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Our measures have repelled
these attacks of fear and panic. We have maintained
the financial integrity of the Government. We
have cooperated to restore and stabilize the situation
abroad. As a nation we have paid every dollar
demanded of us. We have used the credit of the
Government to aid and protect our institutions,
both public and private. We have provided methods
and assurances that none suffer from hunger or
cold amongst our people. We have instituted measures
to assist our farmers and our homeowners. We have
created vast agencies for employment. Above all,
we have maintained the sanctity of the principles
upon which this Republic has grown great.
In a large sense the test
of the success of our program is simple. Our people,
while suffering great hardships, have been and
will be cared for. In the long view our institutions
have been sustained intact and are now functioning
with increasing confidence for the future. As
a nation we are undefeated and unafraid. And again
above all, government by the people has not been
defiled.
With the humility of one
who by necessity has stood in the midst of this
storm I can say with pride that the distinction
for these accomplishments belongs not to the Government
or to any individual. It is due to the intrepid
soul of our people. It is to their character,
their fortitude, their initiative, and their courage
that we owe these results. We of this generation
did not build this great Ship of State. But the
policies that we have inaugurated have protected
and aided its navigation in this terrible storm.
These policies and programs have not been partisan.
I gladly give tribute to those members of the
Democratic Party in the Congress whose patriotic
cooperation against factional and demagogic opposition
has assisted in a score of great undertakings.
I likewise give credit to Democratic as well as
Republican leaders among our citizens for their
cooperation and their help.
A record of these dangers
and these policies of the last 3 years will be
set down in the books. Much of it is of interest
only to history. Our interest now is in the future.
I dwell upon these policies and these programs
and problems only where they illustrate the questions
of the day and our course for the future. As a
government and as a people we still have much
to do. We must continue the building of our measures
of restoration. We must profit by the lessons
of this experience.
Before I enter upon a discussion
of these policies I wish to say something of my
conception of the relations of our Government
to the people and the responsibilities of both,
particularly as applied to these times. The spirit
and the devising of this Government by the people
was to sustain a dual purpose--on the one hand
to protect our people amongst nations and in domestic
emergencies by great national power, and on the
other to preserve individual liberty and freedom
through local self-government.
The function of the Federal
Government in these times is to use its reserve
powers and its strength for the protection of
citizens and local governments by the support
to our institutions against forces beyond their
control. It is not the function of the Government
to relieve individuals of their responsibilities
to their neighbors, or to relieve private institutions
of their responsibilities to the public, or the
local government to the States, or the responsibilities
of State governments to the Federal Government.
In giving that protection and that aid the Federal
Government must insist that all of them exert
their responsibilities in full. It is vital that
the programs of the Government shall not compete
with or replace any of them but shall add to their
initiative and to their strength. It is vital
that by the use of public revenues and public
credit in emergencies that the Nation shall be
strengthened and not weakened.
And in all these emergencies
and crises, and in all our future policies, we
must also preserve the fundamental principles
of our social and our economic system. That system
was rounded upon a conception of ordered freedom.
The test of that freedom is that there should
be maintained an equality of opportunity to every
individual so that he may achieve for himself
the best to which his character, ability, and
ambition entitle him. It is only by the release
of initiative, this insistence upon individual
responsibility, that we accrue the great sums
of individual accomplishment which carry this
Nation forward. This is not an individualism which
permits men to run riot in selfishness or to override
equality of opportunity for others. It permits
no violation of ordered liberty. In the race after
false gods of materialism men and groups have
forgotten their country. Equality of opportunity
contains no conception of exploitation by any
selfish, ruthless, class-minded men or groups.
They have no place in the American system. As
against these stand the guiding ideals and the
concepts of our Nation. I propose to maintain
them.
The solution of our many
problems which arise from the shifting scene of
national life is not to be found in haphazard
experimentation or by revolution. It must be through
organic development of our national life under
these ideals. It must secure that cooperative
action which brings initiative and strength outside
of the Government. It does not follow, because
our difficulties are stupendous, because there
are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity
and effectiveness of our ideals and our system,
that we must turn to a State-controlled or State-directed
social or economic system in order to cure our
troubles. That is not liberalism; that is tyranny.
