Acceptance Speech for the Re-nomination
for the Presidency, Excerpts
27 Jun
1936
The age of machinery, of
railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass
production, mass distribution—all of these combined to bring forward a new
civilization. Out of this modern civilization, economic royalists carved new
dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material
things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, of labor and
capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was
impressed into this royal service.
The privileged princes of
these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over
Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of
legal sanction. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise. The
political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality.
A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control
over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor—other
people's lives.
Our allegiance to American
institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to
hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what
the Flag and the Constitution stand for.
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