Topic: Welfare, Matches 35 quotes.

I have often thought that I should like to say a few words about the Church welfare program in a general conference of the Church. I believe in and accept the program with all my heart and soul. Perhaps I cannot add anything new, but a re-emphasis of some basic principles with a few personal thoughts and feelings may more fully encourage complete acceptance and support of this inspired plan.

It is distinctly a new approach to providing social care. The plan is not a dole. The edict, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” (Gen. 3:19) applies today as anciently. Also in this dispensation the Lord declared, “. . . he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer.” (D & C 42:42.) Each able person is expected to work for what he receives, which in part is the genius and a basic principle of the plan; however, the incapacitated and aged, unable to work, whose relatives cannot or do not provide for them, are taken care of according to their wants and needs as long as these needs are just.

Welfare workers should make those helped feel good in receiving welfare assistance. Some claim humiliation in accepting help from the Church, yet are not embarrassed by receiving a government dole. The best antidote against humiliation is to furnish work opportunities for those receiving benefits in the program to give them the right feeling of having earned and therefore entitled to welfare assistance.

Source: Elder Delbert L. Stapley
General Conference, October 1955

Topics: Welfare

The Soundness Of Principles Of Self-help

Let us stand together on our own feet. Let us cooperate to accomplish these so-called material objectives. A sound agriculture is vital to the national economy. I like the words of that great Irish pioneer in cooperative effort, Horace Plunket, who labored for many years among the poor, down-ridden farmers of Ireland, when he said:

For the longer I live, the more certain do I become that what the best of governments can do for farmers is of insignificant importance compared with what, by carefully thought out and loyal cooperation, they can do for themselves.

Let us as Latter-day Saints stand on our own feet. Let us not be inclined to run to a paternalistic government for help when every problem arises, but to attack our problems jointly, and through effective cooperative effort, solve our problems at home.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1945

Topics: Government, Domestic Policy; Welfare

Seven years have elapsed since the Presidency of the Church requested stakes, wards, and Priesthood quorums to set in motion the great Welfare Program. Well do I recall there were those among us who doubted that such a plan was necessary and feasible. For, on one hand, those in governmental positions advised and counseled the people to destroy food surpluses. Farmers were paid for crops that were not produced. And yet in the face of such counsel and advice the leadership of the Church admonished us to produce greater abundances of foods and to erect storehouses wherein this food could be stored. There have since been erected milk-processing plants, grain elevators, and sewing centers which afford sufficient food, fuel, clothing, and shelter to care for every worthy member of the Church in case of an emergency. Seven years of plenty, of abundance, are about to come to an end, and we may face seven years of leanness and the possibility of famine. The best authorities in the United States are now indicating that a food shortage for the year 1943 is not a remote possibility due to several conditions, too many to enumerate at this time. In retrospect we can all go back in our minds and consider the counsel of the brethren with reference to this matter and observe present-day conditions, which definitely prove that the Welfare Program was the mind and the will of the Lord made known through the power of inspiration and modern-day revelation to His people. With the passing of time, as was the case with the declarations given Moses on Sinai for the children of Israel, the leadership of this people will be vindicated in all of their admonishments to the people, and man will again be convinced that the Lord has and does reveal His mind and will to the prophets of modern times.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1942

Topics: Welfare

American Ideals Corrupted

One of the great wrongs going on in America today is the idea held by millions of people that they have the right to enjoy the things of life which they have never earned. It is a form of dishonesty that is corrupting the youth of today, it has already corrupted millions. It has produced an aversion to hard work. Idleness and the love of pleasure have taken away many of our American ideals given to us by the fathers of this nation. The hate of man for man has grown in this country as it has grown in the lands across the seas. These forces have torn down religious ideals, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord finds little lodgment in the hearts of men. Our civilization is suffering from a breakdown in character because our teachings have not had a sufficient effect on the actions and lives of individuals. We speak of reforms. Human nature can only be reformed by a strengthening of prophetic religion. A new day for social betterment can come only through the revelations of God to his people—the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ. Benjamin Franklin warned us in the Constitutional convention at the very birth of this nation that our government will end in despotism if the people become corrupt. This nation must turn back to God.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1940

Topics: Culture; Government, Wealth Transfer; Welfare

The situation is clear. The Federal Government has before it two issues: first, as to whether or not it is able to carry the relief burden, or is the Federal income adequate to cover the huge expenditures of the past, present, and future. The present condition of the National Treasury indicates that disbursements are far in excess of receipts, which brings back to mind the truth expressed by President Clark, wherein he declared that no individual, nor private enterprise, nor even government can long exist on a sound financial basis when disbursements are greater than receipts. This local problem of relief which has and is being expanded into tremendous proportions by government agencies will come back to local units of government where it rightly belongs, or the nation faces bankruptcy.

