My friends:
I am getting a great thrill out of this. I was thinking today that it was only a year ago last January, less than two years ago and before I became President, that I came down to Muscle Shoals with Senator Norris and a number of other gentlemen. At that time a very great idea was just beginning to take shape. It was only an idea then, and when I think of the very small period of time that has elapsed since then I am very proud to have had something to do with it. But I am much prouder of the way you good people are carrying that idea into actual fact. All of you who are working here at this great dam project and all of the good people throughout the Tennessee Valley who are working on the rest of this great program some day will be known as veterans. You will be known as veterans of a new kind of war, the kind of war that is going to improve conditions for millions and millions of our fellow American citizens.
All I can say to you is "God speed the work." You are going at it with a splendid spirit, and I am coming back here again some time when you get this work done.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Remarks at Clinch River Below the Norris Dam. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/208250