Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Road appropriations and work relief; federal emergency relief and allocation of public funds; National Recovery Administration and the states; arbitrary wage scales; operation of state government under budget pay-as-you-go basis; the Mississippi sales tax; and property taxation.

Points of Interest:

A special federal appropriation had just been made for road construction as a relief tool, and Governors discussed the importance of highways to the economy and the question of whether relief funds to the states should be restricted for highway use. Governor Henry Blood of Utah, who had been President of the American Association of State Highway Officials, told fellow Governors that road construction was a successful means of countering the Depression for three reasons: (1) money was put to work quickly, because every state already had an efficient highway organization in place; (2) it was an excellent source of employment; and (3) it added to capital wealth without surplus, because it could not in turn be sold.

By this time, industry had succeeded in a judicial challenge to the National Industrial Recovery Act's (NIRA) requirements for participating industries to comply with maximum hour/minimum wage and other workplace standards, and the federal government was reorganizing New Deal programs to account for the effects of the Supreme Court's recent decision in industry's favor. [Specifically, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. the United States--295 U.S. 495 (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that the industrial codes of conduct established under NIRA--enforced by presidential approval--constituted an overreach of presidential authority and a violation of the constitutional prohibition against federal regulation of intrastate commerce.]

Governor Paul NcNutt of Indiana said that in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision, Congress had enacted legislation to maintain the National Recovery Administration as a research agency, resolving that gains must be maintained in the elimination of sweat shops, the prohibition of child labor, the establishment of the minimum wage, and the right of labor to bargain collectively. [Ultimately, this led to adoption of the National Labor Relations Act.]

Governors also discussed the possibility of using interstate compacts as a way around the Schechter decision. For example, the Interstate Conference on Labor Compacts had drafted a compact on minimum wage legislation and was working now on seeking uniformity of state laws on child labor and maximum hours.

Aubrey Williams of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration also spoke of Old Age Assistance (OAA) and Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) proposals that were pending in Congress, which would constitute 12 to 14 percent of the states' total relief loads. Assuming that state legislatures approved the matching objectives of the programs, the federal government would reimburse states 50 percent up to $30 a month per person under OAA, and one-third of the total for ADC, with states administering the children's program.

Governor Frank Fitzgerald of Michigan offered a resolution demanding full control of welfare relief administration for the states. A toned-down substitute was then offered urging the federal government to cooperate with states regarding their needs in the administration of relief programs. Although a question was raised about the unwritten rule against the adoption of substantive resolutions involving the federal government, the substitute motion carried.

Memorable Quotes:

Governor Henry Blood of Utah, a former President of the American Association of State Highway Officials, said: "There is no single activity, perhaps, which this nation...initiated, during the past five years, as a palliative for distressed conditions, that has more vitally and more generally affected the welfare of the public than has road work. There is probably no other major activity with greater employment-giving capacity...if there is any motion in a society, the road, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate that fact. Without roads, commerce would be impossible, and cities could not exist; communication would be isolated, and free interchange of ideas would be slowed down...The history of transportation and development of highway systems is in reality the history of the progress of the human race. The extent to which people come into contact with each other determines, to a large extent, the degree of their advancement..."

Governor Harry Nice of Maryland said the following against the New Deal: "It was...uncertainty of the public mind that enabled political quacks to intrigue with their cure-alls the imagination of a depressed people...They preached the doctrine of minimum effort and assured income. Their inevitable goal was the destruction of individual initiative and the substitution of a debilitating and destructive paternalism."

In contrast, Governor Paul McNutt of Indiana said: "[The President] made it his first business to prove to the people that we had in Washington a government that could govern...People had seen the congress and the executive so deadlocked that almost no measure could be enacted...to overcome it the President, inspired as few men have been in our age, drove through a whole series of measures in record breaking time...By June of 1933 we had become an organized nation, confident of our power to provide for our own security and to control our own destiny...the secret of the attack on the crisis...was to be found in the revival of the American spirit through the conquest of fear, and what we must now remember is that just as no policy is a panacea, no defeat is a disaster, provided the government and the people hold fast to the conviction that we have come out of the worst of our dangers by overcoming our own demoralization."

Resolution Adopted:
Urging the federal government's cooperation in giving the states a greater measure of control in their administration of relief programs.