Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate and the Congress: In Reporting on the state of the nation, I have felt it necessary on previous occasions to advise the Congress of disturbance abroad and of the need of putting our own house in order in the face of storm signals from across the seas. As this Seventy-sixth Congress opens there is need for further warning. A war which threatened to envelop the world in flames has been averted; but it has become increasingly clear that world peace is not assured. All about us rage undeclared wars—military and economic. All about us grow more deadly armaments—military and economic. All about us are threats of new aggression military and economic. Storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to Americans, now as always. The first is religion. It is the source of the other two—democracy and international good faith. Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors. Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows. International good faith, a sister of democracy, springs from the will of civilized nations of men to respect the rights and liberties of other nations of men. In a modern civilization, all three—religion, democracy and international good faith- complement and support each other. Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force. An ordering of society which relegates religion, democracy and good faith among nations to the background can find no place within it for the ideals of the Prince of Peace. The United States rejects such an ordering, and retains its ancient faith. There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one we must now make up our minds to save all. We know what might happen to us of the United States if the new philosophies of force were to encompass the other continents and invade our own. We, no more than other nations, can afford to be surrounded by the enemies of our faith and our humanity. Fortunate it is, therefore, that in this Western Hemisphere we have, under a common ideal of democratic government, a rich diversity of resources and of peoples functioning together in mutual respect and peace. That Hemisphere, that peace, and that ideal we propose to do our share in protecting against storms from any quarter. Our people and our resources are pledged to secure that protection. From that determination no American flinches. This by no means implies that the American Republics disassociate themselves from the nations of other continents. It does not mean the Americas against the rest of the world. We as one of the Republics reiterate our willingness to help the cause of world peace. We stand on our historic offer to take counsel with all other nations of the world to the end that aggression among them be terminated, that the race of armaments cease and that commerce be renewed. But the world has grown so small and weapons of attack so swift that no nation can be safe in its will to peace so long as any other powerful nation refuses to settle its grievances at the council table. For if any government bristling with implements of war insists on policies of force, weapons of defense give the only safety. In our foreign relations we have learned from the past what not to do. From new wars we have learned what we must do. We have learned that effective timing of defense, and the distant points from which attacks may be launched are completely different from what they were twenty years ago. We have learned that survival cannot be guaranteed by arming after the attack begins—for there is new range and speed to offense. We have learned that long before any overt. military act, aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda, subsidized penetration, the loosening of ties of good will, the stirring of prejudice and the incitement to disunion. We have learned that God-fearing democracies of the world which observe the sanctity of treaties and good faith in their dealings with other nations cannot safely be indifferent to international lawlessness anywhere. They cannot forever let pass, without effective protest, acts of aggression against sister nations-acts which automatically undermine all of us. Obviously they must proceed along practical, peaceful lines. But the mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression does not mean that we must act as if there were no aggression at all. Words may be futile, but war is not the only means of commanding a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. There are many methods short of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words, of bringing home to aggressor governments the aggregate sentiments of our own people. At the very least, we can and should avoid any action, or any lack of action, which will encourage, assist or build up an aggressor. We have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate neutrality, our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and unfairly—may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim. The instinct of self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that happen any more. And we have learned something else—the old, old lesson that probability of attack is mightily decreased by the assurance of an ever ready defense. Since 1931, nearly eight years ago, world events of thunderous import have moved with lightning speed. During these eight years many of our people clung to the hope that the innate decency of mankind would protect the unprepared who showed their innate trust in mankind. Today we are all wiser—and sadder. Under modern conditions what we mean by "adequate defense"—a policy subscribed to by all of us—must be divided into three elements. First, we must have armed forces and defenses strong enough to ward off sudden attack against strategic positions and key facilities essential to ensure sustained resistance and ultimate victory. Secondly, we must have the organization and location of those key facilities so that they may be immediately utilized and rapidly expanded to meet all needs without danger of serious interruption by enemy attack. In the course of a few days I shall send you a special message making recommendations for those two essentials of defense against danger which we cannot safely assume will not come. If these first two essentials are reasonably provided for, we must be able confidently to invoke the third element, the underlying strength of citizenship—the self-confidence, the ability, the imagination and the devotion that give the staying power to see things through. A strong and united nation may be destroyed if it is unprepared against sudden attack. But even a nation well armed and well organized from a strictly military standpoint may, after a period of time, meet defeat if it is unnerved by self-distrust, endangered by class prejudice, by dissension between capital and labor, by false economy and by other unsolved social problems at home. In meeting the troubles of the world we must meet them as one people—with a unity born of the fact that for generations those who have come to our shores, representing many kindreds and tongues, have been welded by common opportunity into a united patriotism. If another form of government can present a united front in its attack on a democracy, the attack must and will be met by a united democracy. Such a democracy can and must exist in the United States. A dictatorship may command the full strength of a regimented nation. But the united strength of a democratic nation can be mustered only when its people, educated by modern standards to know what is going on and where they are going, have conviction that they are receiving as large a share of opportunity for development, as large a share of material success and of human dignity, as they have a right to receive. Our nation's program of social and economic reform is therefore a part of defense, as basic as armaments themselves. Against the background of events in Europe, in Africa and in Asia during these recent years, the pattern of what we have accomplished since 1933 appears in even clearer focus. For the first time we have moved upon deep-seated problems affecting our national strength and have forged national instruments adequate to meet them. Consider what the seemingly piecemeal struggles of these six years add up to in terms of realistic national preparedness. We are conserving and developing natural resources-land, water power, forests. We are trying to provide necessary food, shelter and medical care for the health of our population. We are putting agriculture—our system of food and fibre supply—on a sounder basis. We are strengthening the weakest spot in our system of industrial supply- its long smouldering labor difficulties. We have cleaned up our credit system so that depositor and investor alike may more readily and willingly make their capital available for peace or war. We are giving to our youth new opportunities for work and education. We have sustained the morale of all the population by the dignified recognition of our obligations to the aged, the helpless and the needy. Above all, we have made the American people conscious of their interrelationship and their interdependence. They sense a common destiny and a common need of each other. Differences of occupation, geography, race and religion no longer obscure the nation's fundamental unity in thought and in action. We have our difficulties, true—but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1929, or in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far-flung internal preparedness in our history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights. We see things now that we could not see along the way. The tools of government which we had in 1933 are outmoded. We have had to forge new tools for a new role of government operating in a democracy—a role of new responsibility for new needs and increased responsibility for old needs, long neglected. Some of these tools had to be roughly shaped and still need some machining down. Many of those who fought bitterly against the forging of these new tools welcome their use today. The American people, as a whole, have accepted them. The Nation looks to the Congress to improve the new machinery which we have permanently installed, provided that in the process the social usefulness of the machinery is not destroyed or impaired. All of us agree that we should simplify and improve laws if experience and operation clearly demonstrate the need. For instance, all of us want better provision for our older people under our social security legislation. For the medically needy we must provide better care. Most of us agree that for the sake of employer and employee alike we must find ways to end factional labor strife and employer-employee disputes. Most of us recognize that none of these tools can be put to maximum effectiveness unless the executive processes of government are revamped—reorganized, if you will—into more effective combination. And even after such reorganization it will take time to develop administrative personnel and experience in order to use our new tools with a minimum of mistakes. The Congress, of course, needs no further information on this. With this exception of legislation to provide greater government efficiency, and with the exception of legislation to ameliorate our railroad and other transportation problems, the past three Congresses have met in part or