I next want to make it clear exactly how we shall direct the work.

This etext was produced by Steve Bonner.

The Fireside Chats of

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Radio addresses to the American people

broadcast between 1933 and 1944.

March 12, 1933.

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United

States about banking--with the comparatively few who understand the

mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming

majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing

of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few

days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be. I

recognize that the many proclamations from state capitols and from

Washington, the legislation, the treasury regulations, etc.,

couched for the most part in banking and legal terms should be

explained for the benefit of the average citizen. I owe this in

particular because of the fortitude and good temper with which

everybody has accepted the inconvenience and hardships of the

banking holiday. I know that when you understand what we in

Washington have been about I shall continue to have your

cooperation as fully as I have had your sympathy and help during

the past week.

First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit

money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit

vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit--

bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans.

In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels

of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively

small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency--

an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the

cash needs of the average citizen. In other words, the total amount

of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the

total deposits in all of the banks.

What, then, happened during the last few days of February and the

first few days of March? Because of undermined confidence on the

part of the public, there was a general rush by a large portion of

our population to turn bank deposits into currency or gold--a rush

so great that the soundest banks could not get enough currency to

meet the demand. The reason for this was that on the spur of the

moment it was, of course, impossible to sell perfectly sound assets

of a bank and convert them into cash except at panic prices far

below their real value.

By the afternoon of March 3d scarcely a bank in the country was

open to do business. Proclamations temporarily closing them in

whole or in part had been issued by the governors in almost all the

states.

It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the

nation-wide bank holiday, and this was the first step in the

government's reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric.

The second step was the legislation promptly and patriotically

passed by the Congress confirming my proclamation and broadening my

powers so that it became possible in view of the requirement of

time to extend the holiday and lift the ban of that holiday

gradually. This law also gave authority to develop a program of

rehabilitation of our banking facilities. I want to tell our

citizens in every part of the nation that the national Congress--

Republicans and Democrats alike--showed by this action a devotion

to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and the

necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in our history.

The third stage has been the series of regulations permitting the

banks to continue their functions to take care of the distribution

of food and household necessities and the payment of payrolls.

This bank holiday, while resulting in many cases in great

inconvenience, is affording us the opportunity to supply the

currency necessary to meet the situation. No sound bank is a dollar

worse off than it was when it closed its doors last Monday. Neither

is any bank which may turn out not to be in a position for

immediate opening. The new law allows the twelve Federal Reserve

Banks to issue additional currency on good assets and thus the

banks which reopen will be able to meet every legitimate call. The

new currency is being sent out by the Bureau of Engraving and

Printing in large volume to every part of the country. It is sound

currency because it is backed by actual, good assets.

A question you will ask is this: why are all the banks not to be

reopened at the same time? The answer is simple. Your government

does not intend that the history of the past few years shall be

repeated. We do not want and will not have another epidemic of bank

failures.

As a result, we start tomorrow, Monday, with the opening of banks

in the twelve Federal Reserve Bank cities--those banks which on

first examination by the treasury have already been found to be all

right. This will be followed on Tuesday by the resumption of all

their functions by banks already found to be sound in cities where

there are recognized clearing houses. That means about 250 cities

of the United states.

On Wednesday and succeeding days banks in smaller places all

through the country will resume business, subject, of course, to

the government's physical ability to complete its survey. It is

necessary that the reopening of banks be extended over a period in

order to permit the banks to make applications for necessary loans,

to obtain currency needed to meet their requirements and to enable

the government to make common sense checkups.

Let me make it clear to you that if your bank does not open the

first day you are by no means justified in believing that it will

not open. A bank that opens on one of the subsequent days is in

exactly the same status as the bank that opens tomorrow.

I know that many people are worrying about state banks not members

of the Federal Reserve System. These banks can and will receive

assistance from members banks and from the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation. These state banks are following the same course as the

national banks except that they get their licenses to resume

business from the state authorities, and these authorities have

been asked by the Secretary of the Treasury to permit their good

banks to open up on the same schedule as the national banks. I am

confident that the state banking departments will be as careful as

the national government in the policy relating to the opening of

banks and will follow the same broad policy.

It is possible that when the banks resume a very few people who

have not recovered from their fear may again begin withdrawals. Let

me make it clear that the banks will take care of all needs--and it

is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an

exceedingly unfashionable pastime. It needs no prophet to tell you

that when the people find that they can get their money--that they

can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes--the

phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to

have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where

they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you that it

is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the

mattress.

The success of our whole great national program depends, of course,

upon the cooperation of the public--on its intelligent support and

use of a reliable system.

Remember that the essential accomplishment of the new legislation

is that it makes it possible for banks more readily to convert

their assets into cash than was the case before. More liberal

provision has been made for banks to borrow on these assets at the

Reserve Banks and more liberal provision has also been made for

issuing currency on the security of those good assets. This

currency is not fiat currency. It is issued only on adequate

security--and every good bank has an abundance of such security.

One more point before I close. There will be, of course, some banks

unable to reopen without being reorganized. The new law allows the

government to assist in making these reorganizations quickly and

effectively and even allows the government to subscribe to at least

a part of new capital which may be required.

I hope you can see from this elemental recital of what your

government is doing that there is nothing complex, or radical, in

the process.

We had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown

themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the

people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in

speculations and unwise loans. This was, of course, not true in the

vast majority of our banks, but it was true in enough of them to

shock the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put

them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but

seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted

them all. It was the government's job to straighten out this

situation and do it as quickly as possible--and the job is being

performed.

I do not promise you that every bank will be reopened or that

individual losses will not be suffered, but there will be no losses

that possibly could be avoided; and there would have been more and

greater losses had we continued to drift. I can even promise you

salvation for some at least of the sorely pressed banks. We shall

be engaged not merely in reopening sound banks but in the creation

of sound banks through reorganization.

It has been wonderful to me to catch the note of confidence from

all over the country. I can never be sufficiently grateful to the

people for the loyal support they have given me in their acceptance

of the judgment that has dictated our course, even though all our

processes may not have seemed clear to them.

After all, there is an element in the readjustment of our financial

system more important than currency, more important than gold, and

that is the confidence of the people. Confidence and courage are

the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must

have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us

unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore

our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work.

It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot

fail.

May 7, 1933.

On a Sunday night a week after my inauguration I used the radio to

tell you about the banking crisis and the measures we were taking

to meet it. I think that in that way I made clear to the country

various facts that might otherwise have been misunderstood and in

general provided a means of understanding which did much to restore

confidence.

Tonight, eight weeks later, I come for the second time to give you

my report; in the same spirit and by the same means to tell you

about what we have been doing and what we are planning to do.

Two months ago we were facing serious problems. The country was

dying by inches. It was dying because trade and commerce had

declined to dangerously low levels; prices for basic commodities

were such as to destroy the value of the assets of national

institutions such as banks, savings banks, insurance companies, and

others. These institutions, because of their great needs, were

foreclosing mortgages, calling loans, refusing credit. Thus there

was actually in process of destruction the property of millions of

people who had borrowed money on that property in terms of dollars

which had had an entirely different value from the level of March,

1933. That situation in that crisis did not call for any

complicated consideration of economic panaceas or fancy plans. We

were faced by a condition and not a theory.

There were just two alternatives: The first was to allow the

foreclosures to continue, credit to be withheld and money to go

into hiding, and thus forcing liquidation and bankruptcy of banks,

railroads and insurance companies and a recapitalizing of all

business and all property on a lower level. This alternative meant

a continuation of what is loosely called "deflation", the net

result of which would have been extraordinary hardships on all

property owners and, incidentally, extraordinary hardships on all

persons working for wages through an increase in unemployment and a

further reduction of the wage scale.

It is easy to see that the result of this course would have not

only economic effects of a very serious nature but social results

that might bring incalculable harm. Even before I was inaugurated I

came to the conclusion that such a policy was too much to ask the

American people to bear. It involved not only a further loss of

homes, farms, savings and wages but also a loss of spiritual

values--the loss of that sense of security for the present and the

future so necessary to the peace and contentment of the individual

and of his family. When you destroy these things you will find it

difficult to establish confidence of any sort in the future. It was

clear that mere appeals from Washington for confidence and the mere

lending of more money to shaky institutions could not stop this

downward course. A prompt program applied as quickly as possible

seemed to me not only justified but imperative to our national

security. The Congress, and when I say Congress I mean the members

of both political parties, fully understood this and gave me

generous and intelligent support. The members of Congress realized

that the methods of normal times had to be replaced in the

emergency by measures which were suited to the serious and pressing

requirements of the moment. There was no actual surrender of power,

Congress still retained its constitutional authority, and no one

has the slightest desire to change the balance of these powers. The

function of Congress is to decide what has to be done and to select

the appropriate agency to carry out its will. To this policy it has

strictly adhered. The only thing that has been happening has been

to designate the President as the agency to carry out certain of

the purposes of the Congress. This was constitutional and in

keeping with the past American tradition.

The legislation which has been passed or is in the process of

enactment can properly be considered as part of a well-grounded

plan.

First, we are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a

million of the unemployed, especially the young men who have

dependents, to go into the forestry and flood prevention work. This

is a big task because it means feeding, clothing and caring for

nearly twice as many men as we have in the regular army itself. In

creating this civilian conservation corps we are killing two birds

with one stone. We are clearly enhancing the value of our natural

resources and we are relieving an appreciable amount of actual

distress. This great group of men has entered upon its work on a

purely voluntary basis; no military training is involved and we are

conserving not only our natural resources, but our human resources.

One of the great values to this work is the fact that it is direct

and requires the intervention of very little machinery.

Second, I have requested the Congress and have secured action upon

a proposal to put the great properties owned by our government at

Muscle Shoals to work after long years of wasteful inaction, and

with this a broad plan for the improvement of a vast area in the

Tennessee Valley. It will add to the comfort and happiness of

hundreds of thousands of people and the incident benefits will

reach the entire nation.

