Home Photo Gallery Classroom Documents Dear Mr. President: I appreciate the inquiry which you have sent out to the Gospel ministers of the nation. Surely yours is, and has been, a most difficult task, and I admire the courage with which you have gone into it. You have relieved much suffering throughout the land, and deserve due credit for it. Many of our finest people would have suffered much during the past months but for the government relief provided. Now I have been impressed with what have appeared to me as three great mistakes that have been made by your administration, namely: First, the fact that your administration brought back to us the saloon with all its evils. I shall not discuss this except to say that it has grieved me greatly to see homes broken up and children deprived of the food and clothes, that even the relief programs made possible for them , by drunken parents. This has bee a great hindrance to some of the ministers in the land, making it difficult for them to pray for your administration as they would like to do. This is true of whole churches; churches whose prayers might have meant much to you. Second, that the Administration has seemed to feel that it would be possible to so revive the present industrial system that it would be possible to sustain the vast throngs who are now congested in the centers of population. I live where a few years ago many thousands of people were supported by the thousands of saw mills. As these mills cut out their timber, and ceased to operate, most of these people moved into the towns and cities. Comparatively few of them went to farms. In fact they were not able to go to farms. I believe we will never solve our industrial and economic problems until millions of these people have been settled on little farms of their own. Of course there are difficulties here, as many of them know nothing about farming, and many do not care to go there. There are many vast farms with thousands of acres each; if sufficient land could be provided from some such source as this, cut up into small farms, and provided to families, I believe it would prove a permanent solution of much of our trouble. The Government would have to help these families for a time. Finally, I fear that local managers have given the best jobs, office jobs, in the Relief work to many who did not need it. I believe this was not according to your wish. Fraternally yours,
D. A. Youngblood, Pastor
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