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("CHARLESTON" PLAYS)
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"Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord.
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"His seed shall be mighty upon the earth,
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"wealth and riches shall be in his house."
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When John Winthrop, Governor
of Massachusetts, founded in the 1640s
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the Puritan Society of New England,
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he laid it down that the economic
failure of a godly society
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was a sign of God's curse.
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He took his text
from the Book of Deuteronomy.
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"Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God,
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"for it is He that giveth
the power to get wealth."
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So it would not be blasphemous
to old John Winthrop
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if he'd found us here on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange,
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because in this history
we've come to the 1920s,
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the decade which more than any
since the original Puritans
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believed in piety with profit.
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We tend to forget this
in the legend of a Charleston-crazy,
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cocktail-shaking era
of wonderful nonsense.
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But a New York financier of the time,
echoing Winthrop, said,
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"Prosperity is the fruit of good deeds."
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And the Americans had just
performed the supreme good deed
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of making certain the defeat of the Kaiser.
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Since we were the victors, the victory was,
of course, a moral one.
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The President of the United States said so.
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"It will be our fortunate duty
to establish a just democracy
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"throughout the world."
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Quite an undertaking. Then as now.
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But America was led at the time
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by the perfect prototype
of a 17th-century Puritan,
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reincarnated in the 20th century.
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A former college president,
Governor of New Jersey,
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he liked best to be called
the Reverend Dr Woodrow Wilson.
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(CONGREGATION SINGS
"O, COME ALL YE FAITHFUL")
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In this small South Carolina chapel,
Woodrow Wilson, it is recorded,
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accepted Christ.
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There are, I think,
three things about Woodrow Wilson
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that elevated him for a dizzy year or so
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to the status of a world saviour,
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and which in the end brought him down:
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His high moral tone,
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his splendid eloquence,
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And his true concern for the dispossessed.
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I believe that of all the presidents
before or since,
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John Winthrop would have chosen
him as one of God's elect.
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He was steeped in Presbyterian blood
down many generations,
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and the last of them was his father,
a minister of the strictest piety.
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From boyhood, Wilson retained
an absolute confidence in his principles
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and a collateral belief
that compromise was moral treason.
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Secondly, he was able to convey
through the grandeur of his speeches,
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at a time when Americans
were flushed with victory,
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that his righteous feelings were theirs.
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The third thing was as rooted
in his childhood as his piety.
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He was nine years old when the Civil War ended.
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And he grew up in a wasteland
of impoverished Southerners
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being treated as beaten aliens
in their own country.
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So when the First World War ended,
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he was deeply moved by the similar plight,
on a huger scale,
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of the broken countries of Central Europe.
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Then, as in an Old Testament dream,
he had a revelation.
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He would give them, and all smaller countries,
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the right to govern themselves,
and he would draft and dictate
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a new world order under a league of nations
pledged to universal peace.
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He went to Europe in 1919 to do this,
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the first president to leave
the country in office.
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And to a Europe reeling
after 20 million casualties,
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his coming was like the entry into Jerusalem.
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But beyond the dazzled crowds were
populations too listless to cheer,
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the unemployed in every land
and Germany in famine.
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In the long business of drafting
the Treaty of Versailles,
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the noble allies seemed to Wilson
to be haggling for colonies,
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and to the Allies, Wilson seemed
more of a preacher than a negotiator
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on the model of Lloyd George,
Orlando and Clemenceau.
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He left to rising outrage that America should want
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repayment with interest of the huge sums
she had loaned the Allies.
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Uncle Sam had arrived as Moses.
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He was soon to be known as Uncle Shylock.
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After the formal cordiality of his homecoming,
domestic disillusion was swifter still.
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Russia had succumbed to Communism,
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and in 1919 America was seized with a fear
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that the last great wave of immigrants
had brought the infection with them.
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There were mass raids
on socialist and liberal rallies,
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arrests and deportations without trial.
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Old soldiers failed to find the homes
for heroes that they'd been promised.
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The protests spread to labour,
which had kept its wartime pledge not to strike.
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With prices rising
and munitions factories closing,
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there was a railroad strike,
a steel strike, and race riots in 23 cities.
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All this was put down to high-minded
American intervention in Europe
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and most of all to the intervener himself.
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America wanted no part of Europe
and ditched the League of Nations.
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She wanted to slide back into a bath of nostalgia
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for the 19th-century America
that had obeyed its first presidents
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and avoided all foreign entanglements.
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America turned in on herself
and looked for a homespun leader,
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and found him in the small Midwestern
town of Marion, Ohio.
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A newspaper editor,
a clubbable and genial buddy,
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and a United States senator,
Warren Gamaliel Harding.
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The party bosses called him in during
a deadlocked convention and asked,
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"Is there anything in your past
that might embarrass the presidency?"
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He went into an inner room and thought
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and then came back to confess
to no fault or flaw.
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He had, in fact, had a flaming
extramarital love affair in Ohio
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and then had a mistress who bore him a child
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and made a best-seller out of the experience
when he was dead.
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But in such matters in 1920,
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senators and reporters jointly observed
a quaint tradition of silence.
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But Harding did have
one rare presidential qualification.
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He looked as if he'd been ordered up
by Hollywood Central Casting.
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Unfortunately, this buddy had other buddies,
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including cabinet officers who quietly
pilfered the public treasury,
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and five of them later went to jail.
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The knowledge of this scoundrelism
and his private turmoil
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griped him with a bellyache that killed him.
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He was buried here in his hometown,
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and here, in respectful ignorance,
the American people sent him to Valhalla.
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"He was not a bad man,"
said Roosevelt's daughter,
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"he was simply a slob."
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Harding said it more truly and touchingly.
"I was a small-town editor.
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"I could not grasp I was
President of the United States."
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It took time for the news
of Harding's death in San Francisco
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to travel 3,000 miles east
to a small town in Vermont,
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where Vice-President Calvin Coolidge
was staying with his widowed father,
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a deputy sheriff known locally as the Colonel.
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But eventually, a telephone operator
11 miles away got the message.
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It came first to the Colonel
after the household had gone to bed.
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So he called to his son upstairs.
Calvin wakened his wife and dressed.
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And then in an episode
that is now part of the folklore,
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he knelt down by this bed and asked
God to bless the American people.
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Now, by long custom,
a new president is always sworn in
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by the Chief Justice of the United States,
who was in his hammock
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and 500 miles away.
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Father and son rummaged around the house
for a copy of the Constitution
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and they found one.
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They found also that it does not
specify who shall administer the oath.
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Since the Colonel was a notary public,
a commissioner of oaths,
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they decided to risk doing it here.
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The family Bible was brought.
The old man adjusted his spectacles.
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He read aloud the single sentence
written over 130 years before
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that signifies the transfer of power
from one president to another.
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"I, Calvin Coolidge, do solemnly swear
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"that I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States,
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"and will, to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect and defend
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"the Constitution of the United States."