Next, the Congress is about to pass legislation that will greatly

ease the mortgage distress among the farmers and the home owners of

the nation, by providing for the easing of the burden of debt now

bearing so heavily upon millions of our people.

Our next step in seeking immediate relief is a grant of half a

billion dollars to help the states, counties and municipalities in

their duty to care for those who need direct and immediate relief.

The Congress also passed legislation authorizing the sale of beer

in such states as desired it. This has already resulted in

considerable reemployment and incidentally has provided much needed

tax revenue.

We are planning to ask the Congress for legislation to enable the

government to undertake public works, thus stimulating directly and

indirectly the employment of many others in well-considered

projects.

Further legislation has been taken up which goes much more

fundamentally into our economic problems. The Farm Relief Bill

seeks by the use of several methods, alone or together, to bring

about an increased return to farmers for their major farm products,

seeking at the same time to prevent in the days to come disastrous

overproduction which so often in the past has kept farm commodity

prices far below a reasonable return. This measure provides wide

powers for emergencies. The extent of its use will depend entirely

upon what the future has in store.

Well-considered and conservative measures will likewise be proposed

which will attempt to give to the industrial workers of the country

a more fair wage return, prevent cut-throat competition and unduly

long hours for labor, and at the same time encourage each industry

to prevent overproduction.

Our Railroad Bill falls into the same class because it seeks to

provide and make certain definite planning by the railroads

themselves, with the assistance of the government, to eliminate the

duplication and waste that is now resulting in railroad

receiverships and continuing operating deficits.

I am certain that the people of this country understand and approve

the broad purposes behind these new governmental policies relating

to agriculture and industry and transportation. We found ourselves

faced with more agricultural products than we could possibly

consume ourselves and surpluses which other nations did not have

the cash to buy from us except at prices ruinously low. We found

our factories able to turn out more goods than we could possibly

consume, and at the same time we were faced with a falling export

demand. We found ourselves with more facilities to transport goods

and crops than there were goods and crops to be transported. All of

this has been caused in large part by a complete lack of planning

and a complete failure to understand the danger signals that have

been flying ever since the close of the World War. The people of

this country have been erroneously encouraged to believe that they

could keep on increasing the output of farm and factory

indefinitely and that some magician would find ways and means for

that increased output to be consumed with reasonable profit to the

producer.

Today we have reason to believe that things are a little better

than they were two months ago. Industry has picked up, railroads

are carrying more freight, farm prices are better, but I am not

going to indulge in issuing proclamations of overenthusiastic

assurance. We cannot ballyhoo ourselves back to prosperity. I am

going to be honest at all times with the people of the country. I

do not want the people of this country to take the foolish course

of letting this improvement come back on another speculative wave.

I do not want the people to believe that because of unjustified

optimism we can resume the ruinous practice of increasing our crop

output and our factory output in the hope that a kind Providence

will find buyers at high prices. Such a course may bring us

immediate and false prosperity but it will be the kind of

prosperity that will lead us into another tailspin.

It is wholly wrong to call the measure that we have taken

government control of farming, control of industry, and control of

transportation. It is rather a partnership between government and

farming and industry and transportation, not partnership in

profits, for the profits still go to the citizens, but rather a

partnership in planning and partnership to see that the plans are

carried out.

Let me illustrate with an example. Take the cotton goods industry.

It is probably true that ninety percent of the cotton manufacturers

would agree to eliminate starvation wages, would agree to stop long

hours of employment, would agree to stop child labor, would agree

to prevent an overproduction that would result in unsalable

surpluses. But, what good is such an agreement if the other ten

percent of cotton manufacturers pay starvation wages, require long

hours, employ children in their mills and turn out burdensome

surpluses? The unfair ten percent could produce goods so cheaply

that the fair ninety percent would be compelled to meet the unfair

conditions. Here is where government comes in. Government ought to

have the right and will have the right, after surveying and

planning for an industry to prevent, with the assistance of the

overwhelming majority of that industry, unfair practice and to

enforce this agreement by the authority of government. The so-

called anti-trust laws were intended to prevent the creation of

monopolies. That purpose of the anti-trust laws must be continued,

but these laws were never intended to encourage the kind of unfair

competition that results in long hours, starvation wages and

overproduction.

The same principle applies to farm products and to transportation

and every other field of organized private industry.

We are working toward a definite goal, which is to prevent the

return of conditions which came very close to destroying what we

call modern civilization. The actual accomplishment of our purpose

cannot be attained in a day. Our policies are wholly within

purposes for which our American constitutional government was

established 150 years ago.

I know that the people of this country will understand this and

will also understand the spirit in which we are undertaking this

policy. I do not deny that we may make mistakes of procedure as we

carry out the policy. I have no expectation of making a hit every

time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting

average, not only for myself but for the team. Theodore Roosevelt

once said to me: "If I can be right 75 percent of the time I shall

come up to the fullest measure of my hopes."

Much has been said of late about federal finances and inflation,

the gold standard, etc. Let me make the facts very simple and my

policy very clear. In the first place, government credit and

government currency are really one and the same thing. Behind

government bonds there is only a promise to pay. Behind government

currency we have, in addition to the promise to pay, a reserve of

gold and a small reserve of silver. In this connection it is worth

while remembering that in the past the government has agreed to

redeem nearly thirty billions of its debts and its currency in

gold, and private corporations in this country have agreed to

redeem another sixty or seventy billions of securities and

mortgages in gold. The government and private corporations were

making these agreements when they knew full well that all of the

gold in the United States amounted to only between three and four

billions and that all of the gold in all of the world amounted to

only about eleven billions.

If the holders of these promises to pay started in to demand gold

the first comers would get gold for a few days and they would

amount to about one twenty-fifth of the holders of the securities

and the currency. The other twenty-four people out of twenty-five,

who did not happen to be at the top of the line, would be told

politely that there was no more gold left. We have decided to treat

all twenty-five in the same way in the interest of justice and the

exercise of the constitutional powers of this government. We have

placed everyone on the same basis in order that the general good

may be preserved.

Nevertheless, gold, and to a partial extent silver, are perfectly

good bases for currency and that is why I decided not to let any of

the gold now in the country go out of it.

A series of conditions arose three weeks ago which very readily

might have meant, first, a drain on our gold by foreign countries,

and second, as a result of that, a flight of American capital, in

the form of gold, out of our country. It is not exaggerating the

possibility to tell you that such an occurrence might well have

taken from us the major part of our gold reserve and resulted in

such a further weakening of our government and private credit as to

bring on actual panic conditions and the complete stoppage of the

wheels of industry.

The administration has the definite objective of raising commodity

prices to such an extent that those who have borrowed money will,

on the average, be able to repay that money in the same kind of

dollar which they borrowed. We do not seek to let them get such a

cheap dollar that they will be able to pay back a great deal less

than they borrowed. In other words, we seek to correct a wrong and

not to create another wrong in the opposite direction. That is why

powers are being given to the administration to provide, if

necessary, for an enlargement of credit, in order to correct the

existing wrong. These powers will be used when, as, and if it may

be necessary to accomplish the purpose.

Hand in hand with the domestic situation which, of course, is our

first concern, is the world situation, and I want to emphasize to

you that the domestic situation is inevitably and deeply tied in

with the conditions in all of the other nations of the world. In

other words, we can get, in all probability, a fair measure of

prosperity to return in the United States, but it will not be

permanent unless we get a return to prosperity all over the world.

In the conferences which we have held and are holding with the

leaders of other nations, we are seeking four great objectives:

First, a general reduction of armaments and through this the

removal of the fear of invasion and armed attack, and, at the same

time, a reduction in armament costs, in order to help in the

balancing of government budgets and the reduction of taxation;

second, a cutting down of the trade barriers, in order to restart

the flow of exchange of crops and goods between nations; third, the

setting up of a stabilization of currencies, in order that trade

can make contracts ahead; fourth, the reestablishment of friendly

relations and greater confidence between all nations.

Our foreign visitors these past three weeks have responded to these

purposes in a very helpful way. All of the nations have suffered

alike in this great depression. They have all reached the

conclusion that each can best be helped by the common action of

all. It is in this spirit that our visitors have met with us and

discussed our common problems. The international conference that

lies before us must succeed. The future of the world demands it and

we have each of us pledged ourselves to the best joint efforts to

this end.

To you, the people of this country, all of us, the Members of the

Congress and the members of this administration, owe a profound

debt of gratitude. Throughout the depression you have been patient.

You have granted us wide powers; you have encouraged us with a

widespread approval of our purposes. Every ounce of strength and

every resource at our command we have devoted to the end of

justifying your confidence. We are encouraged to believe that a

wise and sensible beginning has been made. In the present spirit of

mutual confidence and mutual encouragement we go forward.

July 24, 1933.

After the adjournment of the historical special session of the

Congress five weeks ago I purposely refrained from addressing you

for two very good reasons.

First, I think that we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet

thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding

events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting

of the wheels of the New Deal.

Secondly, I wanted a few weeks in which to set up the new

administrative organization and to see the first fruits of our

careful planning.

I think it will interest you if I set forth the fundamentals of

this planning for national recovery; and this I am very certain

will make it abundantly clear to you that all of the proposals and

all of the legislation since the fourth day of March have not been

just a collection of haphazard schemes but rather the orderly

component parts of a connected and logical whole.

Long before inauguration day I became convinced that individual

effort and local effort and even disjointed federal effort had

failed and of necessity would fail and, therefore, that a rounded

leadership by the federal government had become a necessity both of

theory and of fact. Such leadership, however, had its beginning in

preserving and strengthening the credit of the United States

government, because without that no leadership was a possibility.

For years the government had not lived within its income. The

immediate task was to bring our regular expenses within our

revenues. That has been done.

