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 take it wise1y 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 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 in an effort to provide better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.
yes the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the value of the agricultural product and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. it can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing losses through fore closures of our small homes and our farms. it can be helped by insistence that the federal, the state, and the local government act forthwith on the demands that their costs be drastically reduce. it can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are of ten 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 mere1y talking about it. we must act, we must act quickly.
and finally in our progress toward a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against the 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 provisions 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 outflow 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 narrowly nationalistic. it is the insistence, as a first consideration upon the inter-dependence of the various elements in all parts of the united states of america - a recognition of the old and the 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 ob1igation, and respects the sanctity of his agreement, in and with, a world of neighbor.
if i read the temper of our people correctly we now realize what we have never realized before, our inter-dependence on each other, that we cannot 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 discip1ine, no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective. we are all ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline because it makes possible a 1eadership which aims at the larger good. this, i propose to offet we are going to larger purposes, bind upon us, bind upon us all, as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.