Speech Transcript:

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate and House of
Representatives, the Constitution wisely provides that the Chief
Executive shall report to the Congress on the state of the Union, for
through you, the chosen legislative representatives, our citizens
everywhere may fairly judge the progress of our governing.

I am confident that today, in the light of the events of the past 2
years, you do not consider it merely a trite phrase when I tell you
that i am truly glad to greet you and that I look forward to common
counsel, to useful cooperation, and to genuine friendships between
us.

We have undertaken a new order of things, yet we progress to it under
the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American
Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable
distance on the road toward this new order. Materially, I can report
to you substantial benefits to our agricultural population, increased
industrial activity, and profits to our merchants. Of equal moment,
there is evident restoration of that spirit of confidence and faith
which marks the American character. Let him who, for speculative
profit or partisan purpose, without just warrant would seek to
disturb or dispel this assurance, take heed before he assumes
responsibility for any which slows our onward steps.

Throughout the world change is the order of the day. In every nation
economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many
kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were
unprepared. In most nations social justice, no longer a distant
ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient governments are
beginning to heed the call.

Thus, the American people do not stand alone in the world in their
desire for change. We seek it through processes which retain all of
the deep essentials of that republican form of representative
government first given to a troubled world by the United States.

As the various parts in the program begun in the extraordinary
session of the Seventy-third Congress shape themselves in practical
administration, the unity of our program reveals itself to the
nation. The outlines of the new economic order, rising from the
disintegration of the old, are apparent. We test what we have done as
our measures take root in the living texture of life. We see where we
shave built wisely and where we can do still better.

The attempt to make a distinction between recovery and reform is a
narrowly conceived effort to substitute the appearance of reality for
reality itself. When a man is convalescing from illness, wisdom
dictates not only cure of the symptoms but also removal of their
cause.

It is important to recognized 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 form our simple purpose the confusion that
results form a multiplicity of detail and from millions of written
and spoken words.

We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little
changed by past sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in
spite of our talk we have not weeded out the overpriviledged and we
have not effectively lifted up the underpriviledged. 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 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: '

First. The security of a livelihood through the better use of the
national resources of the land in which we live.

Second. The security against the major hazards and vicissitudes of
life.

Third. 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.

A study of our national resources, more comprehensive than any
previously made, shows the vast amount of necessary and practicable
work which needs to be done for the development and preservation of
our natural wealth for the enjoyment and advantage of our people in
generations to come. The sound use of land and water is far more
comprehensive than the mere planting of trees, building of dams,
distributing of electricity, or retirement of submarginal land. It
recognizes that stranded populations, either in the country or the
city, cannot have security under the conditions which now surround
them.

To this end we are ready to begin to meet this problem - the
intelligent care of population throughout our Nation, in accordance
with an intelligent distribution of the means of livelihood for that
population. A definite program for putting people to work, of which I
shall speak in a moment, is a component part of this greater program
of security of livelihood through the better use of natural
resources.

Closely related to the broad problem of livelihood is that of
security against the major hazards of life. Here also a comprehensive
survey of what has been attempted or accomplished in many nations and
in many States proves to me that the time has come for action by the
National Government. I shall send to you in a few days definite
recommendations based on these studies. These recommendations will
cover the broad subjects of unemployment insurance and old-age
insurance, of benefits for children, for mothers, for the
handicapped, for maternity care, and for other aspects of dependency
and illness where a beginning can now be made.

The third factor -- better homes for our people - has also been the
subject of experimentation and study. Here, too, the first practical
steps can be made through the proposals which I shall suggest in
relation to giving work to the unemployed.

Whatever we plan and whatever we do should be in the light of these
three clear objectives of security. We cannot afford to lose valuable
time in haphazard public policies which cannot find a place in the
broad outlines of these major purposes. In that spirit I come to an
immediate issue made for us by hard and inescapable circumstance -
the task of putting people back to work. In the spring of 1933 the
issue of destitution seemed to stand apart; today, in the light of
our experience and our new national policy, we find we can put people
to work in ways which conform to, initiate, and carry forward the
broad principles of that policy.

