We cannot maintain prosperity unless we have a fair distribution of opportunity and a widespread consumption of the products of our factories and farms.

Our Government has undertaken to meet these responsibilities.

We have made tremendous public investments in highways, hydroelectric power projects, soil conservation, and reclamation.  We have established a system of social security.  We have enacted laws protecting the rights and the welfare of our working people and the income of our farmers.  These Federal policies have paid for themselves many times over.  They have strengthened the material foundations of our democratic ideals.  Without them, our present prosperity would be impossible.

Reinforced by these policies, our private enterprise system has reached new heights of production.  Since the boom year of 1929, while our population has increased by only 20 percent, our agricultural production has increased by 45 percent, and our industrial production has increased by 75 percent.  We are turning out far more goods and more wealth per worker than we have ever done before.

This progress has confounded the gloomy prophets—­at home and abroad who predicted the downfall of American capitalism.  The people of the United States, going their own way, confident in their own powers, have achieved the greatest prosperity the world has even seen.

But, great as our progress has been, we still have a long way to go.

As we look around the country, many of our shortcomings stand out in bold relief.

We are suffering from excessively high prices.

Our production is still not large enough to satisfy our demands.

Our minimum wages are far too low.

Small business is losing ground to growing monopoly.

Our farmers still face an uncertain future.  And too many of them lack the benefits of our modern civilization.

Some of our natural resources are still being wasted.

We are acutely short of electric power, although the means for developing such power are abundant.

Five million families are still living in slums and firetraps.  Three million families share their homes with others.

Our health is far behind the progress of medical science.  Proper medical care is so expensive that it is out of the reach of the great majority of our citizens.

Our schools, in many localities, are utterly inadequate.

Our democratic ideals are often thwarted by prejudice and intolerance.

Each of these shortcomings is also an opportunity-an opportunity for the
Congress and the President to work for the good of the people.

Our first great opportunity is to protect our economy against the evils of “boom and bust.”

This objective cannot be attained by government alone.  Indeed, the greater part of the task must be performed by individual efforts under our system of free enterprise.  We can keep our present prosperity, and increase it, only if free enterprise and free government work together to that end.