Highways and reforestation should continue to have the interest and support
of the Government. Everyone is anxious for good highways. I have made a
liberal proposal in the Budget for the continuing payment to the States by
the Federal Government of its share for this necessary public improvement.
No expenditure of public money contributes so much to the national wealth
as for building good roads.
Reforestation has an importance far above the attention it usually secures.
A special committee of the Senate is investigating this need, and I shall
welcome a constructive policy based on their report.
It is 100 years since our country announced the Monroe doctrine. This
principle has been ever since, and is now, one of the main foundations of
our foreign relations. It must be maintained. But in maintaining it we must
not be forgetful that a great change has taken place. We are no longer a
weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition. We
are great and powerful. New powers bring new responsibilities. Our ditty
then was to protect ourselves. Added to that, our duty now is to help give
stability to the world. We want idealism. We want that vision which lifts
men and nations above themselves. These are virtues by reason of their own
merit. But they must not be cloistered; they must not be impractical; they
must not be ineffective.
The world has had enough of the curse of hatred and selfishness, of
destruction and war. It has had enough of the wrongful use of material
power. For the healing of the nations there must be good will and charity,
confidence and peace. The time has come for a more practical use of moral
power, and more reliance upon the principle that right makes its own might.
Our authority among the nations must be represented by justice and mercy.
It is necessary not only to have faith, but to make sacrifices for our
faith. The spiritual forces of the world make all its final determinations.
It is with these voices that America should speak. Whenever they declare a
righteous purpose there need be no doubt that they will be heard. America
has taken her place in the world as a Republic--free, independent,
powerful. The best service that can be rendered to humanity is the
assurance that this place will be maintained.
***
State of the Union Address
Calvin Coolidge
December 3, 1924
To the Congress of the United States:
The present state of the Union, upon which it is customary for the
President to report to the Congress under the provisions of the
Constitution, is such that it may be regarded with encouragement and
satisfaction by every American. Our country is almost unique in its ability
to discharge fully and promptly all its obligations at home and abroad, and
provide for all its inhabitants an increase in material resources, in
intellectual vigor and in moral power. The Nation holds a position
unsurpassed in all former human experience. This does not mean that we do
not have any problems. It is elementary that the increasing breadth of our
experience necessarily increases the problems of our national life. But it
does mean that if all will but apply ourselves industriously and honestly,
we have ample powers with which to meet our problems and provide for I heir
speedy solution. I do not profess that we can secure an era of perfection
in human existence, but we can provide an era of peace and prosperity,
attended with freedom and justice and made more and more satisfying by the
ministrations of the charities and humanities of life.
Our domestic problems are for the most part economic. We have our enormous
debt to pay, and we are paying it. We have the high cost of government to
diminish, and we are diminishing it. We have a heavy burden of taxation to
reduce, and we are reducing it. But while remarkable progress has been made
in these directions, the work is yet far from accomplished. We still owe
over $21,000,000,000, the cost of the National Government is still about
$3,500,000,000, and the national taxes still amount to about $27 for each
one of our inhabitants. There yet exists this enormous field for the
application of economy.
In my opinion the Government can do more to remedy the economic ills of the
people by a system of rigid economy in public expenditure than can be
accomplished through any other action. The costs of our national and local
governments combined now stand at a sum close to $100 for each inhabitant
of the land. A little less than one-third of this is represented by
national expenditure, and a little more than two-thirds by local
expenditure. It is an ominous fact that only the National Government is
reducing its debt. Others are increasing theirs at about $1,000,000,000
each year. The depression that overtook business, the disaster experienced
in agriculture, the lack of employment and the terrific shrinkage in all
values which our country experienced in a most acute form in 1920, resulted
in no small measure from the prohibitive taxes which were then levied on
all productive effort. The establishment of a system of drastic economy in
public expenditure, which has enabled us to pay off about one-fifth of the
national debt since 1919, and almost cut in two the national tax burden
since 1921, has been one of the main causes in reestablishing a prosperity
which has come to include within its benefits almost every one of our
inhabitants. Economy reaches everywhere. It carries a blessing to
everybody.
The fallacy of the claim that the costs of government are borne by the rich
and those who make a direct contribution to the National Treasury can not
be too often exposed. No system has been devised, I do not think any system
could be devised, under which any person living in this country could
escape being affected by the cost of our government. It has a direct effect
both upon the rate and the purchasing power of wages. It is felt in the
price of those prime necessities of existence, food, clothing, fuel and
shelter. It would appear to be elementary that the more the Government
expends the more it must require every producer to contribute out of his
production to the Public Treasury, and the less he will have for his own
benefit. The continuing costs of public administration can be met in only
one way--by the work of the people. The higher they become, the more the
people must work for the Government. The less they are, the more the people
can work for themselves.
The present estimated margin between public receipts and expenditures for
this fiscal year is very small. Perhaps the most important work that this
session of the Congress can do is to continue a policy of economy and
further reduce the cost of government, in order that we may have a
reduction of taxes for the next fiscal year. Nothing is more likely to
produce that public confidence which is the forerunner and the mainstay of
prosperity, encourage and enlarge business opportunity with ample
opportunity for employment at good wages, provide a larger market for
agricultural products, and put our country in a stronger position to be
able to meet the world competition in trade, than a continuing policy of
economy. Of course necessary costs must be met, proper functions of the
Government performed, and constant investments for capital account and
reproductive effort must be carried on by our various departments. But the
people must know that their Government is placing upon them no unnecessary
burden.