The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles ...of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am willing to pledge myself that if the time should ever come that the voluntary agencies of the country together with the local... and state governments are unable to find resources with which to prevent hunger and suffering ... I will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government.... I have the faith in the American people that such a day will not come.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It does not follow, because our difficulties are stupendous, because there are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity an...d effectiveness of our ideals and our system, that we must turn to a state controlled or state directed social or economic system in order to cure our troubles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in th...e community. That has been the American way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winte...r. The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength. The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities. The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service--in the spirit that each is his brother's keeper.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[R]eports to the Surgeon General ... represent the final word upon the efficient and devoted sense of responsibility of our people... in this obligation to our fellow citizens. Overwhelmingly they confirm the fact that the general mortality rate, infant mortality rate, epidemics, the disease rate--are less than in normal times. There is but one explanation. That is, that through an aroused sense of public responsibility, those in destitution and their children are receiving actually more adequate care than even in normal times.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[O]ur people are steadily increasing their spending for higher standards of living ... the slogan of progress is changing from the... full dinner pail to the full garage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not... only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »