Speech Transcript:

For the first time in our national history a President delivers his
annual message to a new Congress within a fortnight of the expiration
of his term of office. While there is no change in the Presidency this
year, change will occur in future years. It is my belief that under
this new constitutional practice the President should in every fourth
year, insofar as seems reasonable, review the existing state of our
national affairs and outline broad future problems, leaving specific
recommendations for future legislation to be made by the President
about to be inaugurated.

At this time, however, circumstances of the moment compel me to ask
your immediate consideration of: First, measures extending the life
of certain authorizations and powers which, under present statutes,
expire within a few weeks; second, an addition to the existing
Neutrality Act to cover specific points raised by the unfortunate
civil strife in Spain; and, third, a deficiency appropriation bill
for which I will submit estimates this week.

In March 1933 the problems which faced our Nation and which only our
National Government had the resources to meet, were more serious even
than appeared on the surface.

It was not only that the visible mechanism of economic life had
broken down. More disturbing was the fact that long neglect of the
needs of the underprivileged had brought too many of our people to
the verge of doubt as to the successful adaptation of our historic
traditions to the complex modern world. In that, lay a challenge to
our democratic form of government itself.

Ours was the task to prove that democracy could be made to function
in the world of today as effectively as in the simpler world of a
hundred years ago. Ours was the task to do more than argue a theory.
The times required confident answer of performance to those whose
instinctive faith in humanity made them want to believe that in the
long run democracy would prove superior to more extreme forms of
government as a process of getting action when action was wisdom
without the spiritual sacrifice which those other forms of government
exact.

That challenge we met. To meet it required unprecedented activities
under Federal leadership - to end abuses - to restore a large measure
of material prosperity - to give new faith to millions of our citizens
who had been traditionally taught to expect that democracy would
provide continuously wider opportunity and continuously greater
security in a world where science was continuously making material
riches more available to man.

In the many methods of attack with which we met these problems, you
and I, by mutual understanding and by determination to cooperate,
helped to make democracy succeed by refusing to permit unnecessary
disagreement to arise between two of our branches of government. That
spirit of cooperation was able to solve difficulties of extradordinary
magnitude and ramification with few important errors, and at a cost
cheap when measured by immediate necessities and the eventual
results.

I look forward to a continuance of that cooperation in the next 4
years. I look forward also to a continuance of the basis of that
cooperation - mutual respect for each other's proper sphere of
functioning in a democracy which is working well, and a common-sense
realization of the need for play in the joints of the machine.

On that basis, it is within the right of Congress to determine which
of the many new activities shall be continued or abandoned, increased
or curtailed.

On that same basis the President alone has the responsibility for
their administration. I find that this task of Executive management
has reached the point where our administrative machinery needs
comprehensive overhauling. I shall, therefore, shortly address the
Congress more fully in regard to modernizing and improving the
executive branch of the Government.

That cooperation of the past 4 years between Congress and the
President has aimed at the fulfillment of a twofold policy - first,
economic recovery through many kinds of assistance to agriculture,
industry, and banking; and second, deliberate improvement in the
personal security and opportunity of the great mass of our people.

The recovery we sought was not to be merely temporary. It was to be a
recovery protected from the causes of previous disasters. With that
aim in view - to prevent a future similar crisis - you and I joined
in a series of enactments - safe banking and sound currency, the
guarantee of bank deposits, protection for the investor in
securities, the removal of the threat of agricultural surpluses,
insistence on collective bargaining, the outlawing of sweatshops,
child labor and unfair trade practices, and the beginning of security
for the aged and the worker.

Nor was the recovery we sought merely a purposeless whirring of
machinery. It is important, of course, that every man and woman in
the country be able to find work, that every factory run, that
business as a whole earn profits. But government in a democratic
nation does not exist solely, or ever primarily, for that purpose.

It is not enough that the wheels turn. They must carry us in the
direction of a greater satisfaction in the life for the average man.
The deeper purpose of democratic government is to assist as many of
its citizens as possible - especially those who need it most - to
improve their conditions of life, to retain all personal liberty
which does not adversely affect their neighbors, and to pursue the
happiness which comes with security and an opportunity for recreation
and culture.

