[Scpg] Franklin Delano Roosevelt First Inaugural Address Delivered 4 March 1933

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First Inaugural Address
Delivered 4 March 1933
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugural.html

President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this 
day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the 
Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which 
the present situation of our people impels.

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, 
frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing 
conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure, as it 
has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we 
have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified 
terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into 
advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of 
frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of 
the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am 
convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in 
these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common 
difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values 
have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay 
has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment 
of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; 
the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; 
farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many 
years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of 
unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an 
equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist 
can deny the dark realities of the moment.
And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are 
stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our 
forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we 
have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty 
and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but 
a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's 
goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own 
incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. 
Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the 
court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the 
pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they 
have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of 
profit by which to induce our people to follow their false 
leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully 
for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of 
self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the 
people perish.
Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple 
of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient 
truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which 
we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the 
joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the 
moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad 
chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be 
worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not 
to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves, to our fellow men.
Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of 
success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief 
that public office and high political position are to be valued only 
by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there 
must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too 
often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish 
wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives 
only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on 
faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it 
cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This 
Nation is asking for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no 
unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be 
accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, 
treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at 
the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great -- 
greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our 
great natural resources.
Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of 
population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national 
scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the 
land for those best fitted for the land.

Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values 
of agricultural products, and with this the power to purchase the 
output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically 
the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small 
homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, 
the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that 
their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying 
of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, 
unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of 
all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities 
that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which 
it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about 
it.
We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require 
two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order. There 
must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and 
investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people's 
money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge 
upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their 
fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 
States.
Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our 
own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our 
international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point 
of time, and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound 
national economy. I favor, as a practical policy, the putting of 
first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by 
international economic readjustment; but the emergency at home cannot 
wait on that accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national 
recovery is not nationally -- narrowly nationalistic. It is the 
insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the 
various elements in and parts of the United States of America -- a 
recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the 
American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the 
immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will 
endure.
In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this Nation to the 
policy of the good neighbor: the neighbor who resolutely respects 
himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others; the 
neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of 
his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we 
have never realized before, our interdependence on each other; that 
we can not merely take, but we must give as well; that if we are to 
go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to 
sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such 
discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective.
We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our 
property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership 
which aims at the larger good. This, I propose to offer, pledging 
that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a 
sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times 
of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of 
this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon 
our common problems.
Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form 
of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our 
Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to 
meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement 
without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system 
has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the 
modern world has ever seen.
It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign 
wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. And it is to be 
hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority 
may be wholly equal, wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task 
before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for 
undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal 
balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures 
that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. 
These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out 
of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional 
authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But, in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these 
two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still 
critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then 
confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining 
instrument to meet the crisis -- broad Executive power to wage a war 
against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to 
me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the 
devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of 
national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and 
precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from 
the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the 
assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.
We do not distrust the -- the future of essential democracy. The 
people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have 
registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They 
have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have 
made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the 
gift I take it.
In this dedication -- In this dedication of a Nation, we humbly ask 
the blessing of God.
May He protect each and every one of us.
May He guide me in the days to come.
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