Those opposing this plan have sought to arouse prejudice and fear by crying that I am seeking to "pack" the Supreme Court and that a baneful precedent will be established.
What do they mean by the words "packing the Court"?
Let me answer this question with a bluntness that will end allhonestmisunderstanding of my purposes.
If by that phrase "packing the Court" it is charged that I wish to place on the bench spineless puppets who would disregard the law and would decide specific cases as I wished them to be decided, I make this answer: that no President fit for his office would appoint, and no Senate of honorable men fit for their office would confirm, that kind of appointees to the Supreme Court.
But if by that phrase the charge is made that I would appoint and the Senate would confirm justices worthy to sit beside present members of the Court who understand those modern conditions, that I will appoint justices who will not undertake to override the judgment of the Congress on legislative policy, that I will appoint justices who will act as justices and not as legislators—if the appointment of such justices can be called "packing the Courts," then I say that I and with me the vast majority of the American people favor doing just that thing—now.
Is it a dangerous precedent for the Congress to change the number of the justices? The Congress has always had, and will have, that power. The number of justices has been changed several times before, in the administration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson— both signers of the Declaration of Independence—Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
I suggest only the addition of justices to the bench in accordance with a clearly defined principle relating to a clearly defined age limit. Fundamentally, if in the future, America cannot trust the Congress it elects to refrain from abuse of our Constitutional usages, democracy will have failed far beyond the importance to it of any king of precedent concerning the judiciary.
We think it so much in the public interest to maintain a vigorous judiciary that we encourage the retirement of elderly judges by offering them a life pension at full salary. Why then should we leave the fulfillment of this public policy to chance or make independent on upon the desire or prejudice of any individual justice?
It is the clear intention of our public policy to provide for a constant flow of new and younger blood into the judiciary. Normally every President appoints a large number of district and circuit court judges and a few members of the Supreme Court. Until my first term practically every President of the United States has appointed at least one member of the Supreme Court. President Taft appointed five members and named a Chief Justice; President Wilson, three; President Harding, four, including a Chief Justice; President Coolidge, one; President Hoover, three, including a Chief Justice.
Such a succession of appointments should have provided a Court well-balanced as to age. But chance and the disinclination of individuals to leave the Supreme bench have now given us a Court in which five justices will be over seventy-five years of age before next June and one over seventy. Thus a sound public policy has been defeated.
I now propose that we establish by law an assurance against any such ill-balanced court in the future. I propose that hereafter, when a judge reaches the age of seventy, a new and younger judge shall be added to the court automatically. In this way I propose to enforce a sound public policy by law instead of leaving the composition of our federal courts, including the highest, to be determined by chance or the personal indecision of individuals.
If such a law as I propose is regarded as establishing a new precedent, is it not a most desirable precedent?
Like all lawyers, like all Americans, I regret the necessity of this controversy. But the welfare of the United States, and indeed of the Constitution itself, is what we all must think about first. Our difficulty with the Court today rises not from the Court as an institution but from human beings within it. But we cannot yield our constitutional destiny to the personal judgment of a few men who, being fearful of the future, would deny us the necessary means of dealing with the present.
This plan of mine is no attack on the Court; it seeks to restore the Court to its rightful and historic place in our constitutional government and to have it resume its high task of building anew on the Constitution "a system of living law." The Court itself can best undo what the Court has done.
I have thus explained to you the reasons that lie behind our efforts to secure results by legislation within the Constitution. I hope that thereby the difficult process of constitutional amendment may be rendered unnecessary. But let us examine the process.
There are many types of amendment proposed. Each one is radically different from the other. There is no substantial groups within the Congress or outside it who are agreed on any single amendment.
It would take months or years to get substantial agreement upon the type and language of the amendment. It would take months and years thereafter to get a two-thirds majority in favor of that amendment inbothHouses of the Congress.
Then would come the long course of ratification by three-fourths of all the states. No amendment which any powerful economic interests or the leaders of any powerful political party have had reason to oppose has ever been ratified within anything like a reasonable time. And thirteen states which contain only five percent of the voting population can block ratification even though the thirty- five states with ninety-five percent of the population are in favor of it.
A very large percentage of newspaper publishers, Chambers of Commerce, Bar Association, Manufacturers' Associations, who are trying to give the impression that they really do want a constitutional amendment would be the first to exclaim as soon as an amendment was proposed, "Oh! I was for an amendment all right, but this amendment you proposed is not the kind of amendment that I was thinking about. I am therefore, going to spend my time, my efforts and my money to block the amendment, although I would be awfully glad to help get some other kind of amendment ratified."
Two groups oppose my plan on the ground that they favor a constitutional amendment. The first includes those who fundamentally object to social and economic legislation along modern lines. This is the same group who during the campaign last Fall tried to block the mandate of the people.
Now they are making a last stand. And the strategy of that last stand is to suggest the time-consuming process of amendment in order to kill off by delay the legislation demanded by the mandate.
To them I say: I do not think you will be able long to fool theAmerican people as to your purposes.
The other groups is composed of those who honestly believe the amendment process is the best and who would be willing to support a reasonable amendment if they could agree on one.
To them I say: we cannot rely on an amendment as the immediate or only answer to our present difficulties. When the time comes for action, you will find that many of those who pretend to support you will sabotage any constructive amendment which is proposed. Look at these strange bed-fellows of yours. When before have you found them really at your side in your fights for progress?
And remember one thing more. Even if an amendment were passed, and even if in the years to come it were to be ratified, its meaning would depend upon the kind of justices who would be sitting on the Supreme Court bench. An amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, is what the justices say it is rather than what its framers or you might hope it is.
This proposal of mine will not infringe in the slightest upon the civil or religious liberties so dear to every American.
My record as Governor and President proves my devotion to those liberties. You who know me can have no fear that I would tolerate the destruction by any branch of government of any part of our heritage of freedom.
