Franklin D. Roosevelt: Campaign Address at Madison Square Garden

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In the opening paragraphs of his address, President Roosevelt promises to offer a reasoned discussion of “the effect on our Nation” of victory by either party in the upcoming election and then immediately raises the emotional tone by saying that the election was about the fate of “humanity.” More is at stake than “the continuance in the Presidency of any single individual.”

In paragraph 3, the president argues that what was at stake in the last presidential election, in 1932, was “the restoration of American democracy” and makes clear that his concept of democracy is about majority rule, or people's power. He maintains that in 1932 “the American people were in a mood to win” and “did win.” The issue in 1936 is “the preservation of their victory,” not going back to rule by the economic royalists. In paragraphs 4 and 5, he characterizes the 1932 campaign as a “crusade to restore America to its own people” and asserts that the crusade is still ongoing.

In paragraph 6, Roosevelt confidently asserts that Americans know what his administration has accomplished, so they will not be misled by the “misrepresentation or statistical contortion” of “unscrupulous enemies” or the “exaggerations of over-zealous friends.” Roosevelt is furious at Republican attacks and focuses on them in detail later in the address. Mentioning negatively “over-zealous friends” appears to be an attempt by Roosevelt to appeal to moderate Democrats. Roosevelt indicates that his approach is pragmatic: The “Administration has been hammering [it] out on the anvils of experience.” He draws on the thinking of individuals with diverse perspectives, trying out different plans and keeping those that worked.

In paragraphs 7 through 11, Roosevelt describes the goals that he and the people had in 1932. In paragraph 7, Roosevelt asserts that their primary goal had been “peace of mind instead of gnawing fear.” The threat of war and foreign policy developments were very much on Roosevelt's mind in 1935 and 1936 as the international situation deteriorated. The events leading to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 had led the United States to adopt neutrality legislation, and Germany's rearmament caused anxiety about a new general war. In January 1936 Roosevelt had delivered his annual message to Congress in a special evening session. The only other such occasion was when President Woodrow Wilson had appeared to ask for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917. Roosevelt highlights the danger of war and pledges to maintain neutrality, sufficient defenses, and support peace. Shortly after the Spanish Civil War had erupted in July 1936, Roosevelt had spoken out against entangling alliances and made an emotional pledge to keep the nation out of war, affirming in a speech at Chautauqua, New York: “I have seen war. … I have seen blood running from the wounded. … I hate war.” He reiterates this stance in the Madison Square Garden speech.

In paragraphs 9 and 10, Roosevelt lists the many things in 1932 that had caused people to worry about themselves and the ability of community institutions such as schools, parks, and a “solvent local government” to function. He also lists such goals as “fairer wages, the ending of long hours of toil, the abolition of child labor,” and “the safety of their children from kidnappers.” Establishing minimum wages and maximum hours and limiting child labor were addressed in the Fair Labor Standards Act enacted in 1938. The allusion to fears of kidnapping stemmed from the widespread attention in 1932 to the tragic case of the kidnapping and murder of the toddler son of the aviator Charles Lindbergh.

In paragraph 12, Roosevelt sums up the section of the address on peace by stating his administration's record. He also connects the internal and external dimensions of the concept by pledging that in the future one could expect peace for the individual, community, and nation and “peace with the world.”

In paragraphs 13 to 18, Roosevelt as leader of a people's army for social change calls the “roll of honor” of those “who stood with us in 1932 and still stand with us today.” The roll of honor includes the suffering of millions of all classes, “men at starvation wages, women in sweatshops, children at looms … farmers whose acres yield only bitterness,” needy youth, business people, home owners, and “frugal citizens” worried about losing their savings. Roosevelt includes on the honor roll better-off liberal-minded people “Americans of all parties and all faiths,” and those “who had eyes to see and hearts to understand.” New Deal measures offered help to people of all classes and drew support from a number of progressive Republicans and members of left-of-center state-level third parties.

In paragraph 19, Roosevelt pays tribute to the strong faith his supporters had in him (“They stood with us then because in 1932 they believed”), which was reinforced in 1936 by the knowledge they have that the New Deal had delivered improvements (“They stand with us today because in 1936 they know.”) Roosevelt also notes that there are “millions of new recruits who have come to know,” an assertion that was borne out on election day when the number of new Democratic voters shot up by nearly five million.

