As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.

Any Government, like any family, can for a year spend a little more than it earns. But you and I know that a continuation of that habit means the poorhouse.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.