"Let us unanimously recognize the fact that the federal debt, whether it be twenty-five billions or forty billions, can only be paid if the nation obtains a vastly increased citizen income. I repeat that if this citizen income can be raised to eighty billion dollars a year the national government and the overwhelming majority of state and local governments will be definitely 'out of the red.' The higher the national income goes the faster will we be able to reduce the total of federal and state and local debts. Viewed from every angle, today's purchasing power—the citizens' income of today—is not at this time sufficient to drive the economic system of America at higher speed. Responsibility of government requires us at this time to supplement the normal processes and in so supplementing them to make sure that the addition is adequate. We must start again on a long steady upward incline in national income.
". . . And in that process, which I believe is ready to start, let us avoid the pitfalls of the past—the overproduction, the overspeculation, and indeed all the extremes which we did not succeed in avoiding in 1929. In all of this, government cannot and should not act alone. Business must help. And I am sure business will help.
"We need more than the materials of recovery. We need a united national will.
"We need to recognize nationally that the demands of no group, however just, can be satisfied unless that group is prepared to share in finding a way to produce the income from which they and all other groups can be paid. . . . You, as the Congress, I, as the President, must by virtue of our offices, seek the national good by preserving the balance between all groups and all sections.
"We have at our disposal the national resources, the money, the skill of hand and head to raise our economic level—our citizens' income. Our capacity is limited only by our ability to work together. What is needed is the will.
"The time has come to bring that will into action with every driving force at our command. And I am determined to do my share.
". . . Certain positive requirements seem to me to accompany the will—if we have that will.
"There is placed on all of us the duty of self-restraint. . . . That is the discipline of a democracy. Every patriotic citizen must say to himself or herself, that immoderate statement, appeals to prejudice, the creation of unkindness, are offenses not against an individual or individuals, but offenses against the whole population of the United States. . . .
"Self-restraint implies restraint by articulate public opinion, trained to distinguish fact from falsehood, trained to believe that bitterness is never a useful instrument in public affairs. There can be no dictatorship by an individual or by a group in this Nation, save through division fostered by hate. Such division there must never be."
And finally I should like to say a personal word to you.