The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Radio Addresses to the American People Broadcast Between 1933 and 1944Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
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The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Radio Addresses to the American People Broadcast Between 1933 and 1944
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Depressions -- 1929 -- United States -- Sources; New Deal, 1933-1939 -- Sources; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 -- Oratory -- Sources; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 -- Political and social views -- Sources; United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945
But the simplest way for each of you to judge recovery lies in the
plain facts of your own individual situation. Are you better off
than you were last year? Are your debts less burdensome? Is your
bank account more secure? Are your working conditions better? Is
your faith in your own individual future more firmly grounded?
Also, let me put to you another simple question: Have you as an
individual paid too high a price for these gains? Plausible self-
seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of
individual liberty. Answer this question also out of the facts of
your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or
constitutional freedom of action and choice? Turn to the Bill of
Rights of the Constitution, which I have solemnly sworn to maintain
and under which your freedom rests secure. Read each provision of
that Bill of Rights and ask yourself whether you personally have
suffered the impairment of a single jot of these great assurances.
I have no question in my mind as to what your answer will be. The
record is written in the experiences of your own personal lives.
In other words, it is not the overwhelming majority of the farmers
or manufacturers or workers who deny the substantial gains of the
past year. The most vociferous of the Doubting Thomases may be
divided roughly into two groups: First, those who seek special
political privilege and, second, those who seek special financial
privilege. About a year ago I used as an illustration the 90
percent of the cotton manufacturers of the United States who wanted
to do the right thing by their employees and by the public but were
prevented from doing so by the 10 percent who undercut them by
unfair practices and un-American standards. It is well for us to
remember that humanity is a long way from being perfect and that a
selfish minority in every walk of life--farming, business, finance
and even government service itself--will always continue to think
of themselves first and their fellow-beings second.
In the working out of a great national program which seeks the
primary good of the greater number, it is true that the toes of
some people are being stepped on and are going to be stepped on.
But these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or
to gain position or riches or both by some short cut which is
harmful to the greater good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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