It has been the spirit of its people that has made America great. Other regions and other people have enjoyed as great national resources as those that we possess, but it was the spirit of America that made this the richest and most powerful nation on earth. For more than two years our people have paid the penalty of overspeculation, but far greater than that, they have suffered from economic forces from abroad that fundamentally are the reflexes of the Great War, a situation for which our people had no blame. They have stood their ground with grim courage and resolution.
But this is no occasion to discuss the origins of the character of the economic forces that have developed over the past two years. Fighting a great depression is a war with destructive forces in a hundred battles on a hundred fronts. We must needs fight as in a great war; we must meet these destructive forces by mobilizing our resources and our people against them.
A thoroughly non-partisan patriotic program of reconstruction is in progress. The Government has exerted itself to the utmost to give a sound, stable basis to the Treasury, to banking, to industry and to agriculture. The Government alone cannot produce prosperity, but it can liberate the inherent resources and strength of the American people. The people themselves must apply those resources and exert that strength.
The time has now arrived for a new offensive rally in the spirit that has made America great. The battle front today is against the hoarding of currency, which began about ten months ago, and with its growing intensity became a national danger during the last four months. It has sprung from fears and apprehensions largely the reflex of foreign and domestic causes which now no longer obtain. But it has grown to enormous dimensions and has contributed greatly to restrict the credit facilities of our country, and thus directly to increase unemployment and depreciate prices to our farmers.
I believe that the individual American have not realized the harm he has done when he hoards even a single dollar away from circulation. He has not realized that his dollar compels the bank to withdraw many times that amount of credit from the use of borrowers. These borrowers are the local merchants, the local manufacturers, the local farmers; and their borrowings are the money they use to buy goods, to pay wages and the cost of keeping their business going. One hoarded dollar deprive some wage earner of at least some part of his pay. Multiply this example by nearly a billion and a half of dollars of idle money now hidden in the country, and you may get somewhere near a true picture of the enemy of our national security that we vaguely call “hoarding.” It strangles our daily life, increases unemployment, and sorely afflicts our farmers. No one will deny that if the vast sums of money hoarded in the country to they could be brought into active circulation there would be a great lift to the whole of our economic progress.
The Citizens' Reconstruction organization, which has been formed at my request, under the leadership of Colonel Knox, is seeking the support of every voluntary organization and every individual in the country to bring out of hoarding these great sums of money which have been withdrawn from the active channels of trade during this past ten months. They have summoned the leadership of thousands of public-spirited men and women.
Already we have evidences of the progress of these efforts and that the hoarding of money has stopped. The tide has turned in some of these idle dollars are finding their way back into the channels of trade. But we must continue until we have won all along the line. This movement affords an opportunity for all our people to participate, to do so within the traditions of our country which are traditions of individual effort, of courage, of energy, idealism and public spirit.
Colonel Knox is this evening sounding a call to the mighty power of the American people, a call to service for the common good of our country, a call to protect the individual home by means of ensuring the safety of the Nation as a whole. I do it with more confidence because I have witnessed the most heartening exhibition of its patriotic power here in the National capital. I am proud to bear witness to the capacity of the people's representatives in the presence of emergency, to their cooperation, to their loyalty, to their single-minded and effective action in this joint effort to restore economic stability and prosperity.
To join in this effort and to respond to this appeal become a measure of your faith in our country; it will be the touchstone of your loyalty and of your sense of individual responsibility for the welfare of the whole community; it is your opportunity to prove again that the private citizen of the United States in the exercise of his own independent judgment and his own free will, coerced by no authority save his conscience and moved only by his own patriotic pride, can be counted upon to meet every emergency in the Nation's economy, and to rout every foe of the Nation's security.
The word “depression” is an accurate but an obnoxious one. It is intensified by fear and apprehension, and by the loss of faith and courage. The true basis of wealth and the creator of prosperity are the industry and resourcefulness of people when inspired by vision and sustained by faith. The summons tonight is a call to the faith of the people. Not to faith in some rosy panacea or pretentious theory, but to their intelligent faith in themselves and in their individual resourcefulness and enterprise, and to the sense of responsibility of every man his neighbor. The safest risk in the world is a share in the future of the American people. The American people have at this moment one of the greatest opportunities in their history to show uninsured confidence and an active faith in their own destiny which is the destiny of the United States—and by that faith we shall win this battle.