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I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction
into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision
which the present situation of our people impel.
This is preeminently
the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor
need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will
prosper.
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified
terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and
vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people
themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will
again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In
such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties.
They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to
fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen;
government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the
means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered
leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no
markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of
families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens
face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil
with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities
of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of
substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the
perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were
not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.
Nature still offers
her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our
doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the
supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of
mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their
own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices
of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of
public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True
they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an
outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only
the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to
induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted
to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know
only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision,
and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers
have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We
may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the
restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more
noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere
possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill
of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer
must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark
days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true
destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and
to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth
as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of
the false belief that public office and high political position are to
be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit;
and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which
too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and
selfish wrongdoing.
Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it
thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on
faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot
live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our
greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable
problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished
in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the
task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time,
through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to
stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand
in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of
population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national
scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land
for those best fitted for the land.
The task can be helped by definite
efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the
power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by
preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through
foreclosure of our small homes and our farms.
It can be helped by
insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith
on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped
by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered,
uneconomical, and unequal.
It can be helped by national planning for
and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications
and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are
many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely
by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our
progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against
a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict
supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be
an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be
provision for an adequate but sound currency.
There are the lines
of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special
session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the
immediate assistance of the several States.
Through this program
of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in
order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade
relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity
secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as
a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no
effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment,
but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.
The
basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is
not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first
consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all
parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently
important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is
the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest
assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world
policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good
neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he
does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his
obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a
world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly,
we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on
each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that
if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army
willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because
without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes
effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and
property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership
which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the
larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a
unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With
this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great
army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common
problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under
the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our
Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to
meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without
loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has
proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern
world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of
territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world
relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive
and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the
unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented
demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure
from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under
my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation
in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such
other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and
wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to
speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to
take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national
emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty
that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one
remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a
war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to
me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We
face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the
national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and
precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the
stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the
assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not
distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United
States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate
that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline
and direction under leadership. They have made me the present
instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In
this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He
protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.
Sound familiar????????
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 11–16.