The present attempt by those opposed to progress to play upon the fears of danger to personal liberty brings again to mind that crude and cruel strategy tried by the same opposition to frighten the workers of America in a pay-envelope propaganda against the Social Security Law. The workers were not fooled by that propaganda then. The people of America will not be fooled by such propaganda now.
I am in favor of action through legislation:
First, because I believe that it can be passed at this session of the Congress.
Second, because it will provide a reinvigorated, liberal-minded judiciary necessary to furnish quicker and cheaper justice from bottom to top.
Third, because it will provide a series of federal courts willing to enforce the Constitution as written, and unwilling to assert legislative powers by writing into it their own political and economic policies.
During the past half century the balance of power between the three great branches of the federal government, has been tipped out of balance by the courts in direct contradiction of the high purposes of the framers of the Constitution. It is my purpose to restore that balance. You who know me will accept my solemn assurance that in a world in which democracy is under attack, I seek to make American democracy succeed. You and I will do our part.
October 12, 1937.
My Friends:
This afternoon I have issued a Proclamation calling a special session of the Congress to convene on Monday, November 15, 1937.
I do this in order to give to the Congress an opportunity to consider important legislation before the regular session in January, and to enable the Congress to avoid a lengthy session next year, extending through the summer.
I know that many enemies of democracy will say that it is bad for business, bad for the tranquility of the country, to have a special session—even one beginning only six weeks before the regular session. But I have never had sympathy with the point of view that a session of the Congress is an unfortunate intrusion of what they call "politics" into our national affairs. Those who do not like democracy want to keep legislators at home. But the Congress is an essential instrument of democratic government; and democratic government can never be considered an intruder into the affairs of a democratic nation.
I shall ask this special session to consider immediately certain important legislation which my recent trip through the nation convinces me the American people immediately need. This does not mean that other legislation, to which I am not referring tonight, is not important for our national well-being. But other legislation can be more readily discussed at the regular session.
Anyone charged with proposing or judging national policies should have first-hand knowledge of the nation as a whole.
That is why again this year I have taken trips to all parts of the country. Last spring I visited the Southwest. This summer I made several trips in the East. Now I am just back from a trip from a trip all the way across the continent, and later this autumn I hope to pay my annual visit to the Southeast.
For a President especially it is a duty to think in national terms.
He must think not only of this year but of future years, when someone else will be President.
He must look beyond the average of the prosperity and well-being of the country, for averages easily cover up danger spots of poverty and instability.
He must not let the country be deceived by a merely temporary prosperity which depends on wasteful exploitation of resources which cannot last.
He must think not only of keeping us out of war today, but also of keeping us out of war in generations to come.
The kind of prosperity we want is the sound and permanent kind which is not built up temporarily at the expense of any section or any group. And the kind of peace we want is the sound and permanent kind, which is built on the cooperative search for peace by all the nations which want peace.
The other day I was asked to state my outstanding impression gained on this recent trip. I said that it seemed to me to be the general understanding on the part of the average citizen of the broad objectives and policies which I have just outlined.
Five years of fierce discussion and debate—five years of information through the radio and the moving picture—have taken the whole nation to school in the nation's business. Even those who have most attacked our objectives have, by their very criticism, encouraged the mass of our citizens to think about and understand the issues involved, and, understanding, to approve.
Out of that process, we have learned to think as a nation. And out of that process we have learned to feel ourselves a nation. As never before in our history, each section of America says to every other section, "Thy people shall be my people."
For most of the country this has been a good year—better in dollars and cents than for many years—far better in the soundness of its prosperity. And everywhere I went I found particular optimism about the good effect on business which is expected from the steady spending by farmers of the largest farm income in many years.
But we have not yet done all that must be done to make this prosperity stable. The people of the United States were checked in their efforts to prevent future piling up of huge agricultural surpluses and the tumbling prices which inevitably follow them. They were checked in their efforts to secure reasonable minimum wages and maximum hours and the end of child labor. And because they were checked, many groups in many parts of the country still have less purchasing power and a lower standard of living than the nation as a whole can permanently allow.
Americans realize these facts. That is why they ask government not to stop governing simply because prosperity has come back a long way.
They do not look on government as an interloper in their affairs. On the contrary, they regard it as the most effective form of organized self-help.
Sometimes I get bored sitting in Washington hearing certain people talk and talk about all that government oughtnotdo—people who got alltheywanted from government back in the days when the financial institutions and the railroads were being bailed out by the government in 1933. It is refreshing to go out through the country and feel the common wisdom that the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
They want the financial budget balanced. But they want the human budget balanced as well. They want to set up a national economy which balances itself with as little government subsidy as possible, for they realize that persistent subsidies ultimately bankrupt their government.
They are less concerned that every detail be immediately right than they are that the direction be right. They know that just so long as we are traveling on the right road, it does not make much difference if occasionally we hit a "Thank you marm."
The overwhelming majority of our citizens who live by agriculture are thinking very clearly how they want government to help them in connection with the production of crops. They want government help in two ways: first, in the control of surpluses, and, second, in the proper use of land.
The other day a reporter told me that he had never been able to understand why the government seeks to curtail crop production and, at the same time, to open up new irrigated acres.
He was confusing two totally separate objectives.
Crop surplus control relates to the total amount of any major crop grown in the whole nation on all cultivated land—good or bad— control by the cooperation of the crop growers and with the help of the government. Land use, on the other hand, is a policy of providing each farmer with the best quality and type of land we have, or can make available, for his part in that total production. Adding good new land for diversified crops is offset by abandoning poor land now uneconomically farmed.
The total amount of production largely determines the price of the crop, and, therefore, the difference between comfort and misery for the farmer.
If we Americans were foolish enough to run every shoe factory twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we would soon have more shoes than the nation could possibly buy—a surplus of shoes so great that it would have to be destroyed, or given away, or sold at prices far below the cost of production. That simple law of supply and demand equally affects the price of all our major crops.
