The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-11-29

"To-day," he continued. Less than three years later, it is 8 fact that the total of all debts in the United States is lower than it was then. Whereas on the other sdie of the picture, you and I know that the values of property of all kinds farms, houses, automobiles, securi- ties and every other kind of prop since 1883 that to-day we are once more in the black. We were insol- vent. To-day we are solvent.
 To Better Human Conditions
 "In this fact most of us find a deep satisfaction. But recovery means something more than getting the country back into the black. You and I do not want just to go back to the past. We want to face the future in the belief that human beings ca nenjoy more of the good things of life, under better condi- tions, than human beings ever en- joyed in the past.
 American life has improved in these two years and half and if I have anything to do with it, it Is going to improve more in the days to come.
 "The word progress is 8 better word than recovery, for 1t means not only sound business and a sound agriculture from the material point of view, but 1t means, with equal importance, 8 sound irn- provement in American life as 8 re- suit of continuing and forceful ef- fort on the part of our people and, through them, on the part of their government. I am certain that this is your purpose; and that is why I continue my confidence, my faith in the people of America"
 The president traced the course of economics and finance in years leading up to the depression and observed that "in that wild orgy of prosperity a wild speculation was building speculative profits for the speculators and preparing the way for the public to be left holding the bag."
 Orgy of Prosperity
 "In that orgy of prosperity" he said, banks, individually and by chains, were closing their doors at the expense of the depositors. In that orgy of prosperity, the farm CTS of the south had become in- voluntary speculators themselves, never certain when they planted their cotton whether 1t would bring twenty-five cents or fifteen cents or five cents.
 "In that orgy of prosperity, the poorest vied with the richest in throwing their earnings and their savings into a cauldron of land and stock Speculation. In that orgy of prosperity slum conditions went unheeded, better education was for- gotten, usurious interest charges mounted, child labor continued, starvation wages were too often the rule instead of the exception.
 'Mammon ruled America"
 At this juncture the president emphasized his words and slowly remarked:
 xe3ES VU MSMcmUcC
 '"Those are the years to remem- ber-those fools paradise years be- fore the crash came. Too much do we harp on the years that followed, when from 1929 to 1883 this nation slipped spirally downward-ever downward-to the inevitable point when the mechanics of civilization came to a dead stop on March 3, 1883.
 "You and need not rehearse the four years of disaster and gloom, we know the simple fact that at the end of them America acted be- fore it was LOO Iate, that we turned about and by Q supreme. well-nigh unanimous national effort, started on the upward path again"
 Mir. Roosevelt here summed up reforms inaugurated by his admin istratoin and pointed out benefits to home owners, the new banking laws, abolition of child labor, stock