Commentary on Fireside Chat Outlining the New Deal
In this "fireside chat," delivered over the radio on May 7, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) outlined the basic features of the New Deal. It was the president's second fireside chat; the success of the first, on March 12, which was credited with stopping a run on the banks, convinced Roosevelt of the effectiveness of direct "conversations" with the American people.
Much had happened in the two months since that first fireside chat. Roosevelt had presented before a special session of Congress a stunning array of reform legislation, much of which had already been passed. When he took office, Roosevelt said here, "The country was dying by inches." People had lost confidence in the banks and begun to withdraw their money. The banks, in turn, had tried to collect on loans they had made, and this had resulted in millions of people losing their homes and businesses.
On a spring night in 1935, a handful of people gathered at the home of Henry Alsberg to discuss the ambitions and ideas they were bringing to the organization of the Federal Arts Projects, or Federal Project One, an offspring of the recently created Works Progress Administration (WPA). Hallie Flanagan arrived with Harry Hopkins, a friend of President Franklin Roosevelt and the newly appointed head of the WPA, who was urging Flanagan to accept the directorship of the Federal Theatre Project. Among the others present, Holger Cahill had signed on to lead the Federal Art Project, Nikolai Sokoloff had agreed to run the Federal Music Project, and the host, Henry Alsberg, had undertaken to manage the Federal Writers Project. It was "one of those evenings," Flanagan reported later, "when everything seemed possible."
OVERVIEW
In October of 1929, the United States experienced the deepest stock market crash in US history. The wealth of hundreds of thousands of Americans who had invested in the market during the widespread boom of the 1920s was wiped out. Banks closed, businesses shut down, and a large percentage of the population was suddenly out of work and out of money. In 1929 unemployment was less than three million; by 1932 it was twelve and a half million. In that same year, one-fourth of American households did not include a wage earner. For those who did have jobs, nine of ten companies cut wages and reduced workers’ hours, and in 1932 three-quarters of all workers were only working part time....
(History.com)
The 1930s in the United States began with a historic low: more than 15 million Americans—fully one-quarter of all wage-earning workers—were unemployed. President Herbert Hoover did not do much to alleviate the crisis: Patience and self-reliance, he argued, were all Americans needed to get them through this “passing incident in our national lives.”
But in 1932, Americans elected a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who pledged to use the power of the federal government to make Americans’ lives better. Over the next nine years, Roosevelt’s New Deal created a new role for the government in American life. Though the New Deal alone did not end the Depression, it did provide an unprecedented safety net to millions of suffering Americans.
The Great Depression (1929–41) that started with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, affected almost every part of people's lives during the 1930s. The optimism of the 1920s slowly faded as various efforts to “fix” the economic downturn did not work. More and more people lost their jobs and could not find others. Americans suffered as they never had before. Record numbers of people were unemployed. Nearly one million people paraded through towns across the country in “hunger marches” in 1930. For the elderly who lost their life savings in the stock market crash and for those who had purchased on credit and now did not have jobs to support their payments, the 1930s were a disaster. Thousands of sharecroppers in the South—tenant farmers who bought on credit—were unable to pay their landlords and were thrown off their farms. Millions of children lost the chance for an education as thousands of schools closed because of lack of funds to maintain schools and pay teachers. Charities and local governments could not provide enough aid to help the starving. It took several years for business and government to understand and correct the Great Depression.
The Depression Decade
In the United States the greatest legacy of the years 1930-1939 was the creation of the modern bureaucratic welfare state, which arose in response to the worst economic collapse in national history. Unlike other economic crises, the Great Depression was not short-lived. It persisted throughout the 1930s, affecting all aspects of society. The critical political controversy of the decade focused on how government ought to be used to bring the Depressionto an end. Every political quarter proposed solutions. In the desperate times of severe economic crisis patience often grew thin, and debates became strident. The major political contest took place between Republicans and Democrats. Together these parties consistently drew about 97 percent of ballots cast, and the debate over how to end the Depression was generally carried out on ideological terrain defined by individuals and groups within them. Yet other groups—with a broad spectrum of alternative political visions—also influenced the debate and sometimes policy. On the political Left were small numbers of socialists, communists, and anarcho-syndicalists; and on what is sometimes called the "far Right" there were tiny groups of American fascists and Nazi sympathizers. The severity of the Depression and the immediacy of the need to bring the nation back to prosperity galvanized politics in the 1930s. Still, the problems of the United States in the Great Depression must bekept in perspective. For all of the hardships, most Americans continued to work; and in contrast to other countries suffering from the international economic depression, the United States remained among the wealthiest nations in the world.
