State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
History
State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Such communities exist in the East, in the Middle West, in the Far West,
and in the South. Those who represent such areas in every part of the
country do their constituents ill service by blocking efforts to raise
their incomes, their property values and, therefore, their whole scale of
living. In the long run, the profits from Child labor, low pay and overwork
enure not to the locality or region where they exist but to the absentee
owners who have sent their capital into these exploited communities to
gather larger profits for themselves. Indeed, new enterprises and new
industries which bring permanent wealth will come more readily to those
communities which insist on good pay and reasonable hours, for the simple
reason that there they will find a greater industrial efficiency and
happier workers.
No reasonable person seeks a complete uniformity in wages in every part of
the United States; nor does any reasonable person seek an immediate and
drastic change from the lowest pay to the highest pay. We are seeking, of
course, only legislation to end starvation wages and intolerable hours;
more desirable wages are and should continue to be the product of
collective bargaining.
Many of those who represent great cities have shown their understanding of
the necessity of helping the agricultural third of the Nation. I hope that
those who represent constituencies primarily agricultural will not
underestimate the importance of extending like aid to the industrial
third.
Wage and hour legislation, therefore, is a problem which is definitely
before this Congress for action. It is an essential part of economic
recovery. It has the support of an overwhelming majority of our people in
every walk of life. They have expressed themselves through the ballot box.
Again I revert to the increase of national purchasing power as an
underlying necessity of the day. If you increase that purchasing power for
the farmers and for the industrial workers, especially for those in both
groups who have least of it today, you will increase the purchasing power
of the final third of our population--those who transport and distribute the
products of farm and factory, and those of the professions who serve all
groups. I have tried to make clear to you, and through you to the people of
the United States, that this is an urgency which must be met by complete
and not by partial action.
If it is met, if the purchasing power of the Nation as a whole--in other
words, the total of the Nation's income--can be still further increased,
other happy results will flow from such increase.
We have raised the Nation's income from thirty-eight billion dollars in the
year 1932 to about sixty-eight billion dollars in the year 1937. Our goal,
our objective is to raise it to ninety or one hundred billion dollars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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