It is important to recognize that while we seek to outlaw specific abuses, the American objective of today has an infinitely deeper, finer and more lasting purpose than mere repression.  Thinking people in almost every country of the world have come to realize certain fundamental difficulties with which civilization must reckon.  Rapid changes—­the machine age, the advent of universal and rapid communication and many other new factors—­have brought new problems.  Succeeding generations have attempted to keep pace by reforming in piecemeal fashion this or that attendant abuse.  As a result, evils overlap and reform becomes confused and frustrated.  We lose sight, from time to time, of our ultimate human objectives.

Let us, for a moment, strip from our simple purpose the confusion that results from a multiplicity of detail and from millions of written and spoken words.

We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies.  In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged.  Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness.  No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our families.

We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well.  In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions.  We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others.  But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

I recall to your attention my message to the Congress last June in which I said:  “among our objectives I place the security of the men, women and children of the Nation first.”  That remains our first and continuing task; and in a very real sense every major legislative enactment of this Congress should be a component part of it.

In defining immediate factors which enter into our quest, I have spoken to the Congress and the people of three great divisions: 

1.  The security of a livelihood through the better use of the national resources of the land in which we live.

2.  The security against the major hazards and vicissitudes of life.

3.  The security of decent homes.

I am now ready to submit to the Congress a broad program designed ultimately to establish all three of these factors of security—­a program which because of many lost years will take many future years to fulfill.