The first objectives of emergency legislation of 1933 were to relieve
destitution, to make it possible for industry to operate in a more
rational and orderly fashion, and to put behind industrial recovery
the impulse of large expenditures in Government undertakings. The
purpose of the National Industrial Recovery Act to provide work for
more people succeeded in a substantial manner within the first few
months of its life, and the act has continued to maintain employment
gains and greatly improved working conditions in industry.

The program of public works provided for int he Recovery Act launched
the Federal Government into a task for which there was little time to
make preparation and little American experience to follow. Great
employment has been given and is being given by these works.

More than tow billions of dollars have also been expended in direct
relief to the destitute. Local agencies, of necessity, determined the
recipients of this form of relief. With inevitable exceptions, the
funds were spent by them with reasonable efficiency, and as a result
actual want of food and clothing in the great majority of cases has
been overcome.

But the stark fact before us is that great numbers still remain
unemployed.

A large proportion of these unemployed and their dependents have been
forced on the relief rolls. The burden on the Federal Government has
grown with great rapidity. We have here a human as well as an
economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans
give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the
evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued
dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration
fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief
in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the
human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is
in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for
able-bodied but destitute workers.

The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.

I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by
the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work
cutting grass, raking leaves, or picking up papers in the public
parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from
destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance, and
courage and determination. This decision brings me to the problem of
what the Government should do with approximately 5,000,000 unemployed
now on the relief rolls.

About one million and a half of these belong to the group which in
the past was dependent upon local welfare efforts. Most of them are
unable for one reason or another to maintain themselves independently
- for the most part, through no fault of their own. Such people, in
the days before the great depression, were card for by local effort -
by States, by counties, by towns, by cities, by churches, and by
private welfare agencies. It is my thought that in the future they
must be cared for as they were before. I stand ready, through my own
personal efforts and through the public influence of the office that
I hold, to help these local agencies to get the means necessary to
assume this burden.

The security legislation which I shall propose to the Congress will,
I am confident, be of assistance to local effort in the care of this
type of cases. Local responsibility can and will be resumed, for,
after all, common sense tells us that the wealth necessary for this
task existed and still exists in the local community, and the
dictates of sound administration require that this responsibility be
in the first instance a local one.

There are, however, an additional three and one-half million
employable people who are on relief. With them the problem is
different and the responsibility is different. This group was the
victim of a Nation-wide depression caused by conditions which were
not local but national. The Federal Government is the only
governmental agency with sufficient power and credit to meet this
situation. We have assumed this task, and we shall not shrink form it
in the future. It is a duty dictated by every intelligent
consideration of national policy to ask you to make it possible for
the United States to give employment to all of these three-and-a-half
million people now on relief, pending their absorption in a rising
tide of private employment.

It is my thought that, with the exception of certain of the normal
public building operations of the Government, all emergency public
works shall be united in a single new and greatly enlarged plan.

With the establishment of this new system we can supersede the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration with a coordinated authority
which will be charged with the orderly liquidation of our present
relief activities and the substitution of a national chart for the
giving of work.

This new program of emergency public employment should be governed by
a number practical principles.

   1. All work undertaken should be useful - not just for a day or a
year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement
in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the
Nation.
   2. Compensation on emergency public projects should be in the form
of security payments which should be larger than the amount now
received as a relief dole but, at the same time, not so large as to
encourage the rejection of opportunities for private employment or
the leaving of private employment to engage in Government work.
   3. Projects should be undertaken on which a percentage of direct
labor can be used.
   4. Preference should be given to those projects which will be
self-liquidating in the sense that there is a reasonable expectation
that the Government will get its money back at some future time.
   5. The projects to be undertaken should be selected and planned so
as to compete as little as possible with private enterprises. This
suggests that if it were not for the necessity of giving useful work
to the unemployed now on relief these projects in most instances
would not now be undertaken.
   6. The planning of projects would seek to assure work during the
coming fiscal year to the individuals now on relief, or until such
time as private employment is available. In order to make adjustment
to increasing private employment, work should be planned with a view
to tapering it off in proportion to the speed with which the
emergency workers are offered positions with private employers.
   7. Efforts should be made to locate projects where they will serve
the greatest unemployment needs as shown by present relief rolls, and
the broad program of the National Resources Board should be freely
used for guidance in selection. Our ultimate objective being the
enrichment of human lives, the Government has the primary duty to use
its emergency expenditures as much as possible to serve those who
cannot secure the advantages of private capital.

