May 13-19, 1933
We return this week to the story of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the first mass public assistance program put into effect by President Roosevelt's Administration. Faced with mass unemployment, mass foreclosures, looming starvation, and collapsing state budgets, the President had called for this $500,000,000 program on March 28, and he finally signed it into law on May 12. As you may recall from our previous report, the allocation was divided into two portions: half to be spent as matching funds for localities, and the other half for distribution to locations which could not meet the matching requirement.
The critical decision which the President took, however, was not simply the structure of the program, but who would administer it. On May 19, he decided to tap Harry Hopkins, then the chairman of the New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, which had been established by Roosevelt himself when he was Governor. The President overrode the objections of New York Governor Lehman, and ordered Hopkins to report to Washington, D.C. on May 22.
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