George Washington to New Hampshire, 29 December 1777 (Detail, GLC03706) America Between the Wars: New Deal; FDR's Ideology by Charles Horgan Our Saviour Lutheran School, Bronx, NY Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 4 vols. [New York: Random House, 1938], I, 742. http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=447 The Great Depression began in 1929. In 1932, the Democratic Party nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for President. Roosevelt made a campaign speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on 23 September 1932. He used the speech to explain the causes of the Great Depression and his plan to action to resolve the economic misery of the people in the US as well as to describe his vision for the United States and the role that government should play in the lives of the people of the United States. A group of college and university professors had formed FDR’s "brains trust" [later named the "brain trust"] to advise FDR on public policy. The brain trust recommended that the national government provide the organized intelligence to reform the free market economy by fostering cooperation among business, labor, and consumers. The Commonwealth Club speech of 23 September 1932 was the first public address in which Roosevelt hinted at his plans for the economy. What follows is a series of excerpts from the speech. . . . A glance at the situation today only too clearly indicates that equality of opportunity as we have know it no longer exists. Our industrial plant is built; the problem just now is whether under existing conditions it is not overbuilt. Our last frontier has long since been reached, and there is practically no more free land. More than half of our people do not live on the farms or on lands and cannot derive a living by cultivating their own property. There is no safety valve in the form of a Western prairie to which those thrown out of work by the Eastern economic machines can go for a new start. We are not able to invite the immigration from Europe to share our endless plenty. We are now providing a drab living for our own people. . . . As I see it, the task of Government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order. This is the common task of statesman and business man. It is the minimum requirement of a more permanently safe order of things. . . . We know, now, that these economic units cannot exist unless prosperity is uniform, that is, unless purchasing power is well distributed throughout every group in the Nation. That is why even the most selfish of corporations for its own interest would be glad to see wages restored and unemployment ended and to bring the Western farmer back to his accustomed level of prosperity and to assure a permanent safety to both groups. That is why some enlightened industries themselves endeavor to limit the freedom of action of each man and business group within the industry in the common interest of all; why business men everywhere are asking a form of organization which will bring the scheme of things into balance, even though it may in some measure qualify the freedom of action of individual units within the business. . . . The terms of that [greater social] contract are as old as the Republic, and as new as the new economic order. Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. We have no actual famine or death; our industrial and agricultural mechanism can produce enough and to spare. Our Government formal and informal, political and economic, owes to everyone an avenue to possess himself of a portion of that plenty sufficient for his needs, through his own work. Every man has a right to his own property; which means a right to be assured, to the fullest extent attainable, in the safety of his savings. By no other means can men carry the burdens of those parts of life which, in the nature of things, afford no chance of labor; childhood, sickness, old age. In all thought of property, this right is paramount; all other property rights must yield to it. If, in accord with this principle, we must restrict the operations of the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier, I believe we must accept the restriction as needful, not to hamper individualism but to protect it. . . . This implication is, briefly, that the responsible heads of finance and industry instead of acting each for himself, must work together to achieve the common end. They must, where necessary, sacrifice this or that private advantage; and in reciprocal self-denial must seek a general advantage. It is here that formal Government - political Government, if you choose - comes in. Whenever in the pursuit of this objective the lone wolf, the unethical competitor, the reckless promoter, . . . declines to join in achieving an end recognized as being for the public welfare, and threatens to drag the industry back to a state of anarchy, the Government may properly be asked to apply restraint. Likewise, should the group ever use its collective power contrary to public welfare, the Government must be swift to enter and protect the public interest. The Government should assume the function of economic regulation only as a last resort, to be tried only when private initiative, inspired by high responsibility, with such assistance and balance as Government can give, has finally failed. As yet there has been no final failure, because there has been no attempt, and I decline to assume that this Nation is unable to meet the situation. The final term of the high contract was for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have learned a great deal of both in the past century. We know that individual liberty and individual happiness mean nothing unless both are ordered in the sense that one man’s meat is not another man’s poison. We know that the old "rights of personal competency", the right to read, to think, to speak to choose and live a mode of life, must be respected at all hazards. We know that liberty to do anything which deprives others of those elemental rights is outside the protection of any compact; and that Government in this regard is the maintenance of a balance, within which every individual may have a place if he will take it; in which every individual may find safety if he wishes it; in which every individual may attain such power as his ability permits, consistent with his assuming the accompanying responsibility. 1. Explain two of President Franklin Roosevelt's ideas about the causes of the Great Depression. 2. Describe the relationship between the Bill of Rights and Roosevelt's "economic declaration of rights." 3. Identify three provisions of Roosevelt's new economic order. 4. Evaluate the consistency between Roosevelt's statement of property rights and his statement that the government should have the ability to restrain the uses of property. 5. Write an essay in which you discuss which is more important: individual liberties or a well-ordered economy.