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Temporarily appointed Federal Emergency Administrator of Public Works was Col. Donald Hubbard Sawyer. Administrator Sawyer was born in Pulaski, Ill. 53 years ago. A civil engineer since 1902, he built cantonments during the War. In 1923 he came to Washington as secretary for the Associated General Contractors of America. For the past two years he has been director of the obscure Employment Stabilization Board, relic of the Hoover era.
To work with Administrator Sawyer, the President set up a Special Board for Public Works composed of Secretaries of Interior, War, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, the Attorney General, the Director of the Budget and Col. George R. Spalding, an Army river & harbor engineer who was embarrassed when the Press jumped the gun, reported he would get Col. Sawyer's job.
The executive order creating his office did not empower Administrator Sawyer to spend all the $3,300,000,000 authorized by Congress for public works, at an estimated ratio of a million jobs per billion dollars. His orders were strict. He was given 30 days to distribute $400,000,000 for highway building projects which could be started immediately. President Roosevelt promised to put 1,000,000 men to work by autumn.
Three-quarters of a billion to be spent under the Recovery Act had already been earmarked by President Roosevelt and his Cabinet as follows:
The Navy gets $238,000,000 to build four Treaty cruisers, 20 destroyers, two airplane carriers, four submarines, two river gunboats. Construction will start on those vessels to be built in government yards as soon as material arrives. Those to be privately built will start as soon as bids are in.
The Navy gets $9,000,000 for 290 new airplanes.
The States get $400,000,000 for new roads.
The Post Office and Treasury Departments were to get by Oct. 1 $100,000,000 for new post offices, court houses, quarantine stations and the like to be built from Big Spring, Tex. to Lewiston, Me.
Stage Two. "In my inaugural," said President Roosevelt. ''I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends on paying less than living wages has any right to continue. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry: by workers I mean all workers—the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level —I mean the wages of decent living.
"Throughout industry the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can. in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe."