US Presidency
1931

That has been the American way of relieving distress among our own people and the country is successfully meeting its problem in the American way today. We have two entirely separate and distinct situations in the country the first is the drought area; the second is the unemployment in our large industrial centers -for both of which these appropriations attempt to make charitable contributions. Immediately upon the appearance of the drought last August, I convoked a meeting of the Governors, the Red Cross and the railways, the bankers and other agencies in the country and laid the foundations of organization and the resources to stimulate every degree of self help to meet the situation which it was then obvious would develop. The result of this action was to attack the drought problem in a number of directions. The Red Cross established committees in every drought county, comprising the leading citizens of those counties, with instructions to them that they were to prevent starvation among their neighbors and, if the problem went beyond local resources, the Red Cross would support them.