Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt last night denounced rich persons who financed anti-refugee propaganda, warned against mounting prejudice in the United States and called for intensified efforts to educate the nation about the value of refugees. She addressed a dinner at the Hotel Roosevelt closing the Second General Conference on the Emigre and the Community sponsored by the Good Neighbor Committee.
Speaking after Clarence E. Pickett, secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, who had proposed a Government loan for refugee resettlement, Mrs. Roosevelt also took occasion to stress that if the people wanted such a thing enough to bring pressure on their congressmen they could obtain it.
As the text for her remarks on the subject of anti-alien propaganda the First Lady held up a leaflet headed “American Jobs for American Citizens,” which, she said, bore the address 70 Park Avenue. A visit to the address this morning disclosed that the sponsor of the leaflet was Henry Winslow Brooks, 62-year-old industrial management engineer.
Mrs. Roosevelt opened her speech by paying tribute to the various races making up this country. “I sometimes think it is the little peoples who are most important,” she said, referring to “the people who suffered greatly in the past few years” as “the real backbone of our nation.”
Launching into the subject of prejudice, she declared:
“We must not let ourselves be ruled by fear in this country. We have seen that happen in too many other countries. And that is something that sometimes worries me–that we will let fear grip us and keep us from recognizing the good that has come to us and the good that will come to us if we keep faith with our past.
“I can quite understand when I get a letter, as I often do, saying, ‘Why are you concerned about refugees? I am an American and my ancestors fought in the Revolution and I can’t get a job. Why aren’t you more concerned about us? I should come first.’ Now if the person writing to me is actually searching for a job I can understand it, because our particular problem dwarfs everything else in the world.
“But what I cannot understand is the ‘patriotic’ organization or group of people that gets together and prints documents such as this. It costs money to do that and to distribute it and much money is back of it. And it has a very important address–70 Park Avenue. I don’t happen to know who it is, but if you have an office there it must cost something. It is headed ‘American Jobs for American Citizens. The American People Demand….’ and it goes down the usual line.
“Now, I think we should concern ourselves deeply with continuing to solve our problems in this country. But we have an obligation as citizens in a world, and we have an obligation because we are a great democracy and because we have riches in many ways, not just in money but in resources of people and of land which we still can develop for the good of many people. And having that we do owe something to the unfortunate of the earth.
“I cannot help feeling that the type of fear which comes to the actual person who is hungry and who cannot find work is perfectly understandable. But the type of fear which comes because you have so much that you are afraid of losing it–that is something that we had better guard against. That is something we may well be called to account for.”
Referring later to Mr. Pickett’s proposal for a Government loan for refugee resettlement, Mrs. Roosevelt said that “if we decide to do what Mr. Pickett said, it should not be just left to the Government…The Government will do what you make up your mind you want it to do…You have to do it through your Government, but you have to bear a share.” She urged those present to “bring influence to bear on your representatives in Congress,” saying that “they will do it if you want it badly enough and get your neighbor to want it….it has got to come from the grass roots up.”
Mrs. Roosevelt stressed the need of education regarding refugees over the radio, through the movies and newspapers, but said that not enough was being done to demand it. Many of the papers read at the conference, she said, should be disseminated to farm and labor groups all over the country. “But if you really want education, and through education cooperation, you will have to do a much better job than you have been doing,” she asserted.
Warning against rising prejudice in the United States, Mrs. Roosevelt said: “Throughout the country fear is growing, unreasoning fear and prejudice, and it is being fed through all kinds of sources…we don’t know from where but…it is high time we faced the reality.”
Deprecating the impression that aliens were bringing in harmful ideas, she said that “the only people who can really do us harm is we ourselves.” She declared: “I think very few ideas are dangerous to us if we know what we ourselves believe in.”
Mr. Pickett, in suggesting the Government loan, cited the case of a loan by the post-war German Republican Government for resettlement of Russian Mennonites in South America. He stressed that before a loan could be asked it was necessary for private individuals and organizations to unite their forces to raise as much as they could.
Other speakers were Dr. John L. Elliott, chairman of the Good Neighbor Committee, who presided; the Rev. Joseph D. Ostermann, executive director of Committee for Catholic Refugees from Germany; Dr. William Haber, executive director of the National Refugee Service; James G. MacDonald, chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees; Dr. Robert W. Searle, general secretary of the Greater New York Federation of Churches; Dr. William A. Neilson, president emeritus of Smith College, and Bart Andress, executive director of the Good Neighbor Committee. About 1,000 persons were present.
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