Choice Review

This intriguing history is drawn from an unusual and overlooked archival source. Shortly after his appointment by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as director of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Harry Hopkins sent 16 reporters to investigate the social condition of the unemployed and the efficacy of local relief organizations throughout the country. To what extent these reports influenced either Hopkins or Roosevelt is, to use the author's term, "speculative." Hopkins clearly perused and commented on the reports, forwarded at least one to Roosevelt, and in all probability circulated them to other governmental agencies. What is most fascinating here is the prismatic refraction of the writers themselves. The reporters traveled many miles, interviewed countless persons, and viewed first hand the wretched conditions confronting rural and agrarian regions that neighborhood welfare organizations were unable to alter because of the enormity of the Depression. Interestingly, the reporters' descriptions are a contradictory mix of sensitivity and compassion on the one hand and callousness and bigotry on the other. The journalists mirrored the ethos of their times in their reporting, reflecting both reality and image. Public and academic libraries, community college level up.