[Senator William] Borah professed not to see the difference between state and federal aid to families… The Idaho solon chided the administration for its readiness to lend money to corporations but not to individuals. “It is a conflict of materialism of one said, and humanity on the other,” he asserted; “I am endeavoring to to place the individual human being on the same level as corporations in the United States.” He denied that federal aid to persons constituted a dole… “If you ask what evils may flow from such a precedent I shall ask what evils will flow for the practice of giving bankers money from the treasury.”

–Senator William Borah, specimen of the extinct species called “progressive Republican,” debating the alien concept of unemployment relief to individual citizens on February 10, 1932. Quoted in, “The Interregnum of Despair: Hoover, Congress, and the Depression” by Jordan A. Schwarz (1970).

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