125 Primary Source: Greater Security for the Average Man (1934)
125 Primary Source: Greater Security for the Average Man (1934)
President Herbert Hoover lost his bid for re-election in 1932 to Franklin Roosevelt (FDR – don’t confuse FDR with Teddy Roosevelt from the Progressive era, that was his uncle). Americans were struggling through the Depression and, thanks to the Progressive Era, had come to expect the government to solve the problem. Hoover objected to the use of government power, even to try and stem the Depression, for fear that a big government was a threat to individual freedom. Roosevelt on the other hand felt that the federal government had an obligation, even though that would mean increasing the power of the federal government (and thus decreasing the power of the states or the public in general). Read this excerpt from FDR’s Fireside Chat 6: On Government and Capitalism, given on September 30, 1934.
Fireside Chat 6
To those who say that our expenditures for Public Works and other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that no country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our minds that for the future we shall permanently have millions of unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade. What may be necessary for those countries is not my responsibility to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed and that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return. I do not want to think that it is the destiny of any American to remain permanently on relief rolls.
Those, fortunately few in number, who are frightened by boldness and cowed by the necessity for making decisions, complain that all we have done is unnecessary and subject to great risks. Now that these people are coming out of their storm cellars, they forget that there ever was a storm. They point to England. They would have you believe that England has made progress out of her depression by a do-nothing policy, by letting nature take her course. England has her peculiarities and we have ours but I do not believe any intelligent observer can accuse England of undue orthodoxy in the present emergency.
Did England let nature take her course? No. Did England hold to the gold standard when her reserves were threatened? No. Has England gone back to the gold standard today? No. Did England hesitate to call in ten billion dollars of her war bonds bearing 5 percent interest, to issue new bonds therefore bearing only 3 1/2 percent interest, thereby saving the British Treasury one hundred and fifty million dollars a year