You and I have heard big manufacturers talk about control of production by the farmer as an indefensible "economy of scarcity." And yet these same manufacturers never hesitate to shut down their own huge plants, throw men out of work, and cut down the purchasing power of whole communities whenever they think that they must adjust their production to an oversupply of the goods they make. When it is their baby who has the measles, they call it not "an economy of scarcity" but "sound business judgment."
Of course, speaking seriously, what you and I want is such governmental rules of the game that labor and agriculture and industry will all produce a balanced abundance without waste.
So we intend this winter to find a way to prevent four-and-a-half cent cotton, nine cent corn and thirty cent wheat—with all the disaster those prices mean for all of us—to prevent those prices from ever coming back again. To do that, the farmers themselves want to cooperate to build an all-weather farm program so that in the long run prices will be more stable. They believe this can be done, and the national budget kept out of the red.
And when we have found that way to protect the farmers' prices from the effects of alternating crop surpluses and crop scarcities, we shall also have found the way to protect the nation's food supply from the effects of the same fluctuation. We ought always to have enough food at prices within the reach of the consuming public. For the consumers in the cities of America, we must find a way to help the farmers to store up in years of plenty enough to avoid hardship in the years of scarcity.
Our land use policy is a different thing. I have just visited much of the work that the national government is doing to stop soil erosion, to save our forests, to prevent floods, to produce electric power for more general use, and to give people a chance to move from poor land on to better land by irrigating thousands of acres that need only water to provide an opportunity to make a good living.
I saw bare and burned hillsides where only a few years ago great forests were growing. They are now being planted to young trees, not only to stop erosion, but to provide a lumber supply for the future.
I saw C.C.C. boys and W.P.A. workers building check-dams and small ponds and terraces to raise the water table and make it possible for farms and villages to remain in safety where they now are. I saw the harnessing of the turbulent Missouri, muddy with the topsoil of many states. And I saw barges on new channels carrying produce and freight athwart the nation.
Let me give you two simple illustrations of why government projects of this type have a national importance for the whole country.
In the Boise Valley in Idaho I saw a district which had been recently irrigated to enormous fertility so that a family can now make a pretty good living from forty acres of its land. Many of the families, who are making good in that valley today, moved there from a thousand miles away. They came from the dust strip that runs through the middle of the nation all the way from the Canadian border to Mexico, a strip which includes large portions of ten states. That valley in western Idaho, therefore, assumes at once a national importance as a second chance for willing farmers. And, year by year, we propose to add more valleys to take care of thousands of other families who need the same kind of second chance in new green pastures.
The other illustration was at the Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington. The engineer in charge told me that almost half of the whole cost of that dam to date had been spent for materials that were manufactured east of the Mississippi River, giving employment and wages to thousands of industrial workers in the eastern third of the nation, two thousand miles away.
All of this work needs, of course, a more businesslike system of planning and greater foresight than we use today.
That is why I recommended to the last session of the Congress the creation of seven planning regions, in which local people will originate and coordinate recommendations as to the kind of this work of this kind to be done in their particular regions. The Congress will, of course, determine the projects to be selected within the budget limits.
To carry out any twentieth century program, we must give the Executive branch of the government twentieth century machinery to work with. I recognize that democratic processes are necessarily and rightly slower than dictatorial processes. But I refuse to believe that democratic processes need be dangerously slow.
For many years we have all known that the Executive and Administrative departments of the government in Washington are a higgledy-piggledy patchwork of duplicate responsibilities and overlapping powers. The reorganization of this vast government machinery which I proposed to the Congress last winter does not conflict with the principle of the democratic process, as some people say. It only makes that process work more efficiently.
On my recent trip many people have talked to me about the millions of men and women and children who still work at insufficient wages and overlong hours.
American industry has searched the outside world to find new markets—but it can create on its very doorstep the biggest and most permanent market it has ever had. It needs the reduction of trade barriers to improve its foreign markets, but it should not overlook the chance to reduce the domestic trade barrier right here—right away—without waiting for any treaty. A few more dollars a week in wages, a better distribution of jobs with a shorter working day will almost overnight make millions of our lowest-paid workers actual buyers of billions of dollars of industrial and farm products. That increased volume of sales ought to lessen other cost of production so much that even a considerable increase in labor costs can be absorbed without imposing higher prices on the consumer.
I am a firm believer in fully adequate pay for all labor. But right now I am most greatly concerned in increasing the pay of the lowest-paid labor—those who are our most numerous consuming group but who today do not make enough to maintain a decent standard of living or to buy the food, and the clothes and the other articles necessary to keep our factories and farms fully running.
Farsighted businessmen already understand and agree with this policy. They agree also that no one section of the country can permanently benefit itself, or the rest of the country, by maintaining standards of wages and hours far inferior to other sections of the country.
Most businessmen, big and little, know that their government neither wants to put them out of business nor to prevent them from earning a decent profit. In spite of the alarms of a few who seek to regain control of American life, most businessmen, big and little, know that their government is trying to make property more secure than ever before by giving every family a real chance to have a property stake in the nation.
Whatever danger there may be to the property and profits of the many, if there be any danger, comes not from government's attitude toward business but from restraints now imposed upon business by private monopolies and financial oligarchies. The average businessman knows that a high cost of living is a great deterrent to business and that business prosperity depends much upon a low price policy which encourages the widest possible consumption. As one of the country's leading economists recently said, "The continuance of business recovery in the United States depends far more upon business policies, business pricing policies, than it does on anything that may be done, or not done, in Washington."
Our competitive system is, of course, not altogether competitive. Anybody who buys any large quantity of manufactured goods knows this, whether it be the government or an individual buyer. We have anti-trust laws, to be sure, but they have not been adequate to check the growth of many monopolies. Whether or not they might have been adequate originally, interpretation by the courts and the difficulties and delays of legal procedure have now definitely limited their effectiveness.
