Wage and hour legislation, therefore, is a problem which is definitely before this Congress for action.  It is an essential part of economic recovery.  It has the support of an overwhelming majority of our people in every walk of life.  They have expressed themselves through the ballot box.

Again I revert to the increase of national purchasing power as an underlying necessity of the day.  If you increase that purchasing power for the farmers and for the industrial workers, especially for those in both groups who have least of it today, you will increase the purchasing power of the final third of our population—­those who transport and distribute the products of farm and factory, and those of the professions who serve all groups.  I have tried to make clear to you, and through you to the people of the United States, that this is an urgency which must be met by complete and not by partial action.

If it is met, if the purchasing power of the Nation as a whole—­in other words, the total of the Nation’s income—­can be still further increased, other happy results will flow from such increase.

We have raised the Nation’s income from thirty-eight billion dollars in the year 1932 to about sixty-eight billion dollars in the year 1937.  Our goal, our objective is to raise it to ninety or one hundred billion dollars.

We have heard much about a balanced budget, and it is interesting to note that many of those who have pleaded for a balanced budget as the sole need now come to me to plead for additional government expenditures at the expense of unbalancing the budget.  As the Congress is fully aware, the annual deficit, large for several years, has been declining the last fiscal year and this.  The proposed budget for 1939, which I shall shortly send to the Congress, will exhibit a further decrease in the deficit, though not a balance between income and outgo.

To many who have pleaded with me for an immediate balancing of the budget, by a sharp curtailment or even elimination of government functions, I have asked the question:  “What present expenditures would you reduce or eliminate?” And the invariable answer has been “that is not my business—­I know nothing of the details, but I am sure that it could be done.”  That is not what you or I would call helpful citizenship.

On only one point do most of them have a suggestion.  They think that relief for the unemployed by the giving of work is wasteful, and when I pin them down I discover that at heart they are actually in favor of substituting a dole in place of useful work.  To that neither I nor, I am confident, the Senators and Representatives in the Congress will ever consent.

I am as anxious as any banker or industrialist or business man or investor or economist that the budget of the United States Government be brought into balance as quickly as possible.  But I lay down certain conditions which seem reasonable and which I believe all should accept.