My most immediate concern is in carrying out the purposes of the great work program just enacted by the Congress.

Its first objective is to put men and women now on the relief rolls to work, and incidentally, to assist materially in our already unmistakable march towards recovery.

For the first time in five long years, the relief rolls have declined instead of increased during the winter months, and they are still declining.

In spite of these facts, however, unemployment remains a serious problem here, as in every other nation, and it is because of this that we’ve come to recognize the possibility and the necessity of certain helpful remedial measures.

These measures are of two kinds.

The first is to make provisions intended to relieve, to minimize and to prevent future unemployment.

The second is to establish measures, the practical means to help those who are unemployed in the present emergency.

Our Social Security legislation is an attempt to answer the first of these questions, and our work-relief program the second.

We’re losing no time in getting he government’s vast work-relief program under way, and we have every reason to believe that it should be in full swing by the autumn.

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