We are already studying how to strengthen our anti-trust laws in order to end monopoly—not to hurt but to free legitimate business.
I have touched briefly on these important subjects, which, taken together, make a program for the immediate future. To attain it, legislation is necessary.
As we plan today for the creation of ever higher standards of living for the people of the United States, we are aware that our plans may be most seriously affected by events in the world outside our borders.
By a series of trade agreements, we have been attempting to recreate the trade of the world which plays so important a part in our domestic prosperity; but we know that if the world outside our borders falls into the chaos of war, world trade will be completely disrupted.
Nor can we view with indifference the destruction of civilized values throughout the world. We seek peace, not only for our generation but also for the generation of our children.
We seek for them the continuance of world civilization in order that their American civilization may continue to be invigorated by the achievements of civilized men and women in the rest of the world.
I want our great democracy to be wise enough to realize that aloofness from war is not promoted by unawareness of war. In a world of mutual suspicions, peace must be affirmatively reached for. It cannot just be wished for. And it cannot just be waited for.
We have now made known our willingness to attend a conference of the parties to the Nine Power Treaty of 1922—the Treaty of Washington—of which we are one of the original signatories. The purpose of this conference will be to seek by agreement a solution of the present situation in China. In efforts to find that solution, it is our purpose to cooperate with the other signatories to this Treaty, including China and Japan.
Such cooperation would be an example of one of the possible paths to follow in our search for means toward peace throughout the whole world.
The development of civilization and of human welfare is based on the acceptance by individuals of certain fundamental decencies in their relations with each other. The development of peace in the world is dependent similarly on the acceptance by nations of certain fundamental decencies in their relations with each other.
Ultimately, I hopeeachnation will accept the fact that violations of these rules of conduct are an injury to the well- being ofallnations.
Meanwhile, remember that from 1913 to 1921, I personally was fairly close to world events, and in that period, while I learned much of what to do, I also learned much of whatnotto do.
The common sense, the intelligence of America agree with my statement that "America hates war. America hopes for peace. Therefore, America actively engages in the search for peace."
April 14, 1938.
My Friends:
Five months have gone by since I last spoke to the people of the nation about the state of the nation.
I had hoped to be able to defer this talk until next week because, as we all know, this is Holy Week. But what I want to say to you, the people of the country, is of such immediate need and relates so closely to the lives of human beings and the prevention of human suffering that I have felt that there should be no delay. In this decision I have been strengthened by the thought that by speaking tonight there may be greater peace of mind and that the hope of Easter may be more real at firesides everywhere, and therefore that it is not inappropriate to encourage peace when so many of us are thinking of the Prince of Peace.
Five years ago we faced a very serious problem of economic and social recovery. For four and a half years that recovery proceeded apace. It is only in the past seven months that it has received a visible setback.
And it is only within the past two months, as we have waited patiently to see whether the forces of business itself would counteract it, that it has become apparent that government itself can no longer safely fail to take aggressive government steps to meet it.
This recession has not returned us the disasters and suffering of the beginning of 1933. Your money in the bank is safe; farmers are no longer in deep distress and have greater purchasing power; dangers of security speculation have been minimized; national income is almost 50 percent higher than in 1932; and government has an established and accepted responsibility for relief.
But I know that many of you have lost your jobs or have seen your friends or members of your families lose their jobs, and I do not propose that the government shall pretend not to see these things. I know that the effect of our present difficulties has been uneven; that they have affected some groups and some localities seriously, but that they have been scarcely felt in others. But I conceive the first duty of government is to protect the economic welfare of all the people in all sections and in all groups. I said in my message opening the last session of the Congress that if private enterprise did not provide jobs this spring, government would take up the slack—that I would not let the people down. We have all learned the lesson that government cannot afford to wait until it has lost the power to act.
Therefore, my friends, I have sent a message of far-reaching importance to the Congress. I want to read to you tonight certain passages from that message, and to talk with you about them.
In that message I analyzed the causes of the collapse of 1929 in these words: "over-speculation in and overproduction of practically every article or instrument used by man. . . millions of people, to be sure, had been put to work, but the products of their hands had exceeded the purchasing power of their pocketbooks. . . . Under the inexorable law of supply and demand, supplies so overran demand which would pay that production was compelled to stop. Unemployment and closed factories resulted. Hence the tragic years from 1929 to 1933."
I pointed out to the Congress that the national income—not the government's income but the total of the income of all the individual citizens and families of the United States—every farmer, every worker, every banker, every professional man and every person who lived on income derived from investments—that national income had amounted, in the year 1929, to eighty-one billion dollars. By 1932 this had fallen to thirty-eight billion dollars. Gradually, and up to a few months ago, it had risen to a total, an annual total; of sixty-eight billion dollars—a pretty good come-back from the low point.
I then said this to the Congress:
"But the very vigor of the recovery in both durable goods and consumers' goods brought into the picture early in certain highly undesirable practices, which were in large part responsible for the economic decline which began in the later months of that year. Again production outran the ability to buy.
"There were many reasons for this overproduction. One of them was fear—fear of war abroad, fear of inflation, fear of nation-wide strikes. None of these fears have been borne out.
". . .Production in many important lines of goods outran the ability of the public to purchase them. For example, through the winter and spring of 1937 cotton factories in hundreds of cases were running on a three-shift basis, piling up cotton goods in the factory, and in the hands of middle men and retailers. For example, also, automobile manufacturers not only turned out a normal increase of finished cars, but encouraged the normal increase to run into abnormal figures, using every known method to push their sales. This meant, of course, that the steel mills of the nation ran on a twenty-four hour basis, and the tire companies and cotton factories and glass factories and others speeded up to meet the same type of abnormally stimulated demand. The buying power of the nation lagged behind.
"Thus by the autumn of 1937, last autumn, the nation again had stocks on hand which the consuming public could not buy because the purchasing power of the consuming public had not kept pace with the production.
