Gale Encyclopedia Of American Law 3Rd Edition Volume 13 P52 docx

provocation; when we may choose peace or war,
as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a
situation? Why quit our own to stand upon
foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our
destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle
our peace and prosperity in the toils of European
ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of per-
manent alliances with any portion of the foreign
world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to
do it; for let me not be understood as capable of
patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I
hold the maxim no less applicable to public
than to private affairs that honesty is always the
best policy. I repeat, therefo re, let those engage-
ments be observed in their genuine sense. But in
my opinion it is unnecessary and would be
unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by
suitable establishments on a respectable defen-
sive posture, we may safely trust to temporary
alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations
are recommended by policy, humanity, and
interest. But even our commercial policy should
hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking
nor granting exclusive favors or preferences;
consulting the natural course of things; diffusing
and diversifying by gentle means the streams of
commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with

powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable
course, to define the rights of our merchants, and
to enable the government to support them,
conventional rules of intercourse, the best that
present circumstances and mutual opinion will
permit, but temporary and liable to be from time
to time abandoned or varied as experience and
circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in
view that it is folly in one nation to look for
disinterested favors from another; that it must
pay with a portion of its independence for
whatever it may accept under that character; that
by such acceptance it may place itself in the
condition of having given equivalents for nomi-
nal favors, and yet of being reproached with
ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no
greater error than to expect or calculate upon real
favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion
which experience must cure, which a just pride
ought to discard.
In offering to you, my countrymen, these
counsels of an old and affectionate friend I dare
not hope they will make the strong and lasting
impression I could wish—that they will control
the usual current of the passions or prevent our
nation from running the course which has
hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But if I
may even flatter myself that they may be
productive of some partial benefit, some occa-
sional good—that they may now and then recur

to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn
against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard
against the impostures of pretended patriotism—
this hope will be a full recompense for the
solicitude for your welfare by which they have
been dictated.
How far in the discharge of my official duties
I have been guided by the principles which have
been delineated the public records and other
evidences of my conduct must witness to you
and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my
own conscience is that I have at least believed
myself to be guided by them.
In relation to the still subsisting war in
Europe, my proclamation of the 22d of April
1793 is the index to my plan. Sanctioned by
your approving voice and by that of your
representatives in both houses of Congress, the
spirit of that measure has continually governed
me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or
divert me from it.
After deliberate examination, with the aid of
the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied
that our country, under all the circumstances of
the case, had a right to take, and was bound in
duty and interest to take, a neutral position.
Having taken it, I determined as far as should
depend upon me to maintain it with moderation,
perseverance, and firmness.
The considerations which respect the right to

hold this conduct it is not necessary on this
occasion to detail. I will only observe that,
according to my understanding of the matter,
that right, so far from being denied by any of the
belligerent powers, has been virtually admitted
by all.
The duty of holding a neutral conduct may
be inferred, without anything more, from the
obligation which justice and humanity impose
on every nation, in cases in which it is free to
act, to maintain in violate the relations of peace
and amity toward other nations.
The inducements of interest for observing
that conduct will best be referred to your own
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PRESIDENTIAL
SPEECHES
GEORGE
WASHINGTON:
FAREWELL
ADDRESS
reflections and experience. With me a predom-
inant motive has been to endeavor to gain time
to our country to settle and mature its yet recent
institutions, and to progress without interrup-
tion to that degree of strength and consistency
which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking,
the command of its own fortunes.
Though in reviewing the incidents of my

administration I am unconscious of intentional
error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my
defects not to think it probable that I may have
committed many errors. Whatever they may be,
I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or
mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall
also carry with me the hope that my country
will never cease to view them with indulgence,
and that, after forty-five years of my life
dedicated to its service with an upright zeal,
the faults of incompetent abilities will be
consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be
to the mansions of rest.
Relying on its kindness in this as in other
things, and actuated by that fervent l ove
toward it which is so natural to a man who
viewsinitthenativesoilofhimselfandhis
progenitors for several generations, I anticipate
with pleasing expectation that retreat in which
I p romise myself to realize without alloy the
sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of
my fellow citizens the benign influence of good
laws under a free government—the ever-
favorite object of my heart, and the happy
reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors,
and dan gers.
Source: James D. Richardson, ed., ACompilationofthe
Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 1 (1896), pp. 213–24.
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PRESIDENTIAL
SPEECHES
GEORGE
WASHINGTON:
FAREWELL
ADDRESS
Presidential
Speeches
Abraham Lincoln:
Gettysburg Address
O
n November 19, 1863, President Abraham
Lincoln delivered an address at the
dedication of the national cemetery in Gettys-
burg, Pennsylvania, that has become one of the
most famous speeches of U.S. history. Lincoln’s
speech came less than six months after the
conclusion of the Gettysburg campaign (June 27–
July 4, 1863), one of the bloodiest battles of the
U.S. CIVIL WAR. Confederate General Robert E.
Lee and his forces were defeated by Union forces
led by General George Meade. The losses for both
sides were immense with more than 7,000 killed
and 44,000 wounded or missing.
The principal orator at the dedication was
Edward Everett, a senator, preacher, and scholar
who spoke for more than two hours in the florid
style of the time. Lincoln, who presided at the
dedication, followed with a few brief remarks in a
speech he had written in Washington and then

