All language subtitles for S01E05 The Rising Road (1933-1939) IMDB 8.4

Previously on "The Roosevelts"...

Franklin Roosevelt was stricken
with a mysterious disease.

His legs felt funn and he felt feverish,

and he never walked without help again.

But his secret wouldn't keep
him from the White House.

I pledge myself

to a new deal for the American people!

And now part 5 of "The Roosevelts:
An Intimate History."

By the time FDR takes office,

there are at least 15
million unemployed,

probably more,

at least a quarter of the nation,

maybe a third.

And action now.

To get a sense of this,
imagine that you're

one of 100,000 people
in a football stadium

and that as you file out you're handed

a piece of paper saying, "you're fired."

Imagine the next week 100,000 more

come into that stadium,
and as they leave,

each of them is told,
"you no longer have a job, "

and imagine that happening
for 52 weeks of the year

for 3 straight years.

You will then have approximated

the total of unemployed
when Franklin Roosevelt

takes office.

By 1933, it was hard to put
down a chilling thought...

"maybe the depression
is never going to end."

There's a sense of fear
that pervades the country.

John Maynard Keynes,
the British economist,

was asked if there'd ever
been anything before

like the great depression?

He said, "yes. It was called the
dark ages, and it lasted 400 years."

We humbly ask the blessing of God.

May he protect each and every one of us.

May he guide me in the days to come.

Saturday, March 4, 1933,
was inauguration day.

Among the friends and
family members invited

to watch Franklin
Roosevelt's inaugural parade

from the reviewing stand
was the new president's

42-year-old sixth cousin Daisy Suckley.

She was quiet, good-humored, unmarried,

and already deeply devoted
to Franklin Roosevelt.

His invitation had been so exciting,

she told a relative,
that when the weekend was over

she thought she'd have
to enter a convent.

My seat was on the president's stand,

section "B, " top row, from where I saw

the White House grounds, the parade,

and the president's head
throughout the afternoon.

He had a high chair to sit on,

which gave the effect of his standing.

The first part of the
parade was dignified,

the last part a sort of circus...

Tom mix cavorting in
white on a black horse,

movie actresses on a float,

bands in fantastic feather
costumes, et cetera.

Democracy!

The inauguration symbolized

almost a century and a half
of American continuity,

but on that day in 1933, Americans were
in the third year of a great depression

so crippling that it seemed to some

that unless the new president acted

with unprecedented boldness,

American democracy itself
might be at an end,

and there were many who feared

the magnetic but essentially untried man

in the reviewing stand could not
possibly be equal to the task.

Still 11 years earlier,
Daisy had witnessed first-hand

Roosevelt's gallant struggle
against the ravages of polio.

"Franklin is a man...
mentally, physically,

and spiritually,
" she confided to her diary.

"What more can I say?"

The rest of the country could only hope

that she was right.

S01E05 The Rising Road

There've been 3 presidents

who were larger than the
office they inherited.

One was Washington,
who fairly invented the office;

there was Lincoln,
who preserved the country

at the center of which sits that office,

and then there was Roosevelt,

who fundamentally
changed the relationship

of the citizen to the
central government.

The presidency is like
a soft leather glove,

and it takes the shape of
the hand that's put into it,

and when a very big hand is put into it

and stretches the glove,
stretches the office,

the glove never quite
shrinks back to what it was.

So we are all living
today with an office

enlarged permanently
by Franklin Roosevelt.

A president could be judged great,

Theodore Roosevelt once explained,

only if he had faced and
overcome a great crisis.

Franklin Roosevelt would
find himself confronted

by the two greatest crises
since the civil war.

He had been taught since boyhood

to believe himself capable
of succeeding at anything

to which he put his mind and hand,

and in part because of that belief,

he proved to have the
power to make a majority

of his fellow citizens believe it, too.

The best of the new deal programs
was Franklin Roosevelt's smile.

He was armored with Christian faith

that the universe is well-organized

and with the American faith
that history is a rising road

and things are going to be all right.

Had that enormous head
and that wonderful grin,

and it was the tonic the country needed.

The country was depressed.

We use the word depression
in lots of ways,

and what they needed was a man who was

incapable of depression.

I have never known a man

who gave one a greater
sense of security.

I never heard him say
there was a problem

that he thought it was impossible

for human beings to solve.

I never knew him to face
life or any problem

that came up with fear.

Franklin Roosevelt was
essentially a lonely man.

No one was allowed to know all

that was going on within
what one aide called

his "thickly forested interior."

That becomes a habit in your life,

to not reveal yourself to others,

as if there's a scar that

you're afraid that
someone else will see.

You always have to be the one that's up.

You always have to be the
one that's doing well,

and it means that you're not in touch,

in a certain sense,
with some of those emotions

within yourself.

It makes it harder for you,

but it also makes you more mysterious,

more magical, perhaps,
to the outside world.

Ideology did not interest him.

Once asked for his philosophy,

he said he was a
Christian and a Democrat

and that was all.

He was steeped in tradition

and conservative by instinct,

but he was also utterly
unafraid of experimentation.

"It is common sense to take a method

and try it, " he said.

"If it fails, admit it
frankly and try another,

but above all, try something."

"I want to be a preaching president, "

FDR said, "like my cousin Theodore, "

and he believed, just as
Theodore Roosevelt had believed,

that the presidency was "preeminently
a place of moral leadership."

Building on the work of
the first Roosevelt,

the second Roosevelt gave us the idea,

the shimmering, glittering
idea of the heroic presidency

and with it the hope
that complex problems

would yield to charisma.

This sets the country up for
perpetual disappointment.

He set lofty goals for himself

and his country and pursued them

with a cheerful deviousness
that sometimes appalled

his allies and often
disappointed his wife.

He might have been happier

with a wife who was
completely uncritical.

That I was never able to be,

and he had to find it in other people.

Nevertheless, I think I
sometimes acted as a spur,

even though the spurring was
not always wanted or welcome.

I was one of those who
served his purposes.

The Roosevelts would become

perhaps the most admired
and the most reviled couple

ever to occupy the White House.

Franklin would be
denounced as a dictator,

a socialist, a traitor to his class.

Eleanor was dismissed as naive,
meddling, dangerously radical.

They needed each other, too.

One was strong where the other was weak.

FDR was not as idealistic
as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt was
not as good a politician

as Franklin Roosevelt.

Together they represented

both the better angels of our nature

and a sense of how to get it done,

how to let those angels actually
have some authority and run things.

5,000 banks have failed.

9 million savings accounts
have been wiped out,

and Roosevelt declares

a national bank holiday.

And this is a happy term,

not at all like Hoover's "Moratorium, "

and for several days,

the country operates without cash.

Pickpockets are no longer
able to ply their trade.

The floating crap game disappears.

The new movie "King Kong" plays
at the radio city music hall

to empty houses,

and the expectation is that
when the banks are reopened

in the following week

there's gonna be a massive withdrawal.

On Sunday evening, March 12,

8 days after his inauguration,

the new president spoke
to the american people.

The president wants to
come into your home

and sit at your fireside
for a little fireside chat.

Some 60 million Americans

gathered around their radios.

My friends, I want to talk

for a few minutes with the people

of the United States about banking,

to talk with the comparatively few

who understand the mechanics of banking

but more particularly with
the overwhelming majority

of you who use banks for
the making of deposits

and the drawing of checks.

I want to tell you...

Roosevelt did for speaking

what bing Crosby did for singing.

They called it crooning.

Before that for all of human history,

leaders had talked to their people...

Like this.

They had had to orate
because the microphone

hadn't been invented.

And Roosevelt was the first one

to understand that you could
have this new relationship

with the audience that was
an intimate relationship.

Let me make it clear to you

that the banks will
take care of all needs,

and it is my belief that hoarding

during the past week has become

an exceedingly unfashionable pastime.

