Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Criminal laws and their enforcement; federal and state cooperation; control and sale of alcoholic liquors; state coordination with the federal government in the recovery program; taxation; and federal emergency relief

Points of Interest:

It was noted in the description of the meeting's social entertainment that attendance was small due to labor strikes that had made transportation to the meeting difficult.

Governors talked about gangsterism, as well as engaging in extensive discussion of the 1933 repeal of prohibition via the 21st Amendment. Among the perspectives they covered were: (1) methods for pricing liquor low enough to drive bootleggers out of business, including the possible reduction of taxes, tariffs, and license charges; and (2) whether monopoly sale--through state liquor stores--was preferable to free market sale.

Aubrey Williams of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration made a detailed presentation to the Governors regarding the number of people being served by relief programs and the expenditures per state. At that time, 4.3 million families were on relief rolls, representing 16 million people total--or one-sixth of the U.S. population. Mr. Williams reported that funding for relief was 40 percent state/local and 60 percent federal, with funds going toward the provision of food, clothing, shelter, and health care, including 7 to 8 percent in overhead expenses. He expressed concern, however, that only 3.6 percent of funding was going toward medical care, and that better medical care was needed to prevent a weakened population in the decades to come. Already, in one study of elementary school children, 22 percent had proven to be undernourished, of whom two-thirds were tubercular.

Governors went on to discuss pros and cons of relief programs, including how state legislatures could be called into session to seek more funding, whether it was fair for New Deal civil works jobs to require the payment of prevailing wages when those jobs provided essentially makeshift work, how to ensure that New Deal programs would be dismantled when they were no longer needed, and whether the federal government was operating relief programs absent sufficient consultation with states.

Memorable Quotes:

Governor Henry Horner of Illinois said regarding the 1933 repeal of prohibition: "The return of legal liquor is helping to bring prosperity to the Nation. It has provided additional revenues for the disposition of the farmer's grain. It has created jobs and opportunities for investments for many, many thousands. It has improved real estate values. It has brought additional revenues to State and Federal governments. But this step toward prosperity must not, through faulty regulation or mismanagement, be permitted to cause a recurrence of the old abuses...National prohibition resulted from the failure of State regulation and control along the lines of temperance. The burden rests upon the State now to cope with the situation in which the municipalities failed before prohibition and the Federal Government failed during prohibition."

Aubrey Williams of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration said: "...I can see where people have obviously demonstrated their inability to manage their own affairs and the man cannot get home with the money...give him a grocery order that the children will be sure to get something to eat. But I loathe the day when America will ask one-sixth of its population to live on a grocery order...what right, I ask you frankly, what right have we got to say to anybody, 'you don't know how to manage your own business?'"

Regarding the Civilian Conservation Corps, Governor Joseph Ely of Massachusetts said: "We have had the [CCC] in our state...there hasn't been any politics in them. One of the great benefits from it is going to be that these young men, many of them will form a liking for the country as against the city, so that our highways...may take the place of what we call the American Frontier so that every new highway will be an American Frontier where a man may locate himself...and have his own home.."

In the description of the meeting's social entertainment was the following commentary: "We are in a rather perilous time and suffering what may be the 'growing pains' of what we hope is recovery from the Depression which has for years afflicted not only our Country but all of the Countries of the world. Internal disturbance, the age-old conflict between labor and industry...manifested itself in a great many of the States through strikes, making it very necessary for many of the Governors to remain home..."