The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt | Page 7

way. All of the nations have suffered alike in
this great depression. They have all reached the conclusion that each
can best be helped by the common action of all. It is in this spirit that
our visitors have met with us and discussed our common problems. The
international conference that lies before us must succeed. The future of
the world demands it and we have each of us pledged ourselves to the
best joint efforts to this end.
To you, the people of this country, all of us, the Members of the
Congress and the members of this administration, owe a profound debt
of gratitude. Throughout the depression you have been patient. You
have granted us wide powers; you have encouraged us with a
widespread approval of our purposes. Every ounce of strength and
every resource at our command we have devoted to the end of
justifying your confidence. We are encouraged to believe that a wise
and sensible beginning has been made. In the present spirit of mutual
confidence and mutual encouragement we go forward.

July 24, 1933.
After the adjournment of the historical special session of the Congress

five weeks ago I purposely refrained from addressing you for two very
good reasons.
First, I think that we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought
to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of
the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels
of the New Deal.
Secondly, I wanted a few weeks in which to set up the new
administrative organization and to see the first fruits of our careful
planning.
I think it will interest you if I set forth the fundamentals of this
planning for national recovery; and this I am very certain will make it
abundantly clear to you that all of the proposals and all of the
legislation since the fourth day of March have not been just a collection
of haphazard schemes but rather the orderly component parts of a
connected and logical whole.
Long before inauguration day I became convinced that individual effort
and local effort and even disjointed federal effort had failed and of
necessity would fail and, therefore, that a rounded leadership by the
federal government had become a necessity both of theory and of fact.
Such leadership, however, had its beginning in preserving and
strengthening the credit of the United States government, because
without that no leadership was a possibility. For years the government
had not lived within its income. The immediate task was to bring our
regular expenses within our revenues. That has been done.
It may seem inconsistent for a government to cut down its regular
expenses and at the same time to borrow and to spend billions for an
emergency. But it is not inconsistent because a large portion of the
emergency money has been paid out in the form of sound loans which
will be repaid to the treasury over a period of years; and to cover the
rest of the emergency money we have imposed taxes to pay the interest
and the installments on that part of the debt.
So you will see that we have kept our credit good. We have built a
granite foundation in a period of confusion. That foundation of the
federal credit stands there broad and sure. It is the base of the whole
recovery plan.
Then came the part of the problem that concerned the credit of the
individual citizens themselves. You and I know of the banking crisis

and of the great danger to the savings of our people. On March sixth
every national bank was closed. One month later 90 percent of the
deposits in the national banks had been made available to the
depositors. Today only about 5 percent of the deposits in national banks
are still tied up. The condition relating to state banks, while not quite so
good on a percentage basis, is showing a steady reduction in the total of
frozen deposits--a result much better than we had expected three
months ago.
The problem of the credit of the individual was made more difficult
because of another fact. The dollar was a different dollar from the one
with which the average debt had been incurred. For this reason large
numbers of people were actually losing possession of and title to their
farms and homes. All of you know the financial steps which have been
taken to correct this inequality. In addition the Home Loan Act, the
Farm Loan Act and the Bankruptcy Act were passed.
It was a vital necessity to restore purchasing power by reducing the
debt and interest charges upon our people, but while we were helping
people to save their credit it was at the same time absolutely essential
to