It is the regimentation of men under autocratic
bureaucracy with all its extinction of liberty,
of hope, and of opportunity. Of course, no man
of understanding says that our system works perfectly.
It does not for the human race is not yet perfect.
Nevertheless, the movement of true civilization
is towards freedom rather than regimentation.
And that is our ideal.
Ofttimes the tendency of
democracy in the presence of national danger is
to strike blindly, to listen to demagogues and
to slogans, all of which destroy and do not save.
We have refused to be stampeded into such courses.
Ofttimes democracy elsewhere in the world has
been unable to move fast enough to save itself
in emergency. There have been disheartening delays
and failures in legislation and private action
which -have added to the losses of our people,
yet this democracy of ours has proved its ability
to act.
Our emergency measures
of the last 3 years form a definite strategy dominated
in the background by these American principles
and ideals, forming a continuous campaign waged
against the forces of destruction on an ever-widening
and a constantly shifting front.
Thus we have held that
the Federal Government should in the presence
of great national danger use its powers to give
leadership to the initiative, the courage, and
the fortitude of the people themselves, but that
it must insist upon individual, community, and
State responsibility. That it should furnish leadership
to assure the coordination and unity of great
existing agencies, governmental and private, for
economic and humanitarian action. That where it
becomes necessary to meet emergencies beyond the
power of these agencies by the creation of new
governmental instrumentalities, that they should
be of such character as not to supplant or weaken,
but rather to supplement and strengthen, the initiative
and enterprise of our people. That they must,
directly or indirectly, serve all of the people.
And above all, that they should be set up in such
form that once the emergency is past they can
and must be demobilized and withdrawn, leaving
our governmental, economic, and social structure
strong and whole.
We have not feared boldly
to adopt unprecedented measures to meet unprecedented
violences of the storm. But, because we have kept
ever before us these eternal principles of our
Nation, the American Government in its ideals
is the same as it was when the people gave the
Presidency to my trust. We shall keep it so. We
have resolutely rejected the temptation, under
pressure of immediate events, to resort to those
panaceas and short cuts which, even if temporarily
successful, would ultimately undermine and weaken
what has slowly been built and molded by experience
and effort throughout these 150 years.
It was in accordance with
these principles that at the first stage of the
depression I called upon the leaders of business
and of labor and of agriculture to meet with me
and induced them, by their own initiative, to
organize against the panic with all its devastating
destruction; to uphold wages until the cost of
living was adjusted; to spread existing employment
through shortened hours; and to advance construction
work against future need.
It was in pursuance of
that same policy that I have each winter thereafter
assumed the leadership in mobilizing all of the
voluntary and official organizations throughout
the country to prevent suffering from hunger and
cold, and to protect millions of families stricken
by drought. And when it became advisable to strengthen
the States who could no longer carry the full
burden of relief to distress, it was in accordance
with these principles that we held that the Federal
Government should do so through loans to the States
and thus maintain the fundamental responsibility
of the States themselves. We stopped the attempt
to turn this effort to the politics of selfish
sectional demands, and we kept it based upon human
need.
It was in accordance with
these principles that, in aid to unemployment,
we expend some $600 millions in Federal construction
of such public works as can be justified as bringing
early and definite returns. We have opposed the
distortion of these needed works into pork-barrel
nonproductive works which impoverish the Nation.
It is in accord with these
principles and these purposes that we have made
provision for $1,500 millions of loans to self-supporting
works so that we may increase employment in productive
labor. We rejected projects of wasteful nonproductive
work allocated for purposes of attracting votes
instead of affording relief. Thereby, instead
of wasteful drain upon the taxpayer, we secured
the return of their cost to Government agencies
and at the same time we increased the wealth of
the Nation.