He spoke to them like a father,

like a favorite Uncle,

speaking to them on a Sunday night.

Many of them had already gone to bed,

but they were huddled
under their covers.

It was a cold night.

They turned out the lights
to save on electricity,

and his voice came over the radio,

and it reassured them that
things were gonna be ok.

In less than 15 minutes, he explained

how the banking system
was supposed to work.

He explained how it had failed.

Some of our bankers had shown themselves

either incompetent or dishonest

in their handling of the people's funds.

They had used the money
entrusted to them

in speculations and unwise loans.

He explained what his administration
and Congress had done.

This bank holiday is affording us

the opportunity to supply the currency

necessary to meet the situation.

Remember that no sound
bank is a dollar worse off

than it was when it closed
its doors last week.

And then he spoke to them as an equal,

and he said that "all that we've done
"in Washington will mean nothing

without the support of
the American people."

After all, there is an element

in the readjustment of
our financial system

more important than currency,
more important than gold,

and that is the confidence
of the people themselves.

Confidence and courage
are the essentials

of success in carrying out our plan.

Let us unite in banishing fear.

It is your problem, my friends...

your problem, no less than it is mine.

Together we cannot fail.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the president of the United States

has spoken to you from the
White House in Washington, D.C.

And in 14 1/2 minutes,
he utterly changed

the mindset of Americans.

When he says in that first fireside chat

"hoarding has become a terribly
unfashionable pastime.

"Please take your money out
from under your mattresses

"and redeposit it in the banks

when they reopen,
" people actually did it.

The same people who had been lining up,

pushing each other out of the way to get

their money out of the banks,

they now after listening
to the new president

on the radio, they lined up

to redeposit the money.

Now that's leadership.

Dear sir, while listening

to your broadcast Sunday night,

our little home seemed a church,

our radio the pulpit,

and you the preacher.

Thank you for the courage
and faith you have given us.

My dear Mr. President,

no sooner had your voice died on the air

when mother, a hard-shelled Republican,

jumped from her chair saying,
"isn't he a fine man?"

And father with tears in his eyes said,

"I feel one hundred
percent better already."

This, I am certain,
is the effect your talk

must have had on all
who heard you tonight.

"Capitalism, " one of Roosevelt's advisers
remembered, "was saved in 8 days."

The banks are open.

The headlines tell a new story,

new confidence, new spirit.

Billions in untapped
wealth begin to flow.

New money backed by real assets pours

from Uncle Sam's treasury to revitalize

the country's commerce.

The leader leads, and the nation heeds.

Roosevelt had had his entire cabinet

sworn in at once, something that had

never been done before.

It included Harold Ickes,

an old progressive party follower

of the president's cousin Theodore,

as interior secretary,

and Southern Democrats
like Senator Cordell Hull

from Tennessee,
who became Secretary of State.

Henry Wallace, the Republican editor

of a farm journal from Iowa,

was named Secretary of Agriculture,

and Frances Perkins
took the oath of office

as Secretary of Labor,

the first woman ever to
serve in any cabinet.

Over the coming years,
the ranks of government

would for the first time come to include

more talented women,
as well as Catholics, Jews,

and African-Americans.

The Roosevelt administration is run

by a man who never knew
any of those people

when he was young,

but he was so secure
and so unthreatened,

and if you are, then you
can employ the talents

of anyone you like.

FDR understood that no program

and no presidency could
work unless the president

continued to communicate effectively

with the voters.

To do that, he welcomed
the press into his office

twice a week...

997 times before he was through.

Except for Theodore Roosevelt,

most presidents before
him had treated reporters

as little better than spies.

FDR called them by their first names,

claimed to be a newspaperman himself

because he'd once edited
the "Harvard Crimson, "

and provided a constant
flow of copy that kept

him always at the center of events.

Ha ha ha! Is it on straight?

We are planning within a few days

to ask the Congress

for legislation to enable the government

to undertake public works,
thus stimulating directly

and indirectly the employment

of many others in
well-considered projects.

Never in american history

had so much transformative
legislation been passed

by Congress in so little time.

Republicans as well as
Democrats voted for it.

During the first hundred days

of Franklin Roosevelt's administration,

15 major bills granted
the federal government

the power to decide which
banks should reopen

and which should be allowed to fail,

to guarantee depositors' bank deposits

and to definitively separate commercial

and investment banking activities

in the Glass-Steagall Act,

to demand greater transparency

in the selling of stocks and dictate

the gold value of the dollar,

to make loans to homeowners to
save them from foreclosure,

and keep farm income high by
paying farmers not to produce,

to provide public jobs for
those who needed work,

and to provide public
power and flood control

to the vast Tennessee River Basin

that sprawled across 6 states, the TVA.

The AAA, the PWA, the FDIC...

among the alphabet soup
of programs Roosevelt's

new deal created to
stimulate the economy

and combat unemployment
was one especially dear

to the president's heart.

He had pushed it through Congress

in less than a week
after being inaugurated,

the civilian conservation corps.

The CCC eventually put
some 3 million jobless men

to work preserving the
American landscape,

controlling erosion,

developing national parks,

planting hundreds of millions of trees.

They earned $30 a month

and sent 25 of it home
to help their families.

Inspiring his forest army
by a personal visit,

President Roosevelt makes his first tour

of the civilian conservation corps camps

in the Shenandoah Valley.

After inspecting skyland,
the commander-in-chief

takes a seat at the head
of the table to eat

with the boys,

and he enjoys every bite

of the plain, wholesome
food furnished at the camp.

I wish that I could take
a couple of months off

from the White House and come down here

and live with them
because I know I'd get

full of health the way they have.

The only difference is that they put on

an average of about 12 pounds a piece

since they got here,

and I'm trying to take off 12 pounds.

FDR's most ambitious and daring program

was the national
recovery administration,

which set prices and
wages in 541 industries.

Roosevelt was asking
businesses to keep wages up

and simultaneously keep prices down.

Two million employers signed up.

The NRA was so popular that
when a parade it sponsored

marched down 5th Avenue,
more than a quarter of a million

New Yorkers came out to cheer.

My father took me there.

I was 10 years old,

and to this day,
it is the greatest parade

in the history of New York City.

Garment workers, tailors,
barbers, marched

like medieval guilds down 5th Avenue.

It went on all through the afternoon,

all through the evening, past midnight.

People went to movies, they came out,

and paraders were still going by.

They were saying, "we do our part, "

that the American
people were going to be

in league with the American government

in seeing that the
country could lift itself

out of the great depression.

"There is a unity in this country, "

FDR said, "which I have
not seen since we went

to war in 1917."

What he did in the first hundred days

was demonstrate that
the federal government

was capable of acting swiftly.

We tend to forget,

partly because we want to forget,

that at about that time the
word dictator, dictatorial,

dictatorship did not have
an unambiguously bad ring,

not just in America but
in Europe, as well,

where people were simply terrified

by the sense that things
had spun out of control,

and respected people talked
to Franklin Roosevelt

about the need for dictatorial powers,

and the president shrank
from those, rightly so,

but he did infuse his
rhetoric with strong appeals

to collective, almost military action...

"we're all in this war together."

It rang tellingly reassuring

to a lot of Americans at that point.

The United States was not
alone in its suffering.

Everywhere, countries
had been devastated

by the worldwide depression.

In parts of Europe,
democracy itself had collapsed,

and some people had turned to other,

more extreme solutions.

Some Americans, too, were disillusioned

by their government's
response to the crisis

and took to the streets in protest.

Shortly after he became president,

FDR had a visitor who said to him,

"Mr. President, you're either
gonna be our greatest president,

or you're gonna be our
worst president, "

and Roosevelt said, "No, if, if I fail,

I'll be our last president."