in whole the pressing needs of the new order of things. We have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our program of social reform. Our full energies may now be released to invigorate the processes of recovery in order to preserve our reforms, and to give every man and woman who wants to work a real job at a living wage. But time is of paramount importance. The deadline of danger from within and from without is not within our control. The hour-glass may be in the hands of other nations. Our own hour-glass tells us that we are off on a race to make democracy work, so that we may be efficient in peace and therefore secure in national defense. This time element forces us to still greater efforts to attain the full employment of our labor and our capital. The first duty of our statesmanship is to bring capital and man-power together. Dictatorships do this by main force. By using main force they apparently succeed at it—for the moment. However we abhor their methods, we are compelled to admit that they have obtained substantial utilization of all their material and human resources. Like it or not, they have solved, for a time at least, the problem of idle men and idle capital. Can we compete with them by boldly seeking methods of putting idle men and idle capital together and, at the same time, remain within our American way of life, within the Bill of Rights, and within the bounds of what is, from our point of view, civilization itself? We suffer from a great unemployment of capital. Many people have the idea that as a nation we are overburdened with debt and are spending more than we can afford. That is not so. Despite our Federal Government expenditures the entire debt of our national economic system, public and private together, is no larger today than it was in 1929, and the interest thereon is far less than it was in 1929. The object is to put capital—private as well as public—to work. We want to get enough capital and labor at work to give us a total turnover of business, a total national income, of at least eighty billion dollars a year. At that figure we shall have a substantial reduction of unemployment; and the Federal Revenues will be sufficient to balance the current level of cash expenditures on the basis of the existing tax structure. That figure can be attained, working within the framework of our traditional profit system. The factors in attaining and maintaining that amount of national income are many and complicated. They include more widespread understanding among business men of many changes which world conditions and technological improvements have brought to our economy over the last twenty years—changes in the interrelationship of price and volume and employment, for example- changes of the kind in which business men are now educating themselves through excellent opportunities like the so-called "monopoly investigation. They include a perfecting of our farm program to protect farmers' income and consumers' purchasing power from alternate risks of crop gluts and crop shortages. They include wholehearted acceptance of new standards of honesty in our financial markets. They include reconcilement of enormous, antagonistic interests—some of them long in litigation—in the railroad and general transportation field. They include the working out of new techniques—private, state and federal—to protect the public interest in and to develop wider markets for electric power. They include a revamping of the tax relationships between federal, state and local units of government, and consideration of relatively small tax increases to adjust inequalities without interfering with the aggregate income of the American people. They include the perfecting of labor organization and a universal ungrudging attitude by employers toward the labor movement, until there is a minimum of interruption of production and employment because of disputes, and acceptance by labor of the truth that the welfare of labor itself depends on increased balanced out-put of goods. To be immediately practical, while proceeding with a steady evolution in the solving of these and like problems, we must wisely use instrumentalities, like Federal investment, which are immediately available to us. Here, as elsewhere, time is the deciding factor in our choice of remedies. Therefore, it does not seem logical to me, at the moment we seek to increase production and consumption, for the Federal Government to consider a drastic curtailment of its own investments. The whole subject of government investing and government income is one which may be approached in two different ways. The first calls for the elimination of enough activities of government to bring the expenses of government immediately into balance with income of government. This school of thought maintains that because our national income this year is only sixty billion dollars, ours is only a sixty billion dollar country; that government must treat it as such; and that without the help of government, it may some day, somehow, happen to become an eighty billion dollar country. If the Congress decides to accept this point of view, it will logically have to reduce the present functions or activities of government by one-third. Not only will the Congress have to accept the responsibility for such reduction; but the Congress will have to determine which activities are to be reduced. Certain expenditures we cannot possibly reduce at this session, such as the interest on the public debt. A few million dollars saved here or there in the normal or in curtailed work of the old departments and commissions will make no great saving in the Federal budget. Therefore, the Congress would have to reduce drastically some of certain large items, very large items, such as aids to agriculture and soil conservation, veterans' pensions, flood control, highways, waterways and other public works, grants for social and health security, Civilian Conservation Corps activities, relief for the unemployed, or national defense itself. The Congress alone has the power to do all this, as it is the appropriating branch of the government. The other approach to the question of government spending takes the position that this Nation ought not to be and need not be only a sixty billion dollar nation; that at this moment it has the men and the resources sufficient to make it at least an eighty billion dollar nation. This school of thought does not believe that it can become an eighty billion dollar nation in the near future if government cuts its operations by one-third. It is convinced that if we were to try it, we would invite disaster—and that we would not long remain even a sixty billion dollar nation. There are many complicated factors with which we have to deal, but we have learned that it is unsafe to make abrupt reductions at any time in our net expenditure program. By our common sense action of resuming government activities last spring, we have reversed a recession and started the new rising tide of prosperity and national income which we are now just beginning to enjoy. If government activities are fully maintained, there is a good prospect of our becoming an eighty billion dollar country in a very short time. With such a national income, present tax laws will yield enough each year to balance each year's expenses. It is my conviction that down in their hearts the American public—industry, agriculture, finance—want this Congress to do whatever needs to be done to raise our national income to eighty billion dollars a year. Investing soundly must preclude spending wastefully. To guard against opportunist appropriations, I have on several occasions addressed the Congress on the importance of permanent long-range planning. I hope, therefore, that following my recommendation of last year, a permanent agency will be set up and authorized to report on the urgency and desirability of the various types of government investment. Investment for prosperity can be made in a democracy. I hear some people say, "This is all so complicated. There are certain advantages in a dictatorship. It gets rid of labor trouble, of unemployment, of wasted motion and of having to do your own thinking." My answer is, "Yes, but it also gets rid of some other things which we Americans intend very definitely to keep—and we still intend to do our own thinking." It will cost us taxes and the voluntary risk of capital to attain some of the practical advantages which other forms of government have acquired. Dictatorship, however, involves costs which the American people will never pay: The cost of our spiritual values. The cost of the blessed right of being able to say what we please. The cost of freedom of religion. The cost of seeing our capital confiscated. The cost of being cast into a concentration camp. The cost of being afraid to walk down the street with the wrong neighbor. The cost of having our children brought up, not as free and dignified human beings, but as pawns molded and enslaved by a machine. If the avoidance of these costs means taxes on my income; if avoiding these costs means taxes on my estate at death, I would bear those taxes willingly as the price of my breathing and my children breathing the free air of a free country, as the price of a living and not a dead world. Events abroad have made it increasingly clear to the American people that dangers within are less to be feared than dangers from without. If, therefore, a solution of this problem of idle men and idle capital is the price of preserving our liberty, no formless selfish fears can stand in the way. Once I prophesied that this generation of Americans had a rendezvous with destiny. That prophecy comes true. To us much is given; more is expected. This generation will "nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. . . . The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just-a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless."
