Montana labor news., 1932-07-28
WARNS RELIEF LAWS
ARE DEFECTIVE, INADEQUATE

Costigan of Colorado, progressive
Democrat, warns the country that the Wagner unemployment relief bill,
adopted with amendments forced upon it by President Hoover in the clos
ing days of the session of congress which ended July 16, is inadequate
and defective. He shows deep concern for the results of this mistreat-
ment of the unemployment crisis. In a speech printed in the first tissue of
the Congressional Record following adjournment. but delivered OIL the night
of July 70, he urges the prompt enactment of the bill providing $500
credit to every unemployed man who has two dependents. This is the
measure sponsored by the Rail Labor Executives Association.
Costigan opposed adjournment, and favored a brief recess instead. He
declared that the senators and congressman could not go home for five
months under present conditions and maintain decent sefrespect. They
should, he said, be here working out plans however unprecedented and
original, for conquering our economic depression"
The author of the n constructive hunger-relef bill which va voted
down in the Senate in February said that his chief objection to- the wag-
ner-Garner bill was "that it promises to be inadequate to meet the actual
need.
at va ~ clear duty when we met last December" he said, ~after
more than two years of panic conditions and in the midst of intolerable
suffering due to unemployment among Or citizens, to put through without
delay two classes of remedial federal undertakings.
First, we should have given substantial federal aid to states and mu-
nicipalths-not in the form of loans, as provided by this bill, but through
direct federal grants-to bridge the present unemployment emergency
and provide the necessities of life for stricken victims of our unprecedented
depression. Some of US at the beginning of this session of congress Wig
orously, but vamy, urged such action N a unresponsive Senate and on
shortsighted industrial leadership.
zone almost despais Of the ability of Americas industrial and political
generals to say America in its present crisis when it is remembered that
it has taken more than six months to convince our leadership of the
necessity for action and to whip into shape for immediate passage this
grudging and compromise measure for federal aid to idle and suffering
but selfrespecting Americans.
"The second legislative commitment We should long ago have made,
and which today We are only partially conceding, is for immediate
struction of needed public works, calculated to give direct and indirect
employment to idle persons in every part of America. Such public on
struction if early undertaken and consistently pressed in the past few
months would doubtless have done much to start the restoration of indus
trial activity and to promote farm and other community benefits, through
higher commodity prices stimulated by the demand for necessities of life
from newly employed workers and by moderate and controlled credit ex-
pansion due to useful governmental expenditures.
at is deplorable that these legislative measures, long retarded and now
haldngy and halfhearedy favored, have been so long delayed. Indeed
it is questionable whether, coming now, they will operate to produce a frac-
tonal part of the benefits which would have accrued from their earlier
and largescae initiation. Let us, however, be grateful for small achieve
ments and rejoice that the educational process has so far advanced that
public opinion at last begins to recognize the necessity for federal parhci-
patton. Perhaps by the time congress again meets, economic events will
have convinced the most conservative that heroic legislative remedies are
necessary"
OF the operation Of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation law and
the GasSStegal Act, Costgan said: "The program is fundamentally de-
fectve in that it fails to extend credit, except in a highly restricted way,
to countless farmers and workers and ordinary business men, the over
whelming majority of our people. Granting credit to production, we
have held it back from purchasing power"
The loan of 100000 0 to Dawes bank, and of $23O0OOOO to the Missouri
Pacific Railroad by the R. F. C.h he described as almost reasonable abuses
of public confidence and credit" in view of the surrender to private greed
involved in such determinations by the R. F. C. board.