PRESIDENT'S ORGANIZATION FOR UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF (POUR)

The President's Organization for Unemployment Relief (POUR), created in August of 1931, was the Hoover administration's second federal committee to promote voluntarist solutions to the unemployment crisis. Although the POUR resembled its predecessor, the President's Emergency Committee on Employment (PECE), there were important differences between the two committees. The PECE, created in October 1930, had played a minimal role in national relief policy, focusing instead on encouraging local public employment and private sector job creation. The POUR's mandate, by contrast, was to organize a national fundraising campaign to finance local relief for the unemployed.

The POUR fund drive was, in large measure, a response to the growing demand for a federal relief appropriation. The issue had been raised in late 1930 during a congressional debate over drought relief to farmers and by the fall of 1931 support in Congress for a more active federal role in the unemployment emergency was growing.

The administration's response to these pressures was a national fund drive modeled on the Liberty Loan campaigns of World War I and the Community Chest drives of the 1920s. During the fall of 1931, advertising agencies prepared full-page ads that the POUR distributed to newspapers and magazines. Press services and newspapers donated space for publicity. Thousands of billboards throughout the country carried POUR's slogan, "Of Course We Can Do It." Over one hundred colleges organized benefit football games and air shows were staged throughout the country to raise funds for the unemployed.

The POUR raised significant sums, as private spending for relief nearly doubled during the winter of 1931 and 1932. But the national private relief drive was not only inadequate to meet the needs of the mass of unemployed, it was counterproductive. By portraying the unemployed as needy and advertising the existence of large relief funds, the POUR drive encouraged mass applications for aid. The large urban relief organizations established in November and December of 1931 with POUR funds were on the verge of collapse by the following spring, generating a relief crisis that required federal intervention.

See Also: HOOVER, HERBERT; PRESIDENT'S EMERGENCY COMMITTEE FOR EMPLOYMENT (PECE); UNEMPLOYMENT, LEVELS OF.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Josephine. Public Relief, 1929–1939. 1940.

Burner, David. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. 1984.

Hamilton, David E. "Herbert Hoover and the Great Drought of 1930." Journal of American History 68 (1982): 850–875.

Hawley, Ellis. "Neo-Institutional History and the Understanding of Herbert Hoover. " In Understanding Herbert Hoover: Ten Perspectives, ed. Lee Nash. 1987.

Schwartz, Bonnie Fox. "Unemployment Relief in Philadelphia, 1930–1932: A Study of the Depression's Impact on Voluntarism." In Hitting Home: The Great Depression in Town and Country, ed. Bernard Sternsher. 1970.

Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression. 2000.

JEFF SINGLETON