I feel that we have the power, and therefore we come to the source of that power, the great governmental organizations of our life, to Congress, and we say to you that American democracy has given into your hands the power to solve the situations as no other government has ever been given before, and before you is the challenge to create a new thing in the life of nations whereby a government by its wisdom can show its people that it can given them the inalienable rights that they require without the necessity of a resort to unrest, to bitterness, bloodshed, and violence.

If the executive branch of our government is either so hampered or so blind that it will veto such a proposition, you who are nearer to the people, you who are the heart of the people, you who are the real preservers of the great body of American life, in adapting itself to the greatest crisis that it has ever faced, must speak even over the veto of the executive branch of the Government.

It is more than an economic situation, gentlemen, it is the greatest challenge to the governmental life that we have ever known. It is the real question whether such a government has that power that no other government has ever had before in its existence.

Public works is the immediate and essential answer to that question, and so we put that plea before you. [Applause.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. McGrady, will you please give your full name and address to the reporter for the record?