ADDRESS
OF THE
DELIVERED AT A JOINT SESSION
OF THE TWO HOUSES OF
CONGRESS
ADDRESS.
It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear
and imperative duty that I have a second time this session sought
the privilege of addressing you in person. I know, of course, that
the heated season of the year is upon us, that work in these
chambers and in the committee rooms is likely to become a burden as
the season lengthens, and that every consideration of personal
convenience and personal comfort, perhaps, in the cases of some of
us, considerations of personal health even, dictate an early
conclusion of the deliberations of the session; but there are
occasions of public duty when these things which touch us privately
seem very small; when the work to be done is so pressing and so
fraught with big consequence that we know that we are not at liberty
to weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in
the presence of such an occasion. It is absolutely imperative that
we should give the business men of this country a banking and
currency system by means of which they can make use of the freedom
of enterprise and of individual initiative which we are about to
bestow upon them.
We are about to set them free; we must not leave them
without the tools of action when they are free. We are about to set
them free by removing the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever
since the Civil War they have waited for this emancipation and for
the free opportunities it will bring with it. It has been reserved
for us to give it to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the
slothful security of their dependence upon the Government; some took
advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set up a mimic mastery of
their own within its walls. Now both the tonic and the discipline of
liberty and maturity are to ensue. There will be some readjustments
of purpose and point of view. There will follow a period of
expansion and new enterprise, freshly conceived. It is for us to
determine now whether it shall be rapid and facile and of easy
accomplishment. This it can not be unless the resourceful business
men who are to deal with the new circumstances are to have at hand
and ready for use the instrumentalities and conveniences of free
enterprise which independent men need when acting on their own
initiative.
It is not enough to strike the shackles from business.
The duty of statesmanship is not negative merely. It is constructive
also. We must show that we understand what business needs and that
we know how to supply it. No man, however casual and superficial his
observation of the conditions now prevailing in the country, can
fail to see that one of the chief things business needs now, and
will need increasingly as it gains in scope and vigor in the years
immediately ahead of us, is the proper means by which readily to
vitalize its credit, corporate and individual, and its originative
brains. What will it profit us to be free if we are not to have the
best and most accessible instrumentalities of commerce and
enterprise? What will it profit us to be quit of one kind of
monopoly if we are to remain in the grip of another and more
effective kind? How are we to gain and keep the confidence of the
business community unless we show that we know how both to aid and
to protect it? What shall we say if we make fresh enterprise
necessary and also make it very difficult by leaving all else except
the tariff just as we found it? The tyrannies of business, big and
little, lie within the field of credit. We know that. Shall we not
act upon the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If a man
can not make his assets available at pleasure, his assets of
capacity and character and resource, what satisfaction is it to him
to see opportunity beckoning to him on every hand, when others have
the keys of credit in their pockets and treat them as all but their
own private possession? It is perfectly clear that it is our duty to
supply the new banking and currency system the country needs, and it
will need it immediately more than it has ever needed it before.
The only question is, When shall we supply it—now, or
later, after the demands shall have become reproaches that we were
so dull and so slow? Shall we hasten to change the tariff laws and
then be laggards about making it possible and easy for the country
to take advantage of the change? There can be only one answer to
that question. We must act now, at whatever sacrifice to ourselves.
It is a duty which the circumstances forbid us to postpone. I should
be recreant to my deepest convictions of public obligation did I not
press it upon you with solemn and urgent insistence.
The principles upon which we should act are also
clear. The country has sought and seen its path in this matter
within the last few years—sees it more clearly now than it ever saw
it before—much more clearly than when the last legislative proposals
on the subject were made. We must have a currency, not rigid as now,
but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding
and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and
flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must
mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration anywhere in a
few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for
speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand
in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the
control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are
to set up must be public, not private, must be vested in the
Government itself, so that the banks may be the instruments, not the
masters, of business and of individual enterprise and initiative.
The committees of the Congress to which legislation of
this character is referred have devoted careful and dispassionate
study to the means of accomplishing these objects. They have honored
me by consulting me. They are ready to suggest action. I have come
to you, as the head of the Government and the responsible leader of
the party in power, to urge action now, while there is time to serve
the country deliberately and as we should, in a clear air of common
counsel. I appeal to you with a deep conviction of duty. I believe
that you share this conviction. I therefore appeal to you with
confidence. I am at your service without reserve to play my part in
any way you may call upon me to play it in this great enterprise of
exigent reform which it will dignify and distinguish us to perform
and discredit us to neglect.