ROOSEVELT IN OFFICE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 71, 6 March 1933, Page 8

ROOSEVELT IN OFFICE

MOMENTOUS INAUGURAL ADDRESS GREAT NATIONAL EMERGENCIES. AN UNPRECEDENTED TASK. Washington, March 4. Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed office as President of the United States to-day. He took the oath at 1.6 p.m. In a momentous inaugural address immediately after taking the oath Mr. Roosevelt told the United States that he would ask for war-time powers if necessary to meet the national emergency. He would call the new Congress into a special session to carry out his planned attack on the crisis, saying: “We must act, and act quickly.” Among the policies he outlined was that “there must be provision for adequate but sound currency.” “This is pre-eminently a time to speak the truth and the whole truth frankly and boldly,” said Mr. Roosevelt, “nor need we shrink from honestly facing the conditions of our country to-day. This great nation will endure as it has endured; it will revive and will prosper. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — the nameless, unreasoning and unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

“Our difficulties, thank God, concern only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels, taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen, withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side, farmers find no markets for their produce and a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, yet our failure conies from no failure of substance. Nature still offers her bounty, and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but the generous use of it languishes in the very sight of supply. “Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, They have admitted their failure and abdicated. The practices of unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion and are 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, LENDING OF MORE MONEY. “Faced by the failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of the profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rule of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilisation, and we may now restore that temple to its ancient truths. “The measure of 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 and the thrill of creative effort. “These dark days will be worth all they cost if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto, but to minister to ourselves and our fellowmen. Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as a 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 standards of pride of place and personal profit. There must be an end to the conduct of banking and business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. CALLS FOR ACTION.

“Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action, and the action now our greatest primary task is to put people to work. If we face it wisely and courageously, it can be accomplished. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting and by the Government itself treating the task as we would treat an emergency of war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganise the use of our national resources. Hand and hand with this we must frankly reorganise the overbalance of population in our industrial centres, and by engaging on a national scale in the redistribution of endeavour provide a better use of lauds for those best fitted for the land.

“The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, and with this power purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by .preventing realistically the tragedy of growing loss through foreclosure on our small homes and our farms, and by insistence that the Federal, State and local governments act forthwith on a demand that their cost be drastically reduced. UNIFYING RELIEF. “It can be helped by unifying relief activities, by national planning for and the supervision of all forms of transportation, communication and other util-

ities which have definitely a public character. Finally, in our progress toward the resumption of work we require two safeguards against the return of the evils of the old order. “ There must be strict supervision of all banking credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money; there must be provision for adequate but sound currency. “ These are the lines of the attack I shall persistently urge upon the new Congress in the special session. Our international trado relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of sound national economy. 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 narrowly materialistic. It is as insistent as the first consideration of the inter-dependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States, and the recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of tha pioneer. THE WORLD POLICY. “ In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to a policy of the good neighbour who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of his other neighbour, who respects his obligations and raspects the sanctity of his agreement in and with the world of neighbours. , “It is to be hoped the normal balance of executive legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. It may be that the unprecedented demand for undelayed action may call for a temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. I am prepared to recommend the measures that strict administration in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as 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 of Congress failing to take one of these two courses, and in the event of the national emergency being still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of the duty that will then confront mo. ONE LAST INSTRUMENT.

“I shall ask Congress for tlic one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—a broad executive power to wage war against an emergency as great as the power that- would be given me if wo were in fact invade! by a foreign one. We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed in their need; they have registered their mandate, they want, direct, vigorous action, they have asked for discipline and direction under leadership, they have made me the present instrument of their wishes, and in the spirit of the gift — I take it.”