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate and the Congress: In Reporting on the state of the nation, I have felt it necessary on previous occasions to advise the Congress of disturbance abroad and of the need of putting our own house in order in the face of storm signals from across the seas. As this Seventy-sixth Congress opens there is need for further warning. A war which threatened to envelop the world in flames has been averted; but it has become increasingly clear that world peace is not assured. All about us rage undeclared wars—military and economic. All about us grow more deadly armaments—military and economic. All about us are threats of new aggression military and economic. Storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to Americans, now as always. The first is religion. It is the source of the other two—democracy and international good faith. Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors. Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows. International good faith, a sister of democracy, springs from the will of civilized nations of men to respect the rights and liberties of other nations of men. In a modern civilization, all three—religion, democracy and international good faith- complement and support each other. Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force. An ordering of society which relegates religion, democracy and good faith among nations to the background can find no place within it for the ideals of the Prince of Peace. The United States rejects such an ordering, and retains its ancient faith. There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one we must now make up our minds to save all. We know what might happen to us of the United States if the new philosophies of force were to encompass the other continents and invade our own. We, no more than other nations, can afford to be surrounded by the enemies of our faith and our humanity. Fortunate it is, therefore, that in this Western Hemisphere we have, under a common ideal of democratic government, a rich diversity of resources and of peoples functioning together in mutual respect and peace. That Hemisphere, that peace, and that ideal we propose to do our share in protecting against storms from any quarter. Our people and our resources are pledged to secure that protection. From that determination no American flinches. This by no means implies that the American Republics disassociate themselves from the nations of other continents. It does not mean the Americas against the rest of the world. We as one of the Republics reiterate our willingness to help the because of world peace. We stand on our historic offer to take counsel with all other nations of the world to the end that aggression among them be terminated, that the race of armaments cease and that commerce be renewed. But the world has grown so small and weapons of attack so swift that no nation can be safe in its will to peace so long as any other powerful nation refuses to settle its grievances at the council table. For if any government bristling with implements of war insists on policies of force, weapons of defense give the only safety. In our foreign relations we have learned from the past what not to do. From new wars we have learned what we must do. We have learned that effective timing of defense, and the distant points from which attacks may be launched are completely different from what they were twenty years ago. We have learned that survival cannot be guaranteed by arming after the attack begins—for there is new range and speed to offense. We have learned that long before any overt. military act, aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda, subsidized penetration, the loosening of ties of good will, the stirring of prejudice and the incitement to disunion. We have learned that God-fearing democracies of the world which observe the sanctity of treaties and good faith in their dealings with other nations cannot safely be indifferent to international lawlessness anywhere. They cannot forever let pass, without effective protest, acts of aggression against sister nations-acts which automatically undermine all of us. Obviously they must proceed along practical, peaceful lines. But the mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression does not mean that we must act as if there were no aggression at all. Words may be futile, but war is not the only means of commanding a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. There are many methods short of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words, of bringing home to aggressor governments the aggregate sentiments of our own people. At the very least, we can and should avoid any action, or any lack of action, which will encourage, assist or build up an aggressor. We have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate neutrality, our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and unfairly—may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim. The instinct of self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that happen any more. And we have learned something else—the old, old lesson that probability of attack is mightily decreased by the assurance of an ever ready defense. Since 1931, nearly eight years ago, world events of thunderous import have moved with lightning speed. During these eight years many of our people clung to the hope that the innate decency of mankind would protect the unprepared who showed their innate trust in mankind. Today we are all wiser—and sadder. Under modern conditions what we mean by "adequate defense"—a policy subscribed to by all of us—must be divided into three elements. First, we must have armed forces and defenses strong enough to ward off sudden attack against strategic positions and key facilities essential to ensure sustained resistance and ultimate victory. Secondly, we must have the organization and location of those key facilities so that they may be immediately utilized and rapidly expanded to meet all needs without danger of serious interruption by enemy attack. In the course of a few days I shall send you a special message making recommendations for those two essentials of defense against danger which we cannot safely assume will not come. If these first two essentials are reasonably provided for, we must be able confidently to invoke the third element, the underlying strength of citizenship—the self-confidence, the ability, the imagination and the devotion that give the staying power to see things through. A strong and united nation may be destroyed if it is unprepared against sudden attack. But even a nation well armed and well organized from a strictly military standpoint may, after a period of time, meet defeat if it is unnerved by self-distrust, endangered by class prejudice, by dissension between capital and labor, by false economy and by other unsolved social problems at home. In meeting the troubles of the world we must meet them as one people—with a unity born of the fact that for generations those who have come to our shores, representing many kindreds and tongues, have been welded by common opportunity into a united patriotism. If another form of government can present a united front in its attack on a democracy, the attack must and will be met by a united democracy. Such a democracy can and must exist in the United States. A dictatorship may command the full strength of a regimented nation. But the united strength of a democratic nation can be mustered only when its people, educated by modern standards to know what is going on and where they are going, have conviction that they are receiving as large a share of opportunity for development, as large a share of material success and of human dignity, as they have a right to receive. Our nation's program of social and economic reform is therefore a part of defense, as basic as armaments themselves. Against the background of events in Europe, in Africa and in Asia during these recent years, the pattern of what we have accomplished since 1933 appears in even clearer focus. For the first time we have moved upon deep-seated problems affecting our national strength and have forged national instruments adequate to meet them. Consider what the seemingly piecemeal struggles of these six years add up to in terms of realistic national preparedness. We are conserving and developing natural resources-land, water power, forests. We are trying to provide necessary food, shelter and medical care for the health of our population. We are putting agriculture—our system of food and fibre supply—on a sounder basis. We are strengthening the weakest spot in our system of industrial supply- its long smouldering labor difficulties. We have cleaned up our credit system so that depositor and investor alike may more readily and willingly make their capital available for peace or war. We are giving to our youth new opportunities for work and education. We have sustained the morale of all the population by the dignified recognition of our obligations to the aged, the helpless and the needy. Above all, we have made the American people conscious of their interrelationship and their interdependence. They sense a common destiny and a common need of each other. Differences of occupation, geography, race and religion no longer obscure the nation's fundamental unity in thought and in action. We have our difficulties, true—but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1929, or in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far-flung internal preparedness in our history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights. We see things now that we could not see along the way. The tools of government which we had in 1933 are outmoded. We have had to forge new tools for a new role of government operating in a democracy—a role of new responsibility for new needs and increased responsibility for old needs, long neglected. Some of these tools had to be roughly shaped and still need some machining down. Many of those who fought bitterly against the forging of these new tools welcome their use today. The American people, as a whole, have accepted them. The Nation looks to the Congress to improve the new machinery which we have permanently installed, provided that in the process the social usefulness of the machinery is not destroyed or impaired. All of us agree that we should simplify and improve laws if experience and operation clearly demonstrate the need. For instance, all of us want better provision for our older people under our social security legislation. For the medically needy we must provide better care. Most of us agree that for the sake of employer and employee alike we must find ways to end factional labor strife and employer-employee disputes. Most of us recognize that none of these tools can be put to maximum effectiveness unless the executive processes of government are revamped—reorganized, if you will—into more effective combination. And even after such reorganization it will take time to develop administrative personnel and experience in order to use our new tools with a minimum of mistakes. The Congress, of course, needs no further information on this. With this exception of legislation to provide greater government efficiency, and with the exception of legislation to ameliorate our railroad and other transportation problems, the past three Congresses have met in part or in whole the pressing needs of the new order of things. We have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our program of social reform. Our full energies may now be released to invigorate the processes of recovery in order to preserve our reforms, and to give every man and woman who wants to work a real job at a living wage. But time is of paramount importance. The deadline of danger from within and from without is not within our control. The hour-glass may be in the hands of other nations. Our own hour-glass tells us that we are off on a race to make democracy work, so that we may be efficient in peace and therefore secure in national defense. This time element forces us to still greater efforts to attain the full employment of our labor and our capital. The first duty of our statesmanship is to bring capital and man-power together. Dictatorships do this by main force. By using main force they apparently succeed at it—for the moment. However we abhor their methods, we are compelled to admit that they have obtained substantial utilization of all their material and human resources. Like it or not, they have solved, for a time at least, the problem of idle men and idle capital. Can we compete with them by boldly seeking methods of putting idle men and idle capital together and, at the same time, remain within our American way of life, within the Bill of Rights, and within the bounds of what is, from our point of view, civilization itself? We suffer from a great unemployment