Ever since the adjournment of the Seventy-third Congress the
administration has been studying from every angle the possibility and
the practicability of new forms of employment. As a result of these
studies I have arrived at certain very definite convictions as to the
amount of money that will be necessary for the sort of public projects
that I have described. I shall submit these figures in my Budget
message. I assure you now they will be within the sound credit of the
Government.

The work itself will cover a wide field, including clearance of
slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private
capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private
capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the
reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an
intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted
areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing
national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the
elimination of grade crossings; in the extension and enlargement of
the successful work of the Civilian Conservation Corps; in
non-Federal work, mostly self-liquidating and highly useful to local
divisions of government; and on many other projects which the Nation
needs and cannot afford to neglect.

This is the method which I propose to you in order that we may better
meet this present-day problem of unemployment. Its greatest advantage
is that it fits logically and usefully into the long-range permanent
policy of providing the three types of security which constitute as a
whole an American plan for the betterment of the future of the
American people.

I shall consult with you from time to time concerning other measures
of national importance. Among the subjects that lie immediately
before us are the consolidation of Federal regulatory administration
over all forms of transportation, the renewal and clarification of
the general purposes of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the
strengthening of our facilities for the prevention, detection, and
treatment of crime and criminals, the restoration of sound conditions
in the public-utilities field through abolition of the evil features
of holding companies, the gradual tapering off of the emergency
credit activities of the Government, and improvement in our taxation
forms and methods.

We have already begun to feel the bracing effect upon our economic
system of a restored agriculture. The hundreds of millions of
additional income that farmers are receiving is finding its way into
the channels of trade. The farmers' share of the national income is
slowly rising. The economic facts justify the wide-spread opinion of
those engaged in agriculture that our provision for maintaining a
balanced production gives at this time the most adequate remedy for
an old and vexing problem. For the present and especially in view of
abnormal world conditions, agricultural adjustment with certain
necessary improvements in methods should continue.

It seems appropriate to call attention at this time to the fine
spirit shown during the past year by our public servants. I cannot
praise too highly the cheerful work of the civil-service employees,
and of those temporarily working for the Government. As for those
thousands in our various public agencies spread throughout the
country who, without compensation, agreed to take over heavy
responsibilities in connection with our various loan agencies and
particularly in direct relief work, I cannot say too much. I do not
think any country could show a higher average of cheerful and even
enthusiastic teamwork than has been shown by these men and women.

I cannot with candor tell you that general international
relationships outside the borders of the United States are improved.
On the surface of things many old jealousies are resurrected, old
passions aroused; new strivings for armament and power, in more than
one land, rear their ugly heads. I hope that calm counsel and
constructive leadership will provide the steadying influence and the
time necessary for the coming of new and more practical forms of
representative government throughout the world wherein privilege and
power will occupy a lesser place and world welfare a greater.

I believe, however, that our own peaceful and neighborly attitude
toward other nations is coming to be understood and appreciated. The
maintenance of international peace is a matter in which we are deeply
and unselfishly concerned. Evidence of our persistent and undeniable
desire to prevent armed conflict has recently been more than once
afforded.

There is no ground for apprehension that our relations with any
nation will be otherwise than peaceful. Nor is there ground for doubt
that the people of most nations seek relief from the threat and burden
attaching to the false theory that extravagant armament cannot be
reduced and limited by international accord.

The ledger of the past year shows many more gains than losses. Let us
not forget that, in addition to saving millions from utter
destitution, child labor has been for the moment outlawed, thousands
of homes saved to their owners, and, most important of all, the
morale of the Nation has been restored. Viewing the year 1934 as a
whole, you and I can agree that we have a generous measure of reasons
for giving thanks.

It is not empty optimism that moves me to a strong hope for the
coming year. We can, if we will, make 1935 a genuine period of good
feeling, sustained by a sense of purposeful progress. Beyond the
material recovery, I sense a spiritual recovery as well. The people
of America are turning as never before to those permanent values that
are not limited to the physical objectives of life. There are growing
signs of this on every hand. In the face of these spiritual impulses
we are sensible of the divine Providence to which nations can turn
now, as always, for guidance and fostering care.