FDR

It is our task to perfect, to improve, to alter when necessary, but in all cases to go forward.

They recognize that human welfare has not increased and does not increase through mere materialism and luxury, but that it does progress through integrity, unselfishness, responsibility and justice.

We seek the definite end of preventing combinations in furtherance of monopoly and in restraint of trade, while at the same time we seek to prevent ruinous rivalries within industrial groups which in many cases resemble the gang wars of…

You recognized last spring that the most serious part of the debt burden affected those who stood in danger of losing their farms and their homes.

We have, I hope, made it clear to our neighbors that we seek with them future avoidance of territorial expansion and of interference by one Nation in the internal affairs of another.

In other parts of the world, however, fear of immediate or future aggression and with it the spending of vast sums on armament and the continued building up of defensive trade barriers prevent any great progress in peace or trade…

I have made it clear that the United States cannot take part in political arrangements in Europe but that we stand ready to cooperate at any time in practicable measures on a world basis looking to immediate reduction of armaments and the…

Returning to home problems, we have been shocked by many notorious examples of injuries done our citizens by persons or groups who have been living off their neighbors by the use of methods either unethical or criminal.

In the first category--a field which does not involve violations of the letter of our laws--practices have been brought to light which have shocked those who believed that we were in the past generation raising the ethical standards of…

In the other category, crimes of organized banditry, coldblooded shooting, lynching and kidnapping have threatened our security.

These violations of ethics and these violations of law call on the strong arm of Government for their immediate suppression; they call also on the country for an aroused public opinion.

I shall continue to regard it as my duty to use whatever means may be necessary to supplement State, local and private agencies for the relief of suffering caused by unemployment.

With respect to this question, I have recognized the dangers inherent in the direct giving of relief and have sought the means to provide not mere relief, but the opportunity for useful and remunerative work.

We shall, in the process of recovery, seek to move as rapidly as possible from direct relief to publicly supported work and from that to the rapid restoration of private employment.

It is to the eternal credit of the American people that this tremendous readjustment of our national life is being accomplished peacefully, without serious dislocation, with only a minimum of injustice and with a great, willing spirit of…

Self-help and self-control are the essence of the American tradition--not of necessity the form of that tradition, but its spirit.

Viewed in the large, it is designed to save from destruction and to keep for the future the genuinely important values created by modern society.

The vicious and wasteful parts of that society we could not save if we wished; they have chosen the way of self-destruction.

We would save useful mechanical invention, machine production, industrial efficiency, modern means of communication, broad education.

We would save and encourage the slowly growing impulse among consumers to enter the industrial market place equipped with sufficient organization to insist upon fair prices and honest sales.

The letter of the Constitution wisely declared a separation, but the impulse of common purpose declares a union.

We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution.

Of equal moment, there is evident a restoration of that spirit of confidence and faith which marks the American character.

In every Nation economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared.

In most Nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient Governments are beginning to heed the call.