of capital. Many people have the idea that as a nation we are overburdened with debt and are spending more than we can afford. That is not so. Despite our Federal Government expenditures the entire debt of our national economic system, public and private together, is no larger today than it was in 1929, and the interest thereon is far less than it was in 1929. The object is to put capital—private as well as public—to work. We want to get enough capital and labor at work to give us a total turnover of business, a total national income, of at least eighty billion dollars a year. At that figure we shall have a substantial reduction of unemployment; and the Federal Revenues will be sufficient to balance the current level of cash expenditures on the basis of the existing tax structure. That figure can be attained, working within the framework of our traditional profit system. The factors in attaining and maintaining that amount of national income are many and complicated. They include more widespread understanding among business men of many changes which world conditions and technological improvements have brought to our economy over the last twenty years—changes in the interrelationship of price and volume and employment, for example- changes of the kind in which business men are now educating themselves through excellent opportunities like the so-called "monopoly investigation. They include a perfecting of our farm program to protect farmers' income and consumers' purchasing power from alternate risks of crop gluts and crop shortages. They include wholehearted acceptance of new standards of honesty in our financial markets. They include reconcilement of enormous, antagonistic interests—some of them long in litigation—in the railroad and general transportation field. They include the working out of new techniques—private, state and federal—to protect the public interest in and to develop wider markets for electric power. They include a revamping of the tax relationships between federal, state and local units of government, and consideration of relatively small tax increases to adjust inequalities without interfering with the aggregate income of the American people. They include the perfecting of labor organization and a universal ungrudging attitude by employers toward the labor movement, until there is a minimum of interruption of production and employment because of disputes, and acceptance by labor of the truth that the welfare of labor itself depends on increased balanced out-put of goods. To be immediately practical, while proceeding with a steady evolution in the solving of these and like problems, we must wisely use instrumentalities, like Federal investment, which are immediately available to us. Here, as elsewhere, time is the deciding factor in our choice of remedies. Therefore, it does not seem logical to me, at the moment we seek to increase production and consumption, for the Federal Government to consider a drastic curtailment of its own investments. The whole subject of government investing and government income is one which may be approached in two different ways. The first calls for the elimination of enough activities of government to bring the expenses of government immediately into balance with income of government. This school of thought maintains that because our national income this year is only sixty billion dollars, ours is only a sixty billion dollar country; that government must treat it as such; and that without the help of government, it may some day, somehow, happen to become an eighty billion dollar country. If the Congress decides to accept this point of view, it will logically have to reduce the present functions or activities of government by one-third. Not only will the Congress have to accept the responsibility for such reduction; but the Congress will have to determine which activities are to be reduced. Certain expenditures we cannot possibly reduce at this session, such as the interest on the public debt. A few million dollars saved here or there in the normal or in curtailed work of the old departments and commissions will make no great saving in the Federal budget. Therefore, the Congress would have to reduce drastically some of certain large items, very large items, such as aids to agriculture and soil conservation, veterans' pensions, flood control, highways, waterways and other public works, grants for social and health security, Civilian Conservation Corps activities, relief for the unemployed, or national defense itself. The Congress alone has the power to do all this, as it is the appropriating branch of the government. The other approach to the question of government spending takes the position that this Nation ought not to be and need not be only a sixty billion dollar nation; that at this moment it has the men and the resources sufficient to make it at least an eighty billion dollar nation. This school of thought does not believe that it can become an eighty billion dollar nation in the near future if government cuts its operations by one-third. It is convinced that if we were to try it, we would invite disaster—and that we would not long remain even a sixty billion dollar nation. There are many complicated factors with which we have to deal, but we have learned that it is unsafe to make abrupt reductions at any time in our net expenditure program. By our common sense action of resuming government activities last spring, we have reversed a recession and started the new rising tide of prosperity and national income which we are now just beginning to enjoy. If government activities are fully maintained, there is a good prospect of our becoming an eighty billion dollar country in a very short time. With such a national income, present tax laws will yield enough each year to balance each year's expenses. It is my conviction that down in their hearts the American public—industry, agriculture, finance—want this Congress to do whatever needs to be done to raise our national income to eighty billion dollars a year. Investing soundly must preclude spending wastefully. To guard against opportunist appropriations, I have on several occasions addressed the Congress on the importance of permanent long-range planning. I hope, therefore, that following my recommendation of last year, a permanent agency will be set up and authorized to report on the urgency and desirability of the various types of government investment. Investment for prosperity can be made in a democracy. I hear some people say, "This is all so complicated. There are certain advantages in a dictatorship. It gets rid of labor trouble, of unemployment, of wasted motion and of having to do your own thinking." My answer is, "Yes, but it also gets rid of some other things which we Americans intend very definitely to keep—and we still intend to do our own thinking." It will cost us taxes and the voluntary risk of capital to attain some of the practical advantages which other forms of government have acquired. Dictatorship, however, involves costs which the American people will never pay: The cost of our spiritual values. The cost of the blessed right of being able to say what we please. The cost of freedom of religion. The cost of seeing our capital confiscated. The cost of being cast into a concentration camp. The cost of being afraid to walk down the street with the wrong neighbor. The cost of having our children brought up, not as free and dignified human beings, but as pawns molded and enslaved by a machine. If the avoidance of these costs means taxes on my income; if avoiding these costs means taxes on my estate at death, I would bear those taxes willingly as the price of my breathing and my children breathing the free air of a free country, as the price of a living and not a dead world. Events abroad have made it increasingly clear to the American people that dangers within are less to be feared than dangers from without. If, therefore, a solution of this problem of idle men and idle capital is the price of preserving our liberty, no formless selfish fears can stand in the way. Once I prophesied that this generation of Americans had a rendezvous with destiny. That prophecy comes true. To us much is given; more is expected. This generation will "nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. . . . The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just-a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless."
vice president speaker members of the senate and the congress in reporting on the state of the nation i have felt it necessary on previous occasions to advise the congress of disturbance abroad and of the need of putting our own house in order in the face of storm signals from across the seas as this congress opens there is need for further warning a war which threatened to envelop the world in flames has been averted but it has become increasingly clear that world peace is not assured all about us rage undeclared and economic all about us grow more deadly and economic all about us are threats of new aggression military and economic storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to americans now as always the first is religion it is the source of the other and international good faith religion by teaching man his relationship to god gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors democracy the practice of is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows international good faith a sister of democracy springs from the will of civilized nations of men to respect the rights and liberties of other nations of men in a modern civilization all democracy and international good complement and support each other where freedom of religion has been attacked the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy where democracy has been overthrown the spirit of free worship has disappeared and where religion and democracy have vanished good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force an ordering of society which relegates religion democracy and good faith among nations to the background can find no place within it for the ideals of the prince of peace the united states rejects such an ordering and retains its ancient faith there comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches their governments and their very civilization are founded the defense of religion of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight to save one we must now make up our minds to save all we know what might happen to us of the united states if the new philosophies of force were to encompass the other continents and invade our own we no more than other nations can afford to be surrounded by the enemies of our faith and our humanity fortunate it is therefore that in this western hemisphere we have under a common ideal of democratic government a rich diversity of resources and of peoples functioning together in mutual respect and peace that hemisphere that peace and that ideal we propose to do our share in protecting against storms from any quarter our people and our resources are pledged to secure that protection from that determination no american flinches this by no means implies that the american republics disassociate themselves from the nations of other continents it does not mean the americas against the rest of the world we as one of the republics reiterate our willingness to help the because of world peace we stand on our