It was in accordance with
these principles that we have strengthened the
capital of the Federal land banks--that, on the
one hand, confidence in their securities should
not be impaired, and that on the other, the farmers
indebted to them should not be unduly deprived
of their homes. It was in accordance with these
purposes that the Farm Board by emergency loan
to farmers' cooperatives served to stem panics
in agricultural prices and saved hundreds of thousands
of farmers and their creditors from bankruptcy.
It was in accord with these ideas that we have
created agencies to prevent bankruptcy and failure
in their cooperative organizations; that we are
erecting new instrumentalities to give credit
facilities for their livestock growers and their
orderly marketing of their farm products.
It is in accordance with
these principles that in the face of the looming
European crises we sought to change the trend
of European economic degeneration by our proposals
of the German moratorium and the standstill agreements
on German private debts. We stemmed the tide of
collapse in Germany and the consequent ruin of
its people. In furtherance of world stability
we have made proposals to reduce the cost of world
armaments by $1 billion a year.
It was in accordance with
these principles that I first secured the creation
by private initiative of the National Credit Association,
whose efforts prevented the failure of hundreds
of banks, and the loss to countless thousands
of depositors who had loaned all of their savings
to them.
It was in accord with these
ideas that as the storm grew in intensity we created
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation with a
capital of 2 billions more to uphold the credit
structure of the Nation, and by thus raising the
shield of Government credit we prevented the wholesale
failure of banks, of insurance companies, of building
and loan associations, of farm mortgage associations,
and of railroads in all of which the public interest
is paramount. This disaster has been averted through
the saving of more than 5,000 institutions and
the knowledge that adequate assistance was available
to tide others over the stress. This has been
done not to save a few stockholders, but to save
25 millions of American families, every one of
whose very savings and employment might have been
wiped out and whose whole future would have been
blighted had these institutions gone down.
It was in accordance with
these principles that we expanded the functions
and the powers of the Federal Reserve banks that
they might counteract the stupendous shrinkage
of credit due to fear and to hoarding and the
foreign withdrawal of our resources.
It was in accordance with
these principles that we are now in process of
establishing a new system of home loan banks so
that through added strength and through cooperation
between the building and loan associations, the
savings banks and other institutes we may relax
the pressures on forfeiture of homes and procure
the release of new resources for the construction
of more homes and the employment of more men.
It was in accordance with
these principles that we have insisted upon a
reduction of governmental expenses, for no country
can squander itself to prosperity on the ruins
of its taxpayers. And it was in accordance with
these purposes that we have sought new revenues
to equalize the diminishing income of the Government
in order that the power of the Federal Government
to meet the emergency should be impregnable.
It was in accordance with
these principles that we have joined in the development
of a world economic conference to bulwark the
whole international fabric of finance, of monetary
values, and the expansion of world commerce.
It was in accordance with
these principles and these policies that I am
today organizing the private industrial and financial
resources of the country to cooperate effectively
with the vast governmental instrumentalities which
we have in motion, so that through their united
and coordinated efforts we may move from defense
to a powerful attack upon the depression along
the whole national front.
These programs, unparalleled
in the history of depressions of any country and
in any time, to care for distress, to provide
employment, to aid agriculture, to maintain the
financial stability of the country, to safeguard
the savings of the people, to protect their homes,
are not in the past tense--they are in action.
I shall propose such other measures, public and
private, as may be necessary from time to time
to meet the changing situations that may occur
and to further speed our economic recovery. That
recovery may be slow, but we shall succeed.
And come what may, I shall
maintain through all these measures the sanctity
of the great principles under which the Republic
over a period of 150 years has grown to be the
greatest Nation of the Earth.
I should like to digress
a second for an observation on the last 3 years
which should exhilarate the faith of every American--and
that is the profound growth of the sense of social
responsibility in our Nation which this depression
has demonstrated.
No Government in Washington
has hitherto considered that it held so broad
a responsibility for leadership in such times.
Despite hardships, the devotion of our men and
women to those in distress is demonstrated by
the national averages of infant mortality, general
mortality, and sickness, which are less today
than in times even of prosperity. For the first
time in the history of depressions, dividends
and profits and the cost of living have been reduced
before wages have been sacrificed. We have been
more free from industrial conflict through strikes
and lockouts and all forms of social disorder
than even in normal times. The Nation is building
the initiative of men and of women toward new
fields of social cooperation and new fields of
endeavor.
