US Presidency
1937

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.