It may seem inconsistent for a government to cut down its regular

expenses and at the same time to borrow and to spend billions for

an emergency. But it is not inconsistent because a large portion of

the emergency money has been paid out in the form of sound loans

which will be repaid to the treasury over a period of years; and to

cover the rest of the emergency money we have imposed taxes to pay

the interest and the installments on that part of the debt.

So you will see that we have kept our credit good. We have built a

granite foundation in a period of confusion. That foundation of the

federal credit stands there broad and sure. It is the base of the

whole recovery plan.

Then came the part of the problem that concerned the credit of the

individual citizens themselves. You and I know of the banking

crisis and of the great danger to the savings of our people. On

March sixth every national bank was closed. One month later 90

percent of the deposits in the national banks had been made

available to the depositors. Today only about 5 percent of the

deposits in national banks are still tied up. The condition

relating to state banks, while not quite so good on a percentage

basis, is showing a steady reduction in the total of frozen

deposits--a result much better than we had expected three months

ago.

The problem of the credit of the individual was made more difficult

because of another fact. The dollar was a different dollar from the

one with which the average debt had been incurred. For this reason

large numbers of people were actually losing possession of and

title to their farms and homes. All of you know the financial steps

which have been taken to correct this inequality. In addition the

Home Loan Act, the Farm Loan Act and the Bankruptcy Act were

passed.

It was a vital necessity to restore purchasing power by reducing

the debt and interest charges upon our people, but while we were

helping people to save their credit it was at the same time

absolutely essential to do something about the physical needs of

hundreds of thousands who were in dire straits at that very moment.

Municipal and state aid were being stretched to the limit. We

appropriated half a billion dollars to supplement their efforts and

in addition, as you know, we have put 300,000 young men into

practical and useful work in our forests and to prevent flood and

soil erosion. The wages they earn are going in greater part to the

support of the nearly one million people who constitute their

families.

In this same classification we can properly place the great public

works program running to a total of over three billion dollars--to

be used for highways and ships and flood prevention and inland

navigation and thousands of self-sustaining state and municipal

improvements. Two points should be made clear in the allotting and

administration of these projects--first, we are using the utmost

care to choose labor-creating, quick-acting, useful projects,

avoiding the smell of the pork barrel; and secondly, we are hoping

that at least half of the money will come back to the government

from projects which will pay for themselves over a period of years.

Thus far I have spoken primarily of the foundation stones--the

measures that were necessary to reestablish credit and to head

people in the opposite direction by preventing distress and

providing as much work as possible through governmental agencies.

Now I come to the links which will build us a more lasting

prosperity. I have said that we cannot attain that in a nation half

boom and half broke. If all of our people have work and fair wages

and fair profits, they can buy the products of their neighbors and

business is good. But if you take away the wages and the profits of

half of them, business is only half as good. It doesn't help much

if the fortunate half is very prosperous--the best way is for

everybody to be reasonably prosperous.

For many years the two great barriers to a normal prosperity have

been low farm prices and the creeping paralysis of unemployment.

These factors have cut the purchasing power of the country in half.

I promised action. Congress did its part when it passed the Farm

and the Industrial Recovery Acts. Today we are putting these two

acts to work and they will work if people understand their plain

objectives.

First the Farm Act: It is based on the fact that the purchasing

power of nearly half our population depends on adequate prices for

farm products. We have been producing more of some crops than we

consume or can sell in a depressed world market. The cure is not to

produce so much. Without our help the farmers cannot get together

and cut production, and the Farm Bill gives them a method of

bringing their production down to a reasonable level and of

obtaining reasonable prices for their crops. I have clearly stated

that this method is in a sense experimental, but so far as we have

gone we have reason to believe that it will produce good results.

It is obvious that if we can greatly increase the purchasing power

of the tens of millions of our people who make a living from

farming and the distribution of farm crops, we will greatly

increase the consumption of those goods which are turned out by

industry.

That brings me to the final step--bringing back industry along

sound lines.

Last Autumn, on several occasions, I expressed my faith that we can

make possible by democratic self-discipline in industry general

increases in wages and shortening of hours sufficient to enable

industry to pay its own workers enough to let those workers buy and

use the things that their labor produces. This can be done only if

we permit and encourage cooperative action in industry because it

is obvious that without united action a few selfish men in each

competitive group will pay starvation wages and insist on long

hours of work. Others in that group must either follow suit or

close up shop. We have seen the result of action of that kind in

the continuing descent into the economic Hell of the past four

years.

There is a clear way to reverse that process: If all employers in

each competitive group agree to pay their workers the same wages--

reasonable wages--and require the same hours--reasonable hours--

then higher wages and shorter hours will hurt no employer.

Moreover, such action is better for the employer than unemployment

and low wages, because it makes more buyers for his product. That

is the simple idea which is the very heart of the Industrial

Recovery Act.

On the basis of this simple principle of everybody doing things

together, we are starting out on this nationwide attack on

unemployment. It will succeed if our people understand it--in the

big industries, in the little shops, in the great cities and in the

small villages. There is nothing complicated about it and there is

nothing particularly new in the principle. It goes back to the

basic idea of society and of the nation itself that people acting

in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone

could even hope to bring about.

Here is an example. In the Cotton Textile Code and in other

agreements already signed, child labor has been abolished. That

makes me personally happier than any other one thing with which I

have been connected since I came to Washington. In the textile

industry--an industry which came to me spontaneously and with a

splendid cooperation as soon as the recovery act was signed--child

labor was an old evil. But no employer acting alone was able to

wipe it out. If one employer tried it, or if one state tried it,

the costs of operation rose so high that it was impossible to

compete with the employers or states which had failed to act. The

moment the Recovery Act was passed, this monstrous thing which

neither opinion nor law could reach through years of effort went

out in a flash. As a British editorial put it, we did more under a

Code in one day than they in England had been able to do under the

common law in eighty-five years of effort. I use this incident, my

friends, not to boast of what has already been done but to point

the way to you for even greater cooperative efforts this summer and

autumn.

We are not going through another winter like the last. I doubt if

ever any people so bravely and cheerfully endured a season half so

bitter. We cannot ask America to continue to face such needless

hardships. It is time for courageous action, and the Recovery Bill

gives us the means to conquer unemployment with exactly the same

weapon that we have used to strike down child labor.

The proposition is simply this:

If all employers will act together to shorten hours and raise wages

we can put people back to work. No employer will suffer, because

the relative level of competitive cost will advance by the same

amount for all. But if any considerable group should lag or shirk,

this great opportunity will pass us by and we will go into another

desperate winter. This must not happen.

We have sent out to all employers an agreement which is the result

of weeks of consultation. This agreement checks against the

voluntary codes of nearly all the large industries which have

already been submitted. This blanket agreement carries the

unanimous approval of the three boards which I have appointed to

advise in this, boards representing the great leaders in labor, in

industry and in social service. The agreement has already brought a

flood of approval from every state, and from so wide a cross-

section of the common calling of industry that I know it is fair

for all. It is a plan--deliberate, reasonable and just--intended to

put into effect at once the most important of the broad principles

which are being established, industry by industry, through codes.

Naturally, it takes a good deal of organizing and a great many

hearings and many months, to get these codes perfected and signed,

and we cannot wait for all of them to go through. The blanket

agreements, however, which I am sending to every employer will

start the wheels turning now, and not six months from now.

There are, of course, men, a few of them who might thwart this

great common purpose by seeking selfish advantage. There are

adequate penalties in the law, but I am now asking the cooperation

that comes from opinion and from conscience. These are the only

instruments we shall use in this great summer offensive against

unemployment. But we shall use them to the limit to protect the

willing from the laggard and to make the plan succeed.

In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge

on their shoulders to be sure that comrades do not fire on

comrades. On that principle, those who cooperate in this program

must know each other at a glance. That is why we have provided a

badge of honor for this purpose, a simple design with a legend. "We

do our part," and I ask that all those who join with me shall

display that badge prominently. It is essential to our purpose.

Already all the great, basic industries have come forward willingly

with proposed codes, and in these codes they accept the principles

leading to mass reemployment. But, important as is this heartening

demonstration, the richest field for results is among the small

employers, those whose contribution will give new work for from one

to ten people. These smaller employers are indeed a vital part of

the backbone of the country, and the success of our plans lies

largely in their hands.

Already the telegrams and letters are pouring into the White

House--messages from employers who ask that their names be placed

on this special Roll of Honor. They represent great corporations

and companies, and partnerships and individuals. I ask that even

before the dates set in the agreements which we have sent out, the

employers of the country who have not already done so--the big

fellows and the little fellows--shall at once write or telegraph to

me personally at the White House, expressing their intention of

going through with the plan. And it is my purpose to keep posted in

the post office of every town, a Roll of Honor of all those who

join with me.

I want to take this occasion to say to the twenty-four governors

who are now in conference in San Francisco, that nothing thus far

has helped in strengthening this great movement more than their

resolutions adopted at the very outset of their meeting, giving

this plan their unanimous and instant approval, and pledging to

support it in their states.

To the men and women whose lives have been darkened by the fact or

the fear of unemployment, I am justified in saying a word of

encouragement because the codes and the agreements already

approved, or about to be passed upon, prove that the plan does

raise wages, and that it does put people back to work. You can look

on every employer who adopts the plan as one who is doing his part,

and those employers deserve well of everyone who works for a

living. It will be clear to you, as it is to me, that while the

shirking employer may undersell his competitor, the saving he thus

makes is made at the expense of his country's welfare.

While we are making this great common effort there should be no

discord and dispute. This is no time to cavil or to question the

standard set by this universal agreement. It is time for patience

and understanding and cooperation. The workers of this country have

rights under this law which cannot be taken from them, and nobody

will be permitted to whittle them away, but, on the other hand, no

aggression is now necessary to attain those rights. The whole

country will be united to get them for you. The principle that

applies to the employers applies to the workers as well, and I ask

you workers to cooperate in the same spirit.

When Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory," died, someone asked, "Will he

go to Heaven?" and the answer was, "He will if he wants to." If I

am asked whether the American people will pull themselves out of

this depression, I answer, "They will if they want to." The essence

of the plan is a universal limitation of hours of work per week for

any individual by common consent, and a universal payment of wages

above a minimum, also by common consent. I cannot guarantee the

success of this nationwide plan, but the people of this country can

guarantee its success. I have no faith in "cure-alls" but I believe

that we can greatly influence economic forces. I have no sympathy

with the professional economists who insist that things must run

their course and that human agencies can have no influence on

economic ills. One reason is that I happen to know that

professional economists have changed their definition of economic

laws every five or ten years for a very long time, but I do have

faith, and retain faith, in the strength of common purpose, and in

the strength of unified action taken by the American people.

That is why I am describing to you the simple purposes and the

solid foundations upon which our program of recovery is built. That

is why I am asking the employers of the nation to sign this common

covenant with me--to sign it in the name of patriotism and

humanity. That is why I am asking the workers to go along with us

in a spirit of understanding and of helpfulness.

October 22,1933.

It is three months since I have talked with the people of this

country about our national problems; but during this period many

things have happened, and I am glad to say that the major part of

them have greatly helped the well-being of the average citizen.

Because, in every step which your government is taking we are

thinking in terms of the average of you--in the old words, "the

greatest good to the greatest number"--we, as reasonable people,

cannot expect to bring definite benefits to every person or to

every occupation or business, or industry or agriculture. In the

same way, no reasonable person can expect that in this short space

of time, during which new machinery had to be not only put to work,

but first set up, that every locality in every one of the forty-

eight states of the country could share equally and simultaneously

in the trend to better times.

The whole picture, however--the average of the whole territory from

coast to coast--the average of the whole population of 120,000,000

people--shows to any person willing to look, facts and action of

which you and I can be proud.

In the early spring of this year there were actually and

proportionately more people out of work in this country than in any

other nation in the world. Fair estimates showed twelve or thirteen

millions unemployed last March. Among those there were, of course,

several millions who could be classed as normally unemployed--

people who worked occasionally when they felt like it, and others

who preferred not to work at all. It seems, therefore, fair to say

that there were about 10 millions of our citizens who earnestly,

and in many cases hungrily, were seeking work and could not get it.

Of these, in the short space of a few months, I am convinced that

at least 4 millions have been given employment--or, saying it

another way, 40 percent of those seeking work have found it.

That does not mean, my friends, that I am satisfied, or that you

are satisfied that our work is ended. We have a long way to go but

we are on the way.

How are we constructing the edifice of recovery--the temple which,

when completed, will no longer be a temple of money-changers or of

beggars, but rather a temple dedicated to and maintained for a

greater social justice, a greater welfare for America--the

habitation of a sound economic life? We are building, stone by

stone, the columns which will support that habitation. Those

columns are many in number and though, for a moment the progress of

one column may disturb the progress on the pillar next to it, the

work on all of them must proceed without let or hindrance.

We all know that immediate relief for the unemployed was the first

essential of such a structure and that is why I speak first of the

fact that three hundred thousand young men have been given

employment and are being given employment all through this winter

in the Civilian Conservation Corps Camps in almost every part of

the nation.

So, too, we have, as you know, expended greater sums in cooperation

with states and localities for work relief and home relief than

ever before--sums which during the coming winter cannot be lessened

for the very simple reason that though several million people have

gone back to work, the necessities of those who have not yet

obtained work is more severe than at this time last year.

Then we come to the relief that is being given to those who are in

danger of losing their farms or their homes. New machinery had to

be set up for farm credit and for home credit in every one of the

thirty-one hundred counties of the United States, and every day

that passes is saving homes and farms to hundreds of families. I

have publicly asked that foreclosures on farms and chattels and on

homes be delayed until every mortgagor in the country shall have

had full opportunity to take advantage of federal credit. I make

the further request which many of you know has already been made

through the great federal credit organizations that if there is any

family in the United States about to lose its home or about to lose

its chattels, that family should telegraph at once either to the

Farm Credit Administration or the Home Owners Loan Corporation in

Washington requesting their help.

Two other great agencies are in full swing. The Reconstruction

Finance Corporation continues to lend large sums to industry and

finance with the definite objective of making easy the extending of

credit to industry, commerce and finance.

The program of public works in three months has advanced to this

point: Out of a total appropriated for public works of three

billion three hundred million, one billion eight hundred million

has already been allocated to federal projects of all kinds and

literally in every part of the United States and work on these is

starting forward. In addition, three hundred millions have been

allocated to public works to be carried out by states,

municipalities and private organizations, such as those undertaking

slum clearance. The balance of the public works money, nearly all

of it intended for state or local projects, waits only on the

presentation of proper projects by the states and localities

themselves. Washington has the money and is waiting for the proper

projects to which to allot it.

Another pillar in the making is the Agricultural Adjustment

Administration. I have been amazed by the extraordinary degree of

cooperation given to the government by the cotton farmers in the

South, the wheat farmers of the West, the tobacco farmers of the

Southeast, and I am confident that the corn-hog farmers of the

Middle West will come through in the same magnificent fashion. The

problem we seek to solve had been steadily getting worse for twenty

years, but during the last six months we have made more rapid

progress than any nation has ever made in a like period of time. It

is true that in July farm commodity prices had been pushed up

higher than they are today, but that push came in part from pure

speculation by people who could not tell you the difference between

wheat and rye, by people who had never seen cotton growing, by

people who did not know that hogs were fed on corn--people who have

no real interest in the farmer and his problems.

In spite, however, of the speculative reaction from the speculative

advance, it seems to be well established that during the course of

the year 1933 the farmers of the United States will receive 33

percent more dollars for what they have produced than they received

in the year 1932. Put in another way, they will receive $400 in

1933, where they received $300 the year before. That, remember, is

for the average of the country, for I have reports that some

sections are not any better off than they were a year ago. This

applies among the major products, especially to cattle raising and

the dairy industry. We are going after those problems as fast as we

can.

I do not hesitate to say, in the simplest, clearest language of

which I am capable, that although the prices of many products of

the farm have gone up and although many farm families are better

off than they were last year, I am not satisfied either with the

amount or the extent of the rise, and that it is definitely a part

of our policy to increase the rise and to extend it to those

products which have as yet felt no benefit. If we cannot do this

one way we will do it another. Do it, we will.

Standing beside the pillar of the farm--the A.A.A.--is the pillar

of industry--the N.R.A. Its object is to put industry and business

workers into employment and to increase their purchasing power

through increased wages.

It has abolished child labor. It has eliminated the sweat shop. It

has ended sixty cents a week paid in some mills and eighty cents a

week paid in some mines. The measure of the growth of this pillar

lies in the total figures of reemployment which I have already

given you and in the fact that reemployment is continuing and not

stopping. The secret of N.R.A. is cooperation. That cooperation has

been voluntarily given through the signing of the blanket codes and

through the signing of specific codes which already include all of

the greater industries of the nation.

In the vast majority of cases, in the vast majority of localities--

the N.R.A. has been given support in unstinted measure. We know

that there are chiselers. At the bottom of every case of criticism

and obstruction we have found some selfish interest, some private

ax to grind.

Ninety percent of complaints come from misconception. For example,

it has been said that N.R.A. has failed to raise the price of wheat

and corn and hogs; that N.R.A. has not loaned enough money for

local public works. Of course, N.R.A. has nothing whatsoever to do

with the price of farm products, nor with public works. It has to

do only with industrial organization for economic planning to wipe

out unfair practices and to create reemployment. Even in the field

of business and industry, N.R.A. does not apply to the rural

communities or to towns of under twenty-five hundred population,

except in so far as those towns contain factories or chain stores

which come under a specific code.

It is also true that among the chiselers to whom I have referred,

there are not only the big chiselers but also petty chiselers who

seek to make undue profit on untrue statements.

Let me cite to you the example of the salesman in a store in a

large Eastern city who tried to justify the increase in the price

of a cotton shirt from one dollar and a half to two dollars and a

half by saying to the customer that it was due to the cotton

processing tax. Actually in that shirt there was about one pound of

cotton and the processing tax amounted to four and a quarter cents

on that pound of cotton.

At this point it is only fair that I should give credit to the

sixty or seventy million people who live in the cities and larger

towns of the nation for their understanding and their willingness

to go along with the payment of even these small processing taxes,

though they know full well that the proportion of the processing

taxes on cotton goods and on food products paid for by city

dwellers goes 100 percent towards increasing the agricultural

income of the farm dwellers of the land.

The last pillar of which I speak is that of the money of the

country in the banks of the country. There are two simple facts.

First, the federal government is about to spend one billion dollars

as an immediate loan on the frozen or non-liquid assets of all

banks closed since January 1, 1933, giving a liberal appraisal to

those assets. This money will be in the hands of the depositors as

quickly as it is humanly possible to get it out.

Second, the Government Bank Deposit Insurance on all accounts up to

$2500 goes into effect on January first. We are now engaged in

seeing to it that on or before that date the banking capital

structure will be built up by the government to the point that the

banks will be in sound condition when the insurance goes into

effect.

Finally, I repeat what I have said on many occasions, that ever

since last March the definite policy of the government has been to

restore commodity price levels. The object has been the attainment

of such a level as will enable agriculture and industry once more

to give work to the unemployed. It has been to make possible the

payment of public and private debts more nearly at the price level

at which they were incurred. It has been gradually to restore a

balance in the price structure so that farmers may exchange their

products for the products of industry on a fairer exchange basis.

It has been and is also the purpose to prevent prices from rising

beyond the point necessary to attain these ends. The permanent

welfare and security of every class of our people ultimately

depends on our attainment of these purposes.

