, 1954-07-23

TO eXLenQ just one pOTlOH Ln6I6OIN tine OH11u cd III VSN
fare Rrograml to the Virgin Islands, and not until 1850 that
the Islands were included in the Public Assistance and Old
Age and Survivors Insurance Programs. We are still without
Vocational Rehabilitation or Unemployment Insurance. Our
Public Assistance program still labors under an unfavorable
matching provision that allows the Virgin Islands only l5
the Federal matching provided for States on the mainland.
With our scant local resources and this unfavorable Federal
matching, the best we can do in public assistance provides a
destitute ~agedaelient only 81 . meal.
But even thoughcongress has not yet gone all the way in
providing social security for the people Of the Virgin Islands,
it is a matter of deep sincere qualification to US that 1t has,
in recent wears, brought us into the program and that these
worthwhile services are now actually in operation in the Is
lands. Congress has helped substantially too in 2 number OF
other ways, including a large public works program to con-
struct roads, sewers, schools, hospitals and other valuable
public improvements. We can only hope that the new in
tefest shown in recent years will result soon IN Congressional
legislation that will bring us equality OF treatment IN the So
cial program Of the nation and new life and hope to the peo-
pie Of the Virgin Islands.
IN the Islands themselves, there has been an encourag-
ing awakening to our social needs. Despite our poor resourc-
es, we have in the past decade initiated Workmens compen-
sation and minimum wage programs, scholarship funds Tor
aid to promising students, a school for hayward boys, homes
for the aged, etc. We need very badly but have been unable
to provide homes for girls. We are hoping to enlist the aid
Of some interested mainland Foundation for this urgent
cause. With Federal help, we are providing school lunches
and nursery schools for needy children, and, at long last, mo-
dern housing projects for low-income families are supplant-
ing the degrading unhealthy slums in which SO many OF our
poorer people have been fOrceQ TO i've. IN all THESE enOIGo,
our Welfare Department, rejecting any narrow concept
which might have restricted its endeavors merely to aid the
POOR, has taken a Inactive part or given active support. When
I look back eighteen years to the day when I took office, !
am deeply grateful. for the progress made while acutely con-
scious Of the great challenging problems that face us in the
future.
Some Of these challenges, distinguished friends, confront
not only the Virgin Islands, for we are a part OF the nation,
and a part of the world, and we share the nations and the
worlds .anxieties and problems. Truly our lives are being
lived in times that try mems souls. New Values must be
found to hold mankind together as the corrosive elements OF
class and race and national struggle, of war and hate and
power, threaten to divide peoples and nations, to bring an
end to civilization, even to destroy mankind itself. New pow
ers for good, within man, must be found to combat the ire
mendous powers for evil that surround man. Man, we
know, must find a way to control the fearful powers for des-
truction which his ingenuity has %unleashed, and which move
threaten mans own existence.
Friends, we know also that the problem we face is truly
now how to cnntrol these monsters Of science which, after :
all, areIhut pawns in mans hands. The challenge, clearly, is
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