So much for the great national
emergency and the principles of government for
which we stand and their application to the measures
we have taken.
There are national policies
wider than the emergency, wider than the economic
horizon. They are set forth in our platform. Having
had the responsibility of this office, my views
upon most of them are clearly and often set forth
in public record. I may, however, summarize some
of them.
First: I am squarely for
a protective tariff. I am against the proposal
of "a competitive tariff for revenue"
as advocated by our opponents. That would place
our farmers and our workers in competition with
peasant and sweated-labor products from abroad.
Second: I am against their
proposals to destroy the usefulness of the bipartisan
Tariff Commission, the establishment of whose
effective powers we secured during this administration
just 25 years after it was first advocated by
President Theodore Roosevelt. That instrumentality
enables us to correct any injustice and to readjust
the rates of duty to shifting economic change,
without constant tinkering and orgies of logrolling
by Congress. If our opponents will descend from
the vague generalization to any particular schedule,
if it be higher than necessary to protect our
people or insufficient for their protection, it
can be remedied by this bipartisan Commission
without a national election.
Third: My views in opposition
to the cancellation of the war debt are a matter
of detailed record in many public statements and
in a recent message to the Congress. They mark
a continuity of that policy maintained by my predecessors.
I am hopeful of such drastic reduction of world
armament as will save the taxpayers in debtor
countries a large part of the cost of their payments
to us. If for any particular annual payment we
were offered some other tangible form of compensation,
such as the expansion of markets for American
agriculture and labor, and the restoration and
maintenance of our prosperity, then I am sure
our citizens would consider such a proposal. But
it is a certainty that these debts must not be
canceled or these burdens transferred to the backs
of the American people.
Fourth: I insist upon an
army and navy of a strength which guarantees that
no foreign soldier will land upon the American
soil. That strength is relative to other nations.
I favor every arms reduction which preserves that
relationship.
I favor rigidly restricted
immigration. I have by executive direction in
order to relieve us of added unemployment, already
reduced the inward movement to less than the outward
movement. I shall adhere to that policy.
Sixth: I have repeatedly
recommended to the Congress a revision of railway
transportation laws, in order that we may create
greater stability and greater assurance of that
vital service in our transportation. I shall Persist
in it.
I have repeatedly recommended
the Federal regulation of interstate power. I
shall persist in that. I have opposed the Federal
Government undertaking the operation of the power
business. I shall continue in that opposition.
I have for years supported
the conservation of national resources. I have
made frequent recommendations to the Congress
in respect thereto, including legislation to correct
the waste and destruction of these resources through
the present interpretations of the antitrust laws.
I shall continue to urge such action.
This depression has exposed
many weaknesses in our economic system. There
has been exploitation and abuse of financial power.
We will fearlessly and unremittingly reform these
abuses. I have recommended to the Congress the
reform of our banking laws. Unfortunately this
legislation has not yet been enacted. The American
people must have protection from insecure banking
through a stronger banking system. They must be
relieved from conditions which permit the credit
machinery of the country to be made available
without check for wholesale speculation in securities
with ruinous consequence to millions of our citizens
and to our national economy. I have recommended
to Congress methods of emergency relief to the
depositors of closed banks. For 7 years I have
repeatedly warned against private loans abroad
for nonproductive purposes. I shall persist in
all those matters.
I have insisted upon a
balanced budget as the foundation of all public
and private financial stability and of all public
confidence. I shall insist on the maintenance
of that policy. Recent increases in revenues,
while temporary, should be again examined, and
if they tend to sap the vitality of industry,
and thus retard employment, they should be revised.
