Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
Last year, after much consideration, I recommended that the Congress adopt a national service act as the most efficient and democratic way of insuring full production for our war requirements. This recommendation was not adopted. I now again call upon the Congress to enact this measure for the total mobilization of all our human resources for the prosecution of the war…. National service legislation would make it possible to put ourselves in a position to assure certain and speedy action in meeting our manpower needs.
Although many men were in uniform—many of them drafted, there were still others in civilian life. There was not enough manpower available for war material design and production since many men not in uniform worked at more lucrative jobs than war production jobs. The President wanted to draft men who were not fit for military service into war production service. Congress refused to go along with that solution. Fortunately and unexpectedly women moved into the production jobs in large numbers and needed military production was maintained without drafting war workers.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882-1945, 32nd President of the United States (Democrat, NY), State of the Union Address, 1938
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Note the candor with which the Congress provided the truth to Americans about the financial situation of the nation. Despite the national crises and emergency of the war, the Congress told the truth and did not treat the citizens as children from whom bad news must be withheld. At the time, each state and many individual banks had their own paper currency, these could be easily counterfeited and were done so by the British to collapse the American economy. Because of this early traumatic experience with paper money, the United States did not use it for another 70 years.
Berger was actually prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years in prison, for this editorial. The House refused to seat him after the 1918 election (see {587981}); his constituents re-elected him in 1920 anyway. Finally the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, and he was again seated in Congress.
Coolidge was extremely pro business. See {598686}.
Essentially, this late 19th century notion of the English Socialist movement has become the norm in most industrialized democracies, the only difference being the 2 “partial holidays” as opposed to 3. But the social and economic advantage of having part of the work-force operational to provide services to the rest was key to our modern practice.
Sometimes the costs of the bribes was too great an investment for the likely year. Bribery decisions were made with the same sort of analysis as buying land or a piece of capital machinery. Just business.
At the time, the mine owners and operators claimed that they had NO obligations to their workers—not even to ensure a safe mine. There was no OSHA and workers died and were maimed on the job much more frequently than they do today. Many mine owners now accept that they have obligations to the workers, and the rest are required to have responsible and safe working conditions by law and OSHA regulations.
Wood was one of the first to call for conscription for a peacetime army as well as in wartime.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which defined modern liberalism in the United States throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II, which ended shortly after he died in office.