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The US now had a lord and master
from a country store in Vermont.
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He was to reaffirm the faith in country stores
and the people bred in them.
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Like Jefferson, he believed
in as little government as possible.
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Soon the country was wallowing in what was
to be called the Coolidge Prosperity,
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in which every man
was to have a piece of the pie.
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And it was prosperous, as no modern
nation had dreamed of being.
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Its unbombed industries had
burgeoned on the first assembly lines.
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It was the world's creditor nation,
had the highest income,
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made more steel than Europe,
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and Henry Ford built a motor car for Everyman.
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When he sought backing,
the House of Morgan told him
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to keep such daydreams to himself.
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It must've been a galling day for old JP
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when Ford drove his millionth car
off the assembly line.
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The Model T wove the first network
of paved highways.
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People who'd never taken a holiday
beyond the nearest lake or mountain
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now could explore the South,
New England, the West.
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In fact, Ford opened up the horizon
of the whole United States.
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Most of all, the Model T gave to the farmer
and the rancher miles from anywhere
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a new pair of legs.
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And there was something else
that flourished in the '20s
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that was probably more revolutionary still
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to people who lived, say,
100 miles from the nearest town.
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I remember an advertising tycoon
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said to me in the 1940s when we were
in a dither about the Russians,
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"What we ought to do
is send up a flight of 1,000 B-29s
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"and drop a million of these things
all over Russia."
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This is what he was talking about.
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The mail-order catalogue.
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Now, the farmer, the cowboy,
the miner, the rancher,
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they got this in the mail and they looked it over,
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and they realised that, without making a move,
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they could make
American big business their lackey.
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The farmer could get all his equipment,
from wagons, road scrapers, down to his jeans.
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His wife would turn to the beginning
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and have about 60 pages of clothes
she could buy,
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the kind of clothes that people wore
in New York and Chicago.
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And his daughter could get for 95 cents
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the very hat that was worn
by the "It" girl Clara Blow,
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who was then the raving idol of the movies.
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# Ain't she sweet?
See her comin' down the street
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# Now, I ask you very confidentially
Ain't she sweet?
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# I repeat
Don't you think that's kinda neat?
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# And I ask you very confidentially
Ain't she sweet? #
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# Yes, sir, that's my baby
No, sir, don't mean... #
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This is the America of the 1920s which has
passed into the file of the world's memory.
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Not steel, not the sudden
flowering of a brilliant literature,
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but a kind of mass idiocy and frivolity.
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# Black bottom, a new twister
It's sure got 'em and oh, sister
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# They clap their hands and do a raggedy trot
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# Hot
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# Old fellas with lumbago
High yeller, away they go
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# They jump right in
and give it all that they got #
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# Running wild, lost control
Running wild #
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Europe might jeer,
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but Europe was drained of life
and invention after the First World War,
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and eagerly copied these hectic fads -
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cocktails, bobbed hair, the Charleston, nightclubs,
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because at least they offered a sign of life.
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America was now top dog, consumed
with what Mr Justice Holmes called
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"An itch for the superlative".
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It worshipped the unbeatable in any field.
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This baseball player Babe Ruth,
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the first athlete to earn more than
the President of the United States,
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was crowned as the Sultan of Swat.
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Footballer Red Grange had
his jersey embalmed for posterity
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like the Declaration of Independence.
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The first mother to swim the English Channel
had to be an American,
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Gertrude Ederle.
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And suddenly, the overnight hero
of the world was an American.
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On a drizzly May morning in 1927,
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three airplanes lined up on a primitive,
muddy runway on Long Island.
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They were all going for a shot at a $25,000 prize
for a non-stop transatlantic flight.
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Of the three, this was the strangest and smallest.
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27 feet, three inches long. No radio, no sextant.
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An instrument panel less pretentious
than your automobile dashboard,
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and, unlike his rivals,
its pilot was going it alone.
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It cost $6,000,
and every inch of its construction
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was carefully watched over
by the man who was to fly it.
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And he was a skinny, blond
25-year-old from Minnesota,
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had been a parachute jumper
and a pioneer airmail pilot.
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And it was this plane, this very plane,
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that wobbled and bounced into those
heavy skies on that May morning.
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We had watched the newspapers
for the time he was going,
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but suddenly he was gone.
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And the whole world,
that had never heard his name before,
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was seized with a tension that I don't
believe we could feel today.
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Because, you see, there was no contact with him.
231
00:17:01,327 --> 00:17:04,717
He would make it or he would be gone for good.
232
00:17:05,007 --> 00:17:09,046
And that night,
40,000 baseball fans in New York
233
00:17:09,327 --> 00:17:12,364
stood up and prayed for him.
234
00:17:12,207 --> 00:17:15,882
And in Tokyo, people swarmed
onto the streets at their midnight.
235
00:17:16,047 --> 00:17:18,925
The stock exchanges
of London, Berlin and Amsterdam
236
00:17:19,407 --> 00:17:25,243
interrupted their regular quotations
with the word that there was no word.
237
00:17:25,167 --> 00:17:27,681
And as the second night came on,
238
00:17:28,047 --> 00:17:31,676
in Paris an appeal went out
to everybody who owned a motor car,
239
00:17:31,887 --> 00:17:35,800
which would be 70-80,000 maybe,
240
00:17:35,727 --> 00:17:39,242
to head for a landing field at Le Bourget,
241
00:17:39,567 --> 00:17:42,206
line up in two files, put their headlights on,
242
00:17:42,447 --> 00:17:50,127
and this created a broad shaft of white fog
and a rudimentary glide path.
243
00:17:50,127 --> 00:17:56,475
And into it, 33 hours after missing
the telephone wires on Long Island,
244
00:17:56,367 --> 00:18:03,796
this plane trundled and stopped
and was engulfed by 100,000 Parisians.
245
00:18:04,767 --> 00:18:09,045
When they lifted the pilot out,
if he'd said he was Alexander the Great,
246
00:18:09,127 --> 00:18:10,606
they'd have believed him.
247
00:18:11,047 --> 00:18:15,279
All he said was, "I am Charles Lindbergh."
248
00:18:33,287 --> 00:18:36,962
The ticker-tape parade was to become
New York's special accolade
249
00:18:37,087 --> 00:18:40,363
for a few carefully chosen national gods.
250
00:18:41,687 --> 00:18:44,724
Down the decades, the biggest
blizzards of torn paper
251
00:18:45,047 --> 00:18:48,960
were reserved for such returning heroes
as General Eisenhower,
252
00:18:48,967 --> 00:18:51,959
General MacArthur, astronaut John Glenn,
253
00:18:52,047 --> 00:18:56,802
and, three years after Lindbergh's parade,
this man.
254
00:18:56,967 --> 00:19:00,039
And who, pray, was he?
255
00:19:03,487 --> 00:19:06,240
He was Robert Tyre Jones Jr,
256
00:19:06,367 --> 00:19:11,395
a weekend golfer, the best of his time,
some people think the best of all time.
