We seek it through tested liberal traditions, through processes which retain all of the deep essentials of that republican form of representative government first given to a troubled world by the United States.
FDR
The Public Record
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1933, until his death on April 12, 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in New York and is best known for his leadership during two of the most significant crises in American history: the Great Depression and World War II. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, a series of programs and reforms aimed at economic recovery and social welfare, which fundamentally reshaped the role of the federal government in American life.
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The attempt to make a distinction between recovery and reform is a narrowly conceived effort to substitute the appearance of reality for reality itself.
When a man is convalescing from illness, wisdom dictates not only cure of the symptoms, but also removal of their cause.
It is important to recognize that while we seek to outlaw specific abuses, the American objective of today has an infinitely deeper, finer and more lasting purpose than mere repression.
Thinking people in almost every country of the world have come to realize certain fundamental difficulties with which civilization must reckon.
Rapid changes--the machine age, the advent of universal and rapid communication and many other new factors--have brought new problems.
We lose sight, from time to time, of our ultimate human objectives.
We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies.
In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged.
No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our families.
We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over…
In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions.
But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.
A study of our national resources, more comprehensive than any previously made, shows the vast amount of necessary and practicable work which needs to be done for the development and preservation of our natural wealth for the enjoyment and…
The sound use of land and water is far more comprehensive than the mere planting of trees, building of dams, distributing of electricity or retirement of sub-marginal land.
It recognizes that stranded populations, either in the country or the city, cannot have security under the conditions that now surround them.
A definite program for putting people to work, of which I shall speak in a moment, is a component part of this greater program of security of livelihood through the better use of our national resources.
Closely related to the broad problem of livelihood is that of security against the major hazards of life.
Whatever we plan and whatever we do should be in the light of these three clear objectives of security.
We cannot afford to lose valuable time in haphazard public policies which cannot find a place in the broad outlines of these major purposes.
In that spirit I come to an immediate issue made for us by hard and inescapable circumstance--the task of putting people to work.
In the spring of 1933 the issue of destitution seemed to stand apart; today, in the light of our experience and our new national policy, we find we can put people to work in ways which conform to, initiate and carry forward the broad…
The first objectives of emergency legislation of 1933 were to relieve destitution, to make it possible for industry to operate in a more rational and orderly fashion, and to put behind industrial recovery the impulse of large expenditures…
The purpose of the National Industrial Recovery Act to provide work for more people succeeded in a substantial manner within the first few months of its life, and the Act has continued to maintain employment gains and greatly improved…
But the stark fact before us is that great numbers still remain unemployed.
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