It is imperative that we continue to coordinate United States programs affecting other nations.

Fellow citizens: On this Labor Day, 1954, we Americans pause to take special note of the dignity and the worth--and the tremendous accomplishment--of the individual worker in our land.

It is, then, with profound hope and confidence--and with prayer for the future ages of mankind--that I now, by this act, begin construction of America's first commercial-size atomic power plant.

It is our good fortune, therefore, that on this special day we take a historic step forward, opening for all of us new avenues to constructive employment, to prosperity, to respite from burdensome toil.

My friends, through such measures as these, and through knowledge we are sure to gain from this new plant we begin today, I am confident that the atom will not be devoted exclusively to the destruction of man, but will be his mighty…

On this day we salute with special pride the unmatched productivity of our working men and women.

We do not, as we see it, want to be the great bosses of America.

I know of nothing--particularly for one who has to spend a great deal of his time in Washington in an official position--that can take the place of going out and trying again to meet Americans that are making a living and paying taxes…

I was going to do my best to pick a Cabinet that would do its best, to pick administrators that would do their best, to look at the United States as a whole.

Unless the United States is prosperous, unless each individual feels that glorious right within himself, to do for himself and his family what he can, to get the spiritual uplift of working as hard as he knows how, for himself, and for his…

It is Americans--it is the American spirit, American faith, American courage, and American stamina that have been the greatest resource of this Nation since the first landing in Virginia.

Washington is there to help coordinate, to help in every kind of thing that, as Lincoln put it: to help in those things which people cannot do for themselves, or cannot so well do for themselves.

And that is why we are here--trying to learn, not merely to make speeches.

We believe that the people who are farming the land and using the water, who are developing our natural resources, know a little more about it than the people that just are passing laws concerning it.

It is merely that the Federal Government is doing its part in trying to be your good partner.

What is good for the agriculture and the agricultural interests of the United States, for the natural resources of the United States, is good for all of us, not only now but extending on into the future.

While it is true today that my party and I are here on a special kind of fact-gathering trip, always in any kind of trip it is that need we feel, to get out again and to see Americans in their own homes, and in their own cities, making…

Let's not make Washington the master of any free American, either through unnecessary direct intervention in his business, or through the indirect method of getting control of all of the power and other resources that he needs in order to…