But when, almost two years later, it came before the Supreme Court
its constitutionality was upheld only by a five-to-four vote. The
change of one vote would have thrown all the affairs of this great
Nation back into hopeless chaos. In effect, four Justices ruled
that the right under a private contract to exact a pound of flesh
was more sacred than the main objectives of the Constitution to
establish an enduring Nation.

In 1933 you and I knew that we must never let our economic system
get completely out of joint again--that we could not afford to take
the risk of another great depression.

We also became convinced that the only way to avoid a repetition of
those dark days was to have a government with power to prevent and
to cure the abuses and the inequalities which had thrown that
system out of joint.

We then began a program of remedying those abuses and
inequalities--to give balance and stability to our economic
system--to make it bomb-proof against the causes of 1929.

Today we are only part-way through that program--and recovery is
speeding up to a point where the dangers of 1929 are again becoming
possible, not this week or month perhaps, but within a year or two.

National laws are needed to complete that program. Individual or
local or state effort alone cannot protect us in 1937 any better
than ten years ago.