"During the same period. . . the prices of many vital products had risen faster than was warranted. . . . In the case of many commodities the price to the consumer was raised well above the inflationary boom prices of 1929. In many lines of goods and materials, prices got so high that buyers and builders ceased to buy or to build.
". . . The economic process of getting out the raw materials, putting them through the manufacturing and finishing processes, selling them to the retailers, selling them to the consumer, and finally using them, got completely out of balance.
". . . The laying off of workers came upon us last autumn and has been continuing at such a pace ever since that all of us, government and banking and business and workers, and those faced with destitution, recognize the need for action."
All of this I said to the Congress today and I repeat it to you, the people of the country tonight.
I went on to point out to the Senate and the House of Representatives that all the energies of government and business must be directed to increasing the national income, to putting more people into private jobs, to giving security and a feeling of security to all people in all walks of life.
I am constantly thinking of all our people—unemployed and employed alike—of their human problems of food and clothing and homes and education and health and old age. You and I agree that security is our greatest need; the chance to work, the opportunity of making a reasonable profit in our business—whether it be a very small business or a larger one—the possibility of selling our farm products for enough money for our families to live on decently. I know these are the things that decide the well-being of all our people.
Therefore, I am determined to do all in my power to help you attain that security and because I know that the people themselves have a deep conviction that secure prosperity of that kind cannot be a lasting one except on a basis of business fair dealing and a basis where all from the top to the bottom share in the prosperity. I repeated to the Congress today that neither it nor the Chief Executive can afford "to weaken or destroy great reforms which, during the past five years, have been effected on behalf of the American people. In our rehabilitation of the banking structure and of agriculture, in our provisions for adequate and cheaper credit for all types of business, in our acceptance of national responsibility for unemployment relief, in our strengthening of the credit of state and local government, in our encouragement of housing, and slum clearance and home ownership, in our supervision of stock exchanges and public utility holding companies and the issuance of new securities, in our provision for social security, the electorate of America wants no backward steps taken.
"We have recognized the right of labor to free organization, to collective bargaining; and machinery for the handling of labor relations is now in existence. The principles are established even though we can all admit that, through the evolution of time, administration and practices can be improved. Such improvement can come about most quickly and most peacefully through sincere efforts to understand and assist on the part of labor leaders and employers alike.
"The never-ceasing evolution of human society will doubtless bring forth new problems which will require new adjustments. Our immediate task is to consolidate and maintain the gains achieved.
"In this situation there is no reason and no occasion for any American to allow his fears to be aroused or his energy and enterprise to be paralyzed by doubt or uncertainty."
I came to the conclusion that the present-day problem calls for action both by the government and by the people, that we suffer primarily from a failure of consumer demand because of lack of buying power. Therefore it is up to us to create an economic upturn.
"How and where can and should the government help to start an upward spiral?"
I went on in my message today to propose three groups of measures and I will summarize my recommendations.
First, I asked for certain appropriations which are intended to keep the government expenditures for work relief and similar purposes during the coming fiscal year at the same rate of expenditure as at present. That includes additional money for the Works Progress Administration; additional funds for the Farm Security Administration; additional allotments for the national Youth Administration, and more money for the Civilian Conservation Corps, in order that it can maintain the existing number of camps now in operation.
These appropriations, made necessary by increased unemployment, will cost about a billion and a quarter dollars more than the estimates which I sent to the Congress on the third of January .
Second, I told the Congress that the administration proposes to make additional bank reserves available for the credit needs of the country. About one billion four hundred million dollars of gold now in the treasury will be used to pay these additional expenses of the government, and three-quarters of a billion dollars of additional credit will be made available to the banks by reducing the reserves now required by the Federal Reserve Board.
These two steps—taking care of relief needs and adding to bank credits—are in our best judgment insufficient by themselves to start the nation on a sustained upward movement.
Therefore, I came to the third kind of government action which I consider to be vital. I said to the Congress:
"You and I cannot afford to equip ourselves with two rounds of ammunition where three rounds are necessary. If we stop at relief and credit, we may find ourselves without ammunition before the enemy is routed. If we are fully equipped with the third round of ammunition, we stand to win the battle against adversity."
This third proposal is to make definite additions to the purchasing power of the nation by providing new work over and above the continuing of the old work.
First, to enable the United States Housing Authority to undertake the immediate construction of about three hundred million dollars of additional slum clearance projects.
Second, to renew a public works program by starting as quickly as possible about one billion dollars worth of needed permanent public improvements in our states, and their counties and cities.
Third, to add one hundred million dollars to the estimate for federal aid highways in excess of the amount I recommended in January.
Fourth, to add thirty-seven million dollars over and above the former estimate of sixty-three million for flood control and reclamation.
Fifth, to add twenty-five million dollars additional for federal buildings in various parts of the country.
In recommending this program I am thinking not only of the immediate economic needs of the people of the nation, but also of their personal liberties—the most precious possession of all Americans. I am thinking of our democracy and of the recent trend in other parts of the world away from the democratic ideal.
Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations— disappeared not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership in government. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. We in America know that our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them we need to act together, to meet the problems of the nation boldly, and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people.
Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men. The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of that defense lies in the protection of economic security. Your government, seeking to protect democracy, must prove that government is stronger than the forces of business depression.
History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments but out of weak and helpless governments. If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds, but if they do not, they grow impatient. Therefore, the only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.
We are a rich Nation; we can afford to pay for security and prosperity without having to sacrifice our liberties into the bargain.
In the first century of our republic we were short of capital, short of workers and short of industrial production; but we were rich in free land, free timber and free mineral wealth. The federal government rightly assumed the duty of promoting business and relieving depression by giving subsidies of land and other resources.
