ABSTRACT
Within ten days of the election, Franklin D. Roosevelt made a gesture by reappointing his stabilization commission, and giving it a more immediate but vague mandate to co-ordinate relief. Instead, the majority concentrated on politics, seeking a plan to keep the machinery of relief beyond the Governor's control. At the end of February nearly 160,000 persons were receiving relief. Faced early in March 1932 with over 1,500,000 unemployed, with over 100,000 deserving applications for relief which could not be honored, with the prospect that the $20,000,000 would be used up long before June, Roosevelt was finally forced to relinquish his cherished articles of faith. In February 1932 Roosevelt joined, at long last, the growing procession of Governors demanding a Federal Emergency Relief Act. Almost as reluctantly as the Republican Legislature, Roosevelt finally had to accept deficit spending-a $30,000,000 bond issue for relief which he asked the voters to approve in the fall.