Obviously, and because hundreds of different kinds of crops and

industrial occupations in the huge territory that makes up this

Nation are involved, we cannot reach the goal in only a few months.

We may take one year or two years or three years.

No one who considers the plain facts of our situation believes that

commodity prices, especially agricultural prices, are high enough

yet.

Some people are putting the cart before the horse. They want a

permanent revaluation of the dollar first. It is the government's

policy to restore the price level first. I would not know, and no

one else could tell, just what the permanent valuation of the

dollar will be. To guess at a permanent gold valuation now would

certainly require later changes caused by later facts.

When we have restored the price level, we shall seek to establish

and maintain a dollar which will not change its purchasing and debt

paying power during the succeeding generation. I said that in my

message to the American delegation in London last July. And I say

it now once more.

Because of conditions in this country and because of events beyond

our control in other parts of the world, it becomes increasingly

important to develop and apply the further measures which may be

necessary from time to time to control the gold value of our own

dollar at home.

Our dollar is now altogether too greatly influenced by the

accidents of international trade, by the internal policies of other

nations and by political disturbance in other continents. Therefore

the United States must take firmly in its own hands the control of

the gold value of our dollar. This is necessary in order to prevent

dollar disturbances from swinging us away from our ultimate goal,

namely, the continued recovery of our commodity prices.

As a further effective means to this end, I am going to establish a

government market for gold in the United States. Therefore, under

the clearly defined authority of existing law, I am authorizing the

Reconstruction Finance Corporation to buy gold newly mined in the

United States at prices to be determined from time to time after

consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the President.

Whenever necessary to the end in view, we shall also buy or sell

gold in the world market.

My aim in taking this step is to establish and maintain continuous

control.

This is a policy and not an expedient.

It is not to be used merely to offset a temporary fall in prices.

We are thus continuing to move towards a managed currency.

You will recall the dire predictions made last spring by those who

did not agree with our common policies of raising prices by direct

means. What actually happened stood out in sharp contrast with

those predictions. Government credit is high, prices have risen in

part. Doubtless prophets of evil still exist in our midst. But

government credit will be maintained and a sound currency will

accompany a rise in the American commodity price level.

I have told you tonight the story of our steady but sure work in

building our common recovery. In my promises to you both before and

after March 4th, I made two things plain: First, that I pledged no

miracles and, second, that I would do my best.

I thank you for your patience and your faith. Our troubles will not

be over tomorrow, but we are on our way and we are headed in the

right direction.

June 28, 1934.

It has been several months since I have talked with you concerning

the problems of government. Since January, those of us in whom you

have vested responsibility have been engaged in the fulfillment of

plans and policies which had been widely discussed in previous

months. It seemed to us our duty not only to make the right path

clear but also to tread that path.

As we review the achievements of this session of the Seventy-third

Congress, it is made increasingly clear that its task was

essentially that of completing and fortifying the work it had begun

in March, l933. That was no easy task, but the Congress was equal

to it. It has been well said that while there were a few

exceptions, this Congress displayed a greater freedom from mere

partisanship than any other peace-time Congress since the

administration of President Washington himself. The session was

distinguished by the extent and variety of legislation enacted and

by the intelligence and good will of debate upon these measures.

I mention only a few of the major enactments. It provided for the

readjustment of the debt burden through the corporate and municipal

bankruptcy acts and the Farm Relief Act. It lent a hand to industry

by encouraging loans to solvent industries unable to secure

adequate help from banking institutions. It strengthened the

integrity of finance through the regulation of securities

exchanges. It provided a rational method of increasing our volume

of foreign trade through reciprocal trading agreements. It

strengthened our naval forces to conform with the intentions and

permission of existing treaty rights. It made further advances

towards peace in industry through the Labor Adjustment Act. It

supplemented our agricultural policy through measures widely

demanded by farmers themselves and intended to avert price

destroying surpluses. It strengthened the hand of the federal

government in its attempts to suppress gangster crime. It took

definite steps towards a national housing program through an act

which I signed today designed to encourage private capital in the

rebuilding of the homes of the nation. It created a permanent

federal body for the just regulation of all forms of communication,

including the telephone, the telegraph and the radio. Finally, and

I believe most important, it reorganized, simplified and made more

fair and just our monetary system, setting up standards and

policies adequate to meet the necessities of modern economic life,

doing justice to both gold and silver as the metal bases behind the

currency of the United States.

In the consistent development of our previous efforts toward the

saving and safeguarding of our national life, I have continued to

recognize three related steps. The first was relief, because the

primary concern of any government dominated by the humane ideals of

democracy is the simple principle that in a land of vast resources

no one should be permitted to starve. Relief was and continues to

be our first consideration. It calls for large expenditures and

will continue in modified form to do so for a long time to come. We

may as well recognize that fact. It comes from the paralysis that

arose as the after-effect of that unfortunate decade characterized

by a mad chase for unearned riches and an unwillingness of leaders

in almost every walk of life to look beyond their own schemes and

speculations. In our administration of relief we follow two

principles: First, that direct giving shall, wherever possible, be

supplemented by provision for useful and remunerative work and,

second, that where families in their existing surroundings will in

all human probability never find an opportunity for full self-

maintenance, happiness and enjoyment, we will try to give them a

new chance in new surroundings.

The second step was recovery, and it is sufficient for me to ask

each and every one of you to compare the situation in agriculture

and in industry today with what it was fifteen months ago.

At the same time we have recognized the necessity of reform and

reconstruction--reform because much of our trouble today and in the

past few years has been due to a lack of understanding of the

elementary principles of justice and fairness by those in whom

leadership in business and finance was placed--reconstruction

because new conditions in our economic life as well as old but

neglected conditions had to be corrected.

Substantial gains well known to all of you have justified our

course. I could cite statistics to you as unanswerable measures of

our national progress--statistics to show the gain in the average

weekly pay envelope of workers in the great majority of

industries--statistics to show hundreds of thousands reemployed in

private industries and other hundreds of thousands given new

employment through the expansion of direct and indirect government

assistance of many kinds, although, of course, there are those

exceptions in professional pursuits whose economic improvement, of

necessity, will be delayed. I also could cite statistics to show

the great rise in the value of farm products--statistics to prove

the demand for consumers' goods, ranging all the way from food and

clothing to automobiles, and of late to prove the rise in the

demand for durable goods--statistics to cover the great increase in

bank deposits and to show the scores of thousands of homes and of

farms which have been saved from foreclosure.

But the simplest way for each of you to judge recovery lies in the

plain facts of your own individual situation. Are you better off

than you were last year? Are your debts less burdensome? Is your

bank account more secure? Are your working conditions better? Is

your faith in your own individual future more firmly grounded?

Also, let me put to you another simple question: Have you as an

individual paid too high a price for these gains? Plausible self-

seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of

individual liberty. Answer this question also out of the facts of

your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or

constitutional freedom of action and choice? Turn to the Bill of

Rights of the Constitution, which I have solemnly sworn to maintain

and under which your freedom rests secure. Read each provision of

that Bill of Rights and ask yourself whether you personally have

suffered the impairment of a single jot of these great assurances.

I have no question in my mind as to what your answer will be. The

record is written in the experiences of your own personal lives.

In other words, it is not the overwhelming majority of the farmers

or manufacturers or workers who deny the substantial gains of the

past year. The most vociferous of the Doubting Thomases may be

divided roughly into two groups: First, those who seek special

political privilege and, second, those who seek special financial

privilege. About a year ago I used as an illustration the 90

percent of the cotton manufacturers of the United States who wanted

to do the right thing by their employees and by the public but were

prevented from doing so by the 10 percent who undercut them by

unfair practices and un-American standards. It is well for us to

remember that humanity is a long way from being perfect and that a

selfish minority in every walk of life--farming, business, finance

and even government service itself--will always continue to think

of themselves first and their fellow-beings second.

In the working out of a great national program which seeks the

primary good of the greater number, it is true that the toes of

some people are being stepped on and are going to be stepped on.

But these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or

to gain position or riches or both by some short cut which is

harmful to the greater good.

In the execution of the powers conferred on it by Congress, the

administration needs and will tirelessly seek the best ability that

the country affords. Public service offers better rewards in the

opportunity for service than ever before in our history--not great

salaries, but enough to live on. In the building of this service

there are coming to us men and women with ability and courage from

every part of the Union. The days of the seeking of mere party

advantage through the misuse of public power are drawing to a

close. We are increasingly demanding and getting devotion to the

public service on the part of every member of the administration,

high and low.

The program of the past year is definitely in operation and that

operation month by month is being made to fit into the web of old

and new conditions. This process of evolution is well illustrated

by the constant changes in detailed organization and method going

on in the National Recovery Administration. With every passing

month we are making strides in the orderly handling of the

relationship between employees and employers. Conditions differ, of

course, in almost every part of the country and in almost every

industry. Temporary methods of adjustment are being replaced by

more permanent machinery and, I am glad to say, by a growing

recognition on the part of employers and employees of the

desirability of maintaining fair relationships all around.

So also, while almost everybody has recognized the tremendous

strides in the elimination of child labor, in the payment of not

less than fair minimum wages and in the shortening of hours, we are

still feeling our way in solving problems which relate to self-

government in industry, especially where such self-government tends

to eliminate the fair operation of competition.

In this same process of evolution we are keeping before us the

objectives of protecting on the one hand industry against chiselers

within its own ranks, and on the other hand the consumer through

the maintenance of reasonable competition for the prevention of the

unfair sky-rocketing of retail prices.

But, in addition to this our immediate task, we must still look to

the larger future. I have pointed out to the Congress that we are

seeking to find the way once more to well-known, long-established

but to some degree forgotten ideals and values. We seek the

security of the men, women and children of the nation.