I think we can wonder
whether our descendants...

because I think they'll still be here...

what they will think about us,

and let us hope that at
least they will give us

the benefit of the doubt,

that they will believe that
we have honestly striven

in our day and generation to preserve

for our descendants a
decent land to live in

and a decent form of
government to operate under.

Some of the new legislation

would be overthrown by the courts.

Other laws would turn out to
have been counterproductive,

but in just a little over 3 months,

the federal government that had
been a mostly passive observer

of the people's problems

had become an active force
in trying to solve them.

It's more than a new deal.

It's a new world.

People feel free again.

They can breathe naturally.

It's like quitting a
morgue for the open woods.

Harold Ickes.

The pitch is up.

At the end of the first
hundred days in 1933,

he goes back to campobello
for the first time

since he was stricken with polio...

And he goes out in the woods,

and he's sitting on a tree stump,

and a couple of people he knows
are taking a walk in the woods,

and when they come upon him,

he's got his head in his hands,

and then when he looks up he
has a grimace on his face,

a look of suffering.

Then he notices that they're there,

and it was like a shutter
clicking in a camera,

Roosevelt, then he notices
that they're there,

"picking flowers, Billy?"

And the mask was back on.

This evening, Virginia hunt told me

that Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt

evidently don't get on together.

She is always off somewhere,
though always

on hand for dinners and receptions.

It is very sad as they are
both such splendid people

and must miss a happy married life.

Daisy Suckley.

When Eleanor Roosevelt

first came to the White House
after her husband's election,

the long-time chief Usher greeted her

as "Miss Eleanor," just as he had

during her uncle's presidency,

and she hurled herself into
her duties as first lady

with all the energy for which
Theodore Roosevelt was famous.

She began holding weekly
press conferences of her own.

She allowed only female
reporters to attend

because only men could
attend her husband's.

Politics was officially off limits,

but no previous president's wife

had ever done anything remotely like it.

She would go on to write a
syndicated newspaper column

called "My Day"

and have a network radio
program of her own.

When a reporter warned her to be careful

what she said for fear of
embarrassing her husband,

Eleanor explained that
when she said things

that caused criticism she
would often do so deliberately

to "arouse controversy"

and to "get the topics talked about

and so get people to
thinking about them."

The White House, Washington.

Hick dearest,
it was good to talk to you.

The one thing which
reconciles me to this job

is the fact that I begin
to think there may be ways

in which I can be useful.

I am getting some ideas

which I want to talk over with you.

A world of love to you and good night

and God bless you, "light of my life."

E.R.

Lorena Hickok...
"Hick" to Eleanor Roosevelt...

had been one of America's
top newspaperwomen in 1932,

when she was assigned
by the associated press

to cover the Democratic candidate's wife

and found herself so in
love with her subject

that she quit her job because she could

no longer be objective.

The result was one of the
most intense friendships

of Eleanor Roosevelt's life.

When apart, the two women
wrote one another daily.

Hick darling,

remember always, no one is
just what you are to me.

I'd rather be writing this
minute than anything else,

and yet I love many other people

and some often can do things
for me probably better

than you could,
but I've never enjoyed being

with anyone the way I
enjoy being with you.

The important thing about Lorena Hickok

is that when Eleanor
first became first lady,

Lorena's the one who gave
her the confidence to become

something other than a
ceremonial first lady,

and more importantly, she loved Eleanor.

It was the first person,
perhaps, that loved

Eleanor completely for her own self

more than she loved anybody else.

I mean, Franklin loved
her but loved the world.

Lorena fell in love with Eleanor,

and it gave her, I think,
the self-assurance that

she needed for this whole
new role as first lady.

In July of 1933, they quietly

took off together in Eleanor's
blue buick convertible

for a month-long vacation on
the back roads of new England

and the gaspe peninsula in Canada.

The Secret Service wanted
to send an escort.

The first lady refused to have one

but did agree to carry a revolver

in her glove compartment,

though she carried no ammunition

with which to load it.

In most of the little
towns they visited,

she went unrecognized.

That kind of anonymity
would not last long.

Eleanor Roosevelt's frequent travels

would soon help make her
the best-known woman

in the world.

Lawndale, California.

Most honorable president,
I am writing you this morning

in all faith that if
I can get word to you

of our horrible plight you will not

pass it by unnoticed.

I am a mother of 7 children

and utterly heartbroken
in that they are hungry.

Have only 65 cents in money.

The father is in L.A.
trying to find something to do.

Provisions all gone.

Our pride isn't all gone,

and if we have a chance,

we can care for ourselves and be happy.

President Herbert Hoover's mail

had been handled by a single clerk.

The Roosevelts needed 50.

During the week following
FDR's inauguration,

450,000 Americans wrote the White House.

During the 145 months that followed,

FDR and his wife received an average

of between 5,000 and 8,000
letters every single day.

"Never before have we had leaders

"in the White House to whom we felt

we could go to with our problems,
" one woman wrote,

"for never before have
our leaders seemed

conscious of the masses."

They wrote because they
felt they knew him,

but there was a lot they did not know.

It still amazes me to
realize that even though

the public knew that he had had polio,

they had no idea, really most people,

that he could not walk on his own power.

If you look at the photographs of him

through the years,

there are thousands of
pictures of him standing.

He is always in some way
leaning on something.

He's balanced.

Sometimes his hand is behind his back,

leaning on the cane,

or he's holding a car door,

but the extraordinary thing
is that there are lots

of accounts of people who
said they visited him

in the oval office and that
he rose to greet them.

He never once rose to greet anyone.

He could not rise without
locking his braces,

but he was so outgoing
and so magnetic that

people thought they saw him
doing things he did not do,

just the power of his own personality.

His press secretary
Steve Early turned away

all reporters' questions

about the president's disability.

"It's not a story, " he'd say.

When guests filed into
the formal dining room

at the White House,
they found the president

already seated at the head of the table.

No one was to see him being
wheeled down the hall.

The secret service became
expert at installing

and removing special ramps to allow

the president to enter a
building without anyone

seeing him being carried.

And when the White House imposed rules

on how he could be
filmed and photographed,

few complained, at least at first.

No images of FDR in his wheelchair

or getting in or out of
cars were permitted.

No visual record was to be made

of the arduous effort
it took him to move

just a few feet.

Photographers who defied the rules,

including ordinary tourists,

had their film confiscated
by the secret service.

The thing that's different from our time

is that the press cooperated,

and people bought it in
the thirties and forties.

They bought it.

They thought it was
intrusive on the whole.

I don't think anyone
as afflicted as he was

could ever be elected to
national office today.

I think it would be
impossible, which is sad.

What I want you to do is to go out

around the country and
look this thing over.

Go talk with preachers and teachers,

businessmen, workers, farmers.

Go talk with the unemployed,

those who are on relief
and those who aren't,

and when you talk with them,

don't ever forget that
but for the grace of God,

you, I, or any of our friends
might be in their shoes.

Harry Hopkins.

When Eleanor Roosevelt
and Lorena Hickok ended

their vacation in the summer of 1933,

Hickok moved into her own
room at the White House

and then went to work
traveling the country

as chief investigator for Harry Hopkins,

the head of the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration.

Able and impatient, fueled by
cigarettes and black coffee,

Hopkins combined the
hard-eyed sensibilities

of a seasoned political operative

with the conscience of a
committed social worker.

Told a new federal program
was likely to succeed

in the long run, he answered

that wasn't good enough.

"People don't eat in the
long run, " he said.

Hopkins would remain one of Roosevelt's

most effective and devoted advisors

throughout his presidency,

eager always to know from Lorena Hickok

what was really happening
outside Washington.

It was the worst place I'd ever seen.

In a gutter along the main street,

there was stagnant, filthy water,

which the inhabitants used for
drinking, cooking, washing,

and everything else imaginable.

On either side of the street were

ramshackle houses, black with coal dust,

which most americans would not
have considered fit for pigs,

and in those houses every night children

went to sleep hungry on
piles of bug-infested rags,

spread out on the floor.

