FDR´s First Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1933
I am certain that 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 impel. 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
vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people
themselves which is essential to victory. 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 shrunken 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; 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.
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 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 know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no
vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
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 the 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 and moral stimulation of work no
longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These
dark days 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 and to
our fellow men.
Recognition of the 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, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks 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 natural resources.
Hand in hand with
this 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. 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, State, and 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, and
unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of
all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities
which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which
it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it.
We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward 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.
There 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 several 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 all
parts of the United States—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 the 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 can not 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 is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are,
I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such
discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a
larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes
will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty
hitherto evoked only in time 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 and to this end is feasible under the form of government
which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so
simple and 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 produced. It
has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of
bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped
that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be
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, and 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 the
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 and 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.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed.,
The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 11–16.
Students:
Victor Dominguez
Mihaela Tirca
Labels: 1940s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, New Deal, Political speech project
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