Thus, from our earliest days we have had a tradition of substantial government help to our system of private enterprise. But today the government no longer has vast tracts of rich land to give away and we have discovered, too, that we must spend large sums of money to conserve our land from further erosion and our forests from further depletion. The situation is also very different from the old days, because now we have plenty of capital, banks and insurance companies loaded with idle money; plenty of industrial productive capacity and many millions of workers looking for jobs. It is following tradition as well as necessity, if government strives to put idle money and idle men to work, to increase our public wealth and to build up the health and strength of the people—and to help our system of private enterprise to function.
It is going to cost something to get out of this recession this way but the profit of getting out of it will pay for the cost several times over. Lost working time is lost money. Every day that a workman is unemployed, or a machine is unused, or a business organization is marking time, it is a loss to the nation. Because of idle men and idle machines this Nation lost one hundred billion dollars between 1929 and the Spring of 1933, in less than four years. This year you, the people of this country, are making about twelve billion dollars less than last year.
If you think back to the experiences of the early years of this administration you will remember the doubts and fears expressed about the rising expenses of government. But to the surprise of the doubters, as we proceeded to carry on the program which included Public Works and Work Relief, the country grew richer instead of poorer.
It is worthwhile to remember that the annual national people's income was thirty billion dollars more last year in 1937 than it was in 1932. It is true that the national debt increased sixteen billion dollars, but remember that in that increase must be included several billion dollars worth of assets which eventually will reduce that debt and that many billion dollars of permanent public improvements—schools, roads, bridges, tunnels, public buildings, parks and a host of other things—meet your eye in every one of the thirty-one hundred counties in the United States.
No doubt you will be told that the government spending program of the past five years did not cause the increase in our national income. They will tell you that business revived because of private spending and investment. That is true in part, for the government spent only a small part of the total. But that government spending acted as a trigger to set off private activity. That is why the total addition to our national production and national income has been so much greater than the contribution of the government itself.
In pursuance of that thought I said to the Congress today:
"I want to make it clear that we do not believe that we can get an adequate rise in national income merely by investing, and lending or spending public funds. It is essential in our economy that private funds must be put to work and all of us recognize that such funds are entitled to a fair profit."
As national income rises, "let us not forget that government expenditures will go down and government tax receipts will go up."
The government contribution of land that we once made to business was the land of all the people. And the government contribution of money which we now make to business ultimately comes out of the labor of all the people. It is, therefore, only sound morality, as well as a sound distribution of buying power, that the benefits of the prosperity coming from this use of the money of all the people ought to be distributed among all the people—at the bottom as well as at the top. Consequently, I am again expressing my hope that the Congress will enact at this session a wage and hour bill putting a floor under industrial wages and a limit on working hours—to ensure a better distribution of our prosperity, a better distribution of available work, and a sounder distribution of buying power.
You may get all kinds of impressions in regard to the total cost of this new program, or in regard to the amount that will be added to the net national debt.
It is a big program. Last autumn in a sincere effort to bring government expenditures and government income into closer balance, the Budget I worked out called for sharp decreases in government spending.
In the light of present conditions those estimates were far too low. This new program adds two billion and sixty-two million dollars to direct treasury expenditures and another nine hundred and fifty million dollars to government loans—the latter sum, because they are loans, will come back to the treasury in the future.
The net effect on the debt of the government is this—between now and July 1, 1939—fifteen months away—the treasury will have to raise less than a billion and a half dollars of new money.
Such an addition to the net debt of the United States need not give concern to any citizen, for it will return to the people of the United States many times over in increased buying power and eventually in much greater government tax receipts because of the increase in the citizen income.
What I said to the Congress in the close of my message I repeat to you.
"Let us unanimously recognize the fact that the federal debt, whether it be twenty-five billions or forty billions, can only be paid if the nation obtains a vastly increased citizen income. I repeat that if this citizen income can be raised to eighty billion dollars a year the national government and the overwhelming majority of state and local governments will be definitely 'out of the red.' The higher the national income goes the faster will we be able to reduce the total of federal and state and local debts. Viewed from every angle, today's purchasing power—the citizens' income of today—is not at this time sufficient to drive the economic system of America at higher speed. Responsibility of government requires us at this time to supplement the normal processes and in so supplementing them to make sure that the addition is adequate. We must start again on a long steady upward incline in national income.
". . . And in that process, which I believe is ready to start, let us avoid the pitfalls of the past—the overproduction, the overspeculation, and indeed all the extremes which we did not succeed in avoiding in 1929. In all of this, government cannot and should not act alone. Business must help. And I am sure business will help.
"We need more than the materials of recovery. We need a united national will.
"We need to recognize nationally that the demands of no group, however just, can be satisfied unless that group is prepared to share in finding a way to produce the income from which they and all other groups can be paid. . . . You, as the Congress, I, as the President, must by virtue of our offices, seek the national good by preserving the balance between all groups and all sections.
"We have at our disposal the national resources, the money, the skill of hand and head to raise our economic level—our citizens' income. Our capacity is limited only by our ability to work together. What is needed is the will.
"The time has come to bring that will into action with every driving force at our command. And I am determined to do my share.
". . . Certain positive requirements seem to me to accompany the will—if we have that will.
"There is placed on all of us the duty of self-restraint. . . . That is the discipline of a democracy. Every patriotic citizen must say to himself or herself, that immoderate statement, appeals to prejudice, the creation of unkindness, are offenses not against an individual or individuals, but offenses against the whole population of the United States. . . .
"Self-restraint implies restraint by articulate public opinion, trained to distinguish fact from falsehood, trained to believe that bitterness is never a useful instrument in public affairs. There can be no dictatorship by an individual or by a group in this Nation, save through division fostered by hate. Such division there must never be."
And finally I should like to say a personal word to you.
I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust.
