…Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. …
…More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return…
…Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men….
. ..Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers….
…The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men. …
…Our greatest primary task is to put people to work….
…in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency…."
Sounds eerily like today doesn't it??? Read the whole address at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/
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