First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, the first president to be sworn in since passage of the 20th Amendment, which mandated Inauguration Day to be held on January 20th. After his landslide victory, Roosevelt's address, with the Great Depression still griping the country, was heard by tens of millions of Americans by radio. One of the most remembered and paraphrased quotes from any presidential inauguration address is in this one: "The only thing we have to fear...is fear itself..."
Inaugural Speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Given in Washington, D.C.
March 4th, 1933
President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:
This is a day of national consecration, and I am certain
that 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 nation impels.
This is pre-eminently 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 vigor has met with that understanding
and support of the people themselves which is essential to
victory. 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 shrunken 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, 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.
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 failures and 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 conditions.
They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.
They have no vision, and when there is no vision the
people perish.
The money changers have fled their high seats in the
temple of our civilization. We may now restore that
temple to the ancient truths.
The measure of the 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 and moral stimulation of work no longer
must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent
profits. These dark days 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 and to
our fellow-men.
Recognition of the 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 values 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, on unselfish
performance. Without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics
alone. This nation asks 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 accompanied 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
national resources.
Hand in hand with this, we must frankly recognize the
over-balance 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.
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, State,
and 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 and unequal.
It can be helped by national planning for and supervision
of all forms of transportation and of communications and
other utilities which have a definitely public character.
There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can
never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act,
and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward 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 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
several 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, to point in 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
interdependence of the various elements in and parts
of the United States. . .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 the 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 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 discipline, no progress is made,
no leadership becomes effective.
We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives
and property to such discipline because it makes
possibly a leadership which aims at a larger good.
This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger
purposes will hind upon us all as a sacred obligation
with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time 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 and to this end is feasible under
the form of government which we have inherited
from our ancestors.
Our Constitution is so simple and 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 produced. It has met every stress
of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter
internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive
and legislative authority may be 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.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of
these courses, and 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 and permanent
national life.
We do not distrust 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 will take it.
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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