The 1930s were a turning point for the economy of the United States. In the nineteenth century, the economy had been driven by heavy industry and by the expanding frontier. As the nation grew, it demanded more goods. From railway lines to locomotives, ships, and building materials, American industry was working at full tilt. World War I helped continue the trend, but by the end of the 1920s things had changed. The American economy no longer demanded enough goods to keep heavy industry in business on such a large scale. By 1931, most of the railroads had been built, and even the automobile industry was struggling. With less money to spend, people kept their cars longer, put them in storage, or simply went without. Agricultural products, oil, and coal flooded the market and prices fell. The old economy had almost stopped working.
The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Many, like Louis Banks, were reduced to homelessness.
1929 was pretty hard. I hoboed, I bummed, I begged for a nickel to get somethin' to eat. Go get a job, oh, at the foundry there. They didn't hire me because I didn't belong to the right kind of race. 'Nother time I went into Saginaw, it was two white fellas and myself made three. The fella there hired the two men and didn't hire me. I was back out on the streets. That hurt me pretty bad, the race part.
When I was hoboing, I would lay on the side of the tracks and wait until I could see the train comin'. I would always carry a bottle of water in my pocket and a piece of tape or rag to keep it from bustin' and put a piece of bread in my pocket, so I wouldn't starve on the way. I would ride all day and all night long in the hot sun.
I'd ride atop a boxcar and went to Los Angeles, four days and four nights. The Santa Fe, we'd go all the way with Santa Fe. I was goin' over the hump and I was so hungry and weak 'cause I was goin' into the d.t.'s, and I could see snakes draggin' through the smoke. I was sayin', "Lord, help me, Oh Lord, help me," until a white hobo named Callahan, he was a great big guy, looked like Jack Dempsey, and he got a scissors on me, took his legs and wrapped 'em around me. Otherwise, I was about to fall off the Flyer into a cornfield there. I was sick as a dog until I got into Long Beach, California.
Although many people and businesses suffered during the Great Depression (1929–41), the movie industry did not. In fact, the 1930s are considered the golden era of Hollywood cinema. Eighty-five million people a week crowded movie theaters across America to escape the emotional strain of their sometimes desperate financial situations. From black-and-white and two-color “B” movies to new three-color Technicolor “A” movies, audiences had huge quantities of movies from which to choose.
The technological advances of color and sound made the best movies truly extravagant. Broadway choreographer Busby Berkeley (1895–1976) created some of the most elaborate musicals. Dancing partners Fred Astaire (1899–1987) and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) turned dance into an art form on film. Large, powerful movie studios turned actors and actresses, such as Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992), young Shirley Temple (1928–), and Mickey Rooney (1920–), into superstars by featuring them in film after film. Rooney played the popular character Andy Hardy in a series of films that could be enjoyed by the whole family.
The motion-picture studios employed new technologies in sound, color, and special effects and cultivated the images of major stars to make Hollywood the entertainment capital of the nation
Key Figures
Frank Capra (1897-1991), the creative director who managed to overcome small budgets at Columbia Studios.
Claudette Colbert (Claudette Lily Chauchoin), an articulate actress who often played sophisticated characters.
Clark Gable (1901-1960), the rugged son of an Ohio oil-field worker who translated toughness into screen stardom.
Greta Garbo (Greta Louisa Gustafsson, 1905- 1990), a Swedish actress who achieved legendary stardom in Hollywood silents and then excelled in sound films.
Chico Marx (1886-1961), the eldest of the Marx Brothers, who spoke one-liners in a heavy Italian accent.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977), the leader of the Marx Brothers, whose mustache, big cigar, and rapid patter set the comedic tone for the Marx Brothers.
Harpo Marx (1888-1964), the Marx Brothers' nonspeaking, harp-playing, woman-chasing specialist in visual puns.
Zeppo Marx (1901-1979), the singer and straight man for the Marx Brothers.
Louis B. Mayer (1885-1957), the autocratic studio boss of both Gable and Garbo at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Summary of Event
The decade of the 1930s saw the beginning of what has been called the Golden Age of Hollywood. The United States was in the midst of suffering through the Great Depression, but the film industry and its stars were never more popular. Its technical innovations captivated audiences (who had begun to tire of silent films) and its movie stars commanded a public following and loyalty that politicians envied; movie studios not only survived the terrible economy, but grew into one of the nation's most potent economic and cultural forces.
Emerging out of the depths of the Depression, the gangster film revealed much about America's frustrations and proved one of the most popular and resilient of film genres