Lorena Hickok.

Eleanor read every one of the reports

Lorena Hickok wrote for Harry Hopkins

and made sure they were
among the papers she left

on FDR's bedside table each evening

so that he could read them, too.

In late August,
Hickok telephoned Eleanor

at the White House.

If she wanted to see for
herself how bad things were,

she should come to Scotts
run, West Virginia.

The first lady of the
United States came,

driving alone in her Buick.

The American Friends Service Committee

had been working in the region to help

unemployed coal miners
and their families.

Some men had been without
work for 8 years.

There was already a plan by
West Virginia University

to shift some families to a big plot

of gently rolling land
nearby owned by a family

named Arthur.

This is the worst place
in depression America.

Eleanor Roosevelt goes down
there with Lorena Hickok,

and they say these
folks are gonna be out

of these caves and
culverts within a year

and a new community called Arthurdale

is going to arise.

Eleanor returned to Washington,

committed to take over the project

and make "Arthurdale" a model community.

FDR shared Eleanor's enthusiasm.

Both believed that the
lives of the rural poor

should be improved so
that they would not be

tempted to shift into
the already overcrowded

industrial cities.

165 families were eventually chosen.

Each was to be given a furnished home,

a plot of land,
farm equipment, and livestock

with 30 years to pay the government back

for its investment.

The project was troubled
from the beginning.

The first 50 prefabricated
houses did not fit

their foundations.

The finished homes cost 4
times what had been budgeted.

When interior secretary
Ickes complained to FDR,

he just shrugged.

"My missus, " he said, "hasn't
any sense about money at all."

When she tried to attract
small-scale industries,

congressional opponents
torpedoed her plans.

A vacuum cleaner plant failed.

So did a shirt maker and
a tractor manufacturer.

Eleanor refused to give up.

She was as dedicated to Arthurdale

as her husband was to warm Springs.

When federal funds proved insufficient,

she contributed nearly
all her earned income

and canvassed wealthy
friends to underwrite

projects, including a
progressive high school

that allowed miners' children to get

advanced schooling their parents
could not have imagined.

She adopts a whole community,

and she goes every year to
the graduation at Arthurdale,

to the elementary school graduation,

the high school graduation,

and she square dances, and she plays

with the folks at Arthurdale,
the whole community.

She had this brilliant
notion that it's better

for everybody when it gets better

for everybody.

It was always individual by individual.

To its critics, Arthurdale came to

symbolize everything
wrong with the new deal.

They charged that it was wasteful,
overambitious, socialistic,

but for those who lived there,

Eleanor Roosevelt was a godsend,
and Arthurdale was a triumph.

"We woke up in hell, "

one of the first
homesteaders remembered,

"and went to bed the
next night in heaven."

Portsmouth, Virginia.

Mr. President and wife,
we is just in a place

where we don't know what to do.

Some of we colored peoples is so ragged

we is ashamed to get
out among the peoples,

and it's getting cold, no wood,

and if we don't get something to do,

we will freeze to death
during the winter.

Some of these peoples here
where we rents houses from,

if a person can't pay house rent,

some of them will take the window out

and take the doors off.

So please do what you can
for we peoples, please.

Most americans suffered
during the depression

but African-Americans suffered most.

3 out of 4 still lived
in the Jim Crow south.

More than half of them
were without work,

and federal relief
almost always went first

to needy whites.

Some 400,000 desperate
people migrated north

during the 1930s only to discover

that, in many big cities,
there was no work to be had.

Theodore Roosevelt had
once sought to deal

with african-american citizens

through a single representative...

Booker T. Washington.

Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt understood that

the world had changed,
and his administration

would prove more sympathetic to
african-american aspirations

than any of its predecessors.

Eleanor Roosevelt
obtained for her friend,

the educator Mary McLeod Bethune,

several posts within the administration.

When Bethune came to the
White House for dinner

for the first time,
a gardener stopped her.

"Hey there, auntie," he said.

"Where y'all think you're going?"

She looked him up and down, then asked,

"Which one of my sister's
children are you?"

No one ever tried to stop her again.

Following the advice
of Bethune and others,

FDR appointed an informal network
of second-level officials,

who came to be called
his "black cabinet, "

and Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins

struggled to ensure that
new deal relief programs

did not discriminate.

By 1935, 1/3 of all black americans

would be receiving federal
help of some kind,

and african-americans all
over the country were

shifting their allegiance

from the party of Abraham Lincoln

to the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

But local prejudice persisted
in federal programs.

Most CCC camps were segregated.

The coal miners of Arthurdale voted

to keep out black homesteaders.

Black reporters were barred

from the president's press conferences,

and the shame of lynching persisted.

In 1933, 26 americans died
at the hands of mobs,

3 times as many as had been
lynched the year before.

New York senator Robert Wagner

and Senator Edward Costigan
of Colorado introduced a bill

to make lynching a federal crime.

Southern politicians denounced it

as an assault on state's rights

and kept it locked up in committee.

FDR had denounced lynching as

"a vile form of collective murder"

and was willing to sign
the bill if it was passed,

but he felt he could not
back the bill in public.

Walter White of the National Association

for the Advancement of
Colored People asked

to see the president.

His Appointments Secretary said the boss

was far too busy.

Then Eleanor invited white to tea

on the south portico with the president.

There was really nothing
he could do, FDR said.

The speaker of the house believed

the bill unconstitutional.

If it reached the senate floor,

it would be filibustered to death.

Eleanor persisted.

So did the president's mother.

FDR was immovable.

Seniority had given

Southern Democratic
senators and congressmen

more than their share of chairmanships.

"I did not choose the tools with which

I must work, " he finally told white.

If he came out for the
anti-lynching bill,

he would be unable to pass legislation

the whole country needed,

including african-americans.

We were very disappointed.

The interesting thing was that
particularly african-american people

had such a strong feeling

about Franklin Roosevelt
and all the things that

he was doing that they saw
clearly that his own party

was defeating him at every step.

The good thing was that Mrs.
Roosevelt encouraged

young people to act.

She was always there to say,
"stay within the law

"and keep yourselves in hand,

but always stand for what you believe."

And I think it was that that
gave us a kind of strength.

The president liked to remind critics

who thought him too cautious that

"you have to wait,
even for the best things,

until the right time comes."

Although bills to end
lynching would be revived

again and again during
his administration,

that time would never come,

but Eleanor Roosevelt
would continue to argue

for all of them.

Any president gets lied to

by all the yes-men around him.

They all need to go around
that chain of command

and find out what's really
going on on the ground.

She was a tremendous asset
to him in telling him

what was working,
not working in the new deal.

She would fill the
inbox next to his bed,

and he would then say to his cabinet,

"my missus tells me, WPA's not working

too well in Texas."

The Roosevelt marriage was a partnership

in which each played a
very important part,

each admired the other,
each wanted very much

the approval of the other.

That was true throughout
their lives together,

even when they were mad at each other.

They lived very separate lives.

Even when they were in the White House,

they were very separate lives,

and she took a sort of
cold view of his fame

and the kind of popularity he had.

She knew who he was, and he wasn't

quite who they thought he was.

And he sought her approval,

but he had all sorts of
practical political decisions

that he felt he had to make,

some of which she disapproved of,

and it bothered him when
she didn't like it.

It is a happy privilege to talk to you

once again about Georgia
Warm Springs Foundation

and its fight against
infantile paralysis.

It is a privilege because I can tell you

of the accomplishments of
those who are fighting

this battle.

Whenever he could manage it,

the president escaped to
Warm Springs, Georgia.

A few days there,
always restored his energy

and lifted the spirits of
all the polio patients

struggling to regain their feet.

To have the president
of the United States be

a sufferer from the same
thing you had struggled with

was enormous benefit to them.

He was the example.

