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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 104 ***
+
+          Inaugural Address of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
+                    Given in Washington, D.C.
+                          March 4th, 1933
+
+
+President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:
+
+
+This is a day of national consecration, and I am certain that on this
+day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency
+I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present
+situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak
+the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from
+honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will
+endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of
+all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear
+is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
+paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark
+hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has
+met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which
+is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give
+that support to leadership in these critical days.
+
+In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common
+difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values
+have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay
+has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of
+income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the
+withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers
+find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in
+thousands of families are gone.
+
+More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of
+existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a
+foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
+
+And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are
+stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our
+forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we
+have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and
+human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a
+generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
+Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods
+have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence,
+have admitted their failure and have abdicated. Practices of the
+unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public
+opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
+
+True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern
+of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed
+only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which
+to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have
+resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.
+They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no
+vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
+
+Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple
+of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient
+truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we
+apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
+
+Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy
+of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the moral
+stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of
+evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they
+cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered
+unto but to minister to ourselves—to our fellow men.
+
+Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of
+success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that
+public office and high political position are to be valued only by the
+standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an
+end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given
+to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small
+wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on
+honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on
+unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
+
+Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This
+Nation is asking for action, and action now.
+
+Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no
+unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be
+accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself,
+treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the
+same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed
+projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural
+resources.
+
+Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of
+population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national
+scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land
+for those best fitted for the land. Yes, the task can be helped by
+definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with
+this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped
+by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through
+foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by
+insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act
+forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can
+be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often
+scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning
+for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of
+communications and other utilities that have a definitely public
+character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can
+never be helped by merely talking about it. We must act; we must act
+quickly.
+
+And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work we require
+two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there
+must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and
+investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s
+money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
+
+These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge
+upon a new Congress, in special session, detailed measures for their
+fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the
+forty-eight States.
+
+Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own
+national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our
+international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of
+time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national
+economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things
+first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international
+economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that
+accomplishment.
+
+The basic thought that guides these specific means of national
+recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a
+first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements
+in and parts of the United States of America—a recognition of the old
+and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the
+pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the
+strongest assurance that recovery will endure.
+
+In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the
+policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects
+himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the
+neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his
+agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
+
+If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we
+have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we
+cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go
+forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice
+for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no
+progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know,
+ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such
+discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the
+larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes
+will bind upon us—bind upon us all—as a sacred obligation with a
+unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.
+
+With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this
+great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our
+common problems.
+
+Action in this image—action to this end—is feasible under the form
+of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our
+Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to
+meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without
+loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has
+proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern
+world has ever seen. It has met every stress of vast expansion of
+territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world
+relations.
+
+And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and
+legislative authority may be wholly equal—wholly adequate—to meet the
+unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented
+demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure
+from that normal balance of public procedure.
+
+I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures
+that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.
+These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of
+its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional
+authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
+
+But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two
+courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I
+shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I
+shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the
+crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as
+great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded
+by a foreign foe.
+
+For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion
+that befit the time. I can do no less.
+
+We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of
+national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and
+precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the
+stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the
+assurance of a rounded—a permanent—national life.
+
+We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of
+the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a
+mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for
+discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the
+present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
+
+In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May
+He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to
+come.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 104 ***