revised slightly before the ceremony. Lincoln
honored those who had died at Gettysburg and
proclaimed that the cause for which they had died
had given the nation a “new birth of freedom.”
Lucid, terse, and precise, Lincoln’s speech
stood in stark contrast to Everett’s. Though the
crowd that day applauded Lincoln’s address
without enthusiasm, generations of schoolchil-
dren have memorized and recited it, while
Everett’s speech was quickly forgotten.
k
Abraham Lincoln:
Gettysburg Address
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field
as a final resting-place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should
do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—
we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our

poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is
for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us—that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion; that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain; that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
Source: The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Constitutional ed.,
vol. 7 (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), p. 20.
498
REFLECTIONS ON LAW AND SOCIETY
Presidential
Speeches
Abraham Lincoln:
Second Inaugural Address
A
braham Lincoln gave many memorable
addresses during his political career, but
his second inaugural address is ranked as
perhaps his greatest speech. On March 4,
1865, as he began his second term as president,

Lincoln delivered the address at the Capitol
in Washington, D.C. With the Union forces
close to victory—the
CIVIL WAR would end
the following month—Lincoln ’s address looked
forward to the peace that would follow.
Throughout the war Lincoln had expressed his
desire to preserve the Unio n. In his address he
reminded his listeners that the issue of slavery
had been central to the Civil War and suggested
that slavery had offended God and brought
forth divine retribution in the form of the
conflict. Now, with peace at hand, he urged a
national reconciliation “with malice toward
none, w ith charity for all.” Linc oln did not
have the opportunity to shape Reconstruction.
He was shot on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes
Booth during the performance of a play at
Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He died the
next day.
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Abraham Lincoln: Second
Inaugural Address
Fellow countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of
the presidential office, there is less occasion for
an extended address than there was at the first.
Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course
to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now,
at the expiration of four years, during which

public de clarations have been constantly called
forth on every point and phase of the great
contest which still absorbs the attention and
engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is
new could be presented. The progress of our
arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I
trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to
all. With high hope for the future, no prediction
in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four
years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to
an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought
to avert it. While the inaugural address was being
delivered from this place, devoted altogether to
saving the Union without war, insurgent agents
were in the city seeking to destroy it without
war—seeking to disolve the Union and divide
effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated
war, but one of them would make war rather than
let the nation survive, and the other would accept
war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were
colored slaves, not distributed generally over the
Union, but localized in the southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful
interest. All knew that this interest was
somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the

Union even by war, while the govern ment
claimed no right to do more than to restrict the
territorial enlargement of it. Neither party
expected for the war the ma gnitude or the
499
REFLECTIONS ON LAW AND SOCIETY
duration which it has already attained . Neither
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might
cease with or even be fore the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph,
and a result less fundamental and astounding.
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same
God, and each invokes His aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare
to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their
bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but
let us judge not, that we be not judged. The
prayers of both could not be answered. That of
neither has been answered fully. The Almighty
has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world
because of offenses; for it must needs be that
offenses come, but woe to that man by whom
the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that
American slavery is one of those offenses which,
in the providence of God, must needs come, but
which, having continued through His appointed
time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives
to both North and South this terrible war as the
woe due to those by whom the offense came,
shall we discern therein any departure from

those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if
God wills that it continue until all the wealth
piled by the bondsman ’s two hundred and fifty
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be
said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to
see the right, let us strive on to finish t he work
we are in , to bind up the nation’s wounds, to
care for him who shall have borne the battle and
for his widow and his orphan, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations.
Source: James D. Richardson, ed. Messages and Papers of the
Presidents: 1789–1897, vol. 6 (1900), pp. 276–277.
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PRESIDENTIAL
SPEECHES
ABRAHAM
LINCOLN:
SECOND
INAUGURAL