257
00:19:11,647 --> 00:19:14,719
The only man to win in one year
the American Amateur,
258
00:19:15,007 --> 00:19:17,123
the British Amateur, the British Open,
259
00:19:16,927 --> 00:19:18,679
and the American Open.
260
00:19:18,847 --> 00:19:23,557
His grace on and off the course
made him the idol of two continents,
261
00:19:23,647 --> 00:19:26,684
to people who didn't know
a putter from a stair rod.
262
00:19:27,167 --> 00:19:30,318
But his universal appeal was not as a golfer.
263
00:19:30,487 --> 00:19:32,159
What, then?
264
00:19:32,327 --> 00:19:37,447
Well, the word that comes to mind
is a dying word. Gentleman.
265
00:19:37,727 --> 00:19:40,958
And I think that Jones embodied it.
266
00:19:41,007 --> 00:19:45,922
And I would say it is a combination
of goodness and grace,
267
00:19:45,807 --> 00:19:51,404
an unwavering courtesy, self-deprecation,
consideration for other people.
268
00:19:51,567 --> 00:19:56,083
And this, allied
to complete supremacy in one sport,
269
00:19:56,487 --> 00:19:59,285
was what made him a hero
in Scotland and England
270
00:19:59,567 --> 00:20:01,478
as much as in his native Georgia.
271
00:20:01,567 --> 00:20:04,035
Once, in a national championship,
272
00:20:03,967 --> 00:20:07,084
he pushed his ball into the woods
and he went after it
273
00:20:07,327 --> 00:20:09,283
and he was there alone, of course.
274
00:20:09,727 --> 00:20:13,402
And in standing to the ball,
he just barely touched it.
275
00:20:13,567 --> 00:20:17,765
He came out at once, signalled his fault,
penalised himself two strokes,
276
00:20:17,887 --> 00:20:20,276
and lost the championship by one stroke.
277
00:20:20,287 --> 00:20:22,164
And when he was praised for this
278
00:20:22,207 --> 00:20:25,882
and similar acts of sportsmanship,
he was disgusted. He said,
279
00:20:26,047 --> 00:20:30,279
"You might as well praise a man
for not robbing a bank."
280
00:20:30,367 --> 00:20:35,316
In his middle forties,
he was paralysed by a rare disease.
281
00:20:35,647 --> 00:20:38,366
A friend asked him
what was the medical outlook.
282
00:20:38,527 --> 00:20:41,917
He said, "I will tell you privately.
283
00:20:41,887 --> 00:20:44,959
"It's not going to get better.
It's going to get worse.
284
00:20:45,247 --> 00:20:50,037
"But don't fret. Remember,
we play the ball where it lies.
285
00:20:50,527 --> 00:20:53,803
"And now, let's not talk about this ever again."
286
00:20:53,887 --> 00:20:55,878
And he never did, down 23 years
287
00:20:55,807 --> 00:20:59,243
of increasing and, in the end, dire physical agony,
288
00:20:59,647 --> 00:21:03,003
retaining his humour and his generosity
289
00:21:03,007 --> 00:21:05,999
and his cat-like sense
290
00:21:06,367 --> 00:21:11,805
of the stranger being left out
in the corner of the room.
291
00:21:11,647 --> 00:21:15,640
So what we're talking about
is not the hero-as-golfer
292
00:21:15,967 --> 00:21:21,121
but something that the 1920s, the brash 1920s,
hungered for and found.
293
00:21:21,247 --> 00:21:26,082
The best performer in the world
who was also a hero-as-human-being.
294
00:21:26,047 --> 00:21:29,483
In the flesh, what Gary Cooper was in the movies,
295
00:21:29,887 --> 00:21:34,438
the gentle, chivalrous,
wholly self-sufficient male,
296
00:21:34,687 --> 00:21:37,759
Jefferson's lost American hero,
297
00:21:38,047 --> 00:21:40,959
the wise innocent.
298
00:21:40,927 --> 00:21:44,681
At the age of 28, still an amateur, he retired,
299
00:21:44,767 --> 00:21:46,678
all the world conquered.
300
00:21:46,687 --> 00:21:50,362
And he built this exquisite course.
301
00:21:50,527 --> 00:21:53,724
And it suffices as his only memorial.
302
00:22:16,327 --> 00:22:18,887
(SAXOPHONE)
303
00:22:23,047 --> 00:22:27,120
Innocence was something that most
mothers wished their daughters had.
304
00:22:26,887 --> 00:22:30,357
A novelty that struck terror
into parents was, of all things,
305
00:22:30,727 --> 00:22:32,285
the saxophone.
306
00:22:32,647 --> 00:22:36,242
Magistrates and city fathers
condemned it as a siren sound
307
00:22:36,007 --> 00:22:40,922
beckoning young girls to a losing battle
with a fate worse than death.
308
00:22:41,287 --> 00:22:47,044
Yet many brave girls were willing
to risk their lives on that battlefield.
309
00:22:47,807 --> 00:22:53,916
I'm sitting here in the favourite dugout
for night manoeuvres, the rumble seat.
310
00:22:54,047 --> 00:22:59,360
They always say that the sexual licence
is due to the strain of war.
311
00:22:59,807 --> 00:23:04,722
Then when the war's over that it's due
to the letdown from the strain of war.
312
00:23:04,607 --> 00:23:08,202
But in the 1920s, there were
also the writings of Sigmund Freud,
313
00:23:08,447 --> 00:23:10,722
which became a scandalous fashion.
314
00:23:10,847 --> 00:23:15,682
And both young and old picked up
a grotesque misunderstanding
315
00:23:15,647 --> 00:23:18,115
of Freud's theory of unconscious repression,
316
00:23:18,527 --> 00:23:23,203
which is when people repress an instinct
and don't know they're doing it.
317
00:23:23,327 --> 00:23:24,999
What everybody thought he said
318
00:23:25,247 --> 00:23:28,683
was that consciously to suppress an instinct,
319
00:23:28,607 --> 00:23:34,796
any instinct, would make you
break out in insanity or pimples.
320
00:23:35,327 --> 00:23:38,683
Sexual freedom was a mania,
and it strikes me only now
321
00:23:38,687 --> 00:23:40,962
that for the past 50 years,
322
00:23:41,087 --> 00:23:44,921
every generation is convinced
that it was the pioneer
323
00:23:44,927 --> 00:23:47,282
in breaking with Victorian morals.
324
00:23:47,807 --> 00:23:52,961
That breakthrough, as an historical fact,
occurred in the Garden of Eden.
325
00:23:54,047 --> 00:23:58,837
Anyway, sex drenched the magazines
and the movies and the theatre
326
00:23:58,847 --> 00:24:05,798
until the notably sophisticated theatre critic
of the "New Yorker" wrote this.