The first necessity of
the Nation, the wealth and income of whose citizens
has been reduced, is to reduce the expenditures
on government-national, State, and local. It is
in the relief of taxes from the backs of men through
which we liberate their powers. It is through
lower expenditures that we get lower taxes. This
must be done. A considerable reduction in Federal
expenditures has been attained. If we except those
extraordinary expenditures imposed upon us by
the depression, it will be found that the Federal
Government is operating some $200 million less
annually today than 4 years ago. The Congress
rejected recommendations from the administration
which would have saved an additional $150 million
this fiscal year. The opposition leadership insisted,
as the price of vital reconstruction legislation
and over the protest of our leaders, upon adding
$300 million of costs to the taxpayer through
public works inadvisable at this time. I shall
repeat these proposals for economy. The opposition
leadership in the House of Representatives in
the last 4 months secured the passage by that
House of $3 billion in raids upon the Public Treasury.
They have been stopped, and I shall continue to
oppose such raids.
I have repeatedly for 7
years urged the Congress either themselves to
abolish obsolete bureaus and commissions and to
reorganize the whole Government structure in the
interest of economy, or to give someone the authority
to do it. I have succeeded partially in securing
that authority, but I regret that no great act
under it can be effective until after the approval
of the next Congress.
With the collapse of world
prices and the depreciated currencies the farmer
was never so dependent upon his tariff protection
for recovery as he is at the present time. We
shall hold to that as a national policy. We have
enacted many measures of emergency relief to agriculture.
They are having their effect. I shall keep them
functioning until the strain is past. The original
purpose of the Farm Board was to strengthen the
efforts of the farmer to establish his own farmer-owned,
farmer controlled marketing agencies. It has greatly
succeeded in this purpose, even in these times
of adversity. The departure of the Farm Board
from its original purpose by making loans to farmers'
cooperatives to preserve prices from panic served
an emergency, but such an action in normal times
is absolutely destructive of the farmers' own
interest.
We still have vast problems
to solve in agriculture. But no power on Earth
can restore prices except by restoration of the
general recovery and by restoration of markets.
Every measure that we have taken looking to general
recovery is of benefit to the farmer. There is
no relief to the farmer by extending governmental
bureaucracy to control his production and thus
to curtail his liberties, nor by subsidies that
bring only more bureaucracy and their ultimate
collapse. And I shall continue to oppose
them.
The most practicable relief
to the farmer today aside from general economic
recovery is a definite program of readjustment
and coordination of national, State, and local
taxation which will relieve real property, especially
the farms, from the unfair burdens of taxation
which the current readjustment in values have
brought about. To that purpose I propose to devote
myself.
I have always favored the
development of rivers and harbors and highways.
These improvements have been greatly expedited
in the last 30 years. We shall continue that work
to completion. After 20 years of discussion between
the United States and our great neighbor to the
north, I have signed a treaty for the construction
of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence seaway. That treaty
does not injure the Chicago to the Gulf waterway,
the work upon which, together with the whole Mississippi
system, I have expedited, and in which I am equally
interested. We shall undertake this great seaway,
the greatest public improvement ever undertaken
upon our continent, with its consequent employment
of men as quickly as that treaty can be ratified.
Our views upon sound currency
require no elucidation. They are indelibly a part
of Republican history and policies. We have affirmed
them by preventing the Democratic majority in
the House from effecting wild schemes of uncontrolled
inflation in the last 4 months.
There are many other important
subjects set forth in the platform and in my public
statements in the past for which I will not take
your time. There are one or two others that do
merit some emphasis.
The leadership of the Federal
Government is not to be confined to economic and
international questions. There are problems of
the home and the education of children and of
citizenship. They are the most vital of all to
the future of the Nation. Except in the case of
aids to States which I have recommended for stimulation
of the protection and health of children, they
are not matters of legislation. We have given
leadership to the initiative of our people for
social advancement through this organization against
illiteracy, through the White House conferences
on the protection and health of children, through
the national conferences on homeownership, through
the stimulation of social and recreational agencies.
These are the visible evidences of spiritual leadership
in the Government. They will be continued, and
they will be constantly invigorated.
My foreign policies have
been devoted to strengthening the foundations
of world peace. We inaugurated the London Naval
Treaty which reduced arms and limited the ratios
between the fleets of the three powers. We have
made concrete proposals at Geneva to reduce the
armaments of the world by one-third. It would
save the taxpayers of the world a billion a year.