They just loved to be in his presence.

They loved to see him
lead games and play

water polo and preside
at Thanksgiving dinner,

which he did with enormous
ceremony every year

no matter what he was doing.

He was always there for Thanksgiving.

And the first thing we do is to, uh,

distribute the spinach,
which you're all so fond of.

And then at last, we get busy,

and we commit murder.

During his early days at Warm Springs,

he had lifted his own spirits

by fitting out a farmer's old Model T

with hand controls and setting out alone

along the back roads
of meriwether county.

He'd get out in his car,

and he'd ride all over the community,

and if he saw you
outside the road there,

he would toot his horn, say,

"may I speak to you just a minute?"

And he'd say, uh, "how you and
your family getting along?"

Once he found out that
you was all right there,

if you if you needed
some supplies, anything,

or didn't have enough to eat,

"I'll have my farm supervisor, Otis

bring you something."

And when he got that settled down,

he found out you gonna be all right,

uh, "you have any ideas, any suggestions

"that'll to help us in the situation

"we in today?

I'll be glad to listen to them."

It's that simple.

By the spring of 1935, the panic

that had gripped America on
inauguration day was over,

and Roosevelt had launched
3 sweeping new programs...

the national youth administration

to provide training for young people

without work;

the rural electrification administration

that would light up the
american countryside;

and the works progress administration,

that would change the face

of much of the american landscape.

It built or rebuilt 2,500 hospitals,

6,000 public schools,
10,000 airport landing fields,

and enough miles of roadway

to pave the continent
from coast to coast

more than 200 times.

Jobless artists and writers,

composers and musicians benefited
from the WPA, as well...

Saul Bellow and Thomas Hart Benton,

Ralph Ellison and Orson Welles,

Berenice Abbott and Alan Lomax

and hundreds of others.

It turned out nearly a
thousand publications,

including guides to all 48 states,

staged plays and performed
symphonies in small towns

that had never seen a live performance,

revived the art of mural painting

on the walls of schools
and post offices,

commissioned photographers
to chronicle the human cost

of the depression,

and transcribed the
memories of american slaves

and collected the folk songs
all kinds of americans sang.

A few timid people

will try to give you
new and strange names

for what we are doing.

Sometimes they will call it "fascism"

and sometimes "communism, "

and sometimes "socialism, "

but in so doing, they are trying to make

very complex something
that is really very simple

and very practical.

Roosevelt asserted,

and the country in this dire straits

of the depression willingly accepted,

that the role of the central
government from now on

would be to secure the
material well-being

of the American people.

Hitherto from the
founding to that point,

the general american orthodoxy had been

that our federal government
existed to defend

the shores, deliver the mails,

protect rights, and get out of the way.

Roosevelt had bigger ideas.

But despite everything he had done,

the United States was
still in its fifth year

of depression.

While 2.5 million americans

had returned to work,

another 10 million remained jobless.

A drought afflicted
most of the 48 states.

In the dust bowl, the topsoil

of the southern plains
was being blown away,

and hundreds of thousands of
americans were on the move

toward California in search of work.

People everywhere were
growing impatient.

On the right,

the American Liberty League,

organized by some of America's
most powerful industrialists,

charged that the new deal was
only making things worse,

that Roosevelt had

become a dictator,

defying the constitution,

encouraging "class warfare."

Their best-known spokesman
was FDR's old ally Al Smith,

the former Democratic
governor of New York.

The new dealers, he said,

were hell-bent on socialism.

"There can only be one
capital, " Smith said,

"Washington or Moscow.

"There can be only one flag,

"the stars and stripes

or the flag of the godless Soviets."

Some of Roosevelt's enemies

called him "that man
in the White House, "

because they could not
bear even to say his name.

When someone unwisely mentioned FDR

in the presence of J.P. Morgan,

whose own father had earlier
done battle with TR,

Morgan is said to have exploded,

"goddamn all Roosevelts."

The people among whom he was brought up,

an awful lot of them
learned to hate him.

He seemed to be betraying
everything that

they had believed.

And it just enraged people.

On the left, socialists and a handful

of communists took to the streets,

denouncing Roosevelt as
a captive of capitalism,

incapable of bringing about real change.

Other men were peddling other schemes.

Dr. Francis Townsend,
an elderly California physician,

promised to grant a monthly pension

to every worker over 60

who was willing to retire
and spend the money

within 30 days.

Father Charles coughlin,
the Detroit radio priest,

preached in favor of inflated currency

and against Wall Street

and international bankers,

but the biggest threat to FDR's
reelection chances in 1936

came from the south.

There was widespread speculation that

Senator Huey P. Long,

the flamboyant, populist,
ex-governor of Louisiana,

planned to lead a third
party coalition against him.

We've tried the Republican Party,

we've tried the Democratic Party,

then we've gone back and
tried the Republican Party,

and now we're back trying
the Democratic party,

and, unfortunately,
whenever we get into power

with either one of these parties,

we find that the one
crying need of our people,

the redistribution of wealth

so that none will be too poor

and none will be too rich,

is always neglected

by the party that is in power.

Long called his program

"share our wealth, "

and hundreds of thousands of voters

signed up all across the country.

Democratic National Committee
chairman Jim Farley

feared long would start
out with at least

12% of the vote, enough to deny FDR

several important states.

Then, on Monday, May 27, 1935,

things got even worse.

The United States Supreme
Court handed down

a unanimous decision in a case brought

by a kosher chicken
producer from Brooklyn,

which invalidated the national
recovery administration

on the grounds that the NRA had

unconstitutionally delegated

legislative power.

The NRA was already
understood to be a failure.

It had only raised prices
and lowered wages,

exactly the opposite of what it was

supposed to do,

but the narrow grounds on
which the NRA decision

was made seemed to suggest that other

new deal programs might
also be swept away.

From the first moments
of our republic on,

we argued how much the
federal government

is restrained by the doctrine

of limited, delegated,
and enumerated powers.

Roosevelt, with that
cheerful indifference

to detail said, "listen,
the preamble stipulates

"certain things... a more perfect union,

"provide for the general welfare.

Implicitly, " he said,
"the constitution gives

"the federal government
any power requisite

for fulfilling the goals
listed in the preamble."

End of constitutional reflection

as far as he was concerned.

The president put a handful of advisors

to work studying how
the powers the court

had taken away could be restored

before it was too late.

In June, just as congressmen were

preparing to leave town for the summer,

Roosevelt seized back the initiative,

calling upon them to enact 5
major pieces of legislation

by autumn.

In part to steal a little
of what FDR called

"Huey's thunder, " he proposed

new taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

He also wanted the
federal reserve system

strengthened and a new law to break up

monopolistic holding companies,

and in the interest of achieving
for ordinary americans

something of the sense of security

that had been his since boyhood,

rew himself something of
the sense behind two bills

initially championed

by the Democratic senator from
New York Robert F. Wagner.

They would turn out to be two
of the most momentous pieces

of legislation in american history.

The first, called the Wagner Act,

created the national
labor relations board

and for the first time
provided a federal guarantee

of labor's right to organize
and bargain collectively,

but it was the second,
the Social Security Act,

that would be the most far-reaching.

It would provide old-age
insurance paid for

by taxes on employees
and their employers,

share with the states responsibility

for insuring the unemployed,

and provide federal aid to
the states to help care

for dependent mothers and children,

the handicapped and the blind.

Social security
represents a redefinition

of the american social contract

of what we owe each other as a people.

In old age and should they be widowed,

they deserved some help
from the government,

and for that reason,
he considered it to be

the centerpiece of the new deal.

He put it in through a
regressive payroll tax

so that it couldn't be taken away,

so as he said,
"no damn politician can ever

take this away."

Like all great pieces
of social legislation,

you've got to start somewhere,

and the bill just barely
cleared committee.

So he knew that if he did too much

for the liberals,
he was gonna blow the bill.