327
00:24:06,167 --> 00:24:09,318
"I am sick of rebellious youth
328
00:24:09,527 --> 00:24:11,677
"and I am sick of Victorian parents,
329
00:24:11,807 --> 00:24:17,120
"and I don't care if all the little girls
in the United States are ruined,
330
00:24:17,087 --> 00:24:20,079
"or want to be ruined,
or keep from being ruined.
331
00:24:20,447 --> 00:24:24,360
"All I ask is they stop writing plays about them."
332
00:24:26,247 --> 00:24:30,320
There was one other thing and it was
worse than the saxophone,
333
00:24:30,567 --> 00:24:32,239
or bobbed hair, if not sex,
334
00:24:32,487 --> 00:24:35,638
because it stimulated every other vice.
335
00:24:35,847 --> 00:24:37,997
It was the old demon rum,
336
00:24:38,247 --> 00:24:39,805
demon gin,
337
00:24:39,687 --> 00:24:44,681
in the form of the hip flask,
carried both by night and day.
338
00:24:46,567 --> 00:24:48,364
(BLARING MUSIC)
339
00:25:04,367 --> 00:25:07,439
This is a nightclub in Chicago today,
340
00:25:07,487 --> 00:25:10,957
dedicated to the proposition
that the 1920s are immortal
341
00:25:11,127 --> 00:25:14,722
and should be preserved in loving restoration.
342
00:25:14,967 --> 00:25:18,960
Like most periods recreated
by enthusiasts who weren't there,
343
00:25:18,807 --> 00:25:20,604
they get a little mixed up.
344
00:25:21,047 --> 00:25:25,120
This is supposedly the flat-chested '20s,
345
00:25:25,327 --> 00:25:28,956
indulging in furtive drinking in the speakeasy,
346
00:25:29,167 --> 00:25:31,522
with its slightly gilted innocence,
347
00:25:31,447 --> 00:25:34,757
keeping one ear cocked
for the approach of the cops.
348
00:25:37,927 --> 00:25:40,395
The sideburns are incidentally authentic
349
00:25:40,447 --> 00:25:44,235
but they were worn only by
what were known as lounge lizards.
350
00:25:46,007 --> 00:25:49,204
These contemporary swingers are, they hope,
351
00:25:49,647 --> 00:25:52,241
watching the flappers of the 1920s,
352
00:25:52,527 --> 00:25:55,564
who now, it's a jolt to reflect,
are in their seventies
353
00:25:55,647 --> 00:25:59,720
and probably lamenting
the sins of their grandchildren.
354
00:26:01,887 --> 00:26:05,038
The speakeasy, as the temple
of surreptitious drinking,
355
00:26:05,487 --> 00:26:09,036
usually clumsily disguised in teacups and mugs,
356
00:26:08,887 --> 00:26:12,197
came about because
in the moral fervour of the war,
357
00:26:12,367 --> 00:26:15,564
Congress had passed
a constitutional amendment
358
00:26:15,807 --> 00:26:19,436
which long-suffering wives
of drunken husbands on the frontier
359
00:26:19,767 --> 00:26:22,645
had been howling for for half a century:
360
00:26:22,847 --> 00:26:28,399
The total, national prohibition
of the manufacture, sale and use of alcohol.
361
00:26:28,567 --> 00:26:30,762
When the war was over, it became law.
362
00:26:30,687 --> 00:26:33,963
It was known as the noble experiment.
363
00:26:36,567 --> 00:26:41,402
It did not endow Americans
with more nobility than they already had.
364
00:26:42,407 --> 00:26:45,797
On the contrary, it gave rise
to an underground industry
365
00:26:46,087 --> 00:26:47,918
based here in Chicago
366
00:26:48,007 --> 00:26:53,604
which turned small-time safe-crackers
and brothel owners into millionaires,
367
00:26:54,087 --> 00:26:56,806
bootleggers who fought for each other's territory.
368
00:26:56,887 --> 00:27:00,960
And when, after a difference
of opinion, one of them died,
369
00:27:01,127 --> 00:27:05,757
a $10,000 coffin was followed
by $50,000's worth of flowers
370
00:27:05,887 --> 00:27:09,243
contributed in loving memory by the opposition.
371
00:27:11,207 --> 00:27:13,801
It took America 13 years to concede
372
00:27:14,087 --> 00:27:17,363
the noble experiment was a squalid disaster.
373
00:27:18,207 --> 00:27:21,324
But these scenes,
periodically flashed from Chicago,
374
00:27:21,647 --> 00:27:24,400
were mere excrescences
on the general health.
375
00:27:24,487 --> 00:27:29,515
The country momentarily shuddered,
then went back to its pleasures and prosperity.
376
00:27:29,687 --> 00:27:32,645
A good man was in the White House.
He interfered as little as possible
377
00:27:32,727 --> 00:27:35,525
with the states, with government, with business.
378
00:27:35,767 --> 00:27:38,759
"The business of America," he said, "is business."
379
00:27:38,927 --> 00:27:42,920
And business was booming out
John Winthrop's original promise
380
00:27:42,767 --> 00:27:45,804
of piety rewarded with profits.
381
00:27:46,127 --> 00:27:50,166
Some explanation of these
providential blessings had to be found.
382
00:27:50,487 --> 00:27:53,877
It came from another Chicagoan, a parson's son,
383
00:27:53,847 --> 00:27:56,759
who helped to found a giant advertising company.
384
00:27:57,207 --> 00:28:00,005
His name was Bruce Barton.
385
00:27:59,767 --> 00:28:01,837
And he wrote a book.
386
00:28:03,287 --> 00:28:06,165
It was called "The Man Nobody Knows".
387
00:28:06,167 --> 00:28:10,558
It could've carried the subtitle
"The Puritan Promise Fulfilled".
388
00:28:10,967 --> 00:28:13,845
It sold half a million.
389
00:28:13,847 --> 00:28:17,078
Now, like men before and since,
390
00:28:17,207 --> 00:28:20,404
Barton recreated God in the image of his time.
391
00:28:20,567 --> 00:28:23,923
He took a second look
at the carpenter of Nazareth
392
00:28:24,407 --> 00:28:28,320
and saw him as Jesus Christ Supersalesman.
393
00:28:28,247 --> 00:28:34,163
From this, we learn
that Jesus was an advertising genius
394
00:28:34,487 --> 00:28:37,763
and that businessmen should study his slogans.
395
00:28:37,847 --> 00:28:40,407
"Arise, take up thy bed and walk."
396
00:28:40,727 --> 00:28:45,642
"What shall it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?"
397
00:28:45,527 --> 00:28:49,600
"Render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar's."
398
00:28:49,847 --> 00:28:52,964
Models of copyrighting.
399
00:28:53,207 --> 00:28:58,565
In the next chapter, we learn that he is
the founder of modern business,
400
00:28:58,487 --> 00:29:01,604
who took 12 men
from the bottom ranks of business
401
00:29:01,847 --> 00:29:06,398
and forged them into an organisation
that conquered the world.