We could save ourselves 200 millions a year. It
would reduce fear and danger of war. We have expanded
the arbitration of disputes. I have recommended
joining the World Court under proper reservations
preserving our freedom of action. Above all, we
have given leadership in the transforming of the
Kellogg-Briand Pact from an inspiring outlawry
of war to an organized instrument for peaceful
settlements backed by definite mobilized world
public opinion against aggression. We shall, under
the spirit of that pact, consult with other nations
in time of emergency to promote world peace. We
shall enter into no agreements committing us to
any future course of action or which call for
use of force in order to preserve peace.
I have projected a new
doctrine into international affairs--the doctrine
that we do not and never will recognize title
to the possession of territory gained in violation
of the peace pacts which were signed with us.
That doctrine has been accepted by all the nations
of the world on a recent critical occasion, and
within the last few days has been again accepted
by all the nations of the Western Hemisphere.
That is public opinion made tangible and effective.
The world needs peace.
It must have peace with justice. I shall continue
to strive unceasingly, with every power of mind
and spirit, to explore every possible path that
leads towards a world in which right triumphs
over force, in which reason rules over passion,
in which men and women may rear their children
not to be devoured by war but to pursue in safety
the nobler arts of peace.
I shall continue to build upon these designs.
Across the path of the
Nation's consideration of these vast problems
of economic and social order there has arisen
a bitter controversy over the control of the liquor
traffic. I have always sympathized with the high
purpose of the 18th amendment, and I have used
every power at my command to make it effective
over this entire country. I have hoped that it
was the final solution of the evils of the liquor
traffic against which our people have striven
for generations. It has succeeded in great measure
in those many communities where the majority sentiment
is favorable to it. But in other and increasing
numbers of communities there is a majority sentiment
unfavorable to it. Laws which are opposed by the
majority sentiment create resentments which undermine
enforcement and in the end produce degeneration
and crime.
Our opponents pledge the
members of their party to destroy every vestige
of constitutional and effective Federal control
of the traffic. That means that over large areas
the return of the saloon system with its corruption,
its moral and social abuse which debauched the
home, its deliberate interference with the States
endeavoring to find honest solution, its permeation
of political parties, its perversion of legislatures,
which reached even to the Capital of the Nation.
The 18th amendment smashed that regime as by a
stroke of lightning. I cannot consent to the return
of that system again.
We must recognize the difficulties
which have developed in making the 18th amendment
effective and that grave abuses have grown up.
In order to secure the enforcement of the amendment
under our dual form of government, the constitutional
provision called for concurrent action on one
hand by the State and local authorities and on
the other by the Federal Government. Its enforcement
requires, therefore, independent but coincident
action of both agencies. An increasing number
of States and municipalities are proving themselves
unwilling to engage in that enforcement. Due to
these forces there is in large sections increasing
illegal traffic in liquor. But worse than this
there has been in those areas a spread of disrespect
not only for this law but for all laws, grave
dangers of practical nullification of the Constitution,
an increase in subsidized crime and violence.
I cannot consent to a continuation of that regime.
I refuse to accept either
of these destinies, on the one hand to return
to the old saloon with its political and social
corruption, or on the other to endure the bootlegger
and the speakeasy with their abuses and crime.
Either of them are intolerable, and they are not
the only ways out.
Now, our objective must
be a sane solution, not a blind leap back to old
evils. Moreover, a step backwards would result
in a chaos of new evils not yet experienced, because
the local systems of prohibition and controls
which were developed over generations have been
in a large degree abandoned under this amendment.
The Republican platform
recommends submission of the question to the States
and that the people themselves may determine whether
they desire a change, but insists that this submission
shall propose a constructive and not a destructive
change. It does not dictate to the conscience
of any member of the party.
The first duty of the President
of the United States is to enforce the laws as
they exist. That I shall continue to do to the
best of my ability. Any other course would be
the abrogation of the very guarantees of liberty
itself.