That security involves added means of providing better homes for

the people of the nation. That is the first principle of our future

program.

The second is to plan the use of land and water resources of this

country to the end that the means of livelihood of our citizens may

be more adequate to meet their daily needs.

And, finally, the third principle is to use the agencies of

government to assist in the establishment of means to provide sound

and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life--in

other words, social insurance.

Later in the year I hope to talk with you more fully about these

plans.

A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and

strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it

"Fascism", sometimes "Communism", sometimes "Regimentation",

sometimes "Socialism". But, in so doing, they are trying to make

very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple

and very practical.

I believe in practical explanations and in practical policies. I

believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of

what Americans have always been doing--a fulfillment of old and

tested American ideals.

Let me give you a simple illustration:

While I am away from Washington this summer, a long needed

renovation of and addition to our White House office building is to

be started. The architects have planned a few new rooms built into

the present all too small one-story structure. We are going to

include in this addition and in this renovation modern electric

wiring and modern plumbing and modern means of keeping the offices

cool in the hot Washington summers. But the structural lines of the

old Executive Office Building will remain. The artistic lines of

the White House buildings were the creation of master builders when

our Republic was young. The simplicity and the strength of the

structure remain in the face of every modern test. But within this

magnificent pattern, the necessities of modern government business

require constant reorganization and rebuilding.

If I were to listen to the arguments of some prophets of calamity

who are talking these days, I should hesitate to make these

alterations. I should fear that while I am away for a few weeks the

architects might build some strange new Gothic tower or a factory

building or perhaps a replica of the Kremlin or of the Potsdam

Palace. But I have no such fears. The architects and builders are

men of common sense and of artistic American tastes. They know that

the principles of harmony and of necessity itself require that the

building of the new structure shall blend with the essential lines

of the old. It is this combination of the old and the new that

marks orderly peaceful progress--not only in building buildings but

in building government itself.

Our new structure is a part of and a fulfillment of the old.

All that we do seeks to fulfill the historic traditions of the

American people. Other nations may sacrifice democracy for the

transitory stimulation of old and discredited autocracies. We are

restoring confidence and well-being under the rule of the people

themselves. We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago,

"emphatically and truly, a government of the people." Our

government "in form and in substance. . . emanates from them. Its

powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on

them, and for their benefits."

Before I close, I want to tell you of the interest and pleasure

with which I look forward to the trip on which I hope to start in a

few days. It is a good thing for everyone who can possibly do so to

get away at least once a year for a change of scene. I do not want

to get into the position of not being able to see the forest

because of the thickness of the trees.

I hope to visit our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico, in the Virgin

Islands, in the Canal Zone and in Hawaii. And, incidentally, it

will give me an opportunity to exchange a friendly word of greeting

to the Presidents of our sister Republics: Haiti, Colombia and

Panama.

After four weeks on board ship, I plan to land at a port in our

Pacific northwest, and then will come the best part of the whole

trip, for I am hoping to inspect a number of our new great national

projects on the Columbia, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, to see

some of our national parks and, incidentally, to learn much of

actual conditions during the trip across the continent back to

Washington.

While I was in France during the War our boys used to call the

United States "God's country". Let us make it and keep it "God's

country".

September 30, 1934.

Three months have passed since I talked with you shortly after the

adjournment of the Congress. Tonight I continue that report,

though, because of the shortness of time, I must defer a number of

subjects to a later date.

Recently the most notable public questions that have concerned us

all have had to do with industry and labor and with respect to

these, certain developments have taken place which I consider of

importance. I am happy to report that after years of uncertainty,

culminating in the collapse of the spring of 1933, we are bringing

order out of the old chaos with a greater certainty of the

employment of labor at a reasonable wage and of more business at a

fair profit. These governmental and industrial developments hold

promise of new achievements for the nation.

Men may differ as to the particular form of governmental activity

with respect to industry and business, but nearly all are agreed

that private enterprise in times such as these cannot be left

without assistance and without reasonable safeguards lest it

destroy not only itself but also our processes of civilization. The

underlying necessity for such activity is indeed as strong now as

it was years ago when Elihu Root said the following very

significant words:

"Instead of the give and take of free individual contract, the

tremendous power of organization has combined great aggregations of

capital in enormous industrial establishments working through vast

agencies of commerce and employing great masses of men in movements

of production and transportation and trade, so great in the mass

that each individual concerned in them is quite helpless by

himself. The relations between the employer and the employed,

between the owners of aggregated capital and the units of organized

labor, between the small producer, the small trader, the consumer,

and the great transporting and manufacturing and distributing

agencies, all present new questions for the solution of which the

old reliance upon the free action of individual wills appears quite

inadequate. And in many directions, the intervention of that

organized control which we call government seems necessary to

produce the same result of justice and right conduct which obtained

through the attrition of individuals before the new conditions

arose."

It was in this spirit thus described by Secretary Root that we

approached our task of reviving private enterprise in March, 1933.

Our first problem was, of course, the banking situation because, as

you know, the banks had collapsed. Some banks could not be saved

but the great majority of them, either through their own resources

or with government aid, have been restored to complete public

confidence. This has given safety to millions of depositors in

these banks. Closely following this great constructive effort we

have, through various federal agencies, saved debtors and creditors

alike in many other fields of enterprise, such as loans on farm

mortgages and home mortgages; loans to the railroads and insurance

companies and, finally, help for home owners and industry itself.

In all of these efforts the government has come to the assistance

of business and with the full expectation that the money used to

assist these enterprises will eventually be repaid. I believe it

will be.

The second step we have taken in the restoration of normal business

enterprise has been to clean up thoroughly unwholesome conditions

in the field of investment. In this we have had assistance from

many bankers and businessmen, most of whom recognize the past evils

in the banking system, in the sale of securities, in the deliberate

encouragement of stock gambling, in the sale of unsound mortgages

and in many other ways in which the public lost billions of

dollars. They saw that without changes in the policies and methods

of investment there could be no recovery of public confidence in

the security of savings. The country now enjoys the safety of bank

savings under the new banking laws, the careful checking of new

securities under the Securities Act and the curtailment of rank

stock speculation through the Securities Exchange Act. I sincerely

hope that as a result people will be discouraged in unhappy efforts

to get rich quick by speculating in securities. The average person

almost always loses. Only a very small minority of the people of

this country believe in gambling as a substitute for the old

philosophy of Benjamin Franklin that the way to wealth is through

work.

In meeting the problems of industrial recovery the chief agency of

the government has been the National Recovery Administration. Under

its guidance, trades and industries covering over 90 percent of all

industrial employees have adopted codes of fair competition, which

have been approved by the President. Under these codes, in the

industries covered, child labor has been eliminated. The work day

and the work week have been shortened. Minimum wages have been

established and other wages adjusted toward a rising standard of

living. The emergency purpose of the N.R.A. was to put men to work

and since its creation more than four million persons have been

reemployed, in great part through the cooperation of American

business brought about under the codes.

Benefits of the Industrial Recovery Program have come, not only to

labor in the form of new jobs, in relief from overwork and in

relief from underpay, but also to the owners and managers of

industry because, together with a great increase in the payrolls,

there has come a substantial rise in the total of industrial

profits--a rise from a deficit figure in the first quarter of 1933

to a level of sustained profits within one year from the

inauguration of N.R.A.

Now it should not be expected that even employed labor and capital

would be completely satisfied with present conditions. Employed

workers have not by any means all enjoyed a return to the earnings

of prosperous times, although millions of hitherto underprivileged

workers are today far better paid than ever before. Also, billions

of dollars of invested capital have today a greater security of

present and future earning power than before. This is because of

the establishment of fair, competitive standards and because of

relief from unfair competition in wage cutting which depresses

markets and destroys purchasing power. But it is an undeniable fact

that the restoration of other billions of sound investments to a

reasonable earning power could not be brought about in one year.

There is no magic formula, no economic panacea, which could simply

revive over-night the heavy industries and the trades dependent

upon them.

Nevertheless the gains of trade and industry, as a whole, have been

substantial. In these gains and in the policies of the

administration there are assurances that hearten all forward-

looking men and women with the confidence that we are definitely

rebuilding our political and economic system on the lines laid down

by the New Deal--lines which as I have so often made clear, are in

complete accord with the underlying principles of orderly popular

government which Americans have demanded since the white man first

came to these shores. We count, in the future as in the past, on

the driving power of individual initiative and the incentive of

fair private profit, strengthened with the acceptance of those

obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all. We have

the right to expect that this driving power will be given

patriotically and whole-heartedly to our nation.

We have passed through the formative period of code making in the

National Recovery Administration and have effected a reorganization

of the N.R.A. suited to the needs of the next phase, which is, in

turn, a period of preparation for legislation which will determine

its permanent form.

In this recent reorganization we have recognized three distinct

functions: first, the legislative or policy making function;

second, the administrative function of code making and revision;

and, third, the judicial function, which includes enforcement,

consumer complaints and the settlement of disputes between

employers and employees and between one employer and another.

We are now prepared to move into this second phase, on the basis of

our experience in the first phase under the able and energetic

leadership of General Johnson.

We shall watch carefully the working of this new machinery for the

second phase of N.R.A., modifying it where it needs modification

and finally making recommendations to the Congress, in order that

the functions of N.R.A. which have proved their worth may be made a

part of the permanent machinery of government.

