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.
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.
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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.
Wherever we find that prices of essentials have risen too high, they will be brought down.
Wherever we find that price ceilings are being violated, the violators will be punished.
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.
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.
The nation cannot afford violence of any kind at the coal mines or in coal towns.
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.
I believe now, as I have all my life, in the right of workers to join unions and to protect their unions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I know that the American people will not tolerate any threat offered to their government by anyone.
Like all other good Americans, they will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory.
Tomorrow the Stars and Stripes will fly over the coal mines, and I hope that every miner will be at work under that flag.
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.
The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march.
I think the first crack in the Axis has come.
The pirate philosophy of the Fascists and the Nazis cannot stand adversity.
The military superiority of the United Nations--on sea and land, and in the air--has been applied in the right place and at the right time.
But he and his Fascist gang will be brought to book, and punished for their crimes against humanity.
No criminal will be allowed to escape by the expedient of "resignation.
So our terms to Italy are still the same as our terms to Germany and Japan--"unconditional surrender.
We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain.
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