Work Relief Administration Press Conferences
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Press Conference
Harry Hopkins
February 25, 1937
4:00 P.M.

Query:	Did you read that the Secret Service caught the persons who spread those checks in Chicago?
Mr. Hopkins:	I do not know anything about that. I just saw a note in the paper. I thought it was PWA.
Query:	No, they were WPA checks.
Mr. Hopkins:	The paper I saw said PWA. Apparently all they know now is that they have found the checks. I have got a figure on employment in the WPA for the last couple of weeks which I will give to you by states.
Query:	Is that mimeographed?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, it shows a light increase. It does not amount to much.
Query:	Have you any figures on the flood district employment?
Mr. Hopkins:	No.
Query:	What is your latest information on the flood situation?
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, the clean-up job is very well along now; in some places it is nearly finished. Now the problem is getting in the real substantial repair jobs where roads and buildings were badly damaged.
Query:	Do you have any idea of the cost?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I do not know what this is going to cost us yet.
Query:	Do you know how much you might need to finish out the year?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I would not know that either.
Query:	What are you going to do with Passamaquoddy?
Mr. Hopkins:	I cannot answer that.
Query:	There has been no school established?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, not yet.
Query:	Because of lack of funds?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I would not say that.
Mr. Hopkins:	What is the reason?
Mr. Hopkins:	It is just the desirability of getting them started, that is all.
Mr. Hopkins:	Are you maintaining the village, keeping it up in repairs?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes. We have a work relief program. Some people are living, out there and doing a lot of work around there too; grading, building streets, etc. In the main, it is a maintenance project.
Mr. Hopkins:	I understand you are going to make a radio speech.
Mr. Hopkins:	That is right.
Query:	That are you going to talk about?
Mr. Hopkins:	The Supreme Court.
Query:	Relief for the nine old men?
Mr. Hopkins:	I would rather not say anything about that. I am going to make the speech Monday night.
Query:	For the Court or against it?
Mr. Hopkins:	Now you guess that one. I do not want to say anything about it. I am writing the speech now.
Query:	You are not opposing this administration program?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I think you could assume that. I do not want to say anything more about that business until Monday night.
Query:	You are writing it?
Mr. Hopkins:	Sure, I am writing it. I have it nearly finished.
Query:	How long do you talk?
Mr. Hopkins:	Fifteen minutes.
Query:	What time?
Mr. Hopkins:	7:15. I do not know whether it will be on Columbia or NBC.
Query:	When will we have a copy?
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, I will have a copy for Sunday.
Query:	Do you get any mail from the relief workers on the program?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, we get some. Of course, a lot of working people do not have money to buy postage or stenographers to sit down and write letters. All the lawyers have stenographers and can dash off a letter saying he is opposed to this, etc. There are some lawyers on the relief rolls.
Query:	Is there anything you can say to us without taking the edge off your speech that would indicate how you stand?
Mr. Hopkins:	No. You know how I stand perfectly well without even asking. I do not want to say anything yet.
Query:	Have you read about Senator Borah's amendment yet?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I have not.
Mr. Hopkins:	He wanted to authorize the states to deal with their own problems.
Mr. Hopkins:	It depends on what are their own problems. I think most of these social problems are national problems.
Query:	Just to stir up a newspaper story, what is your biggest problem now on work and direct relief?
Mr. Hopkins:	I cannot answer that. I do not know what to say to that. The biggest problem, I think, that we have to face is this whole security program in its broadest sense with all its implications; what that problem is and what it is going to cost and who is going to pay for it.
Query:	Are the states coming through the way you expect them to?
Mr. Hopkins:	You mean the whole program?
Press:	Yes.
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, I would think so.
Query:	Well, then, that is not a problem.
Mr. Hopkins:	The problem is to get an understanding on the part of responsible people as to what the problem is in America and what it is probably going to cost to meet it over a long period of time on all fronts. There is a tendency in some quarters to think of dealing with this whole problem of security as though it were a temporary or emergency problem and that is not the case. Now I think that a lot of favorable things can be done so that people do not have to get their incomes by means of benefits, but very large numbers of people under any circumstances are going to have to get their share of the national income by means of various types of benefits; if not the whole share, then part of it.
