The effect was powerful: On March 13, when healthy banks reopened, people lined up in droves to return their cash.

In reality, his words had been carefully written, revised and fact-checked by a team of advisers, but Roosevelt had a way of making them feel informal and fresh. Using a slow, calm and steady voice that rose and fell naturally, he seemed to be engaging in a conversation with his listeners. Roosevelt wasn’t the first president to use the medium of radio, but he was the first to use it so effectively to speak directly to the American people, without the filter of the press. “Together we cannot fail.” Calming Effect of FDR's Words “Let us unite in banishing fear,” he concluded. (Yes, he was actually sitting next to a fireplace.)įinally, Roosevelt called on the American people to renew their “confidence and courage,” and to have “faith,” rather than be “stampeded by rumors or guesses.” That evening, at 10 pm Eastern time, Roosevelt addressed the nation via radio broadcast, directly from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. First Fireside Chat Addresses Banking Crisisīut on March 12, 1933, the day before banks were set to reopen, it wasn’t clear that these emergency measures had done enough to calm the public’s fears. Those that were judged to be healthy and stable enough would reopen on March 13. The bill gave the federal government the power to investigate each bank’s finances. Called into a special session, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act on March 9. Two days later, he declared a nationwide “bank holiday,” temporarily shutting down the nation’s entire banking system. But stirring words would not be enough, and Roosevelt knew it: “This nation asks for action, and action now.” Here is the complete Fireside Chat of September 30, 1934.“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Roosevelt famously declared on that cold and cloudy Inauguration Day.

I believe with Abraham Lincoln, that 'The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.'įurther evidence nothing much has changed. The course we have followed fits the American practice of Government - a practice of taking action step by step, of regulating only to meet concrete needs - a practice of courageous recognition of change. We have avoided on the other hand the equally untenable theory that it is an interference with liberty to offer reasonable help when private enterprise is in need of help. In our efforts for recovery we have avoided on the one hand the theory that business should and must be taken over into an all-embracing Government. 'There is great danger it seems to me to arise from the constant habit which prevails where anything is opposed or objected to, of referring without rhyme or reason to the Constitution as a means of preventing its accomplishment, thus creating the general impression that the Constitution is but a barrier to progress instead of being the broad highway through which alone true progress may be enjoyed.' More than twenty years ago, when Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were attempting to correct abuses in our national life, the great Chief Justice White said: All of these cries have been heard before. We are not frightened by reactionary lawyers or political editors. We do not get greatly excited nor is our peace of mind disturbed, whether we be businessmen or workers or farmers, by awesome pronouncements concerning the unconstitutionality of some of our measures of recovery and relief and reform. FDR heard it all before.įDR: “Nearly all Americans are sensible and calm people. Then as now, there seemed to be a vocal minority who screamed Socialism, Dictatorship and Government meddling in Private Enterprise.

Fdr fireside chats role of government