Remarks at the Annual Meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Canham, Secretary Mueller, and members of the Chamber, and friends:

It is, of course, a distinct privilege to have the opportunity to meet with the members of the Chamber of Commerce during this convention. You have established in this country a very enviable reputation for making recommendations to the Government or for stating propositions before our people that are based upon principle and not expedience. This fact enhances your capacity and your opportunities in one broad function that I conceive to be very important: that of teachers.

It is not enough that a body of people understands a matter, places it before the Government or any other responsible body, and then to sit back in the belief that the duty of that body is completed.

The United States is a government in which public opinion is the motivating force behind everything that happens. It must be an informed public opinion if the things that happen are going to be good for the United States and good for humanity.

Consequently, those that understand must make their voices heard. Their responsibility to inform others is equal, indeed, to that of the responsibility of informing themselves.

I am going to speak for a short time on three subjects that each of you understands. Of this I am certain, because the official actions and recommendations and reports of the Chamber of Commerce have always supported them.

They are:

1. Reciprocal trade, or the importance of expanding foreign and international trade.

2. The programs of mutual security, by which we help other nations further to advance their economic standards and their living standards.

3. And, thirdly, here at home, the need for prudence in our fiscal affairs. We should cast from our minds the thought that money alone can solve all our problems. Only as we produce the people--the thinkers, the teachers, the technicians, the professional people that go along with great programs of welfare, education, and development--then, and then only, can money be used expeditiously, properly, and in a coordinated fashion to bring about the results we seek.

In the field of international trade, it would be unbecoming for me to appear before you as an expert. You people study these matters all the time. But I can express to you my own convictions in support of pronouncements you have made. Indeed, I can pause long enough to tell you that one of the reasons I think you are such a great organization is because you agree with me!

In speaking about foreign trade, we know that without liberalized trade there would be some four or five million of our people who would soon be out of jobs. You know this, but do all others?

It is important that people understand that a great deal of our employment is to produce the things that we send abroad. It is important for our people to understand that we are not a completely self-dependent nation, that there is a whole array of important minerals and products that we must obtain from the other parts of the world.

These areas are important to us both from our security and economic viewpoint. We must liberalize our trade policies or keep them liberal so that this trade can be advanced and increased all the time. As we grow, we need more trade. All along the line through trade we make other countries stronger in their industrial and-economic output and standards. We give them hope--and hope is the thing that sustains them.

So both abroad and here we find that we do prosper, we do. advance the causes of freedom and of peace through the business of trading and producing for the other fellow at such costs as he can buy and at such prices as we can pay.

The mutual security program I shall mention only briefly, because tonight I expect, before another audience, to talk about this subject' with the greatest emphasis of support that I personally can command. I believe it is one of the great programs through which the United States can lead toward world peace. Certainly people who believe in trade and commerce must be looking for world peace as strongly or even stronger than others.

I want to say one or two things about the mutual security program that occurred to me as simple examples of what I am talking about. No one here needs to be told of the vast importance it is to the world for the United States to cooperate closely with Canada and with Mexico. With these two countries we have long borders, and along them is found no soldier, no fort, no defensive or offensive arrangements of any kind. They are defended by friendship. That friendship must be based upon cooperative work--mutual understanding of problems and a constant, insistent effort to solve these problems to the mutual satisfaction of the parties concerned.

Now we understand this need and we are very proud of the results that have been achieved over the years. But modern transportation and modern communications have made every nation of the world our neighbor, except in the geographic sense. The cooperative efforts that have been so successful with Canada and with Mexico must be extended through every possible economic and trade factor that we can bring to bear so as to increase these friendships. The way is paved for us because we commonly worship and revere certain ideals: the dignity of the human, his rights, his equality before the law. These are the kind of concepts that create the atmosphere in which this kind of understanding of which I speak can be developed.

I can conceive of no greater accomplishment for the Chamber of Commerce, or indeed all of the friends and supporters of the Chamber of Commerce, than to bring these subjects and these matters affecting freer trade and mutual security to the understanding of our people, so that no longer do we hear such terms as "give-away," and the pretense that we neglect our own people in some of their needs and desires because we perform and pursue programs on the outside that are of the utmost importance to our own security and of world peace.

Finally, I mention a message that I shall this week send to the Congress, in which I want again to emphasize to them the importance of constructive legislation in certain areas. Along with this, I want to bring before their attention again the need for responsibility in handling the fiscal affairs of this Nation, not to believe that merely because you pass a bill that appropriates billions for some affair, some activity, that this instantly solves the problem that it is intended to solve.

The soundness of the dollar is as important to the world and to us as any other factor I can think of. By this, I mean we must avoid debasement of our currency. Too much of world stability and world peace hangs on it. All of us must bear these truths in mind, and they must be part of what we teach.

By no means must we ever be niggardly in doing for our own people those things that need to be done. We do not forget, and I know the Chamber does not forget, those words of Lincoln when he insisted that it was the responsibility of government to do for the individual that which he cannot do at all or so well do by himself alone. But Lincoln added this admonition when he continued to say that in all those incidents where the individual can do these things for himself, the government ought not to interfere.

So, my friends, in these days when we are spending necessarily and properly billions and billions--unprecedented peace-time billions for the mere purpose of insuring our own safety, of carrying on programs that have been established in our books in all kinds of welfare and health programs--necessary ones--but in which our appropriations have gone up--even some of them in these past 7 years--about 4 times, we must look at the whole fiscal arrangements of this Nation with that same prudence that you, as the head of a family or as a housewife, does when he or she looks at the family budget and says, "Each month we are going deeper in debt. From here where do we go?"

The resources of this Nation are incalculable, but they are not inexhaustible.

As long as we keep these homely truths in our minds and live them as principles, rather than expedients that might be thought profitable in an election year, I really believe that we can, with great confidence, move forward toward our own ideals of prosperity, greater opportunity for the pursuit of happiness at home, equality among ourselves in all things before the law, and achievement of a sounder position for attaining a permanent and durable peace abroad.

Thank you very much.