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
It is important to recognize that while we seek to outlaw specific abuses,
the American objective of today has an infinitely deeper, finer and more
lasting purpose than mere repression. Thinking people in almost every
country of the world have come to realize certain fundamental difficulties
with which civilization must reckon. Rapid changes--the machine age, the
advent of universal and rapid communication and many other new factors--have
brought new problems. Succeeding generations have attempted to keep pace by
reforming in piecemeal fashion this or that attendant abuse. As a result,
evils overlap and reform becomes confused and frustrated. We lose sight,
from time to time, of our ultimate human objectives.
Let us, for a moment, strip from our simple purpose the confusion that
results from a multiplicity of detail and from millions of written and
spoken words.
We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by
vast sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk,
we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively
lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice
have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what
is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the
right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our
families.
We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must
forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through
excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to
our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we
do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal
shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of
some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the
individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable
leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be
preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.
I recall to your attention my message to the Congress last June in which I
said: "among our objectives I place the security of the men, women and
children of the Nation first." That remains our first and continuing task;
and in a very real sense every major legislative enactment of this Congress
should be a component part of it.
In defining immediate factors which enter into our quest, I have spoken to
the Congress and the people of three great divisions:
1. The security of a livelihood through the better use of the national
resources of the land in which we live.
2. The security against the major hazards and vicissitudes of life.
3. The security of decent homes.
I am now ready to submit to the Congress a broad program designed
ultimately to establish all three of these factors of security--a program
which because of many lost years will take many future years to fulfill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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