I try always to remember that their deepest problems are human. I constantly talk with those who come to tell me their own points of view; with those who manage the great industries and financial institutions of the country; with those who represent the farmer and the worker; and often with average citizens without high position who come to this house. And constantly I seek to look beyond the doors of the White House, beyond the officialdom of the national capital, into the hopes and fears of men and women in their homes. I have travelled the country over many times. My friends, my enemies, my daily mail bring to me reports of what you are thinking and hoping. I want to be sure that neither battles nor burdens of office shall ever blind me to an intimate knowledge of the way the American people want to live and the simple purposes for which they put me here.
In these great problems of government I try not to forget that what really counts at the bottom of it all is that the men and women willing to work can have a decent job to take care of themselves and their homes and their children adequately; that the farmer, the factory worker, the storekeeper, the gas station man, the manufacturer, the merchant—big and small—the banker who takes pride in the help that he can give to the building of his community—that all of these can be sure of a reasonable profit and safety for the savings they earn—not today nor tomorrow alone, but as far ahead as they can see.
I can hear your unspoken wonder as to where we are headed in this troubled world. I cannot expect all of the people to understand all of the people's problems; but it is my job to try to those problems.
I always try to remember that reconciling differences cannot satisfy everyone completely. Because I do not expect too much, I am not disappointed. But I know that I must never give up—that I must never let the greater interest of all the people down, merely because that might be for the moment the easiest personal way out.
I believe that we have been right in the course we have charted. To abandon our purpose of building a greater, a more stable and a more tolerant America would be to miss the tide and perhaps to miss the port. I propose to sail ahead. I feel sure that your hopes and your help are with me. For to reach a port, we must sail—sail, not lie at anchor, sail, not drift.
June 24, 1938.
Our government, happily, is a democracy. As part of the democratic process, your President is again taking an opportunity to report on the progress of national affairs, to report to the real rulers of this country—the voting public.
The Seventy-Fifth Congress, elected in November, 1936, on a platform uncompromisingly liberal, has adjourned. Barring unforeseen events, there will be no session until the new Congress, to be elected in November, assembles next January.
On the one hand, the Seventy-Fifth Congress has left many things undone.
For example, it refused to provide more businesslike machinery for running the Executive Branch of the government. The Congress also failed to meet my suggestion that it take the far-reaching steps necessary to put the railroads of the country back on their feet.
But, on the other hand, the Congress, striving to carry out the platform on which most of its members were elected, achieved more for the future good of the country than any Congress did between the end of the World War and the spring of 1933.
I mention tonight only the more important of these achievements.
(1) It improved still further our agricultural laws to give the farmer a fairer share of the national income, to preserve our soil, to provide an all-weather granary, to help the farm tenant towards independence, to find new uses for farm products, and to begin crop insurance.
(2) After many requests on my part the Congress passed a Fair Labor Standards Act, commonly called the Wages and Hours Bill. That act— applying to products in interstate commerce—ends child labor, sets a floor below wages and a ceiling over hours of labor.
Except perhaps for the Social Security Act, it is the most far- reaching, the most far-sighted program for the benefit of workers ever adopted here or in any other country. Without question it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of farm and factory.
Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you—using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions—that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives most heartily disagree.
(3) The Congress has provided a fact-finding Commission to find a path through the jungle of contradictory theories about the wise business practices—to find the necessary facts for any intelligent legislation on monopoly, on price-fixing and on the relationship between big business and medium-sized business and little business. Different from a great part of the world, we in America persist in our belief in individual enterprise and in the profit motive; but we realize we must continually seek improved practices to insure the continuance of reasonable profits, together with scientific progress, individual initiative, opportunities for the little fellow, fair prices, decent wages and continuing employment.
(4) The Congress has coordinated the supervision of commercial aviation and air mail by establishing a new Civil Aeronautics Authority; and it has placed all postmasters under the civil service for the first time in our national history.
(5) The Congress set up the United States Housing Authority to help finance large-scale slum clearance and provide low rent housing for the low income groups in our cities. And by improving the Federal Housing Act, the Congress made it easier for private capital to build modest homes and low rental dwellings.
(6) The Congress has properly reduced taxes on small corporate enterprises, and has made it easier for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make credit available to all business. I think the bankers of the country can fairly be expected to participate in loans where the government, through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, offers to take a fair portion of the risk.
(7) The Congress has provided additional funds for the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps and other agencies, in order to take care of what we hope is a temporary additional number of unemployed at this time and to encourage production of every kind by private enterprise.
All these things together I call our program for the national defense of our economic system. It is a program of balanced action—of moving on all fronts at once in intelligent recognition that all of our economic problems, of every group, and of every section of the country are essentially one problem.
(8) Finally, because of increasing armaments in other nations and an international situation which is definitely disturbing to all of us, the Congress has authorized important additions to the national armed defense of our shores and our people.
On another important subject the net result of a struggle in theCongress has been an important victory for the people of the UnitedStates—what might well be called a lost battle which won a war.
You will remember that on February 5, 1937, I sent a message to the Congress dealing with the real need of federal court reforms of several kinds. In one way or another, during the sessions of this Congress, the ends—the real objectives—sought in that message, have been substantially attained.
The attitude of the Supreme Court towards constitutional questions is entirely changed. Its recent decisions are eloquent testimony of a willingness to collaborate with the two other branches of government to make democracy work. The government has been granted the right to protect its interests in litigation between private parties involving the constitutionality of federal, and to appeal directly to the Supreme Court in all cases involving the constitutionality of federal statutes; and no single judge is any longer empowered to suspend a federal statute on his sole judgment as to its constitutionality. Justices of the Supreme Court may now retire at the age of seventy after ten years of service; a substantial number of additional judgeships have been created in order to expedite the trial of cases; and finally greater flexibility has been added to the federal judicial system by allowing judges to be assigned to congested districts.
Another indirect accomplishment of this Congress has been its response to the devotion of the American people to a course of sane and consistent liberalism. The Congress has understood that under modern conditions government has a continuing responsibility to meet continuing problems, and that government cannot take a holiday of a year, or a month, or even a day just because a few people are tired or frightened by the inescapable pace, fast pace, of this modern world in which we live.
