500.C115/342: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Consul at Geneva ( Gilbert )

86. Your 949 Political June 25, 1934.17 The President has approved the acceptance of the invitation of the International Labor Organization for the United States to become a member.18 You are requested to deliver the following note to the Director of the Organization on August 20, 1934:

“Geneva, Switzerland, August 20, 1934.

Harold Butler, Esquire,
Director of the International Labor Office,
Geneva, Switzerland.

Sir: In your letter to me of June 22, 1934,19 you advised that the International Labor Conference had unanimously adopted a Resolution inviting the Government of the United States of America to accept membership in the International Labor Organization and there was transmitted with your letter a copy of the Resolution, which in extending the invitation states ‘that such acceptance involves only those rights and obligations provided for in the constitution of the Organization and shall not involve any obligations under the Covenant of the League of Nations.’

I am now writing to say that, exercising the authority conferred on him by a Joint Resolution of the Congress of the United States approved June 19, 1934, the President of the United States accepts the invitation heretofore indicated, such acceptance to be effective on August 20, 1934, and, of course, subject to the understandings expressed in the Conference Resolution, and has directed me to inform you accordingly.

Yours respectfully,

Prentiss B. Gilbert”

For your information in discussing the matter with the Director of the Labor Office, it may be added that instructions concerning financial arrangements will be shortly transmitted to you. Please mail to the Department at your earliest convenience a certified copy of the portions of the Treaty of Versailles which make up the constitution of the International Labor Organization, together with such amendments as have been adopted thereto.

Please arrange for simultaneous press release of your letter, taking care that there is no release in Geneva prior to time it is given out here. Department prefers to treat it as nearly routine as practicable. Telegraph Department immediately after delivering the letter.

Phillips
  1. Not printed.
  2. Proclamation of September 10, 1934, accepting the invitation to be effective August 20, 1934; 49 Stat. 2713, or Treaty Series No. 874, p. 1.
  3. Ibid., p. 29.