Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree.ģ. Without question it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of farm and factory.ĭo not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you-using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions-/that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. That Act-applying to products in interstate commerce-ends child labor, sets a floor below wages and a ceiling over hours of labor.Įxcept perhaps for the Social Security Act, it is the most far-reaching, far-sighted program for the benefit of workers ever adopted here or in any other country.

After many requests on my part the Congress passed a Fair Labor Standards Act, commonly called the Wages and Hours Bill. It improved still further our agricultural laws to give the farmer a fairer share of the national income, to preserve our soil, to provide an all-weather granary, to help the farm tenant toward independence, to find new uses for farm products, and to begin crop insurance.Ģ. I mention tonight only the more important of these achievements.ġ. The Congress also failed to meet my suggestion that it take the far-reaching steps necessary to put the railroads of the country back on their feet.īut, on the other hand, the Congress, striving to carry out the Platform on which most of its members were elected achieved more for the future good of the country than any Congress between the end of the World War and the spring of 1933. On the one hand, the Seventy-fifth Congress has left many things undone.įor example, it refused to provide more businesslike machinery for running the Executive Branch of the Government.

Barring unforeseen events, there will be no session until the new Congress, to be elected in November, assembles next January. The Seventy-fifth Congress, elected in November, 1936, on a platform uncompromisingly liberal, has adjourned. As part of the democratic process, your President is again taking an opportunity to report on the progress of national affairs to the real rulers of this country-the voting public. Roosevelt told America, “The success of our whole national program depends, of course, on the cooperation of the public-on its intelligent support and its use of a reliable system.” Kiewe succinctly demonstrates how the rhetoric of the soon-to-be-famous First Fireside Chat laid the groundwork for that support and the recovery of American capitalism.Our government, happily, is a democracy. Amos Kiewe tells the story of the First Fireside Chat, the context in which it was constructed, the events leading to the radio address, and the impact it had on the American people and the nation’s economy. Humorist Will Rogers later said that the president took “such a dry subject as banking and made everyone understand it, even the bankers.” Roosevelt also took a giant step toward restoring confidence in the nation’s banks and, eventually, in its economy. “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States.” Thus began not only the first of Franklin Roosevelt’s celebrated radio addresses, collectively called Fireside Chats, but also the birth of the media era of the rhetorical presidency.

Fireside chats franklin roosevelt