Historical Musing No. 1 ( in "F" Minor); Part One

In the spirit of divining from history and exploiting it for my own election year musings, I will draw from, as my first source of inspiration, the First Inaugural Address of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is the famous "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," speech.

This is not a strict, line-by-line analysis, mind you; merely my own personal reflections upon a few quotes which stand out specifically among the others.

In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

This is followed a few paragraphs later with the following.

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.

In a moment of what the reader may refer to as candor, Roosevelt admits that taxes had risen while the ability of the citizenry to pay those taxes had diminished. In those early years of the Great Depression this was most obvious. At this late hour of the evening I will not address economic concerns, only specific feelings about the text. In this vein, the phrase which I find to be the most distressing is: "direct recruiting by the Government itself," followed closely by: "to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources."

It serves to say that disparaging thoughts regarding FDR may greatly upset a number of seniors, as I have learned through viewpoint exchanges with some elder members of my own family. The general consensus is that Roosevelt's greatest success was in the restoration of an impression of the self worth of an individual, a sentiment which is difficult to refute despite contemporary unemployment rates. Yet the concept of the government stepping in not to solve the difficulties, but to absorb and control them by having a direct hand in any portion of the force of national labor, beyond that which concerns the direct functioning of the government, is in itself problematic, and the dealings with "our natural resources" underscore this problem.

Why do I mention such trivial historical footnotes? Two reasons: first, to provide a very general foundation of my own musings; and second, history is ripe with the fruits of experience, and beyond the usual cliches of its unending repetition we can view specimens of that fruit and use them, as in reference, to better display the table of issues in the present.

Next on the agenda: Part Two, the Overbalance of Population & National Redistribution, and Government Supervision of Financial Dealings.

On Deck: Woodrow Wilson, the Change in Government, and Cardoza's Modern Speculation.