ADDRESS
Presidential
Speeches
Woodrow Wilson:
Fourteen Points
B
y the end of the nineteenth century, U.S.
presidents had begun to relax the tradi-
tional isolationism of U.S. foreign policy. Never-
theless, when
WORLD WAR I began in 1914, the
United States remained aloof from the conflict.
President Woodrow Wilson was reelected to a
second term in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us
out of war.” Wilson and U.S. public opinion
shifted, however, when Germany announced that
it would engage in unrestricted submarine
warfare beginning on February 1, 1917. On
April 6, 1917, Wilson signed the congressional
declaration of war against Germany.
Wilson, who had attempted to negotiate a
peace among the belligerents in 1916, renewed
his efforts by proposing a new framework for
negotiations. On January 8, 1918, he delivered
an address to Congress that named fourteen
points to be used as the guide for a peace
settlement. The speech became known as the
Fourteen Points and served as a distillation of
Wilson’s vision of a postwar world. In the
address Wilson said that the secret alliances that

triggered the war must be replaced with “open
covenants of peace, openly arri ved at.” He
proclaimed the need to demilitarize the ocean
and reduce military armaments. He also
articulated the desire to end European colonial-
ism and allow the various nationalities of the
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires to
create their own states. The most important
point was the last, which called for a general
association of nations that would guarantee
political independence and territorial integrity
for all countries.
Following the armistice that ended the war
on November 9, 1918, President Wilson led the
U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.
Wilson was the only representative of the great
powers (which also included Great Britain,
France, and Italy) who truly wanted an interna-
tional organization. His influence was instru-
mental in persuading the delegates to establish
the League of Nations. At home, however, he was
unable to secure Senate ratification of the peace
treaty that included the league. He was opposed
both by Republicans who did not want to
commit the United States to supporting the
league with financial resources and by isola-
tionists from both major political parties who
argued that the United States should not interfere
in European affairs.
k

Woodrow Wilson:
Fourteen Points
It will be our wish and purpose that the processes
of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely
open and that they shall involve and permit
henceforth no secret understandings of any kind.
The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone
by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered
into in the interest of particular governments and
likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the
peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear
to the view of every public man whose thoughts
do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone,
which makes it possible for every nation whose
purposes are consistent with justice and the peace
501
REFLECTIONS ON LAW AND SOCIETY
of the world to avow now or at any other time the
objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of
right had occurred which touched us to the
quick and made the life of our own people
impossible unless they were corrected and the
world secure once for all against their recur-
rence. What we demand in this war, therefore,
is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the
world be made fit and safe to live in; and
particularly that it be made safe for every peace-
loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live
its own life, determine its own institutions, be

assured of justice and fair dealing by the other
peoples of the world as against force and selfish
aggression. All the peoples of the world are in
effect partners in this interest, and for our own
part we see very clearly that unless justice be
done to others it will no t be done to us. The
programme of the world’s peace, therefore, is
our programme; and that programme, the only
possible programme, as we see it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived
at, after which there shall be no private
international understandings of any kind but
diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in
the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the
seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace
and in war, except as the seas may be closed in
whole or in part by international action for the
enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all
economic barriers and the establishment of an
equality of trade conditions among all the
nations consenting to the peace and associating
themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken
that national armaments will be reduced to the
lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely
impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based
upon a strict observance of the principle that in

determining all such questions of sovereignty the
interests of the populations concerned must have
equal weight with the equitable claims of the
government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory
and such a settlement of all questions affecting
Russia as will secure the best and freest coopera-
tion of the other nations of the world in obtaining
for her an unhampered and unembarrassed
opportunity for the independent determination
of her own political development and national
policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into
the society of free nations under institutions of
her own choosing; and, more than a welcome,
assistance also of every kind that she may need
and may herself desire. The treatment accorded
Russia by her sister nations in the months to
come will be the acid test of their good will, of
their comprehension of her needs as distin-
guished from their own interests, and of their
intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree,
must be evacuated and restored, without any
attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys
in common with all other free nations. No other
single act will serve as this will serve to restore
confidence among the nations in the laws which
they have themselves set and determined for the
government of their relations with one another.
Without this healing act the whole structure and

validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and
the invaded portions restored, and the wrong
done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of
Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of
the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted,
in order that peace may once more be made
secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy
should be effected along clearly recognizable
lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose
place among the nations we wish to see safe-
guarded and assured, should be accorded the
freest opportunity to autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro
should be evacuated; occupied territories re-
stored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to
the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan
states to one another determined by friendly
counsel along histori cally established lines of
allegiance and nationality; and international
guarantees of the political and economic
independence and territorial integrity of the
several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portion of the present
Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure
sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are
now under Turkish rule should be assured an
undoubted security of life and an absolutely

unmolested opportunity of autonomous
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PRESIDENTIAL
SPEECHES
WOODROW
WILSON:
FOURTEEN
POINTS
development, and the Dardanelles should be
permanently opened as a free passage to the ships
and commerce of all nations under international
guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be
erected which should include the territories
inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,
which should be assured a free and secure access
to the sea, and whose political and economic
independence and territorial integrity should be
guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must
be formed under specific covenants for the
purpose of affording mutual guarantees of
political independence and territorial integrity
to great and small states alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of
wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to
be intimate partners of all the governments and
peoples associated together against the Imperial-
ists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided

in purpose. We stand together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we
are willing to fight and to continue to fight
until they are achieved; but only because we
wish the right to prevail and desire a just and
stable peace such as can be secured only by
removing the chief provocations to war, which
this programme does remove. We have no
jealousy of German greatness, and there is
nothing in this programme that impairs it. We
grudge her no achievement or distinction of
learning or of pacific enterprise such as have
made her record very bright and very enviable.
We do not wish to injure her or to bloc k in any
way her legitimate influence or power. We
do not wish to fight her either with arms or
with hostile arrangements of trade if she is
willing to associate herself with us and the
other peace-loving nations of the world in
covenants of justice and law and fair dealing.
We wish her only to accept a place of equality
among the peoples of the world,—the new
world in which we now live,—instead of a
place of mastery.
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PRIMARY DOCUMENTS REFLECTIONS ON LAW AND SOCIETY 503
PRESIDENTIAL
SPEECHES
WOODROW
WILSON:

FOURTEEN
POINTS
Presidential
Speeches
Franklin D. Roosevelt:
First Inaugural Address
D
uring the presidential campaign of 1932,
with the United States mired in the
Great Depres sion, Franklin D. Roosevelt called
for action by the federal government to revive
the economy and end the suffering of the
thirteen million people who were unemployed.
When he took office on March 4, 1933, the
national mood was bleak. In his first inaugural
address, Roosevelt reassured the nation that
“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
He proposed a New Deal for the people of the
United States and prom ised he would use the
power of the executive branch to address
the economic crisis.
In his speech Roosevelt criticized the
financial community for breeding a culture of
greed during the 1920s that led to the
economic depression. Dec laring that “our
greatest task is to put people to work,” he
proposed to use the government to reinvigo-
rate the econ omy. He acknowledged that the
need for “und elayed action” might require
disturbing the “normal balance of executive

and legislative authority.”
Roosevelt’s address helped rally the nation.
His call for sweeping actions by the federal
government produced a torrent of legislat ion
from Congress in his first hundred days in
office. Though the Supreme Court initially
struck down many of thes e acts as unconstitu-
tional, within a few years the Court changed its
view. As a result, the federal government greatly
expanded its power to regulate the economy.
Through Roosevelt’s bold initiatives, many U.S.
citizens came to view the federal government in
a new way— as the catalyst of progressive social
change.
k
Franklin D. Roosevelt: First
Inaugural Address
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 curtailme nt of income;
the means of exchange are frozen in the
currents of trade; the withered leaves of
industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers
504
REFLECTIONS ON LAW AND SOCIETY
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 retur n.
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 stubborn-
ness and their own incompetence, have admit-
ted 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 w hich too
often has given to a sacre d 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 accom-
plished 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 reorga-
nize 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 planningfor and supervision
of all forms of transportation and of communica-
tions 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’smoney,andtheremustbe
provision for an adequate but sound currency.
There are the lines of attack. I shall presently
urge upon a new Congress in special session de-

tailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall
seek the immediate assistance of the several States.
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
PRIMARY DOCUMENTS REFLECTIONS ON LAW AND SOCIETY 505
PRESIDENTIAL
SPEECHES
FRANKLIN D.
ROOSEVELT:
FIRST
INAUGURAL
ADDRESS