402
00:29:06,647 --> 00:29:09,480
Above all, says Barton, he made no distinction
403
00:29:09,527 --> 00:29:12,200
between business and my father's business,
404
00:29:12,407 --> 00:29:14,796
that's to say, between work and religion.
405
00:29:15,167 --> 00:29:18,364
And neither did Coolidge.
406
00:29:18,487 --> 00:29:23,163
Did he have some foreboding of what
would happen to this earthly paradise?
407
00:29:23,287 --> 00:29:24,879
He gave no hint of it.
408
00:29:25,087 --> 00:29:27,317
Nevertheless, in the spring of 1928,
409
00:29:27,327 --> 00:29:30,683
he abruptly announced
he was not going to run again.
410
00:29:30,887 --> 00:29:34,516
A volcano, wrote HL Mencken,
was burning under him.
411
00:29:34,887 --> 00:29:37,879
But he did not know it and he was not singed.
412
00:29:37,807 --> 00:29:42,676
It was his successor Herbert Hoover
who was roasted and fricasseed.
413
00:29:46,407 --> 00:29:48,637
22. And he's got 5,000.
414
00:29:49,047 --> 00:29:51,277
He's offering 5,000.
415
00:29:51,367 --> 00:29:53,244
One.
416
00:29:53,407 --> 00:29:56,922
Well, this was where the volcano erupted.
417
00:29:57,207 --> 00:29:59,437
The New York Stock Exchange.
418
00:29:59,607 --> 00:30:05,443
These are pros, confidently handling the accounts
of corporations, banks, businessmen.
419
00:30:05,207 --> 00:30:08,119
In 1929 they would have been putting in bids also
420
00:30:08,567 --> 00:30:12,162
from taxi drivers, charladies,
janitors and chorus girls.
421
00:30:12,407 --> 00:30:16,400
Everybody was riding high
in what President Hoover called
422
00:30:16,247 --> 00:30:19,922
"The final triumph over poverty".
423
00:30:20,087 --> 00:30:23,921
On the 24th of October, the dam broke.
424
00:30:24,407 --> 00:30:26,557
Prices tumbled down and down.
425
00:30:26,327 --> 00:30:31,959
Blocks of shares went down the river
in ten- and twenty-thousand lots.
426
00:30:32,567 --> 00:30:36,719
But five days later, on October 29th 1929,
427
00:30:36,887 --> 00:30:42,757
a day that will forever be known
as Black Tuesday, came the deluge.
428
00:30:42,647 --> 00:30:46,276
It became clear, years too late,
that this torrent of liquidation
429
00:30:46,487 --> 00:30:50,116
was caused not so much
by the big traders and the bankers
430
00:30:50,327 --> 00:30:54,559
who rushed in to plug the flood
with a quarter of a million dollars,
431
00:30:54,647 --> 00:30:58,526
but was caused by legions
of wretched small-timers
432
00:30:58,967 --> 00:31:02,198
who had no margins to speak of.
433
00:31:02,327 --> 00:31:07,082
In other words, the Everest
of the 1929 stock market
434
00:31:07,127 --> 00:31:12,281
was a mountain of credit
on a molehill of actual money.
435
00:31:12,407 --> 00:31:16,878
Now, to the very Puritans
who had seen the hand of God
436
00:31:17,207 --> 00:31:20,483
in the Coolidge Prosperity,
the crash was a punishment.
437
00:31:20,567 --> 00:31:22,876
Other analysts, more secular,
438
00:31:22,967 --> 00:31:27,324
saw, though admittedly by hindsight,
other explanations.
439
00:31:27,287 --> 00:31:31,565
Today, you cannot buy without
meeting high margin requirements.
440
00:31:32,087 --> 00:31:37,366
In 1929, you could buy a dollar stock
with ten cents in your hand.
441
00:31:37,367 --> 00:31:39,722
Today, it would have to be 60-65.
442
00:31:39,767 --> 00:31:42,964
The Federal Government regulates investing
443
00:31:43,127 --> 00:31:45,800
and insures brokerage accounts
444
00:31:46,007 --> 00:31:49,841
as it also insures the smallest bank deposit.
445
00:31:50,327 --> 00:31:57,836
But none of these safeguards existed
in the 1929 casino of the stock market.
446
00:31:58,007 --> 00:32:01,079
And the theatrical trade journal "Variety"
447
00:32:01,367 --> 00:32:05,565
said it all in five sassy, grim words.
448
00:32:06,927 --> 00:32:08,326
(READS)
449
00:32:10,287 --> 00:32:15,236
# They used to tell me
I was building a dream
450
00:32:15,487 --> 00:32:20,481
# And so I followed the mob
451
00:32:20,767 --> 00:32:24,601
# When there was earth to plough
or guns to bear
452
00:32:24,727 --> 00:32:29,960
# I was always there right on the job
453
00:32:30,847 --> 00:32:34,760
# They used to tell me
I was building a dream
454
00:32:35,167 --> 00:32:39,080
# With peace and glory ahead
455
00:32:39,167 --> 00:32:45,242
# Why should I be standing in line
456
00:32:46,607 --> 00:32:51,681
#Just waiting for bread?
457
00:32:52,247 --> 00:32:56,923
# Once I built a railroad
Made it run
458
00:32:58,687 --> 00:33:02,441
# Made it race against time
459
00:33:03,487 --> 00:33:08,277
# Once I built a railroad
Now it's done
460
00:33:08,287 --> 00:33:14,396
# Buddy, can you spare a dime? #
461
00:33:15,487 --> 00:33:19,116
Nowhere was the going so rough
as in the idle factories,
462
00:33:19,327 --> 00:33:24,447
for this had been the first nation
to transfer skill on a mass scale
463
00:33:24,607 --> 00:33:26,837
from the man to the machine.
464
00:33:27,007 --> 00:33:29,919
And yet, within three months,
465
00:33:29,887 --> 00:33:32,242
men who worked in big factories and small,
466
00:33:32,767 --> 00:33:35,281
men who'd merrily played the stock market,
467
00:33:35,167 --> 00:33:38,045
were warming their hands before scrapwood fires
468
00:33:38,527 --> 00:33:42,645
in the underpass
beneath the Chicago Opera House.
469
00:33:42,367 --> 00:33:46,519
By 1932, unemployment had gone to 13 millions,
470
00:33:46,687 --> 00:33:50,885
which meant that one American family in three
had nothing coming in.
471
00:33:51,487 --> 00:33:56,720
I don't think that anybody who lived through it
will forget the American Depression,
472
00:33:56,767 --> 00:34:03,605
because it was not just a blow to the extremes
of the millionaire and the coal miner.
473
00:34:03,487 --> 00:34:07,560
It blighted everybody
except the bottom layer of society,
474
00:34:07,807 --> 00:34:10,401
the very poor, who had nothing to lose.