historic offer to take counsel with all other nations of the world to the end that aggression among them be terminated that the race of armaments cease and that commerce be renewed but the world has grown so small and weapons of attack so swift that no nation can be safe in its will to peace so long as any other powerful nation refuses to settle its grievances at the council table for if any government bristling with implements of war insists on policies of force weapons of defense give the only safety in our foreign relations we have learned from the past what not to do from new wars we have learned what we must do we have learned that effective timing of defense and the distant points from which attacks may be launched are completely different from what they were twenty years ago we have learned that survival can not be guaranteed by arming after the attack there is new range and speed to offense we have learned that long before any overt military act aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda subsidized penetration the loosening of ties of good will the stirring of prejudice and the incitement to disunion we have learned that democracies of the world which observe the sanctity of treaties and good faith in their dealings with other nations can not safely be indifferent to international lawlessness anywhere they can not forever let pass without effective protest acts of aggression against sister which automatically undermine all of us obviously they must proceed along practical peaceful lines but the mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression does not mean that we must act as if there were no aggression at all words may be futile but war is not the only means of commanding a decent respect for the opinions of mankind there are many methods short of war but stronger and more effective than mere words of bringing home to aggressor governments the aggregate sentiments of our own people at the very least we can and should avoid any action or any lack of action which will encourage assist or build up an aggressor we have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate neutrality our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim the instinct of should warn us that we ought not to let that happen any more and we have learned something old old lesson that probability of attack is mightily decreased by the assurance of an ever ready defense since 1931 nearly eight years ago world events of thunderous import have moved with lightning speed during these eight years many of our people clung to the hope that the innate decency of mankind would protect the unprepared who showed their innate trust in mankind today we are all sadder under modern conditions what we mean by adequate defense policy subscribed to by all of be divided into three elements first we must have armed forces and defenses strong enough to ward off sudden attack against strategic positions and key facilities essential to ensure sustained resistance and ultimate victory secondly we must have the organization and location of those key facilities so that they may be immediately utilized and rapidly expanded to meet all needs without danger of serious interruption by enemy attack in the course of a few days i shall send you a special message making recommendations for those two essentials of defense against danger which we can not safely assume will not come if these first two essentials are reasonably provided for we must be able confidently to invoke the third element the underlying strength of the ability the imagination and the devotion that give the staying power to see things through a strong and united nation may be destroyed if it is unprepared against sudden attack but even a nation well armed and well organized from a strictly military standpoint may after a period of time meet defeat if it is unnerved by endangered by class prejudice by dissension between capital and labor by false economy and by other unsolved social problems at home in meeting the troubles of the world we must meet them as one a unity born of the fact that for generations those who have come to our shores representing many kindreds and tongues have been welded by common opportunity into a united patriotism if another form of government can present a united front in its attack on a democracy the attack must and will be met by a united democracy such a democracy can and must exist in the united states a dictatorship may command the full strength of a regimented nation but the united strength of a democratic nation can be mustered only when its people educated by modern standards to know what is going on and where they are going have conviction that they are receiving as large a share of opportunity for development as large a share of material success and of human dignity as they have a right to receive our nation program of social and economic reform is therefore a part of defense as basic as armaments themselves against the background of events in europe in africa and in asia during these recent years the pattern of what we have accomplished since 1933 appears in even clearer focus for the first time we have moved upon problems affecting our national strength and have forged national instruments adequate to meet them consider what the seemingly piecemeal struggles of these six years add up to in terms of realistic national preparedness we are conserving and developing natural water power forests we are trying to provide necessary food shelter and medical care for the health of our population we are putting system of food and fibre a sounder basis we are strengthening the weakest spot in our system of industrial its long smouldering labor difficulties we have cleaned up our credit system so that depositor and investor alike may more readily and willingly make their capital available for peace or war we are giving to our youth new opportunities for work and education we have sustained the morale of all the population by the dignified recognition of our obligations to the aged the helpless and the needy above all we have made the american people conscious of their interrelationship and their interdependence they sense a common destiny and a common need of each other differences of occupation geography race and religion no longer obscure the nation fundamental unity in thought and in action we have our difficulties we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1929 or in 1932 never have there been six years of such internal preparedness in our history and this has been done without any dictator power to command without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech freedom of the press or the rest of the bill of rights we see things now that we could not see along the way the tools of government which we had in 1933 are outmoded we have had to forge new tools for a new role of government operating in a role of new responsibility for new needs and increased responsibility for old needs long neglected some of these tools had to be roughly shaped and still need some machining down many of those who fought bitterly against the forging of these new tools welcome their use today the american people as a whole have accepted them the nation looks to the congress to improve the new machinery which we have permanently installed provided that in the process the social usefulness of the machinery is not destroyed or impaired all of us agree that we should simplify and improve laws if experience and operation clearly demonstrate the need for instance all of us want better provision for our older people under our social security legislation for the medically needy we must provide better care most of us agree that for the sake of employer and employee alike we must find ways to end factional labor strife and disputes most of us recognize that none of these tools can be put to maximum effectiveness unless the executive processes of government are if you more effective combination and even after such reorganization it will take time to develop administrative personnel and experience in order to use our new tools with a minimum of mistakes the congress of course needs no further information on this with this exception of legislation to provide greater government efficiency and with the exception of legislation to ameliorate our railroad and other transportation problems the past three congresses have met in part or in whole the pressing needs of the new order of things we have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our program of social reform our full energies may now be released to invigorate the processes of recovery in order to preserve our reforms and to give every man and woman who wants to work a real job at a living wage but time is of paramount importance the deadline of danger from within and from without is not within our control the may be in the hands of other nations our own tells us that we are off on a race to make democracy work so that we may be efficient in peace and therefore secure in national defense this time element forces us to still greater efforts to attain the full employment of our labor and our capital the first duty of our statesmanship is to bring capital and together dictatorships do this by main force by using main force they apparently succeed at the moment however we abhor their methods we are compelled to admit that they have obtained substantial utilization of all their material and human resources like it or not they have solved for a time at least the problem of idle men and idle capital can we compete with them by boldly seeking methods of putting idle men and idle capital together and at the same time remain within our american way of life within the bill of rights and within the bounds of what is from our point of view civilization itself we suffer from a great unemployment of capital many people have the idea that as a nation we are overburdened with debt and are spending more than we can afford that is not so despite our federal government expenditures the entire debt of our national economic system public and private together is no larger today than it was in 1929 and the interest thereon is far less than it was in 1929 the object is to put as well as work we want to get enough capital and labor at work to give us a total turnover of business a total national income of at least eighty billion dollars a year at that figure we shall have a substantial reduction of unemployment and the federal revenues will be sufficient to balance the current level of cash expenditures on the basis of the existing tax structure that figure can be attained working within the framework of our traditional profit system the factors in attaining and maintaining that amount of national income are many and complicated they include more widespread understanding among business men of many changes which world conditions and technological improvements have brought to our economy over the last twenty in the interrelationship of price and volume and employment for changes of the kind in which business men are now educating themselves through excellent opportunities like the monopoly investigation they include a perfecting of our farm program to protect farmers income and consumers purchasing power from alternate risks of crop gluts and crop shortages they include wholehearted acceptance of new standards of honesty in our financial markets they include reconcilement of enormous