Today we want to share with you a personal letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, to the Reverend Warren Cleveland Chafin of Brown County.
As a result of these letters, many of the government buildings in Washington were built using Indiana limestone. The increased shipments of the Indiana limestone put many unemployed limestone quarry workers back to work.
The letter begins:
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON
Sept. 24, 1935
Reverend and dear sir:
Your calling brings you into intimate daily contact not only with members of your own church, but with people generally in your community. I am sure you see the problems of your people with wise and sympathetic understanding.
Because of the grave responsibilities of my office, I am turning to representative Clergymen for counsel and advice, feeling confident that no group can give more accurate or unbiased views.
I am particularly anxious that the new Social Security legislation just enacted, for which we have worked so long, providing for old age pensions, aid for crippled children and unemployment insurance, shall be carried out in keeping with the high purposes with which this law was enacted. It is also vitally important that the Works Program shall be administered to provide employment at useful work, and that our unemployed as well the nation as a whole may derive the greatest possible benefits.
I shall deem it a favor if you will write me about conditions in your community. Tell me where you feel our government can better serve our people.
We can solve our many problems, but no one man or single group can do it; we shall have to work together for the common end of better spiritual and material conditions for the American people.
May I have your counsel and your help? I am leaving on a short vacation but will be back in Washington in a few weeks, and I will deeply appreciate your writing to me.
Signed: Very sincerely yours, Franklin D. Roosevelt
The letter below is Reverend Chafin’s response to the letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Rev Chafin’s letter begins:
Bloomington, Indiana, Nov. 1, 1935.
Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. President:
In reply to your letter of a few days ago, asking “counsel and advice” concerning conditions in my community and asking me to suggest where I believe our Government can better serve the people.
I wish first to say, that I appreciate the privilege you have given me of counseling with you and considering issues which are of common interest to all. As you face the big problems which are before you, I feel like you have made an honest effort to solve them in a way that would benefit the common people, while I can not agree with you in all that you have advocated, especially the repeal of the eighteenth amendment.
In your effort to provide work for the unemployed, there is one class, in my observation, that you have left out, and that is the class who as needy as many are on relief, yet through self respect have suffered and kept off of direct relief. There is no work provided for them.
I am living in the limestone belt. If the government can use, and encourage more use of limestone in building, it will put a large number of men to work in our district who are now idle.
There is no higher authority than God, no instructions that will lead us to prosperity than to follow the teaching of God’s word. We are told in Proverbs 14:34, that, “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” God has blessed the nations of the past as they have honored Him in all things, and has overthrown those who have failed to do so.
Lead us in a moral and spiritual reformation and, we, the Ministers and Christian people of our great country will gladly follow, using all our influences to bring our nation up to a high standard of living which in my estimation will bring back prosperity sooner than any other move we can make.
Signed: Very sincerely yours W. C. Chafin
— Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