Even within our present recovery we are far from the goal of that
deeper purpose. There are far-reaching problems still with us for
which democracy must find solutions if it is to consider itself
successful.

For example, many millions of Americans still live in habitations
which not only fail to provide the physical benefits of modern
civilization but breed disease and impair the health of future
generations. The menace exists not only in the slum areas fo the very
large cities, but in many smaller cities as well. It exists on tens of
thousands of farms, in varying degrees, in every part of the country.

Another example is the prevalence of an un-American type of tenant
farming. I do not suggest that every farm family has the capacity to
earn a satisfactory living on its own farm. But many thousands of
tenant farmers - indeed, most of them - with some financial
assistance and with some advice and training, can be made
self-supporting anon land which can eventually belong to them. The
Nation would be wise to offer them that chance instead of permitting
them to go along as they do now, year after year, with neither future
security as tenants nor hope of ownership of their homes nor
expectation of bettering the lot of their children.

Another national problem is the intelligent development of our social
security system, the broadening of the services it renders, and
practical improvement in its operation. In many nations where such
laws are in effect success in meeting the expectations of the
community has come through frequent amendment of the original
statute.

And, of course, the most far-reaching and the most inclusive problem
of all is that of unemployment and the lack of economic balance, of
which unemployment is at once the result and the symptom. The
immediate question of adequate relief for the needy unemployed who
are capable of performing useful work I shall discuss with the
Congress during upcoming months. The broader task of preventing
unemployment is a matter of long'-range evolutionary policy. To that
we must continue to give our best thought and effort. We cannot
assume that immediate industrial and commercial activity which
mitigates present pressures justifies the National Government at this
time in placing the unemployment problem in a filing cabinet of
unfinished business.

Fluctuations in employment are tied to all other wasteful
fluctuations in our mechanism of production and distribution. One of
these wastes is speculation. In securities or commodities, the larger
the volume of speculation the wider become the upward and downward
swings and the more certain the result that in the long run there
will be more losses than gains in the underlying wealth of the
community.

And, as is now well known to all of us, the same net loss to society
comes from reckless overproduction and monopolistic underproduction
of natural and manufactured commodities.

Overproduction, underproduction, and speculation are three evil
sisters who distill the troubles unbound inflation and disastrous
deflation. It is to the interest of the Nation, to have government
help private enterprise to gain sound general price levels and to
protect those levels form wide perilous fluctuations. We know now
that if early in 1931 government had taken the steps which were taken
2 and 3 years later the depression would never have reached the depths
of the beginning of 1933.

Sober second thought confirms most of us in the belief that the broad
objectives of the National Recovery Act were sound. We know now that
its difficulties arose from the fact that it tried to do too much.
For example, it was unwise to expect the same agency to regulate the
length of working hours, minimum wages, child labor, and collective
bargaining on the one hand and the complicated questions of unfair
trade practices and business controls on the other.

The statute of N.R.A. has been outlawed. The problems have not. They
are still with us.

That decent conditions and adequate pay for labor and just return for
agriculture can be secured through parallel and simultaneous action by
48 states is a proven impossibility. It is equally impossible to
obtain curbs on monopoly, unfair trade practices, and speculation by
State action alone. There are those who, sincerely or insincerely,
still cling to State action as a theoretical hope. But experience
with actualities makes it clear that Federal laws supplementing State
laws are needed to help solve the problems which result from modern
invention applied in an industrialized nation which conducts its
business with scant regard to State lines.

During the past year there has been a growing belief that there is
little fault to be found with the Constitution of the United States
as it stands today. The vital need is not an alteration of our
fundamental law but an increasingly enlightened view with reference
to it. Difficulties have grown out of its interpretation; but rightly
considered, it can be used as an instrument of progress and not as a
device for the prevention of action.

