Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882-1945, 32nd President of the United States (Democrat, NY), First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is a statement that in the early 21st century would be made only by ultra liberals. But in the in the late 1940’s this was not only standard democratic party thinking, but a large number of Republicans thought of the Government as the employer of last resort including their Presidential standard bearer.
The debate in America around jobs during the Great Recession in 2012 may have seemed like a new issue for many Americans. The government wanted to economize, but there was a very high unemployment. Should the government spend money to employ more people or cut back on government jobs. The same issue faced the British in 1848. Most of the politicians and the Parliament wanted to reduce government spending. The Prince (husband of Queen Victoria) and the Queen observed that the economy solution would fall more heavily on the working class. At this time, the British monarchy was far more liberal than most of the politicians.
There has been no other candidate for President who ever made a statement like this. Other candidates typically promise to work hard at a facet of the presidency, or claim that their background or experience will make them very qualified, and many quote others as to their likely success. Trump's authority is Trump. And he assures us that God never created any other president as great as he would be in the area of growing the economy and creating jobs.
The country was in the midst of the Great Depression with a huge part of the nation unemployed. President Hoover and the Republicans had refused to provide any direct assistance to the unemployed—there was no unemployment insurance then. They actually believed that there was a danger of corrupting workers by providing assistance and ruining the American workforce. FDR probably saved the nation from massive violence by providing direct help to the unemployed but notice the way that he had to phrase such a notion which was then regarded as radical and socialistic by many conservatives.
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.