antagonistic of them long in the railroad and general transportation field they include the working out of new state and protect the public interest in and to develop wider markets for electric power they include a revamping of the tax relationships between federal state and local units of government and consideration of relatively small tax increases to adjust inequalities without interfering with the aggregate income of the american people they include the perfecting of labor organization and a universal ungrudging attitude by employers toward the labor movement until there is a minimum of interruption of production and employment because of disputes and acceptance by labor of the truth that the welfare of labor itself depends on increased balanced of goods to be immediately practical while proceeding with a steady evolution in the solving of these and like problems we must wisely use instrumentalities like federal investment which are immediately available to us here as elsewhere time is the deciding factor in our choice of remedies therefore it does not seem logical to me at the moment we seek to increase production and consumption for the federal government to consider a drastic curtailment of its own investments the whole subject of government investing and government income is one which may be approached in two different ways the first calls for the elimination of enough activities of government to bring the expenses of government immediately into balance with income of government this school of thought maintains that because our national income this year is only sixty billion dollars ours is only a sixty billion dollar country that government must treat it as such and that without the help of government it may some day somehow happen to become an eighty billion dollar country if the congress decides to accept this point of view it will logically have to reduce the present functions or activities of government by not only will the congress have to accept the responsibility for such reduction but the congress will have to determine which activities are to be reduced certain expenditures we can not possibly reduce at this session such as the interest on the public debt a few million dollars saved here or there in the normal or in curtailed work of the old departments and commissions will make no great saving in the federal budget therefore the congress would have to reduce drastically some of certain large items very large items such as aids to agriculture and soil conservation veterans pensions flood control highways waterways and other public works grants for social and health security civilian conservation corps activities relief for the unemployed or national defense itself the congress alone has the power to do all this as it is the appropriating branch of the government the other approach to the question of government spending takes the position that this nation ought not to be and need not be only a sixty billion dollar nation that at this moment it has the men and the resources sufficient to make it at least an eighty billion dollar nation this school of thought does not believe that it can become an eighty billion dollar nation in the near future if government cuts its operations by it is convinced that if we were to try it we would invite that we would not long remain even a sixty billion dollar nation there are many complicated factors with which we have to deal but we have learned that it is unsafe to make abrupt reductions at any time in our net expenditure program by our common sense action of resuming government activities last spring we have reversed a recession and started the new rising tide of prosperity and national income which we are now just beginning to enjoy if government activities are fully maintained there is a good prospect of our becoming an eighty billion dollar country in a very short time with such a national income present tax laws will yield enough each year to balance each year expenses it is my conviction that down in their hearts the american agriculture this congress to do whatever needs to be done to raise our national income to eighty billion dollars a year investing soundly must preclude spending wastefully to guard against opportunist appropriations i have on several occasions addressed the congress on the importance of permanent planning i hope therefore that following my recommendation of last year a permanent agency will be set up and authorized to report on the urgency and desirability of the various types of government investment investment for prosperity can be made in a democracy i hear some people say this is all so complicated there are certain advantages in a dictatorship it gets rid of labor trouble of unemployment of wasted motion and of having to do your own thinking my answer is yes but it also gets rid of some other things which we americans intend very definitely to we still intend to do our own thinking it will cost us taxes and the voluntary risk of capital to attain some of the practical advantages which other forms of government have acquired dictatorship however involves costs which the american people will never pay the cost of our spiritual values the cost of the blessed right of being able to say what we please the cost of freedom of religion the cost of seeing our capital confiscated the cost of being cast into a concentration camp the cost of being afraid to walk down the street with the wrong neighbor the cost of having our children brought up not as free and dignified human beings but as pawns molded and enslaved by a machine if the avoidance of these costs means taxes on my income if avoiding these costs means taxes on my estate at death i would bear those taxes willingly as the price of my breathing and my children breathing the free air of a free country as the price of a living and not a dead world events abroad have made it increasingly clear to the american people that dangers within are less to be feared than dangers from without if therefore a solution of this problem of idle men and idle capital is the price of preserving our liberty no formless selfish fears can stand in the way once i prophesied that this generation of americans had a rendezvous with destiny that prophecy comes true to us much is given more is expected this generation will nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth the way is plain peaceful generous way which if followed the world will forever applaud and god must forever bless
vice president speaker members senate congress reporting state nation felt necessary previous occasions advise congress disturbance abroad need putting house order face storm signals across seas congress opens need warning war threatened envelop world flames averted become increasingly clear world peace assured us rage undeclared economic us grow deadly economic us threats new aggression military economic storms abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable americans always first religion source international good faith religion teaching man relationship god gives individual sense dignity teaches respect respecting neighbors democracy practice covenant among free men respect rights liberties fellows international good faith sister democracy springs civilized nations men respect rights liberties nations men modern civilization democracy international good complement support freedom religion attacked attack come sources opposed democracy democracy overthrown spirit free worship disappeared religion democracy vanished good faith reason international affairs given way strident ambition brute force ordering society relegates religion democracy good faith among nations background find place within ideals prince peace united states rejects ordering retains ancient faith comes time affairs men must prepare defend homes alone tenets faith humanity churches governments civilization founded defense religion democracy good faith among nations fight save one must make minds save know might happen us united states new philosophies force encompass continents invade nations afford surrounded enemies faith humanity fortunate therefore western hemisphere common ideal democratic government rich diversity resources peoples functioning together mutual respect peace hemisphere peace ideal propose share protecting storms quarter people resources pledged secure protection determination american flinches means implies american republics disassociate nations continents mean americas rest world one republics reiterate willingness help world peace stand historic offer take counsel nations world end aggression among terminated race armaments cease commerce renewed world grown small weapons attack swift nation safe peace long powerful nation refuses settle grievances council table government bristling implements war insists policies force weapons defense give safety foreign relations learned past new wars learned must learned effective timing defense distant points attacks may launched completely different twenty years ago learned survival guaranteed arming attack new range speed offense learned long overt military act aggression begins preliminaries propaganda subsidized penetration loosening ties good stirring prejudice incitement disunion learned democracies world observe sanctity treaties good faith dealings nations safely indifferent international lawlessness anywhere forever let pass without effective protest acts aggression sister automatically undermine us obviously must proceed along practical peaceful lines mere fact rightly decline intervene arms prevent acts aggression mean must act aggression words may futile war means commanding decent respect opinions mankind many methods short war stronger effective mere words bringing home aggressor governments aggregate sentiments people least avoid action lack action encourage assist build aggressor learned deliberately try legislate neutrality neutrality laws may operate unevenly actually give aid aggressor deny victim instinct warn us ought let happen learned something old old lesson probability attack mightily decreased assurance ever ready defense since 1931 nearly eight years ago world events thunderous import moved lightning speed eight years many people clung hope innate decency mankind would protect unprepared showed innate trust mankind today sadder modern conditions mean adequate defense policy subscribed divided three elements first must armed forces defenses strong enough ward sudden attack strategic positions key facilities essential ensure sustained resistance ultimate victory secondly must organization location key facilities may immediately utilized rapidly expanded meet needs without danger serious interruption enemy attack course days shall send special message making recommendations two essentials defense danger safely assume come first two essentials reasonably provided must able confidently invoke third element underlying strength ability imagination devotion give staying power see things strong united nation may destroyed unprepared sudden attack even nation well armed well organized strictly military standpoint may period time meet defeat unnerved endangered class prejudice dissension capital labor false economy unsolved social problems home meeting troubles world must meet one unity born fact generations come shores representing many kindreds tongues welded common opportunity united patriotism another form government present