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Message to the Governor of Rhode Island on State Unemployment Relief Efforts

November 25, 1931

I WISH to congratulate the people of Rhode Island and you personally on the sturdy manner in which the state has undertaken and provided for its burdens.

HERBERT HOOVER

[Hon. Norman S. Case, Governor of Rhode Island, Providence, R.I.]

Note: The message was in response to a letter from Governor Case, informing the President on the status of State and local unemployment relief efforts. For release dates of similar letters and telegrams issued by the White House, see Appendix A

The text of Governor Case's letter follows:

I know that you will be interested to learn that the three community chest drives in Rhode Island which closed yesterday, exceeded their quota in each instance. Notwithstanding the fact that the Providence community chest quota was approximately eighty thousand dollars in excess of last year, over eight hundred and fifteen thousand dollars was raised, representing a twenty-five thousand dollar oversubscription. Cranston's chest went five thousand dollars over the top, and for the first time the Pawtucket and Blackstone Valley chest raised its quota and exceeded it by fifteen thousand dollars. The showing by employees in each case was remarkable, as for instance, wage earners in Providence contributed over one hundred thousand dollars to this fine humanitarian cause, this on a one per cent payroll basis. Also that the Rhode Island General Assembly in a one day session, for which the legislatures received no pay, adopted the Governor's plan appropriating one million five hundred thousand dollars for unemployment relief to such cities and towns as will require assistance in order to care for their responsibilities in this matter this money to be loaned out of the States unincumbered surplus at an interest rate of three per cent annually on notes, each town to be limited in its borrowings to one-tenth of one per cent of its total assessed valuation.

These facts confirm my telegram to you of recent date, in which I stated that Rhode Island will provide for its own.
NORMAN S. CASE
Governor of Rhode Island

[The President, Washington, D.C.]

Herbert Hoover, Message to the Governor of Rhode Island on State Unemployment Relief Efforts Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/206946

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