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FDR'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 1933 -
THE REAL ENEMY IS FEAR ITSELF
The Only Thing We Have to Fear is
Fear Itself
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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FDR's First Inaugural Address.
It follows the full text transcript of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural
Address, also called The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear
Itself speech, delivered on the East Portico of the U.S.
Capitol at Washington D.C. - March 4, 1933.
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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
preeminently 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 failure, 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 confidence. 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 from 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
valued 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
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 natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize
the overbalance 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.
There 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 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 interdependence of the
various elements in all 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
interdependence on each other; that we can not
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 possible a
leadership which aims at a larger good. This I
propose to offer, pledging that the larger
purposes will bind 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. These
measures, or such other measures as the 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 that the Congress shall fail to
take one of these two 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 the national unity; with the
clear consciousness of seeking old and precious
moral values; with the clean satisfaction that
comes from the stem 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 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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