Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address eBook

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 16 pages of information about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address eBook

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 16 pages of information about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address.
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.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.