The Federal Emergency Relief Act provided state assistance for the unemployed and their families. Rather than having large numbers of workers on the dole, Roosevelt believed in payment for the work performed to help maintain morale of recipients. This program, while being more costly, did provide work for 20 million people. Roosevelt knew that most of the government 's relief efforts got canned due to the fact that they got held up by politics. So he told Harry Hopkins, who had over 20 years of social work and welfare issues, to just focus on the action and not in the politics. There were three objectives to the FERA 1.) to be as effective as possible, 2.) provide work for employable, and 3.) to have a diverse variety of relief