[Released July 6, 1930. Dated April 18, 1930]
OUR GREATEST economic problem is regular and stable employment. To secure it is the assurance of comfort and happiness to millions of men, women and children. Wages sustain not only workers and their families, but also industry and agriculture, whose products they buy.
Therefore, in this present period of unemployment you can render a high service to your own community, and to the whole country, by cooperating with all movements to accelerate building constructions, especially of family dwellings, new roads, and local and State public works. These measures will provide employment, enlarge buying power, increase the circulation of money, create markets for farms and factories, and assure prosperity and contented homes.
Your Order, which since its inception has identified itself with the interests of our Nation, can play an invaluable part in bringing about this happy result.
HERBERT HOOVER
[To the Officers and Members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the United States of America]
Note: The message was read at the Elks Convention held in Atlantic City, N.J.
Herbert Hoover, Message to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/210987