Query:	How many?
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, I would not want to guess at a number because, as a matter of fact, I am working at some detail on this now.
Query:	I don't want to put you on the spot, but there are going to be a number of people who will forever have to get a part of their incomes from made work.
Mr. Hopkins:	It is not the same people all the time, except when you get into old people. It is a big problem in numbers and by the same token a very substantial problem in dollars.
Query:	Would your task be made somewhat easier if there were some national unemployment compensation program instead of the state employment?
Mr. Hopkins:	I would not say that.
Query:	From your experience in the past four years do you think this is going to be a national or state problem?
Mr. Hopkins:	It is obviously both. I think it depends on the groups; that is, I think obviously old age benefits get into a combination of local, state and federal and that is true with certain other categories, and when it comes to unemployment, I think it is primarily a federal responsibility. Unemployment is not a local matter.
Query:	We have been told that even in good times we have had nearly four million people out of work.
Mr. Hopkins:	Only two or three million.
Query:	These are the people who will probably have to get their subsistence through federal or state grants?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, not only the unemployed, but sharecroppers, old people, dependent children, the whole gamut of people in this country who do the normal processes but do not do enough to live decently.
Query:	There does the part of charity come in?
Mr. Hopkins:	I think it would play a very insignificant part. If you are talking about hospitals, character buildings, YWCA, YMCA, experimentation, research, etc. So far as giving relief is concerned, that is finished in this country. We cannot possibly meet this problem. It can only be met by the tax route, it is my opinion.
Query:	Can you tell us if the proposed revision in the Social Security Act will affect the WPA set-up?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I would not say the set-up. We still have some people on the WPA work program that should be carried by means of social security benefits rather than work.
Query:	Do you think they will be with us always?
Mr. Hopkins:	No. I would not think indefinitely. We have always had them in the past and we will in the future. Now my feeling is that these people that cannot share in the normal processes by getting jobs as newspaper men or Federal Directors of the WPA today must be given a dignified status in the community and not be set aside from the rest of us. Old persons getting old-age pensions should be in a position of dignity in this country and they must not be set apart and made to feel that on moral grounds they are not quite as good as the rest of us.
Query:	The March of Time picture last night had something to do with the program which the Mormon Church is putting forth and at the tail end it shows some of the good elders going around to equally good Mormons who would not come in on their relief program but would rather receive a Government check. Is that just propaganda?
Mr. Hopkins:	I do not want to comment on that. I think that is a lot of nonsense about people who would rather take a relief check than to go to work. There is no evidence of that. I never have found it. I think that is a moral concept that people get. They sit around and say that these people do not want to work. It pleases us and makes us feel superior. It certainly does not originate on the basis of knowledge or research into the facts. It gets to be an opinion. A lot of that stuff we got in schools; we got rammed down our throats for years in this country by the so-called responsible rich—we must never give these people too much; they always think they have got more coming to them and the result is that we let them go without.
Query:	But aren't there a lot of them that are not capable of working?
Mr. Hopkins:	Sure, a great many of them.
Query:	Do you think they can be trained?
Mr. Hopkins:	They will never be needed to produce the goods we need to produce. A great many of them are not capable of competing in private industry.
Query:	We get a lot of them coming around to our houses to do work and they cannot do it at all.
Mr. Hopkins:	That is right.
Query:	What inducement would you put up to get these people out of this undignified position?
Mr. Hopkins:	I would not put up any inducement.
Mr. Hopkins:	Leave them there?
Mr. Hopkins:	Sure, unless they could move from there into other normal sources of gaining an income. I would not worry about it, providing the world's work was getting done and the goods produced in the country that needed to be produced. We certainly are producing all the goods we are buying now, and if we cannot control wages and hours why we will have more unemployment forever. They told us once that it cannot be done.
Query:	You are right up against the Supreme Court now.
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, that is right. I promised not to comment on it.
