150.071 Control/215

President Roosevelt to the Secretary of State

My Dear Mr. Secretary: I am sending you a copy of a letter which I have recently sent to Andrew Furuseth, Esq., President and Legislative Representative, International Seamen’s Union of America.

Please designate someone from your Department as a member of the Committee mentioned in the last paragraph.

Very sincerely yours,

Franklin D. Roosevelt
[Enclosure]

President Roosevelt to the President of the International Seamen’s Union of America ( Furuseth )

My Dear Mr. Furuseth: I have read your letter of August seventh, which throws some further light upon the aims and purposes of S. 379, a bill “For the deportation of certain alien seamen, and for other purposes,” about which you had written me a month or so ago.

The points at issue are, as you know, complicated, and there is at the present time so much disagreement with respect to them that it seems unlikely that any bill resolving these differences could be prepared and passed in the few days remaining of this first session of the Seventy-Fourth Congress.

However, I doubt if the differences are permanently irreconcilable, and I am asking the Secretaries of State, Commerce and Labor each [Page 467] to designate one person from his Department to form a joint committee that may discuss the proposals involved with you, with your organization, and with such other persons or parties as may have an interest in the situation. After this committee has held conferences, I hope that it can agree upon a program which it can present to the next session of Congress, and which will have the united endorsement of the Executive departments and of interested persons.

Very sincerely yours,

Franklin D. Roosevelt

[The Committee requested by the President was constituted by the appointment of the following: John Farr Simmons, Chief of the Visa Division, Department of State, August 24, 1935; J. B. Fordham, Junior Assistant to the Secretary of Labor, August 23, 1935; and S. D. Schell, Assistant Director of the Shipping Board Bureau, Department of Commerce, September 3, 1935.]