Let me call your attention to the fact that the national Industrial

Recovery Act gave businessmen the opportunity they had sought for

years to improve business conditions through what has been called

self-government in industry. If the codes which have been written

have been too complicated, if they have gone too far in such

matters as price fixing and limitation of production, let it be

remembered that so far as possible, consistent with the immediate

public interest of this past year and the vital necessity of

improving labor conditions, the representatives of trade and

industry were permitted to write their ideas into the codes. It is

now time to review these actions as a whole to determine through

deliberative means in the light of experience, from the standpoint

of the good of the industries themselves, as well as the general

public interest, whether the methods and policies adopted in the

emergency have been best calculated to promote industrial recovery

and a permanent improvement of business and labor conditions. There

may be a serious question as to the wisdom of many of those devices

to control production, or to prevent destructive price cutting

which many business organizations have insisted were necessary, or

whether their effect may have been to prevent that volume of

production which would make possible lower prices and increased

employment. Another question arises as to whether in fixing minimum

wages on the basis of an hourly or weekly wage we have reached into

the heart of the problem which is to provide such annual earnings

for the lowest paid worker as will meet his minimum needs. We also

question the wisdom of extending code requirements suited to the

great industrial centers and to large employers, to the great

number of small employers in the smaller communities.

During the last twelve months our industrial recovery has been to

some extent retarded by strikes, including a few of major

importance. I would not minimize the inevitable losses to employers

and employees and to the general public through such conflicts. But

I would point out that the extent and severity of labor disputes

during this period has been far less than in any previous,

comparable period.

When the businessmen of the country were demanding the right to

organize themselves adequately to promote their legitimate

interests; when the farmers were demanding legislation which would

give them opportunities and incentives to organize themselves for a

common advance, it was natural that the workers should seek and

obtain a statutory declaration of their constitutional right to

organize themselves for collective bargaining as embodied in

Section 7 (a) of the national Industrial Recovery Act.

Machinery set up by the federal government has provided some new

methods of adjustment. Both employers and employees must share the

blame of not using them as fully as they should. The employer who

turns away from impartial agencies of peace, who denies freedom of

organization to his employees, or fails to make every reasonable

effort at a peaceful solution of their differences, is not fully

supporting the recovery effort of his government. The workers who

turn away from these same impartial agencies and decline to use

their good offices to gain their ends are likewise not fully

cooperating with their government.

It is time that we made a clean-cut effort to bring about that

united action of management and labor, which is one of the high

purposes of the Recovery Act. We have passed through more than a

year of education. Step by step we have created all the government

agencies necessary to insure, as a general rule, industrial peace,

with justice for all those willing to use these agencies whenever

their voluntary bargaining fails to produce a necessary agreement.

There should be at least a full and fair trial given to these means

of ending industrial warfare; and in such an effort we should be

able to secure for employers and employees and consumers the

benefits that all derive from the continuous, peaceful operation of

our essential enterprises.

Accordingly, I propose to confer within the coming month with small

groups of those truly representative of large employers of labor

and of large groups of organized labor, in order to seek their

cooperation in establishing what I may describe as a specific trial

period of industrial peace.

From those willing to join in establishing this hoped-for period of

peace, I shall seek assurances of the making and maintenance of

agreements, which can be mutually relied upon, under which wages,

hours and working conditions may be determined and any later

adjustments shall be made either by agreement or, in case of

disagreement, through the mediation or arbitration of state or

federal agencies. I shall not ask either employers or employees

permanently to lay aside the weapons common to industrial war. But

I shall ask both groups to give a fair trial to peaceful methods of

adjusting their conflicts of opinion and interest, and to

experiment for a reasonable time with measures suitable to civilize

our industrial civilization.

Closely allied to the N.R.A. is the program of Public Works

provided for in the same Act and designed to put more men back to

work, both directly on the public works themselves, and indirectly

in the industries supplying the materials for these public works.

To those who say that our expenditures for public works and other

means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that

no country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human

resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our

greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our

social order. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our

minds that for the future we shall permanently have millions of

unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade.

What may be necessary for those countries is not my responsibility

to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my

refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a

permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a

national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of

unemployed and that we will arrange our national economy to end our

present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise

measures against its return. I do not want to think that it is the

destiny of any American to remain permanently on relief rolls.

Those, fortunately few in number, who are frightened by boldness

and cowed by the necessity for making decisions, complain that all

we have done is unnecessary and subject to great risks. Now that

these people are coming out of their storm cellars, they forget

that there ever was a storm. They point to England. They would have

you believe that England has made progress out of her depression by

a do-nothing policy, by letting nature take her course. England has

her peculiarities and we have ours but I do not believe any

intelligent observer can accuse England of undue orthodoxy in the

present emergency.

Did England let nature take her course? No. Did England hold to the

gold standard when her reserves were threatened? No. Has England

gone back to the gold standard today? No. Did England hesitate to

call in ten billion dollars of her war bonds bearing 5 percent

interest, to issue new bonds therefore bearing only 3-1/2 percent

interest, thereby saving the British treasury one hundred and fifty

million dollars a year in interest alone? No. And let it be

recorded that the British bankers helped. Is it not a fact that

ever since the year 1909, Great Britain in many ways has advanced

further along lines of social security than the United States? Is

it not a fact that relations between capital and labor on the basis

of collective bargaining are much further advanced in Great Britain

than in the United States? It is perhaps not strange that the

conservative British press has told us with pardonable irony that

much of our New Deal program is only an attempt to catch up with

English reforms that go back ten years or more.

Nearly all Americans are sensible and calm people. We do not get

greatly excited nor is our peace of mind disturbed, whether we be

businessmen or workers or farmers, by awesome pronouncements

concerning the unconstitutionality of some of our measures of

recovery and relief and reform. We are not frightened by

reactionary lawyers or political editors. All of these cries have

been heard before. More than twenty years ago, when Theodore

Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were attempting to correct abuses in

our national life, the great Chief Justice White said:

"There is great danger it seems to me to arise from the constant

habit which prevails where anything is opposed or objected to, of

referring without rhyme or reason to the Constitution as a means of

preventing its accomplishment, thus creating the general impression

that the Constitution is but a barrier to progress instead of being

the broad highway through which alone true progress may be

enjoyed."

In our efforts for recovery we have avoided on the one hand the

theory that business should and must be taken over into an all-

embracing government. We have avoided on the other hand the equally

untenable theory that it is an interference with liberty to offer

reasonable help when private enterprise is in need of help. The

course we have followed fits the American practice of government--a

practice of taking action step by step, of regulating only to meet

concrete needs--a practice of courageous recognition of change. I

believe with Abraham Lincoln, that "The legitimate object of

government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to

have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves

in their separate and individual capacities."

I am not for a return to that definition of liberty under which for

many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the

service of the privileged few. I prefer and I am sure you prefer

that broader definition of liberty under which we are moving

forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man

than he has ever known before in the history of America.

April 28, 1935.

Since my annual message to the Congress on January fourth, last, I

have not addressed the general public over the air. In the many

weeks since that time the Congress has devoted itself to the

arduous task of formulating legislation necessary to the country's

welfare. It has made and is making distinct progress.

Before I come to any of the specific measures, however, I want to

leave in your minds one clear fact. The administration and the

Congress are not proceeding in any haphazard fashion in this task

of government. Each of our steps has a definite relationship to

every other step. The job of creating a program for the nation's

welfare is, in some respects, like the building of a ship. At

different points on the coast where I often visit they build great

seagoing ships. When one of these ships is under construction and

the steel frames have been set in the keel, it is difficult for a

person who does not know ships to tell how it will finally look

when it is sailing the high seas.

It may seem confused to some, but out of the multitude of detailed

parts that go into the making of the structure the creation of a

useful instrument for man ultimately comes. It is that way with the

making of a national policy. The objective of the nation has

greatly changed in three years. Before that time individual self-

interest and group selfishness were paramount in public thinking.

The general good was at a discount.

Three years of hard thinking have changed the picture. More and

more people, because of clearer thinking and a better

understanding, are considering the whole rather than a mere part

relating to one section or to one crop, or to one industry, or to

an individual private occupation. That is a tremendous gain for the

principles of democracy. The overwhelming majority of people in

this country know how to sift the wheat from the chaff in what they

hear and what they read. They know that the process of the

constructive rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a

year, but that it is being done in spite of the few who seek to

confuse them and to profit by their confusion. Americans as a whole

are feeling a lot better--a lot more cheerful than for many, many

years.

The most difficult place in the world to get a clear open

perspective of the country as a whole is Washington. I am reminded

sometimes of what President Wilson once said: "So many people come

to Washington who know things that are not so, and so few people

who know anything about what the people of the United States are

thinking about." That is why I occasionally leave this scene of

action for a few days to go fishing or back home to Hyde Park, so

that I can have a chance to think quietly about the country as a

whole. "To get away from the trees", as they say, "and to look at

the whole forest." This duty of seeing the country in a long-range

perspective is one which, in a very special manner, attaches to

this office to which you have chosen me. Did you ever stop to think

that there are, after all, only two positions in the nation that

are filled by the vote of all of the voters--the President and the

Vice-President? That makes it particularly necessary for the Vice-

President and for me to conceive of our duty toward the entire

country. I speak, therefore, tonight, to and of the American people

as a whole.

My most immediate concern is in carrying out the purposes of the

great work program just enacted by the Congress. Its first

objective is to put men and women now on the relief rolls to work

and, incidentally, to assist materially in our already unmistakable

march toward recovery. I shall not confuse my discussion by a

multitude of figures. So many figures are quoted to prove so many

things. Sometimes it depends upon what paper you read and what

broadcast you hear. Therefore, let us keep our minds on two or

three simple, essential facts in connection with this problem of

unemployment. It is true that while business and industry are

definitely better our relief rolls are still too large. However,

for the first time in five years the relief rolls have declined

instead of increased during the winter months. They are still

declining. The simple fact is that many million more people have

private work today than two years ago today or one year ago today,

and every day that passes offers more chances to work for those who

want to work. In spite of the fact that unemployment remains a

serious problem here as in every other nation, we have come to

recognize the possibility and the necessity of certain helpful

remedial measures. These measures are of two kinds. The first is to

make provisions intended to relieve, to minimize, and to prevent

future unemployment; the second is to establish the practical means

to help those who are unemployed in this present emergency. Our

social security legislation is an attempt to answer the first of

these questions; our Works Relief program, the second.