In paragraphs 21 and 22, Roosevelt emphasizes the necessity of “struggle” and attacks his Republican predecessors in a striking reference to a proverb about three monkeys who hear no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil: He calls the twelve Republican years before the New Deal a period of “hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government.” The president's language grows even more colorful as he contrasts the excesses of the 1920s with the disaster of the Herbert Hoover depression years: “Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair!” Roosevelt attacks the conservative objective in the election, “to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.” Here Roosevelt engages in a play on words. The Democratic Party in the nineteenth century had emphasized limited government. The New Deal creation of numerous new government agencies and the establishment of the principle that the federal government is responsible for the economic well-being of the people were far removed from the old philosophy. Charging in the campaign that the New Deal had fundamentally altered the nature of American government and was a threat to liberty and the Constitution, the Republicans shifted from their earlier emphasis on a strong national government. Roosevelt parries the Republicans' charge by contrasting his caring philosophy with their indifference.

Paragraphs 24 to 30 are the most radical passages in the address. Roosevelt denounces the right-wing big businesses that oppose his program and his reelection. In paragraph 24 he notes his administration's “struggle with the old enemies of peace,” reiterating the peace emphasis of the opening of the address, and lists these enemies as “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.” Roosevelt alludes here to the recent Senate investigation of war profiteering in World War I led by Senator Gerald Nye. In attacking monopoly, moreover, Roosevelt draws on the pre–Civil War campaign of the Democratic president Andrew Jackson and an ongoing antimonopoly tradition. The president's reference to class antagonism here serves to open the theme that it is not he but his opponents who initiated a class war. The sectionalism reference may be an allusion to racism. During the election campaign, despite the Democratic orientation of white southern voters, Eleanor Roosevelt was vehemently attacked for violating racial norms for actions, such as being photographed treating African Americans as equals.

The monopolists, Roosevelt argues in paragraph 25, had started to view government “as a mere appendage to their own affairs.” The control of government by “organized money,” Roosevelt proclaims, is “as dangerous” as mob rule.

In the most famous sentences of the address, in paragraphs 26 and 27, Roosevelt personalizes the struggle. He says that the monopoly forces were “united against one candidate” as never before. “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” Roosevelt is moving left to keep in step with and remain the leader of his leftward-moving followers. In the heat of the campaign, Roosevelt expresses his emotional identification with the masses and demonstrates an activist's sensibility that one is accomplishing something significant when one arouses the anger of privileged elites. He indicates both pride in what he has accomplished (“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match”) and hope for future victories (“I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master”). The latter sentence thrilled the Madison Square Garden crowd, but it was the most controversial of the speech. Republicans attacked it vehemently, charging that it was proof of Roosevelt's dictatorial proclivities, and some of his moderate supporters and advisers were also troubled by it. The phrase was Roosevelt's own; in the initial draft of the speech, the words were “these forces found their oblivion.”

In paragraph 28, Roosevelt continues the personal theme, asserting that under his administration there is no back door to influence at the White House. The only entry is through the front door; he says that he holds the “pass-key” and will carry it “in my pocket” as “long as I am President.” The theme of equality of all and special privileges to none was a long-standing Democratic Party principle. If in actual practice Democrats had failed to apply the concept to women and minorities, belief in the abstract principle remained a key value.

In paragraphs 29 to 37, the president delivers a scathing attack on recent efforts by the Republican presidential nominee, Alf Landon, and his supporters to assail the Social Security program. Roosevelt was outraged at both the form and the substance of the Republican charges. Employers had distributed in workers' pay envelopes a note advising workers that on January 1, 1937, the federal government would take 1 percent of their pay with no certainty that Congress would use the funds for the purposes intended and no certainty that workers would ever get anything back. In paragraph 29, Roosevelt characterizes the “pay-envelope campaign against America's working people” as an act by “desperate” and “reckless” people and a return to the “tactics of the labor spy.” He answers at length the substantive charges after first noting the irony in paragraph 30 that those who “talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system” by attempting to coerce workers' votes. Roosevelt argues that it was “the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory” if workers voted the wrong way, a tactic used especially against the Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

The pay envelope campaign was not only wrong in principle because it was coercive, Roosevelt charges in paragraph 31, it was also dishonest because it failed to mention that employers matched the money contributed by the employee to the old-age pension fund. The employer alone contributed to the unemployment insurance fund also established by the Social Security Act. Having employees pay half the cost of the old-age pension system was regressive, but Roosevelt had insisted on it to make it politically impossible to repeal the system. Roosevelt also points out in paragraph 36 that while the Republican leadership campaigned against Social Security, more than three-quarters of the Republicans in Congress had voted for the measure.