If he did too much for
the conservatives,

then he'd lose his liberal support.

And it was his political genius to know

just how much the system could take,

and people sometimes say
now is, "why can't we

"have a leader like FDR
who just gets it done

the way he wants it done?"

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was all compromise,
playing people off each other,

pushing the system a
little here or there,

putting the foot on the gas,

then on the brake, back and forth.

There's an artistry to politics,

and social security wouldn't exist

if he hadn't been a
brilliant political artist.

This law represents also a cornerstone

in a structure which is being built

but is by no means complete,

a structure intended to lessen the force

of possible future depressions.

To act as a protection to future...

1935 saw a sweltering, bruising,

summer-long struggle

on Capitol Hill,

and compromises did reduce the impact

of some of the legislation,

but newspapermen called it
the "Second Hundred Days"

and the beginning of a second new deal.

Roosevelt's prospects for reelection

were all but assured.

And in September, FDR's most serious

third-party rival huey long was cut down

by an assassin's bullet.

September 23, 1935.

Dear Daisy,

do you know that you alone have known

that I was a bit "cast
down" these past weeks?

I couldn't let anyone else know it,

but somehow, I seem to
tell you all those things,

and what I don't happen to tell you,

you seem to know, anyway!

That when we open the
building to the public...

In public, Franklin Roosevelt

always projected cheerful optimism.

Even in private,
he rarely let anyone know

how he really felt,

but beginning in the
late summer of 1935,

he began making an exception

for his admiring distant
cousin Daisy Suckley.

One afternoon that month in Hyde Park,

he took her for a drive in
his hand-controlled car

to a favorite picnic spot,

the crest of a forested Ridge
on the Roosevelt property

he and Daisy named "our hill."

There, they began what they both called

their "voyage,
" confessing to one another

the loneliness each felt,

speaking of a special
bond of friendship,

agreeing to share confidences by letter

and long-distance telephone.

He even spoke to her of
the pain of his braces,

something he never
mentioned to his wife.

Daisy Suckley was a great secret.

He got from her the kind
of total admiration

that he needed.

He told her when he was
feeling sort of down.

He didn't tell anybody else.

Really an extraordinary relationship,

which was kept secret even
from his closest aides.

She was the drab little cousin
who took care of his dog fala...

that was how she was known in the world,

but she was in fact,
I think, central to him.

Franklin addressed her as "M.M."

For "My Margaret,
" and carried her letters

with him wherever he went.

She sometimes signed her letters
"Y.M."... "Your Margaret."

They planned together a
stone cottage to be built

on their hilltop where,
after he had finished

the traditional two terms,
she began to hope

she might live with him as
his nurse and companion.

Dear F.

Do you mind if I do a
little thinking aloud?

The subject is friendships and the way

they start and grow...

an introduction, a shake of the hand,

a few casual words to begin...

and the friendship usually
finds very definite limits

not so far from the surface.

On rare occasions, however, it seems to

start in the deepest depths,

a never-ending voyage
howeof discoverys to

with never a feeling of fear

because of the safe and solid ship

one knows is underfoot.

Daisy often remained at his side

throughout his presidency,

so quiet and unassuming and discreet

that the president's own secretaries,

puzzled by her presence,

dismissed her as "the little mud wren."

Roosevelt was surrounded
by people all the time,

and he gave little pieces of himself

to different people,

but nobody ever got all of him.

A fatherly kiss seals...

No president's family since the time

of Theodore Roosevelt
had ever received such

incessant coverage as FDR's,

though the picture it presented
was always incomplete.

The public read Eleanor's
column "My Day" that

appeared 6 times a week in
newspapers all across the country,

but she made little mention

of the domestic difficulties
of her 5 children,

among whom there would
eventually be 19 marriages.

James served for a time
as his father's assistant

despite charges that he
was using his position

to further his own business interests.

Stress-related ulcers
eventually forced him out

of the White House.

Anna, who had married early to get away

from the tensions within her family,

left her husband for a newspaperman.

Elliott, named for
Eleanor's troubled father,

was troubled, as well.

He refused to attend college,

rarely stayed in one place for long,

used his famous name to get ahead

in a series of speculative businesses.

Franklin, Jr., who inherited
his father's looks and charm,

earned a reputation at
Harvard as a playboy.

And John, who had only
been 5 when his father

developed polio and virtually vanished

from his life,

did what he could to
avoid the spotlight,

working quietly as a clerk

at filene's basement in Boston.

"One of the worst things
in the world is being

the child of a president,
" FDR once said.

"It's a terrible life they lead."

Every house I visited,

mill worker or unemployed,

had a picture of the president.

These ranged from newspaper clippings

in destitute homes

to large colored prints,
framed in gilt cardboard,

and the feelings of these
people for the president

is one of the most remarkable phenomena

I have ever met.

He is at once god and
their intimate friend.

He knows them all by name,

knows their little town and mill,

their little lives and problems.

And though everything
else fails, he is there

and will not let them down.

Martha Gellhorn.

There's a poll taken by
a New York radio station

of "who is the greatest man?"

And Roosevelt comes out first,

and God comes a distant second.

One mill worker in the south says,

"Roosevelt is the only president
we've ever had who understands

that my boss is a son of a bitch."

On the evening of June 27, 1936,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
traveled to Philadelphia

to accept his party's nomination

for a second term as president
of the United States.

Once again, the nation was listening.

As the crowd just, just indescribable.

What should have been the
greatest night of his life.

He went to be renominated in front

of 100,000 people at Franklin
field in Philadelphia.

The night shall be filled with music,

and the sound of the crowd will explode

like 10,000 hand grenades
that smash against the sky.

They drove into the stadium.

People went crazy.

The bands played.

Well, he got out of his car

out of sight of the cameras

and started toward the back
entrance to the stage.

His son Jimmy was was
carrying his speech

and holding his father's arm,

and his bodyguard was on the other side.

He was moving along and
somehow got jostled.

The lock on his brace opened,

and he really started
to go to the ground,

and Jimmy dropped the speech.

The bodyguard grabbed him

before he actually hit the ground,

but the whole...
you know, the whole crowd

back there saw him.

And he said "Clean me up, goddamn it."

And they... but they got him cleaned.

He managed to get onto the stage

and put his speech back together.

He said it was the most
frightful 5 minutes of his life.

He then gave one of the great speeches

of his administration.

"I was still mad when I began

the speech, " Roosevelt said later.

"It wasn't until I reached the line

"about economic royalists
that I knew I had them,

and then I gave it to them."

These economic royalists

complain that we seek to overthrow

the institutions of America.

What they really complain
of is that we seek

to take away their power.

Governments can err.

Presidents do make mistakes,

but the immortal Dante tells us that

divine justice weighs the
sins of the cold-blooded

and the sins of the warm-hearted

in different scales.

Better the occasional
faults of a government

that lives in a spirit of charity

than the consistent omissions
of a government frozen

in the ice of its own indifference.

There is a mysterious
cycle in human events.

To some generations much is given.

Of other generations much is expected.

This generation of americans

has a rendezvous with destiny.

Roosevelt's Republican opponent was

alf Landon, the able but
unassuming governor of Kansas,

who had once enlisted

in Theodore Roosevelt's
bull moose crusade in 1912.

When Landon promised to
retain useful elements

of the new deal,
FDR mocked the Republicans

for trying to steal Democratic thunder.

"We believe in social security.

"We believe work for the unemployed.

"We believe in saving homes.

"Cross our hearts and hope to die.

"We believe in all these things,

"but we do not like the way

"the present administration
is doing them.

"Just turn them over to us.

"We will do all of them,
we will do more of them,

"we will do them better,
and most important of all,

the doing of them will not
cost anybody anything."

Frustrated, the Republicans
changed tactics,

accusing FDR of being a
socialist in disguise.