475
00:34:10,687 --> 00:34:15,761
And when steel stock prices
went from 90 down to 12,
476
00:34:15,967 --> 00:34:19,801
the automobile factories simply
let half their workers go.
477
00:34:19,807 --> 00:34:23,595
There were skyscrapers just finished
but they had no tenants.
478
00:34:23,647 --> 00:34:25,797
A secretary was a ridiculous luxury,
479
00:34:26,047 --> 00:34:29,198
truckers with nothing to truck,
crops went unharvested,
480
00:34:29,407 --> 00:34:34,197
milk undelivered to people who couldn't afford it.
481
00:34:34,687 --> 00:34:40,045
When I first arrived in this country
as a student in a college town,
482
00:34:39,967 --> 00:34:43,039
I couldn't go out in the evening to mail a letter
483
00:34:43,327 --> 00:34:47,366
without being stopped by a dozen men,
very nicely dressed,
484
00:34:47,647 --> 00:34:51,606
who told their wives that they were out
looking for night work.
485
00:34:51,487 --> 00:34:55,446
So they were. They were out on the streets
cadging quarters and dimes.
486
00:34:58,287 --> 00:35:02,280
There were young people who'd do
anything for a few square meals.
487
00:35:02,607 --> 00:35:06,964
Seeing who could win a prize,
dancing continuously for two days and nights.
488
00:35:07,967 --> 00:35:09,798
Someone had to take the blame.
489
00:35:09,887 --> 00:35:14,278
It fell on Coolidge's unlucky successor,
President Herbert Hoover,
490
00:35:14,687 --> 00:35:19,761
a world-famous engineer who had organised
the feeding of starving Europe after the First War.
491
00:35:20,007 --> 00:35:24,159
He'd been at Versailles.
An English observer, John Maynard Keynes,
492
00:35:24,327 --> 00:35:28,445
called him the only man there
with the knowledge, reality, magnanimity,
493
00:35:28,687 --> 00:35:32,919
to have given us, if he'd been
the president, the good peace.
494
00:35:33,007 --> 00:35:38,286
Now he was president, he was
the football coach who had lost the big game.
495
00:35:38,287 --> 00:35:42,200
His bitter memorial was the shanty
towns of the unemployed.
496
00:35:42,527 --> 00:35:45,758
They called them Hoovervilles.
497
00:35:47,647 --> 00:35:50,161
Outside the cities were the bankrupt farmers,
498
00:35:50,047 --> 00:35:52,607
who fed the armies of Europe in the fat years
499
00:35:52,927 --> 00:35:56,397
and had known only collapsing prices ever since.
500
00:35:56,647 --> 00:36:00,435
They were the forgotten men
of the Coolidge Prosperity.
501
00:36:00,607 --> 00:36:03,838
The rural South had been forgotten
since the Civil War,
502
00:36:04,127 --> 00:36:08,245
overploughing its cotton land for generations
till the topsoil crumbled
503
00:36:08,127 --> 00:36:11,039
and the hillsides were trenched with erosion.
504
00:36:13,247 --> 00:36:17,365
Out on the plains, an unending
drought helped the west wind
505
00:36:17,807 --> 00:36:19,559
turn wheatland into a Sahara.
506
00:36:20,687 --> 00:36:25,044
In the rural hinterland, what Mencken
contemptuously called the Bible Belt,
507
00:36:25,087 --> 00:36:30,002
God-fearing farmers saw
the punishment of the Old Testament God
508
00:36:30,247 --> 00:36:34,718
in the whirlwind by day and the darkness at noon.
509
00:36:36,567 --> 00:36:39,161
Long before the drought and the dustbowl,
510
00:36:39,327 --> 00:36:41,761
long-ignored by the prospering cities,
511
00:36:42,207 --> 00:36:45,438
was the nation's chronic poor relation, the South.
512
00:36:45,607 --> 00:36:49,361
For three quarters of a century,
Southern tenant farmers had been
513
00:36:49,447 --> 00:36:51,403
pretty sad citizens,
514
00:36:51,647 --> 00:36:54,605
the victims of worn-out cotton land
515
00:36:54,527 --> 00:36:59,237
and a diet of corn, fatback pork
and no green vegetables.
516
00:36:59,487 --> 00:37:02,604
They were not shiftless people, just exhausted
517
00:37:02,927 --> 00:37:08,524
from the twin diseases of malnutrition:
Scurvy and pellagra.
518
00:37:10,607 --> 00:37:13,917
More than the rest of us,
they were to find their redeemer
519
00:37:14,447 --> 00:37:17,245
in a man who lived 1,000 miles away from them
520
00:37:17,327 --> 00:37:20,364
and a million light years
away from their experience
521
00:37:20,207 --> 00:37:23,802
of the life and death of an American family.
522
00:37:24,047 --> 00:37:26,038
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
523
00:37:26,447 --> 00:37:29,041
mostly of English blood with a dash of Dutch,
524
00:37:29,167 --> 00:37:31,362
was born amid a flutter of servants
525
00:37:31,567 --> 00:37:35,879
and a household agog
with the wonder of a ten-pound baby.
526
00:37:36,007 --> 00:37:42,037
His father was a dim, amiable country squire
of substantial means and already over 50,
527
00:37:42,207 --> 00:37:47,201
his mother an adoring, imperious matriarch.
528
00:37:47,487 --> 00:37:54,643
I forget who said, "Never fret for an only son,
the idea of failure never occurs to him."
529
00:37:54,687 --> 00:37:58,077
It was a highly cushioned life
he led in his birthplace,
530
00:37:58,047 --> 00:38:00,800
a house 90 miles north of New York City,
531
00:38:00,927 --> 00:38:03,361
with a noble prospect over the Hudson River.
532
00:38:03,767 --> 00:38:07,601
Not the usual nest for a fledgling president.
533
00:38:07,607 --> 00:38:14,638
Anyway, Roosevelt led a charmed life here,
and all through his life he was a charmer.
534
00:38:14,687 --> 00:38:19,841
His mother didn't want to have him coarsened
by contact with the rabble of other boys,
535
00:38:19,967 --> 00:38:23,926
so she brought him private tutors
until he was ready for Groton,
536
00:38:24,087 --> 00:38:26,760
the American Eton, where he was no student,
537
00:38:26,967 --> 00:38:30,721
but he was mad for boats
and the history of naval warfare.
538
00:38:31,287 --> 00:38:34,245
If the navy had been at the disposal of his mother,
539
00:38:34,087 --> 00:38:37,363
she would've given it to him for Christmas.
540
00:38:37,447 --> 00:38:41,326
Then he ambled socially through Harvard.
541
00:38:41,767 --> 00:38:44,156
He married into the opposition, so to speak.
542
00:38:44,167 --> 00:38:48,843
Eleanor, the niece of the former
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt.
543
00:38:49,167 --> 00:38:52,637
After Harvard he went to law school.
