The policies and persona of Franklin Delano Roosevelt set the cast of the "modern" presidency. He was unquestionably the most vital figure in the nation, and perhaps the world, during his 13 years in the White House. Engendering both admiration and scorn, FDR exerted unflinching leadership during the most tumultuous period in the nation's history since the Civil War.

The longest-serving president in U. In his early years, as a pampered, sheltered scion of a wealthy family, FDR exhibited no outward signs of greatness. With his cousin Theodore as a role model, however, FDR purposely forged a successful political career for himself, until his devastating paralysis from polio seemed to crush his dreams.

With the support of his wife, Eleanor, FDR not only recovered, but remade himself into a strong, optimistic national leader. An aristocrat beloved by "ordinary" citizens and despised by many of his own class as a traitor, FDR, for better or worse, forever changed the American people's relationship with their government.

The governmental "safety net" he created would be his greatest legacy — and the source of ongoing controversy today. Film Research Hillary Dann Thaxton Green Studios, Inc.

Assistant Camera William Rexer Anne-Marie Frendrick Don Grissom Larry Planet Robert Sands Dick Williams. Additional Sound Recording Francis X. Coakley Michael Longside Richard Mader John Murphy Bruce Perlman Bob Silvershorne.

Production Assistants Bill Nye David Meichsner Bill Tomlin Elizabeth Grubin. Post-Production Assistants Robert Featherstone Phillip Shane Patricia Zey. Photo Animation Ralph Pitre Broadway Video Tim McCarthy Ray Palagy Regina Mullen John Bowen Sync Sound.

Mark Renovitch Franklin D. Fox Movietonews Sidney Glazier Hearst Metrotone News J. Sherman Grinberg Film Libraries, Inc. Mary Belle Starr UCLA Film and Television Archive University of South Carolina WPA Film Library Archive Film Courtesy of: National Archives and Records Administration Sextant Inc. The Trustees of Groton School Archive Photo Sources: Homan reprinted by permission of UFS, Inc. Imperial War Museum Keystone Press Agency, Inc.

Archive Photos Courtesy Of: Roosevel Library Albany Public Library Bachrach Bethune Museum and Archives, Inc H. BBC Sound Archives CBS News Archives Franklin D. Advisors Alan Brinkley Robert Dallek William Leuchtenberg Susan Ware. Project Administration Susana Fernandes Pamela Gaudiano Lauren Noyes. A David Grubin Productions, Inc. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just announced that President Roosevelt is dead. The President died of a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that the President died at Warm Springs in Georgia. On April 13,the funeral train headed north. In the last car lay the body of the President of the United States. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had led Americans through the great Depression and the greatest war in history.

Now, along railroad tracks from Georgia to New York, they gathered to say goodbye. A whole generation of Americans had grown up knowing no other president. He was a presence in their living rooms. He'd called them "my friends. And to have him suddenly gone was an overwhelming shock.

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: The boss man come into the field and he throwed up his hand. I was flying a tractor. I just set there astonished. I felt like I had lost one of the closest brothers I ever had. It was the single greatest feeling of loss, disorientation, uncertainty and the sense that the whole world was now without the one man that it needed.

This was a man of great ebullience. He was a man of constant cheer. He was a man of laughter. He had the feeling of life. This was a country in despair, and he brought us all together. Last year I nearly killed a photographer. This was the man they trusted so much they elected him president four times. People just idolized him. The most astounding thing was the pictures of Roosevelt you saw everywhere.

Bus stations, libraries, barber shops, homes -- there were pictures of Roosevelt. And the entire country decided he was the savior. We face the future with confidence and with courage. But the President who championed the common man was not like most Americans. I found two birds' nests. I took one egg. Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: The world of wealth and privilege that F.

And the families that lived on those estates were generally friends with one another, related very often to each other, and were the only people that visited one another. I think it's fair to say that even the professional men in the towns, who were the doctors and the lawyers and so on, were not generally invited to the river houses to dinner.

Springwood was a beautiful, isolated place. It was its own world, and it was entirely built around this privileged little boy. And I think he spent most of his life trying to replicate the way his boyhood was arranged.

He looked very sweet, his little blonde curls bobbing as he ran as fast as he could whenever he thought I had designs on combing them. Nearly every detail of Franklin's childhood was recorded with single-minded devotion by his mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt.

FDR | American Experience | Official Site | PBS

She kept his baby clothes, every childish drawing, each golden curl. Franklin was eight and a half years old before he was allowed to bathe himself.

