State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
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State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The delegation representing the United States has worked in close
cooperation with the other American Republics assembled at Montevideo to
make that conference an outstanding success. 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. Furthermore, all of us are seeking the restoration of commerce in
ways which will preclude the building up of large favorable trade balances
by any one Nation at the expense of trade debits on the part of other
Nations.
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 agreements. 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 lowering of the
barriers against commerce.
I expect to report to you later in regard to debts owed the Government and
people of this country by the Governments and peoples of other countries.
Several Nations, acknowledging the debt, have paid in small part; other
Nations have failed to pay. One Nation--Finland--has paid the installments
due this country in full.
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 business. They call for stringent preventive or regulatory
measures. I am speaking of those individuals who have evaded the spirit and
purpose of our tax laws, of those high officials of banks or corporations
who have grown rich at the expense of their stockholders or the public, of
those reckless speculators with their own or other people's money whose
operations have injured the values of the farmers' crops and the savings
of the poor.
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.
The adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment should give material aid to the
elimination of those new forms of crime which came from the illegal traffic
in liquor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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