I speak today in an hour of national peril and national opportunity.  Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure.  The outcome is by no means certain.  The answers are by no means clear.  All of us together—­this Administration, this Congress, this nation—­must forge those answers.

But today, were I to offer—­after little more than a week in office—­detailed legislation to remedy every national ill, the Congress would rightly wonder whether the desire for speed had replaced the duty of responsibility.

My remarks, therefore, will be limited.  But they will also be candid.  To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past.  The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies, and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.  And, while the occasion does not call for another recital of our blessings and assets, we do have no greater asset than the willingness of a free and determined people, through its elected officials, to face all problems frankly and meet all dangers free from panic or fear.

I.

The present state of our economy is disturbing.  We take office in the wake of seven months of recession, three and one-half years of slack, seven years of diminished economic growth, and nine years of falling farm income.

Business bankruptcies have reached their highest level since the Great Depression.  Since 1951 farm income has been squeezed down by 25 percent.  Save for a brief period in 1958, insured unemployment is at the highest peak in our history.  Of some five and one-half million Americans who are without jobs, more than one million have been searching for work for more than four months.  And during each month some 150,000 workers are exhausting their already meager jobless benefit rights.

Nearly one-eighth of those who are without jobs live almost without hope in nearly one hundred especially depressed and troubled areas.  The rest include new school graduates unable to use their talents, farmers forced to give up their part-time jobs which helped balance their family budgets, skilled and unskilled workers laid off in such important industries as metals, machinery, automobiles and apparel.

Our recovery from the 1958 recession, moreover, was anemic and incomplete.  Our Gross National Product never regained its full potential.  Unemployment never returned to normal levels.  Maximum use of our national industrial capacity was never restored.

In short, the American economy is in trouble.  The most resourceful industrialized country on earth ranks among the last in the rate of economic growth.  Since last spring our economic growth rate has actually receded.  Business investment is in a decline.  Profits have fallen below predicted levels.  Construction is off.  A million unsold automobiles are in inventory.  Fewer people are working—­and the average work week has shrunk well below 40 hours.  Yet prices have continued to rise—­so that now too many Americans have less to spend for items that cost more to buy.