Query:	Everyone else seems to be working on a draft of a bill to regulate wages and hours. Are you doing so?
Mr. Hopkins:	No.
Query:	Do you think that stuff is the crux of the whole thing?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I would not say that. I think that is a factor. I think there are lots of other things to be considered.
Query:	Is that an important factor?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, it is an important factor.
Query:	Have you any new plans for taking care of that Matanuska Colony in Alaska?
Mr. Hopkins:	No.
Query:	Have you made any changes?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, I would not say that.
Query:	One of the colonists was here to see you.
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, I had a long talk with him.
Query:	What was the basis of his complaint?
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, I think it was this—a lack of definiteness in terms of what he was going to have to pay or other colonists were going to have to pay for their property. That is, what was their indebtedness going to be. He had a feeling on his part that the cost of goods like hay was too high and the commodities that he was using were too high.
Query:	He made some sort of a statement that he had a $14,000 debt on a forty acre farm.
Mr. Hopkins:	That is not quite true. He had tractors that were technically charged to him but he would return them as soon as he was through.
Query:	Have you figured out the debt that stands against each farm item?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, that is being done now on individual basis and that debt is finally worked out with them, and that will be worked out by spring. It will be a sum of money which they can pay.
Query:	Not necessarily on what the Government put in?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, you cannot charge those fellows now for all those community services. We built up a whole community up there; hospitals, schools, water systems, roads, everything. We built one of the finest hospitals in Alaska.
Query:	Do you think this community can be self-sustaining?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes; incidentally, this fellow thinks he can too.
Query:	He thinks he can make enough on forty acres to make a living?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes.
Query:	Lots of those people up there were failures as farmers in the states from which they came.
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, that is another moral argument of saying that every farmer in the middle west that lost his farm was a failure. That is quite the contrary. They are just a bunch of farmers up there that got licked in the depression. As a matter of fact, we have applications every day from fellows who want to go up there.
Query:	Has anybody been evicted yet?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, quite the contrary. Well, there may have been some who were not cooperating.
Query:	Have they been paying back anything on this year's production?
Mr. Hopkins:	Some of them have, but it is going to take some time. This is a new development.
Query:	You have no idea how far apart the total investment will be?
Mr. Hopkins:	Probably about 50-50. About 50% will be charge off against the development of a new country.
Query:	How much has been put in there altogether?
Mr. Hopkins:	I cannot answer that.
Query:	How many people have you got applications from?
Mr. Hopkins:	We get a lot of them all the time. I cannot tell you. They have had a good many people come up there lately.
Query:	Are they going at their own expense?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, they are going up on their own expense.
Query:	Do they buy land?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, we can handle about a thousand more families there now.
Query:	Ultimately, on the land the Government already owned?
Mr. Hopkins:	All the land they can get. Certainly the fellows that are up there think this thing will go and people that really know about this thing say it will go over. Of course, it costs something to develop something like that, but it will develop a whole new part of America. I think it is a very interesting project.
Query:	Could any one with a sum of money without any qualifications, for some reason or other having an idea to go and start farming, go in with the possibility that he might later become broke?
Mr. Hopkins:	That would be the same situation as would be in any part of the United States. A great many farmers start out now and a few years later they go broke.
Query:	Has anyone gone broke up there?
Mr. Hopkins:	No, they have not yet. It will take two or three years for any fellow to get completely on there. There is still a lot of work to be done.
Query:	Are the costs of their communities budgeted ahead of time?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, and we estimated the costs ahead of time. Now we are estimating the costs for 1937 on how much we will pay out in wages among those colonists, in addition to what they can raise this year.
Query:	How far have you projected that?
Mr. Hopkins:	We projected that for two or three years on a decreasing scale. A lot of this land still is to be cleared.
Query:	I notice here the biggest increase in employment seems to be in Nebraska and New York State outside of the City.
Mr. Hopkins:	That would not mean anything. You have to study that critically for the past several weeks. Nebraska went down because of weather conditions and then after the weather was straightened out employment went up. I do not think there is any real significance in that. What you really need in front of you is that two-week period.