If it's the job of a mother to make her child feel that he or she can do anything, then Sarah Delano Roosevelt was surely one of the great mothers in American history.

He was 53 when Franklin was born. Franklin called him "Popsy. James bred trotters and rode to the hounds. He would ride out with his son to survey their estate. The workers tipped their hats to Mr. James and then to Master Franklin. The boy accepted these displays of deference as routine.

He learned how to please adults from probably before he remembered. His activities were related to showing off for them, relating to them, not to other children, and he didn't go off to play games with other children. I don't think he ever swung a baseball bat until he finally went to school. He was tutored at home or abroad, because every year they went abroad for several months. Then, when he was nine, his well-ordered world fractured. His year-old father suffered a heart attack.

Any irritation might aggravate him, provoke another heart attack and kill him. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: His father's sickness must have reinforced the tendency that was already in him as a small child to be a nice boy, to never make any trouble, never make anybody sad.

Now he had to worry, "If I go in there and make trouble, I may weaken his already-weakened heart. Throughout his life, he would remain a charming but distant figure even to those who were closest to him. When he was 14 years old, Franklin left the rarified world of his Hyde Park estate. His path seemed clear -- boarding school, Harvard, and an uneventful life of luxury and ease among his own kind. I have not had any black marks or lateness yet, and I'm much better in my studies. His letters are always cheerful -- everything's wonderful, he's having a grand time with the other fellows -- and yet he wasn't.

He was, I think, quite unhappy. He did please his teachers and took to heart his headmaster's urgings toward public service, but he did not fit in with the boys. Groton was his first exposure to other children on a regular basis.

After all, he boarded -- all the children boarded -- so he was with other boys 24 hours a day. And it must have been a rude shock to come out of that nest, that very protective nest where he was the only bird or chick in the nest.

His mother worried Franklin might be injured and wrote that he "not have the misfortune of hurting anyone. Jeffery Potter, Groton School Alumnus: He wasn't an athlete. He had never played with other boys' games much, and that was very bad indeed, because it made him an outsider, as if he wasn't -- no, as if he didn't belong and really in a sense where he didn't belong.

His struggle for acceptance only isolated him further. Franklin's tone was not the Groton tone. He seemed so desperate for approval. He was too ambitious and too eager and he was very much, I would say from what I've heard, very close to being a golden retriever.

In other words, his tail was always wagging even when it shouldn't be. At Harvard, he was determined to win popularity and recognition, and he did succeed.

He campaigned for class office and won and was elected editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, but what he wanted even more was admission to Porcellian, Harvard's most exclusive club. You immediately, if you were a member of the Porcellian Club, were recognized as a-- as we say in the club, a brother, by all graduates who had been in the place that were still alive.

But it was essentially a network of friendships, not of power but of friendships, but that could lead to power. Each member was given one white and one black ball. A single black ball deposited in the wooden ballot box was all it took to exclude a candidate.

His father had been a member. So had other Roosevelts. Franklin had every reason to believe that he would be chosen, too. No doubt Franklin Roosevelt failed to be elected to the Porcellian Club for the simple reason that somebody who was in there at the time didn't like him.

You didn't have to have done anything particularly significant. The fellow would just say, "I don't like the cut of your jib, so I don't want you in there," and out you went. Certainly, none of Roosevelt's classmates at Harvard imagined that he would ever be president. I think they were the first of many, many people who underestimated Roosevelt. Sarah wrote in her diary, "All is over.

He merely slept away. She moved to Boston to be near him. A family friend once wrote, "She would not let her son call his soul his own.

Franklin began using a secret code in his diary. He wrote, "E is an angel. From the first, Eleanor Roosevelt saw that there was a serious man beneath the easygoing charm. For the rest of their life together, even through the most difficult years of their marriage, she would be drawn to the serious side of his nature.

Franklin and Eleanor come, from the same social class. There are certain mores, customs, rituals that link their childhoods. Everything else is so totally different they might have come from the other ends of the world. I was a very ugly little girl.

My mother was very beautiful. I think she always wondered why her daughter had to be so ugly. I adored my mother, but rather like a distant and beautiful thing that I couldn't possibly get close to. Oh, my father meant a tremendous amount. I adored him all the days of my childhood. He called me Little Nell after the Little Nell in Dickens's story, and I always liked that. Her parents' marriage was troubled.

Elliott Roosevelt was an alcoholic. Erratic and self-destructive, he left home when she was six. Less than two years later, her mother died of diphtheria.