In paragraph 35, Roosevelt accuses the Republicans of attacking the “integrity and honor of American Government itself” when they intimate that a future Congress would divert funds to other purposes. Roosevelt suggests these critics “are already aliens to the spirit of American democracy” and should “emigrate and try their lot under some foreign flag in which they have more confidence,” alluding to sympathy on the political right for the fascist regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

In paragraphs 37 through 40, Roosevelt sounds a conciliatory note, expressing confidence that “law-abiding businessmen” and “the overwhelming majority of employers, workers and the general public” would reject the anti–Social Security campaign on Election Day.

Roosevelt affirms that his thoughts are for the well-being of the “whole Nation,” since he, like his predecessors, “is President of all the people.” Even in the context of a speech—and a campaign—designed to mobilize constituencies that supported him with class-oriented language, Roosevelt frames part of his argument in terms of the good of the nation as a whole. After all, even the most radical class legislation, the National Labor Relations Act, was based on the idea, as the president put it earlier in his address, of “a new peace between worker and employer.”

In paragraphs 41 to 51, Roosevelt defiantly answers, in his own way, questions posed two nights earlier by Landon in the very same venue. Landon had challenged the president to say what he would do in a second term about balancing the budget, restoring business confidence, reducing unemployment, and reviving New Deal measures declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Would he seek to amend the Constitution or “get around the Constitution by tampering with the Supreme Court? … Does he favor concentrating more and more power in the hands of the chief executive? Or does he favor a return to the American form of government?” (“The Text of Governor Landon's Addresses at Madison Square Garden and over the Radio,” p. 16). The president replies, “Our vision for the future contains more than promises. This is our answer to those who, silent about their own plans, ask us to state our objectives.” Landon had made a number of promises but had offered few specifics about how to implement those pledges.

Roosevelt lists his accomplishments in meeting people's needs and states “Of course we will continue” to do those things. He pledges to go on providing help to workers by supporting collective bargaining and striving to improve working conditions, increase wages, “end the labor of children” and “wipe out sweatshops.” He pledges also to continue to work to end monopoly, and, paraphrasing the words of the Revolutionary naval officer, John Paul Jones, he declares, “We have only just begun to fight.” In subsequent paragraphs, the president pledges “of course” to continue to aid farmers and to work for education and opportunity for youth, conservation, and reforestation. At the end of each series of pledges, he repeats the refrain “We have only just begun to fight.”

In paragraph 46, Roosevelt pledges “of course” to continue to “provide useful work for the needy unemployed,” while in the next paragraph he attacks those “who disparage their fellow citizens on the relief rolls” as “worthless.” In paragraph 48, he declares that “you and I will continue to refuse to accept that estimate of our unemployed fellow Americans.” The president here introduces a religious theme, which he returns to in closing: “Your Government is still on the same side of the street with the Good Samaritan and not with those who pass by on the other side.” The parable of the Good Samaritan is about the duty of service one owes to one's neighbor, in particular, to a neighbor who is of another people or nation. Roosevelt had early in his presidency initiated a new foreign policy toward Latin America, the “Good Neighbor” policy, and during the 1936 campaign, the Democratic National Committee initiated the formation of the Good Neighbor League to win support for Roosevelt's reelection by appealing on moral grounds to liberal middle-class people, especially Protestants.

In paragraph 50, Roosevelt lists all the groups targeted for assistance by the Social Security Act. The act provided aid to those with disabilities and to dependent children and funding for maternity and infant-care programs. The latter provisions were based on need, and funding was limited. Even the programs that were universal in concept, unemployment insurance and old-age pensions, initially excluded large sectors of the workforce. Nevertheless, creating a Social Security system for the first time was popular, the rhetorical promise that all would be protected was reassuring, and coverage and benefits expanded over time.

In the closing paragraphs of the address, Roosevelt returns to the theme of peace at home and abroad. He notes that there was “war and rumor of war” but pledges to work “to remove the causes” of conflict at home that might make it easier for profiteers (who were “not on our side in this campaign”) to get the country into a war.

In paragraphs 54 and 55, Roosevelt combines the peace and religion themes. He includes two religious references (“Peace on earth, good will toward men” and “What doth the Lord require of thee—but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”) and argues that “true religion … gives a nation a sense of justice and of moral purpose.” He maintains that devotion and faith enable government to persuade people “to work for and to sacrifice for each other” rather than “fight each other.” Roosevelt says the “recovery we seek” is “more than economic,” it also includes “justice and love and humility.” He closes with the observation, “That is the road to peace.” A modernist and rationalist, Roosevelt was tolerant of all faiths and of those who were not religious but personally had a strong religious faith that emphasized ethics, service, and social justice.