Secondly, the Federal Government in turning the problem of relief back to states, counties, cities, communities, and churches should set in motion through these local units preparation for the caring of those in distress. Where preparation is being made to meet this problem, there will be but little difficulty. But where no preparation has been made, suffering, difficulties, and bloodshed are not remote possibilities.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, April 1940

Topics: Government, Spending; Welfare

Elements Of Success

I am not a defeatist. I believe there is more good in men than bad and that the good will triumph. I am sure, too, that the people of the United States will, through work, create wealth and in that creation give employment and happiness, if only the natural laws upon which free enterprise has been established are allowed to freely operate. But wealth cannot be created in sufficient amount to go around and bring prosperity to all the people if those laws are seriously contravened by any group in our society,—capital, labor, or government. Nothing but work can create wealth in this day and age,—productive work of the laborer. Other manipulations may seem to do it but they do not create real wealth that feeds and clothes and houses and makes happy people. The Government cannot do it because in final analysis it is not possessed of the elemental necessities for the creation of wealth. Of itself it has no capital and it has no labor. All that it can do is take from one and give to another. It takes by txation, its only ultimate source of revenue; and it gives in wages, subsidies, bounties, and many other ways, but it does not create wealth and the creation of wealth lies at the basis of prosperity.

I want to make it distinctly clear that I am not attacking the motives or intentions of the Government or governmental agencies who have sought to meet emergencies and difficult situations with much novel and experimental legislation. I have never desired failure for any of the experiments. I have always wished for their success and I think some have succeeded. I disclaim any intention or any effort to influence partisan politics. My sole desire is to expound the principles of sound economics as I conceive them and believe in them and as I deem them to be in harmony with the well-established and time-tested principles of our religion.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1939

Topics: Economics; Government, Wealth Transfer; Welfare

Every child should be taught that the Government of the United States, as has already been said, is not an organization which produces a profit, but rather an organization which is a perpetual consumer; that the people of the Government should support it, and in no instance should the Government support the people. When a child or an individual thinks that he can be dependent upon society, then he becomes an enemy of society.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1939

Topics: Welfare

The gathering together upon the land of Zion, and upon her stakes, may be for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm, and from wrath when it shall be poured out without mixture upon the whole earth.

Here is the place of refuge—America. When I read the story last week of the people leaving London, and Paris to go into the rural districts, digging trenches on their front lawns, and gas chambers being built in every home, everybody being prepared to put on gas masks suddenly, as in a few hours these cities might have been engulfed in a terrible raid such as modern war provides, I said: “Thank God for the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that separate us, (at least from the immediate danger,) from these perils. There is no place on earth so secure as in these United States, and it is the business of every Latter-day Saint to be loyal to this government.

That is why the Church is undertaking this relief program, to win everybody off from the back of the government and from off the back of the state, who can stand on his own feet. Many of you aged people may feel somewhat offended that you have been asked if you can support yourselves and not be a burden upon the State or the Nation, for we can lie down upon our Government to the extent that we may imperil its credit and produce the very conditions that would bring the same revolutions and the same troubles that engulf the Old World. God bless us that we may not come to that day, and Latter-day Saints, show the way!

Source: Elder Melvin J. Ballard
General Conference, October 1938

Topics: Responsibility; War; Welfare

Tax-payers Must Meet Public Debts

If I might be pardoned, I should like to add another word about two closely related subjects which I have mentioned or referred to at almost every, if not every, Conference since April, 1933; I refer to the enormous expenditures of the people’s money and to the ever-growing feeling and belief that a great group of the people can live off the public without working.

I should like to say again that neither the State nor the Federal Government has any funds except only such funds as it obtains from the people. Neither of them has anywhere a great pile of gold to which it can go for its money. You taxpayers must furnish it all; and every citizen is a taxpayer, either by direct or indirect taxation. Whenever governments borrow, they borrow from the taxpayers who must pay back or repudiate. To pay back large borrowings causes great hardship and burdening sacrifices; to repudiate brings economic and sometimes political chaos.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1938

Topics: Taxes; Welfare

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