The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt | Page 6

batting average, not only for myself
but for the team. Theodore Roosevelt once said to me: "If I can be right
75 percent of the time I shall come up to the fullest measure of my
hopes."
Much has been said of late about federal finances and inflation, the
gold standard, etc. Let me make the facts very simple and my policy
very clear. In the first place, government credit and government
currency are really one and the same thing. Behind government bonds
there is only a promise to pay. Behind government currency we have,
in addition to the promise to pay, a reserve of gold and a small reserve
of silver. In this connection it is worth while remembering that in the
past the government has agreed to redeem nearly thirty billions of its
debts and its currency in gold, and private corporations in this country

have agreed to redeem another sixty or seventy billions of securities
and mortgages in gold. The government and private corporations were
making these agreements when they knew full well that all of the gold
in the United States amounted to only between three and four billions
and that all of the gold in all of the world amounted to only about
eleven billions.
If the holders of these promises to pay started in to demand gold the
first comers would get gold for a few days and they would amount to
about one twenty-fifth of the holders of the securities and the currency.
The other twenty-four people out of twenty-five, who did not happen to
be at the top of the line, would be told politely that there was no more
gold left. We have decided to treat all twenty-five in the same way in
the interest of justice and the exercise of the constitutional powers of
this government. We have placed everyone on the same basis in order
that the general good may be preserved.
Nevertheless, gold, and to a partial extent silver, are perfectly good
bases for currency and that is why I decided not to let any of the gold
now in the country go out of it.
A series of conditions arose three weeks ago which very readily might
have meant, first, a drain on our gold by foreign countries, and second,
as a result of that, a flight of American capital, in the form of gold, out
of our country. It is not exaggerating the possibility to tell you that such
an occurrence might well have taken from us the major part of our gold
reserve and resulted in such a further weakening of our government and
private credit as to bring on actual panic conditions and the complete
stoppage of the wheels of industry.
The administration has the definite objective of raising commodity
prices to such an extent that those who have borrowed money will, on
the average, be able to repay that money in the same kind of dollar
which they borrowed. We do not seek to let them get such a cheap
dollar that they will be able to pay back a great deal less than they
borrowed. In other words, we seek to correct a wrong and not to create
another wrong in the opposite direction. That is why powers are being
given to the administration to provide, if necessary, for an enlargement
of credit, in order to correct the existing wrong. These powers will be
used when, as, and if it may be necessary to accomplish the purpose.
Hand in hand with the domestic situation which, of course, is our first

concern, is the world situation, and I want to emphasize to you that the
domestic situation is inevitably and deeply tied in with the conditions
in all of the other nations of the world. In other words, we can get, in
all probability, a fair measure of prosperity to return in the United
States, but it will not be permanent unless we get a return to prosperity
all over the world.
In the conferences which we have held and are holding with the leaders
of other nations, we are seeking four great objectives: First, a general
reduction of armaments and through this the removal of the fear of
invasion and armed attack, and, at the same time, a reduction in
armament costs, in order to help in the balancing of government
budgets and the reduction of taxation; second, a cutting down of the
trade barriers, in order to restart the flow of exchange of crops and
goods between nations; third, the setting up of a stabilization of
currencies, in order that trade can make contracts ahead; fourth, the
reestablishment of friendly relations and greater confidence between all
nations.
Our foreign visitors these past three weeks have responded to these
purposes in a very helpful