united front attack democracy attack must met united democracy democracy must exist united states dictatorship may command full strength regimented nation united strength democratic nation mustered people educated modern standards know going going conviction receiving large share opportunity development large share material success human dignity right receive nation program social economic reform therefore part defense basic armaments background events europe africa asia recent years pattern accomplished since 1933 appears even clearer focus first time moved upon problems affecting national strength forged national instruments adequate meet consider seemingly piecemeal struggles six years add terms realistic national preparedness conserving developing natural water power forests trying provide necessary food shelter medical care health population putting system food fibre sounder basis strengthening weakest spot system industrial long smouldering labor difficulties cleaned credit system depositor investor alike may readily willingly make capital available peace war giving youth new opportunities work education sustained morale population dignified recognition obligations aged helpless needy made american people conscious interrelationship interdependence sense common destiny common need differences occupation geography race religion longer obscure nation fundamental unity thought action difficulties wiser tougher nation 1929 1932 never six years internal preparedness history done without dictator power command without conscription labor confiscation capital without concentration camps without scratch freedom speech freedom press rest bill rights see things could see along way tools government 1933 outmoded forge new tools new role government operating role new responsibility new needs increased responsibility old needs long neglected tools roughly shaped still need machining many fought bitterly forging new tools welcome use today american people whole accepted nation looks congress improve new machinery permanently installed provided process social usefulness machinery destroyed impaired us agree simplify improve laws experience operation clearly demonstrate need instance us want better provision older people social security legislation medically needy must provide better care us agree sake employer employee alike must find ways end factional labor strife disputes us recognize none tools put maximum effectiveness unless executive processes government effective combination even reorganization take time develop administrative personnel experience order use new tools minimum mistakes congress course needs information exception legislation provide greater government efficiency exception legislation ameliorate railroad transportation problems past three congresses met part whole pressing needs new order things passed period internal conflict launching program social reform full energies may released invigorate processes recovery order preserve reforms give every man woman wants work real job living wage time paramount importance deadline danger within without within control may hands nations tells us race make democracy work may efficient peace therefore secure national defense time element forces us still greater efforts attain full employment labor capital first duty statesmanship bring capital together dictatorships main force using main force apparently succeed moment however abhor methods compelled admit obtained substantial utilization material human resources like solved time least problem idle men idle capital compete boldly seeking methods putting idle men idle capital together time remain within american way life within bill rights within bounds point view civilization suffer great unemployment capital many people idea nation overburdened debt spending afford despite federal government expenditures entire debt national economic system public private together larger today 1929 interest thereon far less 1929 object put well work want get enough capital labor work give us total turnover business total national income least eighty billion dollars year figure shall substantial reduction unemployment federal revenues sufficient balance current level cash expenditures basis existing tax structure figure attained working within framework traditional profit system factors attaining maintaining amount national income many complicated include widespread understanding among business men many changes world conditions technological improvements brought economy last twenty interrelationship price volume employment changes kind business men educating excellent opportunities like monopoly investigation include perfecting farm program protect farmers income consumers purchasing power alternate risks crop gluts crop shortages include wholehearted acceptance new standards honesty financial markets include reconcilement enormous antagonistic long railroad general transportation field include working new state protect public interest develop wider markets electric power include revamping tax relationships federal state local units government consideration relatively small tax increases adjust inequalities without interfering aggregate income american people include perfecting labor organization universal ungrudging attitude employers toward labor movement minimum interruption production employment disputes acceptance labor truth welfare labor depends increased balanced goods immediately practical proceeding steady evolution solving like problems must wisely use instrumentalities like federal investment immediately available us elsewhere time deciding factor choice remedies therefore seem logical moment seek increase production consumption federal government consider drastic curtailment investments whole subject government investing government income one may approached two different ways first calls elimination enough activities government bring expenses government immediately balance income government school thought maintains national income year sixty billion dollars sixty billion dollar country government must treat without help government may day somehow happen become eighty billion dollar country congress decides accept point view logically reduce present functions activities government congress accept responsibility reduction congress determine activities reduced certain expenditures possibly reduce session interest public debt million dollars saved normal curtailed work old departments commissions make great saving federal budget therefore congress would reduce drastically certain large items large items aids agriculture soil conservation veterans pensions flood control highways waterways public works grants social health security civilian conservation corps activities relief unemployed national defense congress alone power appropriating branch government approach question government spending takes position nation ought need sixty billion dollar nation moment men resources sufficient make least eighty billion dollar nation school thought believe become eighty billion dollar nation near future government cuts operations convinced try would invite would long remain even sixty billion dollar nation many complicated factors deal learned unsafe make abrupt reductions time net expenditure program common sense action resuming government activities last spring reversed recession started new rising tide prosperity national income beginning enjoy government activities fully maintained good prospect becoming eighty billion dollar country short time national income present tax laws yield enough year balance year expenses conviction hearts american agriculture congress whatever needs done raise national income eighty billion dollars year investing soundly must preclude spending wastefully guard opportunist appropriations several occasions addressed congress importance permanent planning hope therefore following recommendation last year permanent agency set authorized report urgency desirability various types government investment investment prosperity made democracy hear people say complicated certain advantages dictatorship gets rid labor trouble unemployment wasted motion thinking answer yes also gets rid things americans intend definitely still intend thinking cost us taxes voluntary risk capital attain practical advantages forms government acquired dictatorship however involves costs american people never pay cost spiritual values cost blessed right able say please cost freedom religion cost seeing capital confiscated cost cast concentration camp cost afraid walk street wrong neighbor cost children brought free dignified human beings pawns molded enslaved machine avoidance costs means taxes income avoiding costs means taxes estate death would bear taxes willingly price breathing children breathing free air free country price living dead world events abroad made increasingly clear american people dangers within less feared dangers without therefore solution problem idle men idle capital price preserving liberty formless selfish fears stand way prophesied generation americans rendezvous destiny prophecy comes true us much given expected generation nobly save meanly lose last best hope earth way plain peaceful generous way followed world forever applaud god must forever bless
vice president speaker member senate congress report state nation felt necessary previous occasion advise congress disturbance abroad need put house order face storm signal across seas congress open need warn war threaten envelop world flames avert become increasingly clear world peace assure u rage undeclared economic u grow deadly economic u threats new aggression military economic storm abroad directly challenge three institution indispensable american always first religion source international good faith religion teach man relationship god give individual sense dignity teach respect respect neighbor democracy practice covenant among free men respect right liberties fellow international good faith sister democracy spring civilize nation men respect right liberty nation men modern civilization democracy international good complement support freedom religion attack attack come source oppose democracy democracy overthrown spirit free worship disappear religion democracy vanish good faith reason international affair give way strident ambition brute force order society relegates religion democracy good faith among nation background find place within ideal prince peace united state reject order retains ancient faith come time affair men must prepare defend home alone tenet faith humanity church government civilization found defense religion democracy good faith among nation fight save one must make mind save know might happen u united state new philosophy force encompass continent invade nation afford surround enemy faith humanity fortunate therefore western hemisphere common ideal democratic government rich diversity resource people function together mutual respect peace hemisphere peace ideal propose share protect storm quarter people resource pledge secure protection determination american flinch mean implies american republic disassociate nation continent mean americas rest world one republic reiterate willingness help world peace stand historic offer take counsel nation world end aggression among terminated race armament cease commerce renew world grow small weapon attack swift nation safe peace long powerful nation refuse