However, for the first time in five years the relief rolls have declined instead of increased during the winter months. It is true that while business and industry are definitely better our relief rolls are still too large. Therefore, let us keep our minds on two or three simple essential facts in connection with this problem of unemployment. Sometimes it depends upon what paper you read and what broadcast you hear. So many figures are quoted to prove so many things. I shall not confuse my discussion by a multitude of figures. Its first objective is to put men and women now on the relief rolls to work and, incidentally, to assist materially in our already unmistakable march toward recovery. My most immediate concern is in carrying out the purposes of the great work program just enacted by the Congress. Tonight, therefore, I speak to and of the American people as a whole.
Did you ever stop to think that there are, after all, only two positions in the Nation that are filled by the vote of all of the voters-the President and the Vice-President? That makes it particularly necessary for the Vice-President and for me to conceive of our duty toward the entire country. "To get away from the trees," as they say, "and to look at the whole forest." This duty of seeing the country in a long-range perspective is one which, in a very special manner, attaches to this office to which you have chosen me.
I am reminded sometimes of what President Wilson once said: "So many people come to Washington who know things that are not so, and so few people who know what the people of the United States are thinking about." That is why I occasionally leave this scene of action for a few days to go fishing or back home to Hyde Park so that I can have a chance to think quietly about the country as a whole. The most difficult place in the world to get a clear and open perspective of the country as a whole is Washington. Americans as a whole are feeling a lot better-a lot more cheerful than for many, many years. They know that the process of the constructive rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a year, but that it is being done in spite of the few who seek to confuse them and to profit by their confusion.
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The overwhelming majority of people in this country know how to sift the wheat from the chaff in what they hear and what they read. That is a tremendous gain for the principles of democracy. More and more people, because of clearer thinking and a better understanding, are considering the whole rather than a mere part relating to one section, or to one crop, or to one industry, or to an individual private occupation. Three years of hard thinking have changed the picture. Before that time individual self-interest and group selfishness were paramount in public thinking. The objective of the Nation has greatly changed in three years. It is that way with the making of a national policy. It may seem confused to some, but out of the multitude of detailed parts that go into the making of the structure, the creation of a useful instrument for man ultimately comes. When one of these ships is under construction and the steel frames have been set in the keel, it is difficult for a person who does not know ships to tell how it will finally look when it is sailing the high seas. At different points on the coast where I often visit they build great seagoing ships. The job of creating a program for the Nation's welfare is, in some respects, like the building of a ship. Each of our steps has a definite relationship to every other step. The Administration and the Congress are not proceeding in any haphazard fashion in this task of government. It has made and is making distinct progress.īefore I come to any of the specific measures, however, I want to leave in your minds one clear fact.
In the many weeks since that time the Congress has devoted itself to the arduous task of formulating legislation necessary to the country's welfare. Since my Annual Message to the Congress on January 4th, last, I have not addressed the general public over the air.
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