Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
This question, too, we have answered. We have answered it by doubling old
age insurance benefits and extending coverage to ten million more people.
We have answered it by increasing our minimum wage. We have answered by the
three million privately constructed homes that the Federal Government has
helped finance since the war--and the 155 thousand units of low rent public
housing placed under construction since 1949.
We have answered with the 42 thousand new hospital beds provided since 1946
through the joint efforts of the Federal Government and local communities.
We have answered by helping eight million veterans of World War II to
obtain advanced education, 196 thousand to start in business, and 64
thousand to buy farms.
We have answered by continuing to help farmers obtain electric power, until
today nearly 90 per cent of our farms have power line electric service.
In these and other ways, we have demonstrated, up to now, that our
democracy has not forgotten how to use the powers of the Government to
promote the people's welfare and security.
Another of the big post-war questions was this: What we would do with the
Nation's natural resources--its soils and water, forests and grasslands.
Would we continue the strong conservation movement of the 1930's, or would
we, as we did after the First World War, slip back into the practices of
monopoly, exploitation, and waste?
The answer is plain. All across our country, the soil conservation movement
has spread, aided by Government programs, enriching private and public
lands, preserving them from destruction, improving them for future use. In
our river basins, we have invested nearly 5 billion dollars of public funds
in the last eight years--invested them in projects to control floods,
irrigate farmlands, produce low-cost power and get it to the housewives and
farmers and businessmen who need it. We have been vigilant in protecting
the people's property--lands and forests and oil and minerals.
We have had to fight hard against those who would use our resources for
private greed; we have met setbacks; we have had to delay work because of
defense priorities, but on the whole we can be proud of our record in
protecting our natural heritage, and in using our resources for the public
good.
Here is another question we had to face at the war's close: Would we
continue, in peace as well as war, to promote equality of opportunity for
all our citizens, seeking ways and means to guarantee for all of them the
full enjoyment of their civil rights?
During the war we achieved great economic and social gains for millions of
our fellow citizens who had been held back by prejudice. Were we prepared,
in peacetime, to keep on moving toward full realization of the democratic
promise? Or would we let it be submerged, wiped out, in post-war riots and
reaction, as after World War I?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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