In these latter years we have witnessed the domination of government by financial and industrial groups, numerically small but politically dominant in the twelve years that succeeded the World War.
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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The present group of which I speak is indeed numerically small and, while it exercises a large influence and has much to say in the world of business, it does not, I am confident, speak the true sentiments of the less articulate but more…
They were an appeal from the clamor of many private and selfish interests, yes, an appeal from the clamor of partisan interest, to the ideal of the public interest.
Our aim was to build upon essentially democratic institutions, seeking all the while the adjustment of burdens, the help of the needy, the protection of the weak, the liberation of the exploited and the genuine protection of the people's…
We have earned the hatred of entrenched greed.
The very nature of the problem that we faced made it necessary to drive some people from power and strictly to regulate others.
I spoke of the practices of the unscrupulous money-changers who stood indicted in the court of public opinion.
I spoke of the rulers of the exchanges of mankind's goods, who failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence.
Yes, in 1933, but now with the passing of danger they forget their damaging admissions and withdraw their abdication.
They offer to lead us back round the same old corner into the same old dreary street.
Yes, there are still determined groups that are intent upon that very thing.
They steal the livery of great national constitutional ideals to serve discredited special interests.
As guardians and trustees for great groups of individual stockholders they wrongfully seek to carry the property and the interests entrusted to them into the arena of partisan politics.
The principle that they would instill into government if they succeed in seizing power is well shown by the principles which many of them have instilled into their own affairs: autocracy toward labor, toward stockholders, toward consumers…
Autocrats in smaller things, they seek autocracy in bigger things.
If these gentlemen believe, as they say they believe, that the measures adopted by this Congress and its predecessor, and carried out by this Administration, have hindered rather than promoted recovery, let them be consistent.
Shall we say to the several millions of unemployed citizens who face the very problem of existence, of getting enough to eat, "We will withdraw from giving you work.
We will turn you back to the charity of your communities and those men of selfish power who tell you that perhaps they will employ you if the Government leaves them strictly alone?
Shall we say to the needy unemployed, "Your problem is a local one except that perhaps the Federal Government, as an act of mere generosity, will be willing to pay to your city or to your county a few grudging dollars to help maintain your…
Shall we say to the children who have worked all day in the factories, "Child labor is a local issue and so are your starvation wages; something to be solved or left unsolved by the jurisdiction of forty-eight States?
Shall we say to the laborer, "Your right to organize, your relations with your employer have nothing to do with the public interest; if your employer will not even meet with you to discuss your problems and his, that is none of our affair?
Shall we say to the unemployed and the aged, "Social security lies not within the province of the Federal Government; you must seek relief elsewhere?
Shall we say to the men and women who live in conditions of squalor in country and in city, "The health and the happiness of you and your children are no concern of ours?
Shall we expose our population once more by the repeal of laws which protect them against the loss of their honest investments and against the manipulations of dishonest speculators?
Shall we abandon the splendid efforts of the Federal Government to raise the health standards of the Nation and to give youth a decent opportunity through such means as the Civilian Conservation Corps?
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