Now, the Constitution gives
the President no power or authority with respect
to changes in the Constitution itself; nevertheless,
my countrymen have a right to know my conclusions
upon this question. They are based upon the broad
facts that I have stated, upon my experience in
this high office, and upon my deep conviction
that our purpose must be the elimination of the
evils of this traffic from this civilization by
practical measures.
It is my belief that in
order to remedy present evils a change is necessary
by which we resummon a proper share of initiative
and responsibility which the very essence of our
Government demands shall rest upon the States
and the local authorities. That change must avoid
the return of the saloon.
It is my conviction that
the nature of this change, and one upon which
all reasonable people can find common ground,
is that each State shall be given the right to
deal with the problem as it may determine, but
subject to the absolute guarantees in the Constitution
of the United States to protect each State from
interference and invasion by its neighbors, and
that in no part of the United States shall there
be a return of the saloon system with its inevitable
political and social corruption and its organized
interference with other States and other communities.
American statesmanship
is capable of working out such a solution and
making it effective.
My fellow citizens, the
discussion of great problems of economic life
and of government seem abstract and cold. But
within their right solution lies the happiness
and the hope of a great people. Without such solution
all else is mere verbal sympathy.
Today millions of our fellow
countrymen are out of work. Prices of farmers'
products are below a living standard. Many millions
more who are in business or hold employment are
haunted by fears for the future. No man with a
spark of humanity can sit in my place without
suffering from the picture of their anxieties
and hardships before him day and night. They would
be more than human if they were not led to blame
their condition upon the government in power.
I have understood their sufferings and have worked
to the limits of my strength to produce action
that would be of help to them.
Much remains to be done
to attain recovery. We have had a great and unparalleled
shock. The emergency measures now in action represent
an unparalleled use of national power to relieve
distress, to provide employment, to serve agriculture,
to preserve the stability of the Government, and
to maintain the integrity of our institutions.
Our policies prevent unemployment caused by floods
of imported goods and of laborers. Our policies
preserve peace in the world. They embrace cooperation
with other nations in those fields in which we
can serve. With patience and perseverance these
measures will succeed.
Despite the dislocation
of economic life our great tools of production
and distribution are more efficient than ever
before; our fabulous national resources, our farms
and homes and our skill are unimpaired. From the
hard-won experience of this depression we shall
build stronger methods of prevention and stronger
methods of protection to our people from abuses
that have become evident. We shall march to a
far greater accomplishment.
With the united effort
we can and will turn the tide towards the restoration
of business, of employment, and of agriculture.
It does call for the utmost devotion and the utmost
wisdom. Every reserve of American courage and
vision must be called upon to sustain us and to
plan wisely for the future.
Through it all our first
duty is to preserve unfettered that dominant American
spirit which has produced our enterprise and our
individual character. That is the bedrock of the
past, and it is the sole guarantee of the future.
Not regimented mechanisms but free men are our
goal. Herein is the fundamental issue. A representative
democracy, progressive and unafraid to meet its
problems, but meeting them upon the foundations
of experience and not upon the wave of emotion
or the insensate demands of a radicalism which
grasps at every opportunity to exploit the sufferings
of a people.
With these courses we shall
emerge from this great national strain with our
American system of life and government strengthened.
Our people will be free to reassert their energy
and their enterprise in a society eager to reward
in full measure those whose industry serves its
well-being. Our youth will find the doors of equal
opportunity still open.
The problems of the next
few years are not only economic. They are also
moral and spiritual. The present check to our
material success must deeply stir our national
conscience upon the purposes of life itself. It
must cause us to revalue and reshape our drift
from materialism to a higher note of individual
and national ideals.
Underlying every purpose
is the spiritual application of moral ideals which
are the fundamental basis of the happiness of
a people. This is a land of homes and of churches
and schoolhouses dedicated to the sober and enduring
satisfactions of family life and the rearing of
children in an atmosphere of ideals and of religious
faith. Only with those ideals and those high standards
can we hold society together, and only from them
can government survive and business prosper. They
are the sole insurance to the safety of our children
and to the continuity of the Nation.
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