It is worth our while to read and re-read the preamble of the
Constitution and the article I thereof which confers the legislative
powers upon the Congress of the United States. It is also worth our
while to read again the debates in the Constitutional Convention of
150 years ago. From such reading, I obtain the very definite thought
the the members of that Convention were fully aware that civilization
would raise problems for the proposed new Federal Government, which
they themselves could not even surmise; and that it was their
definite intent and expectation that a liberal interpretation in the
years to come would give the Congress the same relative powers over
new national problems as they themselves gave Congress over the
national problems of their day.

In presenting to the Convention the first basic draft of the
Constitution, Edmund Randolph explained that its purpose "to insert
essential principles only, lest the operation of government should be
clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable which
ought to be accommodated to times and events."

With a better understanding of our purposes, and a more intelligent
recognition of our needs as a nation, it is not to be assumed that
there will be prolonged failure to bring legislative and judicial
action into closer harmony. Means must be found to adapt our legal
forms and our judicial interpretation to the actual present national
needs of the largest progressive democracy in the modern world.

That thought leads to a consideration of world problems. To go no
further back than the beginning of this century, men and women
everywhere were seeking conditions of life very different from those
which were customary before modern invention and modern industry and
modern communications had come into being. The World War, for all of
its tragedy, encouraged these demands and stimulated action to
fulfill these new desires.

Many national governments seemed unable adequately to respond; and,
often with the improvident assent of the masses of the people
themselves, new forms of government were set up with oligarchy taking
the place of democracy. In oligarchies, militarism has leaped forward,
while in those nations which have retained democracy militarism has
waned.

I have recently visited three of our sister republics in South
America. The very cordial receptions with which I was greeted were in
tribute to democracy. To me the outstanding observation of that visit
was that the masses of the peoples of all the Americas are convinced
that the democratic form of government can be made to succeed and do
not wish to substitute for it any other form of government. They
believe that democracies are best able to cope with the changing
problems of modern civilization within themselves, and that
democracies are best able to maintain peace among themselves.

The Inter-American Conference, operating on these fundamental
principles of democracy, did much to assure peace in this hemisphere.
Existing peace machinery was improved. New instruments to maintain
peace and eliminate causes of war were adopted. Wider protection of
the interests of the American republics in the event of war outside
the Western Hemisphere was provided. Respect for, and observance of,
international treaties and international law were also strengthened.
Principles of liberal trade policies, as effective aids to the
maintenance of peace were reaffirmed. The intellectual and cultural
relationship among American republics were broadened as part of the
general peace program.

In a world unhappily thinking in terms of war, the representatives of
21 nations sat around a table, in an atmosphere of complete confidence
and understanding, sincerely discussing measures for maintaining
peace. Here was a great and a permanent achievement directly
affecting the lives and security of 250,000,000 human beings who
dwell in this Western Hemisphere. Here was an example which must have
a wholesome effect upon the rest of the world.

In a very real sense, the conference in Buenos Aires sent forth a
message on behalf of all the democracies of the world to those
nations which live otherwise. Because such other governments are
perhaps more spectacular, it was high time for democracy to assert
itself.

Because all of us believe that our democratic form of government can
cope adequately with modern problems as they arise, it is patriotic
as well as logical for us to prove that we can meet new national
needs with new laws consistent with a historic constitutional
framework clearly intended to receive liberal and not narrow
interpretation.

The United States of America, within itself, must continue the task
of making democracy succeed.

In that task the legislative branch of our Government will, I am
confident, continue to meet the demands of democracy whether they
relate to the curbing of abuses, the extension of help to those who
need help, or the better balancing of our interdependent economies.

So, too, the executive branch of the Government must move forward in
this task, and, at the same time, provide better management for
administrative action of all kinds.

The judicial branch also is asked by the people to do its part in
making democracy successful. We do not ask the courts to call
nonexistent powers into being, but we have a right to expect that
conceded powers or those legitimately implied shall be made effective
instruments for the common good.

The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of
essential powers of free government.

You task and mine is not ending with the end of the depression. The
people of the United States have made it clear that they expect us to
continue our active efforts in behalf of their peaceful advancement.

In that spirit of endeavor and service I greet the Seventy-Fifth
Congress at the beginning of this auspicious new year.