He never graduated
544
00:38:52,527 --> 00:38:55,883
but, through high connections,
joined a prosperous law firm,
545
00:38:56,367 --> 00:39:00,280
and in the First World War wangled
the only job he wanted,
546
00:39:00,367 --> 00:39:02,881
Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
547
00:39:02,767 --> 00:39:05,759
In 1920, the glamour of the Roosevelt name
548
00:39:06,127 --> 00:39:10,279
was appropriated by the Democrats
and they ran him for Vice-President.
549
00:39:10,407 --> 00:39:16,562
He was buried in the Harding landslide
with the other apostles of Wilson.
550
00:39:16,807 --> 00:39:20,766
12 years later, he was resurrected
as a presidential candidate -
551
00:39:21,127 --> 00:39:23,960
and not the most acceptable
White House material.
552
00:39:24,007 --> 00:39:29,479
For while such social types in England move
automatically from Eton into the Cabinet,
553
00:39:29,767 --> 00:39:32,804
it's a heavy handicap for an American politician
554
00:39:32,967 --> 00:39:36,562
to have gone to Harvard
and have an upper-crust accent.
555
00:39:36,367 --> 00:39:39,643
So here he was,
not Wilson the scholar-statesman,
556
00:39:40,047 --> 00:39:42,800
not Harding, the all-American buddy,
557
00:39:42,967 --> 00:39:46,039
not Coolidge, the symbolic earthy Yankee,
558
00:39:46,207 --> 00:39:49,199
but a mother's boy from the landed gentry.
559
00:39:49,127 --> 00:39:53,086
And to compound his disabilities,
there was another thing.
560
00:39:53,287 --> 00:39:58,042
In his 40th year,
he was paralysed by poliomyelitis.
561
00:39:58,087 --> 00:40:01,762
And for the rest of his life,
he never had the use of his legs.
562
00:40:05,767 --> 00:40:10,045
And yet throughout
the 12 years of his presidency,
563
00:40:10,087 --> 00:40:13,636
the press, including
the most smart-aleck photographers,
564
00:40:13,927 --> 00:40:17,806
respected a convention -
I wonder if they'd do it today? -
565
00:40:18,247 --> 00:40:21,876
never to photograph him in movement.
566
00:40:21,607 --> 00:40:24,246
I remember seeing him once by accident,
567
00:40:24,487 --> 00:40:28,275
being lifted out of his car like a sack of potatoes
568
00:40:28,807 --> 00:40:32,880
and put on his feet, and given
two sticks and two helping hands,
569
00:40:32,647 --> 00:40:35,002
his hat stuck on his head for him.
570
00:40:35,527 --> 00:40:40,237
It was a most eerie sight, but this was
not the Roosevelt the public saw.
571
00:40:40,327 --> 00:40:43,524
They saw the big upper body
and the tossing head
572
00:40:43,687 --> 00:40:49,683
and the dynamic, confident saviour
of the republic in a very dark time.
573
00:40:49,847 --> 00:40:53,123
We must act. We must act quickly.
574
00:40:52,887 --> 00:40:56,880
And finally in our progress
towards a resumption of work,
575
00:40:57,207 --> 00:41:03,521
we require two safeguards
against a return of the evils of the old order.
576
00:41:03,687 --> 00:41:10,877
There must be a strict supervision
of all banking, credit and investments.
577
00:41:15,207 --> 00:41:20,884
There must be an end to speculation
with other people's money.
578
00:41:25,047 --> 00:41:30,167
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief
579
00:41:30,527 --> 00:41:34,566
that the only thing we have to fear is...
580
00:41:34,687 --> 00:41:36,723
...fear itself.
581
00:41:36,887 --> 00:41:43,042
So, he was elected president in 1932,
not to mention '36, '40 and '44,
582
00:41:42,967 --> 00:41:46,846
the only man to break the record
of two terms in the White House.
583
00:41:47,287 --> 00:41:51,360
On March 4th 1933,
the very morning of his inauguration,
584
00:41:51,607 --> 00:41:53,996
he hurled a thunderbolt at the headlines.
585
00:41:54,007 --> 00:41:56,601
He closed every bank in the country.
586
00:41:56,887 --> 00:41:59,355
You see, in the 1929 crash,
587
00:41:59,287 --> 00:42:02,199
many people found that their banks
had no more assets
588
00:42:02,647 --> 00:42:04,922
than the credit-swollen stock exchange.
589
00:42:05,047 --> 00:42:08,005
Roosevelt would decide
which banks deserved support
590
00:42:07,927 --> 00:42:09,645
and which ought to go under.
591
00:42:09,847 --> 00:42:14,398
It was the day the money stopped.
Literally. You had to cadge a meal.
592
00:42:14,647 --> 00:42:18,606
Live on tick. Pay with a cheque
for a cab ride or a shoeshine.
593
00:42:19,327 --> 00:42:24,082
Let me make it clear that the banks
will take care of all needs.
594
00:42:24,127 --> 00:42:28,405
And it is my belief
that hoarding during the past week
595
00:42:28,447 --> 00:42:32,918
has become an exceedingly
unfashionable pastime.
596
00:42:33,247 --> 00:42:38,879
It needs no profit to tell you that when
people find they can get their money,
597
00:42:39,007 --> 00:42:41,726
that they can get it when they want it,
598
00:42:41,887 --> 00:42:44,196
for all legitimate purposes,
599
00:42:44,287 --> 00:42:47,643
the phantom of fear will soon be laid.
600
00:42:48,567 --> 00:42:53,243
And then Roosevelt asked Congress
for powers beyond the Constitution.
601
00:42:53,367 --> 00:42:56,325
Since there were 13 million
unemployed, he got them.
602
00:42:56,727 --> 00:43:01,562
He proclaimed something called the NRA,
the National Recovery Administration.
603
00:43:01,527 --> 00:43:06,203
And for two dizzy years,
America flirted with national socialism.
604
00:43:06,327 --> 00:43:10,400
Anti-trust laws were suspended.
It was government by trade association.
605
00:43:10,647 --> 00:43:14,356
Prices fixed, wages fixed,
for everybody from steelworkers
606
00:43:14,487 --> 00:43:16,443
to burlesque strippers.
607
00:43:16,887 --> 00:43:20,357
This man had promised
to take government back to the states.
608
00:43:20,247 --> 00:43:22,283
Instead, he seized it at the centre.
609
00:43:22,647 --> 00:43:28,040
He was a dictator, but a benevolent one,
and the country loved it.
610
00:43:28,407 --> 00:43:30,363
When I first came to this country,
611
00:43:30,327 --> 00:43:33,000
I'd been teaching school in east Germany,
612
00:43:33,207 --> 00:43:37,166
and pictures of Frederick the Great
were on the walls of every home,
613
00:43:37,047 --> 00:43:40,835
public place, barbershop,
and it was the same with Roosevelt.
