adequate help from banking institutions. It strengthened the
integrity of finance through the regulation of securities
exchanges. It provided a rational method of increasing our volume
of foreign trade through reciprocal trading agreements. It
strengthened our naval forces to conform with the intentions and
permission of existing treaty rights. It made further advances
towards peace in industry through the Labor Adjustment Act. It
supplemented our agricultural policy through measures widely
demanded by farmers themselves and intended to avert price
destroying surpluses. It strengthened the hand of the federal
government in its attempts to suppress gangster crime. It took
definite steps towards a national housing program through an act
which I signed today designed to encourage private capital in the
rebuilding of the homes of the nation. It created a permanent
federal body for the just regulation of all forms of communication,
including the telephone, the telegraph and the radio. Finally, and
I believe most important, it reorganized, simplified and made more
fair and just our monetary system, setting up standards and
policies adequate to meet the necessities of modern economic life,
doing justice to both gold and silver as the metal bases behind the
currency of the United States.

In the consistent development of our previous efforts toward the
saving and safeguarding of our national life, I have continued to
recognize three related steps. The first was relief, because the
primary concern of any government dominated by the humane ideals of
democracy is the simple principle that in a land of vast resources
no one should be permitted to starve. Relief was and continues to
be our first consideration. It calls for large expenditures and
will continue in modified form to do so for a long time to come. We