The pirate philosophy of the Fascists and the Nazis cannot stand adversity.
FDR
The Public Record
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1933, until his death on April 12, 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in New York and is best known for his leadership during two of the most significant crises in American history: the Great Depression and World War II. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, a series of programs and reforms aimed at economic recovery and social welfare, which fundamentally reshaped the role of the federal government in American life.
gutenberg.org
I think the first crack in the Axis has come.
The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march.
Over a year and a half ago I said this to the Congress: "The militarists in Berlin, and Rome and Tokyo started this war, but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it.
Tomorrow the Stars and Stripes will fly over the coal mines, and I hope that every miner will be at work under that flag.
Like all other good Americans, they will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory.
I know that the American people will not tolerate any threat offered to their government by anyone.
Tonight, in the fact of a crisis of serious proportions in the coal industry, I say again that the spirit or this nation is good.
But I also do not mean to desert my obligations and responsibilities as President of the United States and Commander- in-Chief of the Army and Navy.
Every improvement in the conditions of the coal miners of this country has had my hearty support, and I do not mean to desert them now.
I want to make it absolutely clear that this government is not going to do anything now to weaken those rights in the coal fields.
I believe now, as I have all my life, in the right of workers to join unions and to protect their unions.
If it becomes necessary to protect any miner who seeks patriotically to go back and work, then that miner must have and his family must have--and will have--complete and adequate protection.
The nation cannot afford violence of any kind at the coal mines or in coal towns.
And so, under these circumstances, it is inconceivable that any patriotic miner can choose any course other than going back to work and mining coal.
As for food, which today accounts for about another third of the family expenditure on the average, I want to repeat again: your government will continue to take all necessary measures to eliminate unjustified and avoidable price increases.
Wherever we find that price ceilings are being violated, the violators will be punished.
Wherever we find that prices of essentials have risen too high, they will be brought down.
I know only too well that the cost of living is troubling the miners' families, and troubling the families of millions of other workers throughout the country as well.
It has been the objective of this government to reduce that hardship, to obtain for miners and for all who do the nation's work a better standard of living.
That is why, since this war was started in 1939, you have increased the annual production of coal by almost two hundred million tons a year.
That is why you have contributed so generously, so willingly, to the purchase of war bonds and to the many funds for the relief of war victims in foreign lands.
That is why you have sent your sons and brothers from every mining town in the nation to join in the great struggle overseas.
You miners have ample reason to know that there are certain basic rights for which this country stands, and that those rights are worth fighting for and worth dying for.
There can be no one among us--no one faction powerful enough to interrupt the forward march of our people to victory.
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