614
00:43:41,367 --> 00:43:44,837
He was a godhead throughout
the 48 states. I didn't know this.
615
00:43:44,727 --> 00:43:47,844
I remember being tossed out
in the middle of the night
616
00:43:48,087 --> 00:43:50,203
by a saloon keeper in the Rockies,
617
00:43:50,487 --> 00:43:54,480
when I suggested to him that maybe
his picture of Roosevelt over the bar
618
00:43:54,807 --> 00:43:58,197
was a little... romanticised.
619
00:43:58,167 --> 00:44:00,476
Well, in time,
620
00:44:00,567 --> 00:44:04,526
all this became too much
for the nine old men on the Supreme Court.
621
00:44:04,887 --> 00:44:08,960
They decided national socialism
was not the same as the Constitution -
622
00:44:09,207 --> 00:44:12,085
the Federal Government
couldn't control everything,
623
00:44:12,087 --> 00:44:15,363
couldn't control the trade
between one state and another.
624
00:44:15,447 --> 00:44:22,478
And as so often happens with the Supreme Court,
they took a tiny pretext to destroy a mighty power.
625
00:44:22,647 --> 00:44:24,956
They decided in the decisive case
626
00:44:25,047 --> 00:44:29,086
that President Roosevelt
could not punish two brothers
627
00:44:29,367 --> 00:44:33,326
for rearing a sick chicken in New Jersey
and selling it in New York.
628
00:44:33,687 --> 00:44:35,564
That was New Jersey's business.
629
00:44:35,607 --> 00:44:39,282
They destroyed the whole structure
of the Recovery Administration
630
00:44:39,447 --> 00:44:42,519
and gave America back to the Constitution.
631
00:44:42,807 --> 00:44:46,561
And Roosevelt fumed... for a while.
632
00:44:46,647 --> 00:44:49,161
Because he was never down for long.
633
00:44:50,127 --> 00:44:51,765
(TRAIN WHISTLE)
634
00:44:51,887 --> 00:44:54,924
# Happy days are here again... #
635
00:44:54,847 --> 00:44:57,520
He resolved to make his campaign song a reality.
636
00:44:57,927 --> 00:44:59,997
Since private capital had dried up,
637
00:45:00,167 --> 00:45:03,284
he shoved through Congress
huge loans for public works
638
00:45:03,447 --> 00:45:07,486
and gave the industrial worker
who'd been hounded by company spies
639
00:45:07,647 --> 00:45:09,842
the right to organise and bargain.
640
00:45:10,047 --> 00:45:12,356
He handed hard dollars to the unemployed
641
00:45:12,247 --> 00:45:16,035
and took three million youngsters
off the streets to plant trees.
642
00:45:16,367 --> 00:45:18,597
He mobilised actors in a federal theatre,
643
00:45:18,767 --> 00:45:22,476
writers to produce 100 volumes
of guidebooks to the States.
644
00:45:22,607 --> 00:45:25,360
He stopped the growing
of useless farm surpluses,
645
00:45:25,647 --> 00:45:28,081
paid Southern farmers to diversify crops,
646
00:45:28,207 --> 00:45:32,758
and built dams to hold the floods,
bring electric power to the farmer,
647
00:45:32,807 --> 00:45:34,957
and water to his barren soil.
648
00:45:35,247 --> 00:45:37,681
To the horror of the old guard,
649
00:45:37,767 --> 00:45:43,637
he signed a government cheque
for several billion invisible dollars.
650
00:45:46,247 --> 00:45:49,683
What strikes me about him now
is the triumphant contradiction
651
00:45:50,087 --> 00:45:55,400
between his genial, fluty manner
and his extraordinary, tough hide.
652
00:45:55,367 --> 00:45:59,121
He'd make up to anybody he needed,
a labour leader in one state
653
00:45:59,207 --> 00:46:02,438
and a conservative Republican
governor in another.
654
00:46:02,567 --> 00:46:05,445
He'd overlook the race bigotry
of a Southern senator
655
00:46:05,927 --> 00:46:09,237
because he wanted to do something
for poor white farmers.
656
00:46:09,287 --> 00:46:13,599
On behalf of what he called the forgotten man,
and then the little man,
657
00:46:13,607 --> 00:46:18,635
he allied himself to corrupt city governments
in Memphis, Jersey City, Chicago,
658
00:46:18,887 --> 00:46:21,720
because, as he once privately said,
659
00:46:21,767 --> 00:46:25,442
"They may be sons of bitches,
but they're our sons of bitches."
660
00:46:27,047 --> 00:46:30,005
Not since Lincoln had there been
such a manipulator
661
00:46:29,927 --> 00:46:33,886
of the good, the bad
and the bewildered in between.
662
00:46:34,247 --> 00:46:39,526
I believe he saved the capitalist system
by deliberately forgetting to balance the books,
663
00:46:39,527 --> 00:46:44,157
by transferring the gorgeous resources of credit
from bankers to government,
664
00:46:44,327 --> 00:46:47,046
no matter what the national debt might be.
665
00:46:47,207 --> 00:46:52,201
A journalist, a ferocious talent,
I think has written his best epitaph.
666
00:46:52,647 --> 00:46:55,286
"He looked nice and dressy back there in 1932,
667
00:46:55,527 --> 00:46:58,405
"but he's tricky, stubborn and strong as a bull.
668
00:46:58,567 --> 00:47:03,083
"Anybody who gentles Mr Roosevelt
is simply imposing a handicap on himself,
669
00:47:02,887 --> 00:47:05,685
"for he won't gentle you back.
670
00:47:06,047 --> 00:47:09,517
"But never in our time have people
been so conscious
671
00:47:09,767 --> 00:47:12,361
"of the meanness of a complacent upper class,
672
00:47:12,487 --> 00:47:15,081
"and of the government's duty
to do something
673
00:47:15,247 --> 00:47:18,478
"for the assistance of those
who are so far down
674
00:47:18,487 --> 00:47:20,876
"that they can't help themselves.
675
00:47:21,007 --> 00:47:24,841
"If the country doesn't go
absolutely broke in his time,
676
00:47:25,327 --> 00:47:29,923
"it will be a more intelligent
and a better country after him."
677
00:47:30,127 --> 00:47:34,996
And yet he came in on the promise
to do something that has boggled
678
00:47:34,927 --> 00:47:38,715
governments of every ideological brand
before and since -
679
00:47:38,767 --> 00:47:43,283
to guarantee full employment
in peacetime. He didn't make it.
680
00:47:43,567 --> 00:47:47,845
By the end of 1939, there were
six, seven million unemployed still.
681
00:47:47,887 --> 00:47:53,359
And the stacks of the steel mills
didn't begin to belch smoke again
682
00:47:53,647 --> 00:47:58,482
until the first war orders came in
from the British and the French.
683
00:48:05,807 --> 00:48:10,483
(PATRIOTIC WAR SONG)