Roosevelt's New Deal

The following are excerpts from a review published in The Nation of the radio address of Franklin D. Roosevelt announcing the fruition of his New Deal:

Unlike most "historic" events with such an enormous publicity build-up, the thing somehow managed to come off--judging not so much by the applause of Congress and the galleries, which formetd the studio audience, as by the talk of the plain men and women in their homes and on the street. The common man wanted to be let in on a dramatic occasion, and he had his wish. He wanted a fighting speech, and he got it. He was tuning in on history-in-the-making, and the President tool: pains to make it a good show.

The President has again used some sort of magic to increase his stature, and by comparison every Presidential possibility on the Republican side seems puny and frustrate. They can tall: only of outraged "taste"-these men whose stomachs have not been turned by their association with Hearst and all the revolting exploitation of a company universe.

Since Wilson's time the national and international scenes have more clearly emerged. It was possible for Mr. Roosevelt to draw a clear relationship between the fascist imperialism of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese militarists and the fascism of the American plutocrats.

It is a recognition of the relation between fascism abroad and at home, between fascism and war, between fascism and the economic plutocracy. If the President had meant only to repeat the well-worn distinction between democracy and dictatorship, he would not so studiously have avoided mention of Soviet Russia. That he did so avoid, it is a tribute to his good sense, and proof of his intent to single out the fascist dictators as the imperialist war-makers.


Never has an American President so clearly attacked the finance-capitalists, the holding-company wizards, the corporation lawyers, and the whole resplendent array of big-business statesmanship. His attack, coming at a period of capitalistic crisis, is the most significant Presidential utterance we have had on the concentration of financial power in a capitalist state. There have been leftwing attacks on big business in abundance. But when an American President who is politically astute, realistic, sensitive to opinion, directs his Presidential message to such a sustained and considered attack, that becomes news--and history. It becomes an official recognition of the strains within our economic system, and of a basic inner cleavage of interest between those who would freeze the structure as it stands, even at the cost of destroying our culture, and those who still hope to take advantage of whatever flexibilities the system offers.