And now,
when we need ships, we have not got them. We have year after year
debated, without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with
regard to the use of the ores and forests and water powers of our
national domain in the rich States of the West, when we should have
acted; and they are still locked up. The key is still turned upon them,
the door shut fast at which thousands of vigorous men, full of
initiative, knock clamorously for admittance. The water power of our
navigable streams outside the national domain also, even in the eastern
States, where we have worked and planned for generations, is still not
used as it might be, because we will and we won't; because the laws we
have made do not intelligently balance encouragement against restraint.
We withhold by regulation.
I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes and
omissions, even at this short session of a Congress which would
certainly seem to have done all the work that could reasonably be
expected of it. The time and the circumstances are extraordinary, and so
must our efforts be also.
Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to unlock,
with proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain, the other
to encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that domain for the
generation of power, have already passed the House of Representatives
and are ready for immediate consideration and action by the Senate.
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