What was the purpose of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)?

The main purpose of FERA was to provide money for "relief"
to states and cities.  The money given out by FERA was used both to create jobs and to
help people who had no jobs.

FERA was a system of giving
matching grants to the states.  For every $3 that they spent, the federal government
would provide $1.  The point of this was to encourage the states to set up programs that
would benefit the poor over the long term.

The idea behind
FERA was that people needed money immediately to help tide them over but also that this
money was not sufficient.  The program was meant more to create jobs (like the CCC and
the WPA did) because it was felt that just giving people welfare would be humiliating
and would also not be beneficial in the long run.

Overall,
then, the purpose of FERA was to help poor people to have enough money to get by and to
help them get jobs.