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A C C E P T A N C E S P E E C H

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––––––––––––––––– Franklin Delano Roosevelt ––––––––––––––––––

…The appearance before a National Convention of its nominee for President,

to be formally notified of his selection, is unprecedented and unusual, but these

are unprecedented and unusual times. I have started out on the tasks that lie

ahead by breaking the absurd traditions that the candidate should remain in

professed ignorance of what has happened for weeks until he is formally

notified of that event many weeks later.

My friends, may this be the symbol of my intention to be honest and to avoid

all hypocrisy or sham, to avoid all silly shutting of the eyes to the truth in this

campaign. You have nominated me and I know it, and I am here to thank you

for the honor.…

Let us now and here highly resolve to resume the country’s interrupted

march along the path of real progress, of real justice, of real equality for all of

our citizens, great and small. Our indomitable leader in that interrupted march

is no longer with us, but there still survives today his spirit. Many of his

captains, thank God, are still with us, to give us wise counsel. Let us feel that in

everything we do there still lives with us, if not the body, the great indomitable,

unquenchable, progressive soul of our Commander-in-Chief, Woodrow

Wilson.

I have many things on which I want to make my position clear at the earliest

possible moment in this campaign.…

There are two ways of viewing the Government’s duty in matters affecting

economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and

hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to

the farmer, to the small business man. That theory belongs to the party of

Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776.

But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party. This is no

time for fear, for reaction or for timidity. Here and now I invite those nominal

Republicans who find that their conscience cannot be squared with the groping

and the failure of their party leaders to join hands with us; here and now, in

equal measure, I warn those nominal Democrats who squint at the future with

their faces turned toward the past, and who feel no responsibility to the

demands of the new time, that they are out of step with their Party.…

I cannot take up all the problems today. I want to touch on a few that are

vital. Let us look a little at the recent history and the simple economics, the

kind of economics that you and I and the average man and woman talk.

In the years before 1929 we know that this country had completed a vast

cycle of building and inflation; for ten years we expanded on the theory of

repairing the wastes of the War, but actually expanding far beyond that, and

also beyond our natural and normal growth. Now it is worth remembering, and

the cold figures of finance prove it, that during that time there was little or no

drop in the prices that the consumer had to pay, although those same figures

proved that the cost of production fell very greatly; corporate profit resulting

from this period was enormous; at the same time little of that profit was

devoted to the reduction of prices. The consumer was forgotten. Very little of it

went into increased wages; the worker was forgotten, and by no means an

adequate proportion was even paid out in dividends—the stockholder was

forgotten.

And, incidentally, very little of it was taken by taxation to the beneficent

Government of those years.

What was the result? Enormous corporate surpluses piled up—the most

stupendous in history. Where, under the spell of delirious speculation, did those

surpluses go? Let us talk economics that the figures prove and that we can

understand. Why, they went chiefly in two directions: first, into new and

unnecessary plants which now stand stark and idle; and second, into the callmoney

market of Wall Street, either directly by the corporations, or indirectly

through the banks. Those are the facts. Why blink at them?

Then came the crash. You know the story. Surpluses invested in unnecessary

plants became idle. Men lost their jobs; purchasing power dried up; banks

became frightened and started calling loans. Those who had money were afraid

to part with it. Credit contracted. Industry stopped. Commerce declined, and

unemployment mounted.

And there we are today.…

Never in history have the interests of all the people been so united in a single

economic problem.…

My program…is based upon this simple moral principle: the welfare and the

soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish

and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.

What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind,

they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with

it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security—security for themselves

and for their wives and children. Work and security—these are more than

words. They are more than facts. They are the spiritual values, the true goal

toward which our efforts of reconstruction should lead. These are the values

that this program is intended to gain; these are the values we have failed to

achieve by the leadership we now have.

Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws—sacred, inviolable,

unchangeable—cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate

of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact

that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

Yes, when—not if—when we get the chance, the Federal Government will

assume bold leadership in distress relief. For years Washington has alternated

between putting its head in the sand and saying there is no large number of

destitute people in our midst who need food and clothing, and then saying the

States should take care of them, if there are. Instead of planning two and a half

years ago to do what they are now trying to do, they kept putting it off from day

to day, week to week, and month to month, until the conscience of America

demanded action.

I say that while primary responsibility for relief rests with localities now, as

ever, yet the Federal Government has always had and still has a continuing

responsibility for the broader public welfare. It will soon fulfill that

responsibility.

…Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with

some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose. Today

we shall have come through a period of loose thinking, descending morals, an

era of selfishness, among individual men and women and among Nations.

Blame not Governments alone for this. Blame ourselves in equal share. Let us

be frank in acknowledgment of the truth that many amongst us have made

obeisance to Mammon, that the profits of speculation, the easy road without

toil, have lured us from the old barricades. To return to higher standards we

must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.

Never before in modern history have the essential differences between the

two major American parties stood out in such striking contrast as they do today.

Republican leaders not only have failed in material things, they have failed in

national vision, because in disaster they have held out no hope, they have

pointed out no path for the people below to climb back to places of security

and of safety in our American life.

Throughout the Nation, men and women, forgotten in the political

philosophy of the Government of the last years look to us here for guidance and

for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth.

On the farms, in the large metropolitan areas, in the smaller cities and in the

villages, millions of our citizens cherish the hope that their old standards of

living and of thought have not gone forever. Those millions cannot and shall not

hope in vain.

I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us

all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence

and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give

me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore

America to its own people.