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
Never have there been six years of such far-flung internal preparedness in
our history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to
command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without
concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of
the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.
We see things now that we could not see along the way. The tools of
government which we had in 1933 are outmoded. We have had to forge new
tools for a new role of government operating in a democracy--a role of new
responsibility for new needs and increased responsibility for old needs,
long neglected.
Some of these tools had to be roughly shaped and still need some machining
down. Many of those who fought bitterly against the forging of these new
tools welcome their use today. The American people, as a whole, have
accepted them. The Nation looks to the Congress to improve the new
machinery which we have permanently installed, provided that in the process
the social usefulness of the machinery is not destroyed or impaired.
All of us agree that we should simplify and improve laws if experience and
operation clearly demonstrate the need. For instance, all of us want better
provision for our older people under our social security legislation. For
the medically needy we must provide better care.
Most of us agree that for the sake of employer and employee alike we must
find ways to end factional labor strife and employer-employee disputes.
Most of us recognize that none of these tools can be put to maximum
effectiveness unless the executive processes of government are
revamped--reorganized, if you will--into more effective combination. And
even after such reorganization it will take time to develop administrative
personnel and experience in order to use our new tools with a minimum of
mistakes. The Congress, of course, needs no further information on this.
With this exception of legislation to provide greater government
efficiency, and with the exception of legislation to ameliorate our
railroad and other transportation problems, the past three Congresses have
met in part or in whole the pressing needs of the new order of things.
We have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our
program of social reform. Our full energies may now be released to
invigorate the processes of recovery in order to preserve our reforms, and
to give every man and woman who wants to work a real job at a living wage.
But time is of paramount importance. The deadline of danger from within and
from without is not within our control. The hour-glass may be in the hands
of other nations. Our own hour-glass tells us that we are off on a race to
make democracy work, so that we may be efficient in peace and therefore
secure in national defense.
This time element forces us to still greater efforts to attain the full
employment of our labor and our capital.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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