The program for social security now pending before the Congress is

a necessary part of the future unemployment policy of the

government. While our present and projected expenditures for work

relief are wholly within the reasonable limits of our national

credit resources, it is obvious that we cannot continue to create

governmental deficits for that purpose year after year. We must

begin now to make provision for the future. That is why our social

security program is an important part of the complete picture. It

proposes, by means of old age pensions, to help those who have

reached the age of retirement to give up their jobs and thus give

to the younger generation greater opportunities for work and to

give to all a feeling of security as they look toward old age.

The unemployment insurance part of the legislation will not only

help to guard the individual in future periods of lay-off against

dependence upon relief, but it will, by sustaining purchasing

power, cushion the shock of economic distress. Another helpful

feature of unemployment insurance is the incentive it will give to

employers to plan more carefully in order that unemployment may be

prevented by the stabilizing of employment itself.

Provisions for social security, however, are protections for the

future. Our responsibility for the immediate necessities of the

unemployed has been met by the Congress through the most

comprehensive work plan in the history of the nation. Our problem

is to put to work three and one-half million employable persons now

on the relief rolls. It is a problem quite as much for private

industry as for the government.

We are losing no time getting the government's vast work relief

program underway, and we have every reason to believe that it

should be in full swing by autumn. In directing it, I shall

recognize six fundamental principles:

(1) The projects should be useful.

(2) Projects shall be of a nature that a considerable proportion of

the money spent will go into wages for labor.

(3) Projects will be sought which promise ultimate return to the

federal treasury of a considerable proportion of the costs.

(4) Funds allotted for each project should be actually and promptly

spent and not held over until later years.

(5) In all cases projects must be of a character to give employment

to those on the relief rolls.

(6) Projects will be allocated to localities or relief areas in

relation to the number of workers on relief rolls in those areas.

I next want to make it clear exactly how we shall direct the work.

(1) I have set up a Division of Applications and Information to

which all proposals for the expenditure of money must go for

preliminary study and consideration.

(2) After the Division of Applications and Information has sifted

those projects, they will be sent to an Allotment Division composed

of representatives of the more important governmental agencies

charged with carrying on work relief projects. The group will also

include representatives of cities, and of labor, farming, banking

and industry. This Allotment Division will consider all of the

recommendations submitted to it and such projects as they approve

will be next submitted to the President who under the Act is

required to make final allocations.

(3) The next step will be to notify the proper government agency in

whose field the project falls, and also to notify another agency

which I am creating--a Progress Division. This Division will have

the duty of coordinating the purchases of materials and supplies

and of making certain that people who are employed will be taken

from the relief rolls. It will also have the responsibility of

determining work payments in various localities, of making full use

of existing employment services and to assist people engaged in

relief work to move as rapidly as possible back into private

employment when such employment is available. Moreover, this

Division will be charged with keeping projects moving on schedule.

(4) I have felt it to be essentially wise and prudent to avoid, so

far as possible, the creation of new governmental machinery for

supervising this work. The national government now has at least

sixty different agencies with the staff and the experience and the

competence necessary to carry on the two hundred and fifty or three

hundred kinds of work that will be undertaken. These agencies,

therefore, will simply be doing on a somewhat enlarged scale the

same sort of things that they have been doing. This will make

certain that the largest possible portion of the funds allotted

will be spent for actually creating new work and not for building

up expensive overhead organizations here in Washington.

For many months preparations have been under way. The allotment of

funds for desirable projects has already begun. The key men for the

major responsibilities of this great task already have been

selected. I well realize that the country is expecting before this

year is out to see the "dirt fly", as they say, in carrying on the

work, and I assure my fellow citizens that no energy will be spared

in using these funds effectively to make a major attack upon the

problem of unemployment.

Our responsibility is to all of the people in this country. This is

a great national crusade to destroy enforced idleness which is an

enemy of the human spirit generated by this depression. Our attack

upon these enemies must be without stint and without

discrimination. No sectional, no political distinctions can be

permitted.

It must, however, be recognized that when an enterprise of this

character is extended over more than three thousand counties

throughout the nation, there may be occasional instances of

inefficiency, bad management, or misuse of funds. When cases of

this kind occur, there will be those, of course, who will try to

tell you that the exceptional failure is characteristic of the

entire endeavor. It should be remembered that in every big job

there are some imperfections. There are chiselers in every walk of

life; there are those in every industry who are guilty of unfair

practices; every profession has its black sheep, but long

experience in government has taught me that the exceptional

instances of wrong-doing in government are probably less numerous

than in almost every other line of endeavor. The most effective

means of preventing such evils in this Works Relief program will be

the eternal vigilance of the American people themselves. I call

upon my fellow citizens everywhere to cooperate with me in making

this the most efficient and the cleanest example of public

enterprise the world has ever seen.

It is time to provide a smashing answer for those cynical men who

say that a democracy cannot be honest and efficient. If you will

help, this can be done. I, therefore, hope you will watch the work

in every corner of this Nation. Feel free to criticize. Tell me of

instances where work can be done better, or where improper

practices prevail. Neither you nor I want criticism conceived in a

purely fault-finding or partisan spirit, but I am jealous of the

right of every citizen to call to the attention of his or her

government examples of how the public money can be more effectively

spent for the benefit of the American people.

I now come, my friends, to a part of the remaining business before

the Congress. It has under consideration many measures which

provide for the rounding out of the program of economic and social

reconstruction with which we have been concerned for two years. I

can mention only a few of them tonight, but I do not want my

mention of specific measures to be interpreted as lack of interest

in or disapproval of many other important proposals that are

pending.

The National Industrial Recovery Act expires on the sixteenth of

June. After careful consideration, I have asked the Congress to

extend the life of this useful agency of government. As we have

proceeded with the administration of this Act, we have found from

time to time more and more useful ways of promoting its purposes.

No reasonable person wants to abandon our present gains--we must

continue to protect children, to enforce minimum wages, to prevent

excessive hours, to safeguard, define and enforce collective

bargaining, and, while retaining fair competition, to eliminate so

far as humanly possible, the kinds of unfair practices by selfish

minorities which unfortunately did more than anything else to bring

about the recent collapse of industries.

There is likewise pending before the Congress legislation to

provide for the elimination of unnecessary holding companies in the

public utility field.

I consider this legislation a positive recovery measure. Power

production in this country is virtually back to the 1929 peak. The

operating companies in the gas and electric utility field are by

and large in good condition. But under holding company domination

the utility industry has long been hopelessly at war within itself

and with public sentiment. By far the greater part of the general

decline in utility securities had occurred before I was

inaugurated. The absentee management of unnecessary holding company

control has lost touch with, and has lost the sympathy of, the

communities it pretends to serve. Even more significantly it has

given the country as a whole an uneasy apprehension of

overconcentrated economic power.

A business that loses the confidence of its customers and the good-

will of the public cannot long continue to be a good risk for the

investor. This legislation will serve the investor by ending the

conditions which have caused that lack of confidence and good-will.

It will put the public utility operating industry on a sound basis

for the future, both in its public relations and in its internal

relations.

This legislation will not only in the long run result in providing

lower electric and gas rates to the consumer, but it will protect

the actual value and earning power of properties now owned by

thousands of investors who have little protection under the old

laws against what used to be called frenzied finance. It will not

destroy values.

Not only business recovery, but the general economic recovery of

the nation will be greatly stimulated by the enactment of

legislation designed to improve the status of our transportation

agencies. There is need for legislation providing for the

regulation of interstate transportation by buses and trucks, for

the regulation of transportation by water, for the strengthening of

our Merchant Marine and Air Transport, for the strengthening of the

Interstate Commerce Commission to enable it to carry out a rounded

conception of the national transportation system in which the

benefits of private ownership are retained while the public stake

in these important services is protected by the public's

government.

Finally, the reestablishment of public confidence in the banks of

the nation is one of the most hopeful results of our efforts as a

Nation to reestablish public confidence in private banking. We all

know that private banking actually exists by virtue of the

permission of and regulation by the people as a whole, speaking

through their government. Wise public policy, however, requires not

only that banking be safe but that its resources be most fully

utilized in the economic life of the country. To this end it was

decided more than twenty years ago that the government should

assume the responsibility of providing a means by which the credit

of the nation might be controlled, not by a few private banking

institutions, but by a body with public prestige and authority. The

answer to this demand was the Federal Reserve System. Twenty years

of experience with this system have justified the efforts made to

create it, but these twenty years have shown by experience definite

possibilities for improvement. Certain proposals made to amend the

Federal Reserve Act deserve prompt and favorable action by the

Congress. They are a minimum of wise readjustments of our Federal

Reserve System in the light of past experience and present needs.

These measures I have mentioned are, in large part, the program

which under my constitutional duty I have recommended to the

Congress. They are essential factors in a rounded program for

national recovery. They contemplate the enrichment of our national

life by a sound and rational ordering of its various elements and

wise provisions for the protection of the weak against the strong.

Never since my inauguration in March, 1933, have I felt so

unmistakably the atmosphere of recovery. But it is more than the

recovery of the material basis of our individual lives. It is the

recovery of confidence in our democratic processes and

institutions. We have survived all of the arduous burdens and the

threatening dangers of a great economic calamity. We have in the

darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith in our

own ability to master our destiny. Fear is vanishing and confidence

is growing on every side, renewed faith in the vast possibilities

of human beings to improve their material and spiritual status

through the instrumentality of the democratic form of government.

That faith is receiving its just reward. For that we can be

thankful to the God who watches over America.

September 6, 1936.

I have been on a journey of husbandry. I went primarily to see at

first hand conditions in the drought states; to see how effectively

federal and local authorities are taking care of pressing problems

of relief and also how they are to work together to defend the

people of this country against the effects of future droughts.