They were far from rich. They were factory workers, secretaries and postal clerks. They scraped together the down-payment to buy a $7,000 duplex in 1949, proud as can be to be homeowners. They were my family and they adored-- literally adored-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
My mom and her brother were children of the Great Depression. To this day my mother boasts about how far my grandmother could stretch a dollar. They ate potatoes six ways to Sunday. Boiled, roasted, peeled, baked, soup, and salad.
The New Deal saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who managed to outlive the Depression. It restored dignity to people who would sooner die than stand in soup lines or beg for crusts of bread. It restored the American economy to normal levels. And it reformed the U.S. financial system to prevent anything like the Great Depression from happening again.
I wonder if today any of the people who are crowing about wanting to take our country back have given any thought to FDR and his programs. I am willing to bet they all have ancestors who directly benefitted from New Deal programs; some still are. That was a whole lot of government, doing a whole lot of thinking and planning and working in order to get our crippled nation back on its feet and on track to the prosperity many of us enjoyed in the ensuing decades.
Based on the following YouTube video, it appears that among FDR’s formidable talents was prescience. Listen to him:
Hmmmm. The more things change the more they stay the same, eh?
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