holiday challenges the whole concept of American democracy.

The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom--a freedom
which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day
symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the
average man which will give his political freedom reality.



March 9, 1937.


Last Thursday I described in detail certain economic problems which
everyone admits now face the nation. For the many messages which
have come to me after that speech, and which it is physically
impossible to answer individually, I take this means of saying
"thank you."

Tonight, sitting at my desk in the White House, I make my first
radio report to the people in my second term of office.

I am reminded of that evening in March, four years ago, when I made
my first radio report to you. We were then in the midst of the
great banking crisis.

Soon after, with the authority of the Congress, we asked the nation
to turn over all of its privately held gold, dollar for dollar, to
the government of the United States.

Today's recovery proves how right that policy was.