In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C h a p t e r 5 Roosevelt Is in, and So Are the New Deal and Fireside Chats When, in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was chosen as the Democratic candidate for president, when at the convention he said, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” my father fairly leaped into his corner. And then, with no RomanCatholics to muddy the waters, the South returned to its traditional Democratic place and Roosevelt defeated Hoover in the November general election, the family grew ecstatic, and in our apartment in the Bronx, Roosevelt’s campaign song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” rang out loudly and often. Although we all, including ten-year-old me, sang it knowing that “happy days” were not here again, could not magically be here again in the instant after an election, we were optimistic. “Now that we got Roosevelt,” my father would say, “you’ll see some action,” always adding, “Now that’s a President. Now that’s a mensch,” which meant that Roosevelt was a man who knew his duty and would do it. And in those Depression days, a man in high position doing his duty meant a man who would do his level best to lift the economy out of its deep hole. Roosevelt apparently knew his duty so well that on the day after he took office in March 1933, on the day after his inaugural address in which he said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he declared what the papers were calling a bank holiday. For four days the nation’s banks were closed, and all financial transactions were stopped. Even as I was disappointed that it was not a usual “holiday” when my school would not be open, my father was delighted. “So what did I tell you?” he said to us. “He’s doing what needs to be done.” And indeed, even I understood that the bank holiday not only stopped the run on banks but it also gave Roosevelt time to 48 Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Fireside Chats get Congress to give him some control of them. And only three short days later, nearly a thousand banks were up and running again. Fireside Chats A week or so afterward, Jack and his family were, as I learned, gathering in his Bronx apartment at the exact same moment that we were gathering in our Bronx apartment. I don’t exactly know what kind of radio the Subermans were gathering around, but we were around our Atwater Kent. Both families, however, were listening to the same thing—what our president was calling a “fireside chat.” And so simple was Roosevelt’s language that we not only listened, we learned. Roosevelt talked about how well everybody had accepted the bank holiday, explained its necessity, and we nodded in understanding. After the “chat” was over, my mother said, “What do I know from banks? What did I know from the innies and outies of banks? But Roosevelt knows, and so now I know.” Jack said that after the “chat,” even his father, a victim emotionally and physically of the Depression, felt a sense of comfort. “A very little sense,” Jack said to me. “Like he made a foul shot with his opponent twenty-five points ahead.” Through the coming years, we would hear thirty fireside chats, and they would range from such specific issues as drought conditions, loan drives, and judiciary reorganization, and—after December 7, 1941—to such sweeping ones as the rationale for the declaration of war on Japan and the responsibilities on the home front. We always listened and we always learned. My father would say as we gathered before the Atwater Kent, “Let’s hear, children. He’s not talking just to hear himself talk.” Soon after the first fireside chat, a second one brought us to the Atwater Kent, and it was on that night that we heard the outline of what Roosevelt called his “new deal,” a term capitalized in the papers as a more formidable “New Deal,” and we heard some details of his plans for putting it into place. Roosevelt had earlier said he was going to keep us informed of what he was doing, and these fireside chats were apparently his way of doing it. When we heard the one specifically about the Civilian Conservation Corps, a project charged with maintaining and restoring forests, beaches, and parks, my mother, ever...

Share