“I hereby prescribe the following functions and duties of the National Youth Administration: To initiate and administer a program of approved projects which shall provide relief, work relief, and employment for persons between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five years who are no longer in regular attendance at a school requiring full time, and who are not regularly engaged in remunerative employment.”
Continue Reading »Speech given by Aubrey Williams, Assistant Works Progress Administrator and Executive Director of the National Youth Administration before the Buffalo Council of Social Agencies. “You and I know that the problem of unemployment does not stem directly from industrial depression…it was spawned in an era of giddy expansionism…it is an inescapable concomitant of our type of civilization…its roots are now sunk in the very bedrock of our capitalist society.”
Continue Reading »At this moment what are social workers saying concerning economic and political theory or the need for fundamental social changes to eliminate the cycles and seasons of unemployment? With infrequent exception, exactly nothing at all. On the whole, social workers know little and care less about economic or political theory and practice. Their lack of understanding can only be described as abysmal, tragic. Ignorance in very young social workers, of whom there are many, may be forgiven. It is hard, however, to defend the silence–sometimes the deception–of the old-timers….The poor themselves, when they are not so persistently protected from publicity by their social workers, are taking a somewhat more practical view of their situation. Nowadays, when relief is inadequate and they are hungry, they turn to stealing, begging, and standing on the public streets in bread lines. In fact, in one city where the professional social workers are too “ethical” to disclose the distress of those receiving charitable relief, the unemployed are participating in demonstrations, petitioning the city administration for more food, and in turn are being arrested by His Honor, the mayor of the city, on charges of vagrancy and disorderly conduct.
Continue Reading »A speech by Aubrey W. Williams, Executive Director of the National Youth Administration in 1937. “The Youth Administration was established to equalize opportunity for Youth. It was set up to raise economically disadvantaged Youth to within reach of opportunities denied them.”
Continue Reading »Written by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee. “WHEN President Roosevelt on July 9 signed the Code of Fair Competition for the Cotton-Textile Industry, which bars from employment children under 16 years, he virtually removed from that industry several thousand children who will be replaced by adults. Had this action been taken in the spring of 1930, before unemployment became so acute, the number displaced would have been over 10,000.”
Continue Reading »“…For the old people who have lived so long a life of independence, how bitter it must be to come for everything they need to the youngsters who once turned to them!
From every point of view, it seems to me that the old age pension for people who so obviously could not lay aside enough during their working years to live on adequately through their old age, is a national responsibility and one that must be faced when we are planning for a better future.
Unemployment insurance in many homes is all that stands between many a family and starvation. Given a breathing spell, a man or woman may be able to get another job or to re-educate himself in some new line of work, but few people live with such a wide margin that they have enough laid aside to face several months of idleness….”
Continue Reading »“…We can hardly be happy knowing that throughout this country so many fine citizens who have done all that they could for their young people must end their days divided–for they usually are divided in the poorhouse. Old people love their own things even more than young people do. It means so much to sit in the same old chair you sat in for a great many years, to see the same picture that you always looked at!
And that is what an old age security law will do. It will allow the old people to end their days in happiness, and it will take the burden from the younger people who often have all the struggle that they can stand. It will end a bitter situation–bitter for the old people because they hate to be a burden on the young, and bitter for the young because they would like to give gladly but find themselves giving grudgingly and bitterly because it is taking away from what they need for the youth that is coming and is looking to them for support. For that reason I believe that this bill will be a model bill and pass without any opposition this year.”
Continue Reading »“…No right-thinking person in this country today who picks up a paper and reads that in some part of the country the people have not been willing to wait for the due processes of law, but have gone back to the rule of force, blind and unjust as force and fear usually are, can help but be ashamed that we have shown such a lack of faith in our own institutions. It is a horrible thing which grows out of weakness and fear, and not out of strength and courage; and the sooner we as a nation unite to stamp out any such action, the sooner and the better will we be able to face the other nations of the world and to uphold our real ideals here and abroad….”
Continue Reading »“What the skill and care of these devoted nurses has meant to thousands of the needy sick, of all ages, during these dark times, no statistics can reflect. Home nursing, such as ours, includes health education to the family as well as care to the patient. The charts and facts presented in this report enable those previously unfamiliar with our work to understand in some small measure the significance of the Service.”
Continue Reading »Article by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee. “One of the many tragic aspects of the industrial exploitation of children is the army of boys and girls who, at the outset of their industrial careers, fall victims to the machine. Each year, in the sixteen states which take the trouble to find out what is happening to their young workers, no less than a thousand children under eighteen years are permanently disabled and another hundred are killed.”
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