The Oyster Bay Roosevelts
joined the attack.

Theodore Roosevelt's oldest son Ted

addressed the president himself

in a Pennsylvania speech.

"You have been faithless, " he said.

"You have urged Congress to pass laws

"you knew were unconstitutional.

"You have broken your sacred oath

taken on the Bible."

Alice Roosevelt longworth,

Theodore Roosevelt's oldest child,

went still further.

Her father had conquered his illness...

childhood asthma...
and therefore had championed

the "strenuous life, " she said,

but because Franklin
remained in a wheelchair,

he had become a "mollycoddle, "

peddling a "mollycoddle philosophy."

No one who really knew both men

could make that contrast.

No man who has brought himself back

from what might have been an
entire life of invalidism

to physical, mental,
and spiritual strength can

ever be accused of
preaching or exemplifying

a mollycoddle philosophy.

Nothing any critic
said seemed to matter.

"The forces of organized
money are unanimous

in their hatred for me, "

he told a cheering New York crowd,

"and I welcome their hatred."

Wherever FDR went, he asked the crowds

if they were better
off than they had been

when he took office.

They were.

National income had
now more than doubled,

unemployment had nearly
been cut in half.

Voices called out,
"Thank you, Mr. President!"

And, "you saved my home!"

Some people bowed their heads in prayer

as his train rattled past.

In Denver, someone had scrawled in chalk

on a boxcar, "Roosevelt is my friend."

Hick dearest,

I have never seen on any trip

such crowds or enthusiasm.

If they really have all this faith,

I hope he can do a good job for them.

I realize more and more
that FDR is a great man,

and he is nice to me, but as a person,

I'm a stranger,

and I don't want to be anything else!

P.S. How I hate being a show,

but I'm doing it so nicely!

On election day, the Roosevelts voted

at the Hyde Park town hall.

Name, please?

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

At Springwood on election night,

as the returns began coming in,

FDR blew a big smoke ring
and murmured, "wow."

He would win 60.8% of the popular vote,

the largest percentage
anyone had ever won,

and this time carried
46 of the 48 states.

And he carries all but
two of the states,

Maine and Vermont.

It was long said, "as Maine goes,

so goes the nation."

Now it was said, "as Maine goes,

so goes Vermont."

The election map of America has

been transformed.

FDR had forged a new Democratic Party,

a Roosevelt coalition
that brought together

Western farmers and big-city
industrial workers,

immigrants and african-americans

and the solid south.

Almost anything seemed possible.

We love Franklin!

At his second inaugural,

held for the first time on January 20,

Roosevelt promised to finish
the job he'd started.

I see 1/3 of a nation
ill-housed, ill-clad,

ill-nourished.

But it is not in despair that I paint

that picture for you.

I paint it for you in hope

because the nation,
seeing and understanding

the injustice of it,
proposes to paint it out.

The test of our progress
is not whether we add

more to the abundance
of those who have much.

It is whether we provide
enough for those

who have too little.

The great works program

has removed a vast army
from relief roles.

It revived lagging industry,
restored morale,

and renewed courage.

Roosevelt believed that his reelection

as president in 1936 had
essentially confirmed

popular approval of the new deal

and what he was trying to accomplish.

The executive branch had spoken,

the legislative branch had spoken,

the only branch of the government

that wasn't getting the
message was the supreme court.

The Supreme Court had continued

on its conservative course.

It had already overturned a
number of new deal statutes,

the NRA and AAA.

It seemed only a matter
of time before it moved

against the national labor relations

and social security acts,

and all future reforms seemed
to be in jeopardy, as well.

Buoyed by his big victory,
Roosevelt determined to act.

He had been reelected without the help

of his old friend and
closest advisor Louis Howe,

who had recently died.

Howe's political duties had
been taken over by others,

but no one had replaced him as the man

who could tell FDR when
he was about to be

a "damned fool."

Roosevelt genuinely believed

that in compelling the supreme court

to pay attention to modern conditions

he was doing the work of democracy.

These justices had been in office

in some cases for decades,

and they weren't listening to what

the american people wanted and needed.

The plan the president sent

to Capitol Hill without any
warning to the leadership

stunned enemies and friends alike.

He asked for the power
to name a new justice

for every sitting member of
the court who did not resign

6 months after reaching the age of 70.

Roosevelt claimed the retirement

of elderly judges would improve
the court's "efficiency."

Almost no one believed
that was his real purpose.

He wasn't honest about it,

and when the Democrats
on the hill recognized

that they really weren't
being dealt with straight

by the White House,
then that legislation

ran into trouble.

Daisy Suckley asked the president

to explain the plan
during a weekend visit

to Hyde Park.

He did his high-minded best.

When he was finished,
she asked "don't you mean

that you are packing the court?"

FDR roared. "I suppose
you're right, Daisy, " he s

"I suppose you're right!"

President's Roosevelt's

supreme court bombshell has started

a telegraphic barrage aimed at Congress

the like of which hasn't
been seen in years.

The polls of that day
show that the country was

evenly divided on the
supreme court plan,

and it seemed highly likely,

so large were the Democratic majorities

in both houses of Congress,

that Roosevelt would have
gotten that plan through

if the supreme court had gone ahead

and struck down minimum
wage legislation,

struck down the national
labor relations act,

and struck down the social security law.

But then the court itself began

suddenly to shift, upholding a series

of laws most observers had
expected it to overturn.

In the end, Roosevelt's
bill was allowed to die.

Over the coming years,
the president would be

given the opportunity to
replace 8 members of the court.

He may have lost the battle,
Roosevelt said,

but he had won the war.

Still, his court-packing
plan had made him

a host of enemies within his own party

and strengthened a growing

conservative congressional coalition

that would make substantive
new legislation

far more difficult to pass.

In August of 1937,
there was still more trouble.

The economy had been steadily improving

since 1933, so steadily
that american output had

finally outpaced 1929 levels.

FDR and some of his
advisers began to worry

about inflation.

In response, the president slashed funds

for relief and public
works in the interest,

he said, of balancing the budget.

There is a serious
argument to be made that

Roosevelt stopped too soon,

that far from being bold,
he wasn't bold enough

because the recession
within the depression

that came along in 1937 came

because they prematurely
declared victory.

The result was a sudden, precipitous

economic decline that continued

for 9 frightening months.

Republicans called it the
"Roosevelt recession."

Industrial production fell again

by more than 1/3.

So did wages.

Widespread strikes by workers demanding

union recognition slowed
factories still further.

4 million additional americans found

themselves out of work.

FDR's own advisers were
divided as to what

he should do.

Some urged him to
continue to hold the line

on spending.

Other, more left-leaning new dealers,

including his wife, wanted him to return

to the stimulus programs that had seemed

to be working earlier.

In the end, FDR sided with the liberals,

persuading Congress to pump
billions of dollars more

into public works and public housing.

The decline halted.

"We are on our way again,
" Roosevelt said,

and he won passage of the
fair labor standards act,

which for the first time
set federal minimum wages

and maximum hours.

I am very glad...

Meanwhile, the midterm elections

were approaching.

Furious at conservative
members of his own party

who had joined forces with Republicans

on Capitol Hill to defeat
his court plan and stall

new deal legislation,
the president barnstormed

the country, urging voters

to oust conservative incumbents

and elect liberal challengers.

Voters still admired
Roosevelt but resented

his intrusion into local races.

All but one of his targets
survived his assault.

As a political blunder, it was enormous.

After the election of
1938 and the revival

of conservative Democrats
and Republicans,

there was not a liberal
legislating majority

in the Congress of the
United States until 1965.

Newspapermen began writing that FDR

was finished as an effective leader,

a lame duck whose last two
years as president were likely

to be without real achievement.

"President Roosevelt could
not run for a third term, "

one wrote, "even if he so desired."

September 11, 1938.

