It will take time--and plenty of time--to work out our remedies
administratively even after legislation is passed. To complete our
program of protection in time, therefore, we cannot delay one
moment in making certain that our national government has power to
carry through.

Four years ago action did not come until the eleventh hour. It was
almost too late.

If we learned anything from the depression we will not allow
ourselves to run around in new circles of futile discussion and
debate, always postponing the day of decision.

The American people have learned from the depression. For in the
last three national elections an overwhelming majority of them
voted a mandate that the Congress and the President begin the task
of providing that protection--not after long years of debate, but
now.

The courts, however, have cast doubts on the ability of the elected
Congress to protect us against catastrophe by meeting squarely our
modern social and economic conditions.

We are at a crisis in our ability to proceed with that protection.
It is a quiet crisis. There are no lines of depositors outside
closed banks. But to the far-sighted it is far-reaching in its
possibilities of injury to America.

I want to talk with you very simply about the need for present
action in this crisis--the need to meet the unanswered challenge of