Some of my opponents and some of my associates have considered that I have a mistakenly sentimental judgment as to the tenacity of purpose and the general level of intelligence of the American people.
I am still convinced that the American people, since 1932, continue to insist on two requisites of private enterprise, and the relationship of government to it. The first is a complete honesty at the top in looking after the use of other people's money, and in apportioning and paying individual and corporate taxes according to ability to pay. The second is sincere respect for the need of all people who are at the bottom, all people at the bottom who need to get work—and through work to get a really fair share of the good things of life, and a chance to save and rise.
After the election of 1936 I was told, and the Congress was told, by an increasing number of politically—and worldly—wise people that I should coast along, enjoy an easy Presidency for four years, and not take the Democratic platform too seriously. They told me that people were getting weary of reform through political effort and would no longer oppose that small minority which, in spite of its own disastrous leadership in 1929, is always eager to resume its control over the government of the United States.
Never in our lifetime has such a concerted campaign of defeatism been thrown at the heads of the President and the Senators and Congressmen as in the case of this Seventy-Fifth Congress. Never before have we had so many Copperheads—and you will remember that it was the Copperheads who, in the days of the War between the States, tried their best to make President Lincoln and his Congress give up the fight, let the nation remain split in two and return to peace—peace at any price.
This Congress has ended on the side of the people. My faith in the American people—and their faith in themselves—have been justified. I congratulate the Congress and the leadership thereof and I congratulate the American people on their own staying power.
One word about our economic situation. It makes no difference to me whether you call it a recession or a depression. In 1932 the total national income of all the people in the country had reached the low point of thirty-eight billion dollars in that year. With each succeeding year it rose. Last year, 1937, it had risen to seventy billion dollars—despite definitely worse business and agricultural prices in the last four months of last year. This year, 1938, while it is too early to do more than give an estimate, we hope that the national income will not fall below sixty billion dollars. We remember also that banking and business and farming are not falling apart like the one-hoss shay, as they did in the terrible winter of 1932-1933.
Last year mistakes were made by the leaders of private enterprise, by the leaders of labor and by the leaders of government—all three.
Last year the leaders of private enterprise pleaded for a sudden curtailment of public spending, and said they would take up the slack. But they made the mistake of increasing their inventories too fast and setting many of their prices too high for their goods to sell.
Some labor leaders goaded by decades of oppression of labor made the mistake of going too far. They were not wise in using methods which frightened many well-wishing people. They asked employers not only to bargain with them but to put up with jurisdictional disputes at the same time.
Government too made mistakes—mistakes of optimism in assuming that industry and labor would themselves make no mistakes—and government made a mistake of timing in not passing a farm bill or a wage and hour bill last year.
As a result of the lessons of all these mistakes we hope that in the future private enterprise—capital and labor alike—will operate more intelligently together, and operate in greater cooperation with their own government than they have in the past. Such cooperation on the part of both of them will be very welcome to me. Certainly at this stage there should be a united stand on the part of both of them to resist wage cuts which would further reduce purchasing power.
Today a great steel company announced a reduction in prices with a view to stimulating business recovery, and I was gratified to know that this reduction involved no wage cut. Every encouragement ought to be given to industry which accepts the large volume and high wage policy.
If this is done, it ought to result in conditions which will replace a great part of the government spending which the failure of cooperation has made necessary this year.
From March 4, 1933 down, not a single week has passed without a cry from the opposition, a small opposition, a cry "to do something, to say something, to restore confidence." There is a very articulate group of people in this country, with plenty of ability to procure publicity for their views, who have consistently refused to cooperate with the mass of the people, whether things were going well or going badly, on the ground that they required more concessions to their point of view before they would admit having what they called "confidence."
These people demanded "restoration of confidence" when the banks were closed—and demanded it again when the banks were reopened.
They demanded "restoration of confidence" when hungry people were thronging the streets—and again when the hungry people were fed and put to work.
They demanded "restoration of confidence" when droughts hit the country—and again now when our fields are laden with bounteous yields and excessive crops.
They demanded "restoration of confidence" last year when the automobile industry was running three shifts and turning out more cars than the country could buy—and again this year when the industry is trying to get rid of an automobile surplus and has shut down its factories as a result.
It is my belief that many of these people who have been crying aloud for "confidence" are beginning today to realize that that hand has been overplayed, and that they are now willing to talk cooperation instead. It is my belief that the mass of the American people do have confidence in themselves—have confidence in their ability, with the aid of government, to solve their own problems.
It is because you are not satisfied, and I am not satisfied, with the progress that we have made in finally solving our business and agricultural and social problems that I believe the great majority of you want your own government to keep on trying to solve them. In simple frankness and in simple honesty, I need all the help I can get—and I see signs of getting more help in the future from many who have fought against progress with tooth and nail.
And now following out this line of thought, I want to say a few words about the coming political primaries.
Fifty years ago party nominations were generally made in conventions—a system typified in the public imagination by a little group in a smoke-filled room who made out the party slates.
The direct primary was invented to make the nominating process a more democratic one—to give the party voters themselves a chance to pick their party candidates.
What I am going to say to you tonight does not relate to the primaries of any particular political party, but to matters of principle in all parties—Democratic, Republican, Farmer-Labor, Progressive, Socialist or any other. Let that be clearly understood.
It is my hope that everybody affiliated with any party will vote in the primaries, and that every such voter will consider the fundamental principles for which his or her party is on record. That makes for a healthy choice between the candidates of the opposing parties on Election Day in November.
An election cannot give the country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as peas in the same pod.
In the coming primaries in all parties, there will be many clashes between two schools of thought, generally classified as liberal and conservative. Roughly speaking, the liberal school of thought recognizes that the new conditions throughout the world call for new remedies.