NARA Collection hh-goodr — Collection hh-goodr

The Children's Charter was adopted as a set of national goals by the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection in 1930. The Conference had prepared 31 volumes of technical findings and recommendations covering every conceiveable childhood concern from prenatal care and a safe environment during childhood to expanded educational opportunities and the promise of health care for the physically and mentally handicapped. Realizing that the public would have a hard time understanding such detailed recommendations, President Hoover urged the preparation of the Children's Charter to summarize the Conference's more important recommendations and to solicit public support for state and local efforts to make the recommendations a reality. (Follow-up conferences were held in most states and medium and large-sized cities.) To read the Children's Charter is to realize how much has been accomplished as a result -- and to re-dedicate ourselves to fulfill its pledge in our time.

Journal of James P. Goodrich's trip to Russia in 1922. Goodrich, the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Russia during this very chaotic period, was a director of the American Relief Administration and a personal representative of President Harding. Goodrich was in Russia to inspect the operations of the ARA's Russian Relief program (1921-23) and to learn what he could about the intentions of the Bosheviks. During this visit he spoke with Bolshevik leaders and common citizens about the ARA program, conditions in the country, and the possibility of American recognition of the Bolshevik regime. Excerpts include: a speech by Trotsky at a Communist Party meeting, comments about the future role of the church and religion under a hostile regime, first-hand observations of a trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Goodrich's obervations/opinions concerning recognition of the Bolshevik regime and living conditions in Russia at the time.