(6) The Congress has properly reduced taxes on small corporate enterprises, and has made it easier for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make credit available to all business. I think the bankers of the country can fairly be expected to participate in loans where the government, through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, offers to take a fair portion of the risk.
(7) The Congress has provided additional funds for the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps and other agencies, in order to take care of what we hope is a temporary additional number of unemployed at this time and to encourage production of every kind by private enterprise.
All these things together I call our program for the national defense of our economic system. It is a program of balanced action—of moving on all fronts at once in intelligent recognition that all of our economic problems, of every group, and of every section of the country are essentially one problem.
(8) Finally, because of increasing armaments in other nations and an international situation which is definitely disturbing to all of us, the Congress has authorized important additions to the national armed defense of our shores and our people.
On another important subject the net result of a struggle in the
Congress has been an important victory for the people of the United
States—what might well be called a lost battle which won a war.
You will remember that on February 5, 1937, I sent a message to the Congress dealing with the real need of federal court reforms of several kinds. In one way or another, during the sessions of this Congress, the ends—the real objectives—sought in that message, have been substantially attained.
The attitude of the Supreme Court towards constitutional questions is entirely changed. Its recent decisions are eloquent testimony of a willingness to collaborate with the two other branches of government to make democracy work. The government has been granted the right to protect its interests in litigation between private parties involving the constitutionality of federal, and to appeal directly to the Supreme Court in all cases involving the constitutionality of federal statutes; and no single judge is any longer empowered to suspend a federal statute on his sole judgment as to its constitutionality. Justices of the Supreme Court may now retire at the age of seventy after ten years of service; a substantial number of additional judgeships have been created in order to expedite the trial of cases; and finally greater flexibility has been added to the federal judicial system by allowing judges to be assigned to congested districts.
Another indirect accomplishment of this Congress has been its response to the devotion of the American people to a course of sane and consistent liberalism. The Congress has understood that under modern conditions government has a continuing responsibility to meet continuing problems, and that government cannot take a holiday of a year, or a month, or even a day just because a few people are tired or frightened by the inescapable pace, fast pace, of this modern world in which we live.
Some of my opponents and some of my associates have considered that I have a mistakenly sentimental judgment as to the tenacity of purpose and the general level of intelligence of the American people.
I am still convinced that the American people, since 1932, continue to insist on two requisites of private enterprise, and the relationship of government to it. The first is a complete honesty at the top in looking after the use of other people's money, and in apportioning and paying individual and corporate taxes according to ability to pay. The second is sincere respect for the need of all people who are at the bottom, all people at the bottom who need to get work—and through work to get a really fair share of the good things of life, and a chance to save and rise.