The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Radio Addresses to the American People Broadcast Between 1933 and 1944Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
History
The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Radio Addresses to the American People Broadcast Between 1933 and 1944
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Depressions -- 1929 -- United States -- Sources; New Deal, 1933-1939 -- Sources; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 -- Oratory -- Sources; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 -- Political and social views -- Sources; United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945
Thus far I have spoken primarily of the foundation stones--the
measures that were necessary to reestablish credit and to head
people in the opposite direction by preventing distress and
providing as much work as possible through governmental agencies.
Now I come to the links which will build us a more lasting
prosperity. I have said that we cannot attain that in a nation half
boom and half broke. If all of our people have work and fair wages
and fair profits, they can buy the products of their neighbors and
business is good. But if you take away the wages and the profits of
half of them, business is only half as good. It doesn't help much
if the fortunate half is very prosperous--the best way is for
everybody to be reasonably prosperous.
For many years the two great barriers to a normal prosperity have
been low farm prices and the creeping paralysis of unemployment.
These factors have cut the purchasing power of the country in half.
I promised action. Congress did its part when it passed the Farm
and the Industrial Recovery Acts. Today we are putting these two
acts to work and they will work if people understand their plain
objectives.
First the Farm Act: It is based on the fact that the purchasing
power of nearly half our population depends on adequate prices for
farm products. We have been producing more of some crops than we
consume or can sell in a depressed world market. The cure is not to
produce so much. Without our help the farmers cannot get together
and cut production, and the Farm Bill gives them a method of
bringing their production down to a reasonable level and of
obtaining reasonable prices for their crops. I have clearly stated
that this method is in a sense experimental, but so far as we have
gone we have reason to believe that it will produce good results.
It is obvious that if we can greatly increase the purchasing power
of the tens of millions of our people who make a living from
farming and the distribution of farm crops, we will greatly
increase the consumption of those goods which are turned out by
industry.
That brings me to the final step--bringing back industry along
sound lines.
Last Autumn, on several occasions, I expressed my faith that we can
make possible by democratic self-discipline in industry general
increases in wages and shortening of hours sufficient to enable
industry to pay its own workers enough to let those workers buy and
use the things that their labor produces. This can be done only if
we permit and encourage cooperative action in industry because it
is obvious that without united action a few selfish men in each
competitive group will pay starvation wages and insist on long
hours of work. Others in that group must either follow suit or
close up shop. We have seen the result of action of that kind in
the continuing descent into the economic Hell of the past four
years.
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