Voice of Courage

During troubled times, FDR found a new way to talk to a nation.

Reaching Out With Radio

A few days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office, he sat in the White House working on a radio speech about the country's banking crisis, scheduled for delivery on Sunday, March 12, 1933. It was the depths of the Depression, with a quarter of Americans out of work, homeless and destitute. Glancing out the window, FDR saw a workman taking down the inaugural scaffolding on the White House grounds.

"I decided I'd try to make a speech that this workman could understand," he told Louis Howe, his chief aide.

The American economic system was in a state of shock. On Saturday, March 4, a few hours before FDR's swearing-in, the governors of New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania signed orders closing banks in those states. The New York Stock Exchange had suspended trading, and the Chicago Board of Trade bolted its doors for the first time since its founding in 1848. The terrifying "runs" that began the year before on more than 5,000 failing banks had stripped rural areas of capital and now threatened to overwhelm American cities.

This was the bottom. If you had your money in a bank that went bust, you were wiped out. With no idea whether banks would reopen, millions of people hid their few remaining assets under their mattresses, where no one could steal them without a fight.

Roosevelt's inaugural address at the Capitol had begun to restore hope, with his standout line, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Yet the greatest applause came when he said that if his reform program was not adopted, "I shall ask Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis: broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency."

Then FDR used a new medium in a new way to change millions.

The first Presidential radio broadcast was introduced by Robert Trout of CBS, who read from a folksy script approved by FDR: "The President wants to come into your home and sit at your fireside for a little fireside chat." FDR brought natural talent to the role. His speaking voice was a beautiful, relaxed tenor, not the contrived basso profundo of pompous politicians.

Roosevelt owed much to technological good fortune. In 1921, the number of radios in the United States was in the thousands. By 1928, there were 9 million, and by 1932, 18 million, with about half the households owning at least one radio. Herbert Hoover had appeared on one of the first "telecasts" produced by an infant technology called television, but neither he nor anyone else knew how to use the broadcasting medium effectively.

Roosevelt, though, was different.

All afternoon, workers busily removed the gold pieces and Presidential china patterns in the Diplomatic Reception Room on the White House ground floor. In came bulky electrical equipment and telephone cables, connected to a desk and built-in microphone. Meanwhile, Roosevelt pictured people "gathered in the parlor, listening with their neighbors," wrote Frances Perkins, who witnessed many broadcasts. "As he talked, his head would nod and his hands would move in natural, relaxed gestures. His face would light up as though he were actually sitting with people."

The ritual went this way: Upstairs, FDR would put the finishing touches on every word and phrase. He was obsessed with punctuation. Grace Tully, his secretary, sometimes inserted extra commas when she typed, leading her boss to gently upbraid her for "wasting the taxpayers' commas." His real concern was timing. He read aloud at about 100 words a minute, but he adjusted his pace for effect. At 6 p.m., Roosevelt had his throat sprayed for a sinus problem. Then he enjoyed cocktails and dinner.

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