Dear Daisy, the situation in Europe

is full of world dynamite,

and I don't dare be off the scene

because it needs hourly watching.

Did you hear Hitler on the radio today?

His shrieks, his histrionics

and the effect on the huge audience.

They did not applaud.

They made noises like animals.

Adolf Hitler had come to power

in Germany at almost
precisely the same moment

Franklin Roosevelt
first became president.

Americans had looked on
with horror as he crushed

his domestic opposition,

persecuted German Jews...

Supported a fascist uprising in Spain...

Reclaimed the Rhineland
from France in 1936,

and annexed Austria two years later.

Americans also deplored
the Italian fascist

Benito Mussolini's brutal
attack on Ethiopia...

And sympathized with
China in her struggle

against invasion by imperial Japan.

But most americans saw events overseas

as none of their business.

More than one hundred and
116,000 american lives

had been lost in the great war,

and few americans thought
it had been worth it.

In the intervening years,
their representatives

on Capitol Hill had
worked to ensure that

the United States would
not again become entangled

in events overseas.

They shrank the army, kept America out

of international organizations,

limited immigration,
and enacted 3 neutrality acts

barring arms sales to either side

in any future war.

Roosevelt was an internationalist

in an isolationist age,

and so when he watched
Europe and Asia heading

toward war in the late 1930s,

he realized that the United States

was going to have to get
involved in those conflicts

sooner or later

but that if he led America into war,

if another war became
known as "Roosevelt's war"

the way the first world
war was "Wilson's war, "

then he risked undoing all the good

american participation might have done,

and so he engaged in a
very careful, very slow,

but sometimes very duplicitous campaign

of public education.

Franklin Roosevelt believed,

as Theodore Roosevelt had also believed,

that the United States
had an important role

to play overseas,

but he had been consumed
with the economic crisis

during his first years as president,

needed the support in Congress
of progressive Republicans,

who were also implacable isolationists

and for the most part had
been willing to go along

with public sentiment.

"What worries me, " he had told a friend

as the violence increased worldwide,

"is that public opinion
over here is patting itself

"on the back every morning, thanking god

for the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans."

At first, his efforts at informing

the american public of
the dangers it faced

did not go well.

The present reign of terror

and international lawlessness...

When the president compared

fascist aggression to
a spreading disease

that needed to be quarantined,

pacifists charged Roosevelt
was starting America

down the slope to war.

Isolationist congressmen
threatened to impeach him.

The leaders of his own
party remained silent.

The president took no action.

"It is a terrible thing,
" he told an aide,

"to look over your shoulder
when you are trying to lead

and find no one there."

By September of 1938,
Hitler was demanding to

annex the german-speaking
portion of Czechoslovakia

known as the Sudetenland.

At Munich, at the end of that month,

the British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain

agreed not to oppose him

in exchange for a promise
of what Chamberlain

called "peace in our time."

The newspapers these days

are becoming more and more painful.

I was reading my morning
papers on the train

not so long ago and looked up

with a feeling of desperation.

Up and down the car,
people were reading,

yet no one seemed upset.

To me, the whole situation
seems intolerable.

We face today a world filled
with suspicion and hatred.

On the evening of November 9, 1938,

all over Germany,
Hitler's paramilitary thugs

looted Jewishj homes,
smashed jewish shops,

it was remembered as Kristallnacht,

the night of broken glass.

Scores of Jews died.

Thousands were imprisoned.

The rest were required to
pay what the Nazis called

an "atonement fine" for the damage done

to their own property

and then had the rest of
their assets confiscated.

FDR told a press conference
he could "scarcely believe

such things could occur in a
20th century civilization."

He ordered the visas of 15,000 german

and austrian resident
aliens extended so that

they would not be forced
to return to Nazi rule,

and he recalled his
ambassador from Berlin,

something neither Britain
nor France dared do.

A gallup poll taken early in 1939

would show that 85% of
American protestants

and 84% of Catholics

opposed offering sanctuary
to uropean refugees.

So did more than 1/4 of American Jews.

What has happened to us in this country?

If we study our own history,

we find that we have always been ready

to receive the unfortunate
from other countries,

and though this may
seem a generous gesture

on our part, we have profited

a thousand-fold by what
they have brought us.

There comes a time in the affairs of men

when they must prepare to defend

not their homes alone

but the tenets of faith and humanity

on which their churches,

their governments,

and their very foundations are set.

The defense of religion, of democracy,

and of good faith among nations

is all the same fight.

To save one, we must
now make up our minds

to save all.

In march of 1939, Hitler sent

his armies into what
remained of Czechoslovakia.

Poland looked to be next,
and Britain pledged to go

to war if Germany invaded her.

Roosevelt begged Congress
to allow arms sales

to Britain and France.

The house watered down his proposal,

and it never even reached the floor.

That spring, FDR sent a list
of 31 sovereign nations

to Hitler, asking the dictator to pledge

that he had no plans
to attack any of them.

Hitler launched a two-hour
tirade of contempt

directed at Roosevelt.

It was clear that the Fuehrer of Germany

believed he had nothing to fear

from the president of the United States.

In June of 1939,
FDR invited King George VI

and his wife Elizabeth to visit

the United States to
foster american sympathy

for England as she faced
the growing threat

from Nazi Germany.

The president and Mrs.
Roosevelt asked them

to spend a day in Hyde Park.

I arrived at St. James Church

at 10:00, and the doors
did not open until 11:00.

The king and queen walked out together,

smiling from side to side

followed by the Roosevelt
ladies and FDR,

"stumping along, " as he put it,

as fast as he could.

Then I went along to top
cottage for the picnic.

One dish of hot dogs was
served on the porch.

It is said that the king asked

for a second one!

After lunch, there was an
interesting Indian program

organized by Mrs. Roosevelt

by a man and woman in lovely
full-dress Indian clothes...

a little long, perhaps.

There was something

incredibly moving about this scene...

river in the evening light,

the voices of many people
singing this old song...

The train slowly pulling
out with the young couple

waving good-bye.

One thought of the clouds
that hung over them

and the worries they were going to face

and turned away from the
scene with a heavy heart.

If you were to come to this country

and you were at Laguardia Airport,

you would be at an airport

that Roosevelt and the
new deal had built,

and that if you went over
the Triborough Bridge

and then through the Lincoln Tunnel

and continued west across the country

on the Blue Ridge Parkway,
on the Skyline Drive,

took Chicago's subway,

went all the way across
to the great dams

of Bonneville and Grand Cooley,

all of this was done under Roosevelt

and the new deal,

and that's our legacy in America today.

I think what FDR was able to do somehow

was to make the government,
which is all of us...

I mean, we think of the government

as something out there,

but he saw it as the
collective responsibility

of the people to people in need.

He changed the relationship
between government,

business, and labor forever,

but those words are just so abstract.

What he did in those
programs was to bring

the force of the collective
power of the country

to bear on helping people

to get through their daily lives.

Before Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

there had been no
unemployment compensation

or social security,

no regulation of the stock market,

no federal guarantee of bank deposits

or labor's right to bargain,

no national minimum
wage or maximum hours,

no federal commitment
to high employment,

and no price supports for farmers

or federal funds for electric power

with which to light their homes.

But for all the new deal's achievements,

the american economy was
still struggling in 1939.

Many of those who most needed help

were still not getting it,

and Congress was no longer willing

to follow Roosevelt's lead.

The president's attention
was already beginning

to turn away from reform toward readyin

a reluctant country for the new crisis

that now threatened to engulf the world,

and FDR had begun seriously to consider

doing something no man,

not even Theodore
Roosevelt had dared to do,

run for a third consecutive term

as president of the United States.

How can we study history?

How can we live through the things

that we have lived through
and complacently go on

allowing the same causes
over and over again

to put us through these
same horrible experiences.

Anyone who thinks

must think of the next war as suicide.

Eleanor Roosevelt.