settle grievance council table government bristle implement war insist policy force weapon defense give safety foreign relation learn past new war learn must learn effective timing defense distant point attack may launch completely different twenty year ago learn survival guaranteed arm attack new range speed offense learn long overt military act aggression begin preliminary propaganda subsidized penetration loosen tie good stir prejudice incitement disunion learn democracy world observe sanctity treaty good faith dealing nation safely indifferent international lawlessness anywhere forever let pas without effective protest act aggression sister automatically undermine u obviously must proceed along practical peaceful line mere fact rightly decline intervene arm prevent act aggression mean must act aggression word may futile war mean command decent respect opinion mankind many method short war stronger effective mere word bring home aggressor government aggregate sentiment people least avoid action lack action encourage assist build aggressor learn deliberately try legislate neutrality neutrality law may operate unevenly actually give aid aggressor deny victim instinct warn u ought let happen learn something old old lesson probability attack mightily decrease assurance ever ready defense since 1931 nearly eight year ago world event thunderous import move lightning speed eight year many people cling hope innate decency mankind would protect unprepared show innate trust mankind today sadder modern condition mean adequate defense policy subscribe divide three element first must arm force defenses strong enough ward sudden attack strategic position key facility essential ensure sustain resistance ultimate victory secondly must organization location key facility may immediately utilize rapidly expanded meet need without danger serious interruption enemy attack course day shall send special message make recommendation two essential defense danger safely assume come first two essential reasonably provide must able confidently invoke third element underlying strength ability imagination devotion give stay power see thing strong united nation may destroy unprepared sudden attack even nation well armed well organize strictly military standpoint may period time meet defeat unnerve endangered class prejudice dissension capital labor false economy unsolved social problem home meeting trouble world must meet one unity bear fact generation come shore represent many kindred tongue weld common opportunity united patriotism another form government present unite front attack democracy attack must meet united democracy democracy must exist united state dictatorship may command full strength regiment nation united strength democratic nation muster people educate modern standard know go go conviction receive large share opportunity development large share material success human dignity right receive nation program social economic reform therefore part defense basic armament background event europe africa asia recent year pattern accomplish since 1933 appear even clear focus first time move upon problem affect national strength forge national instrument adequate meet consider seemingly piecemeal struggle six year add term realistic national preparedness conserve develop natural water power forest try provide necessary food shelter medical care health population put system food fibre sounder basis strengthen weak spot system industrial long smoulder labor difficulty clean credit system depositor investor alike may readily willingly make capital available peace war give youth new opportunity work education sustain morale population dignify recognition obligation age helpless needy make american people conscious interrelationship interdependence sense common destiny common need difference occupation geography race religion longer obscure nation fundamental unity think action difficulty wiser tough nation 1929 1932 never six year internal preparedness history do without dictator power command without conscription labor confiscation capital without concentration camp without scratch freedom speech freedom press rest bill right see thing could see along way tool government 1933 outmode forge new tool new role government operate role new responsibility new need increase responsibility old need long neglected tool roughly shape still need machine many fought bitterly forge new tool welcome use today american people whole accepted nation look congress improve new machinery permanently instal provided process social usefulness machinery destroyed impair u agree simplify improve law experience operation clearly demonstrate need instance u want good provision old people social security legislation medically needy must provide good care u agree sake employer employee alike must find way end factional labor strife dispute u recognize none tool put maximum effectiveness unless executive process government effective combination even reorganization take time develop administrative personnel experience order use new tool minimum mistake congress course need information exception legislation provide great government efficiency exception legislation ameliorate railroad transportation problem past three congress meet part whole pressing need new order thing pass period internal conflict launch program social reform full energy may release invigorate process recovery order preserve reform give every man woman want work real job living wage time paramount importance deadline danger within without within control may hand nation tell u race make democracy work may efficient peace therefore secure national defense time element force u still great effort attain full employment labor capital first duty statesmanship bring capital together dictatorships main force use main force apparently succeed moment however abhor method compel admit obtain substantial utilization material human resource like solved time least problem idle men idle capital compete boldly seek method put idle men idle capital together time remain within american way life within bill right within bound point view civilization suffer great unemployment capital many people idea nation overburden debt spending afford despite federal government expenditure entire debt national economic system public private together large today 1929 interest thereon far less 1929 object put well work want get enough capital labor work give u total turnover business total national income least eighty billion dollar year figure shall substantial reduction unemployment federal revenue sufficient balance current level cash expenditure basis exist tax structure figure attain work within framework traditional profit system factor attain maintain amount national income many complicate include widespread understanding among business men many change world condition technological improvement bring economy last twenty interrelationship price volume employment change kind business men educate excellent opportunity like monopoly investigation include perfect farm program protect farmer income consumer purchase power alternate risk crop glut crop shortage include wholehearted acceptance new standard honesty financial market include reconcilement enormous antagonistic long railroad general transportation field include work new state protect public interest develop wider market electric power include revamp tax relationship federal state local unit government consideration relatively small tax increase adjust inequality without interfere aggregate income american people include perfect labor organization universal ungrudging attitude employer toward labor movement minimum interruption production employment dispute acceptance labor truth welfare labor depends increase balanced good immediately practical proceed steady evolution solve like problem must wisely use instrumentality like federal investment immediately available u elsewhere time decide factor choice remedy therefore seem logical moment seek increase production consumption federal government consider drastic curtailment investment whole subject government invest government income one may approach two different way first call elimination enough activity government bring expense government immediately balance income government school think maintains national income year sixty billion dollar sixty billion dollar country government must treat without help government may day somehow happen become eighty billion dollar country congress decide accept point view logically reduce present function activity government congress accept responsibility reduction congress determine activity reduce certain expenditure possibly reduce session interest public debt million dollar save normal curtailed work old department commission make great save federal budget therefore congress would reduce drastically certain large item large item aid agriculture soil conservation veteran pension flood control highway waterways public work grant social health security civilian conservation corp activity relief unemployed national defense congress alone power appropriate branch government approach question government spending take position nation ought need sixty billion dollar nation moment men resource sufficient make least eighty billion dollar nation school think believe become eighty billion dollar nation near future government cut operation convince try would invite would long remain even sixty billion dollar nation many complicate factor deal learn unsafe make abrupt reduction time net expenditure program common sense action resume government activity last spring reverse recession start new rise tide prosperity national income begin enjoy government activity fully maintain good prospect become eighty billion dollar country short time national income present tax law yield enough year balance year expense conviction heart american agriculture congress whatever need do raise national income eighty billion dollar year invest soundly must preclude spending wastefully guard opportunist appropriation several occasion address congress importance permanent plan hope therefore follow recommendation last year permanent agency set authorize report urgency desirability various type government investment investment prosperity make democracy hear people say complicate certain advantage dictatorship get rid labor trouble unemployment waste motion think answer yes also get rid thing american intend definitely still intend think cost u tax voluntary risk capital attain practical advantage forms government acquire dictatorship however involve cost american people never pay cost spiritual value cost bless right able say please cost freedom religion cost see capital confiscate cost cast concentration camp cost afraid walk street wrong neighbor cost child bring free dignify human being pawn mold enslaved machine avoidance cost mean tax income avoid cost mean tax estate death would bear tax willingly price breathe child breathe free air free country price live dead world event abroad make increasingly clear american people danger within less feared danger without therefore solution problem idle men idle capital price preserve liberty formless selfish fear stand way prophesied generation americans rendezvous destiny prophecy come true u much give expect generation nobly save meanly lose last best hope earth way plain peaceful generous way follow world forever applaud god must forever bless