The year after, her younger brother died, and the following year her beloved, drunken father died. Eleanor and her brother were left with dutiful, reserved relatives. She grew afraid of other children, mice, the dark, practically everything.

From the melancholy lives of both of her parents, Eleanor took away the feeling that love never lasts, that the world is a dark and forbidding place and that you never can count on anything. Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Allenswood was definitely a turning point. It was the first time that she was really allowed to shine, and her own specialness was recognized. That is really where she got her sense of security and also her sense of her own power.

She was 18 when Franklin began to pursue her. Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: He was a gay and outgoing and charming young man. There was something very sympathetic about him and romantic, and they had a very sweet and romantic relationship according to their early letters.

Your devoted Little Nell. Eleanor's relatives and friends thought of Franklin as a feather duster, which meant somebody who just skimmed along the surface of life and never got very deep into anything at all, so I'm not sure they thought that he was such a wonderful catch for her, because even then Eleanor had a certain vitality, a certain seriousness of purpose that made people feel that she was something special.

Can you imagine how different she must have been from the average run of debutantes of the time? She must have been very interesting, besides being tall with a beautiful figure, fine light hair and lovely skin and great warmth. There was something else, too, and this is not to be underestimated. It didn't hurt his courtship that her uncle was President of the United States.

As a boy, Franklin had watched with pride his distant cousin's spectacular rise to power: The President was "dee-lighted" that Franklin had proposed marriage to Eleanor. Franklin's mother was not. Franklin had in fact concealed from Sarah the entire courtship. The fact that she didn't even know that he was in love with this girl, she didn't know the most important thing that was happening in her son's life, and she thought she knew every waking thought in this child from the time he was born.

And finally she had to accept that this was going to happen and decided that she would control Eleanor and then somehow she wouldn't lose Franklin. And I think the two of them looked at each other and knew that they could draw strength from each other.

Patrick's Day -- Franklin and Eleanor were married. He was 23, she was The President of the United States was there to give away the bride. On the surface, everything seemed fine -- they're seeing Venice, they're seeing Rome -- but at nights, Roosevelt, Eleanor reported, would be tormented by nightmares, and he sleepwalking.

And then he broke out in hives, all of which suggested that something wasn't right. Few would have sensed that they were ill at ease.

He loved to have a good time. All his life, he loved to do that. She wanted someone she could confide in. She'd been alone really all her life and she wanted an intimate partner. She did not get one in Franklin. He didn't like sharing intimacies with anyone, even his wife. When Franklin and Eleanor arrive home from their honeymoon, Sarah tells them, "I've got a present for you, it's great, a new home. The house is five stories and on each floor there are sliding doors where she can walk from her side of the house into their side.

And Eleanor Roosevelt writes there was never any privacy day or night. Sarah Delano Roosevelt was just part of the scene. In a way, great-grandmother made her dependent. She wanted both her son and her daughter-in-law to be dependent upon her. His mother controlled F.

The first 10 years of her married life were spent having children -- six children in about 10 years. She loved the children, but she didn't really know how to run that infant stage. I think she was totally inept when it came to dealing with children. She relied on her mother-in-law and on the various governesses and was so unsure of herself not only because she was an unsure person at the time, but she had never experienced mother love.

And because she felt insecure about not knowing how to mother her own children, she once again turned to Sarah. Sarah had an opinion about everything.

So it wasn't only that they brought in nurses and grannies to help the children, Sarah was the overseer of the house entirely and of the kids. His mother's ever-looming presence was never challenged. At Hyde Park, it's her home, so she sits at the head of the table, Franklin sits at the other end of the table, and Eleanor sits somewhere in the middle with the children.

I see her as an upper-class grande dame who knew her place. She was just doing what came naturally. She, in a way, knew who she was, and my grandmother, in the early years of her marriage, didn't know who she was. That took a long time for her to find out. To a fellow law clerk, he confided a remarkable secret ambition. Grenville Clark, Law Clerk: He said he intended to enter political life as soon as he could, with a view to becoming president.

He said that modestly enough but very definitely, and he laid out a definite plan. Cousin Theodore had already proved that a gentleman might, as Franklin's mother said, "go into politics but not be a politician. Theodore Roosevelt was almost an obsession with Franklin. When he was told he had to wear glasses, he got pince-nez and put them on his nose, because Theodore Roosevelt wore pince-nez.

He would say things like, "bully" and "dee-lighted" when he was talking to the press early in his political career. He was fascinated by his energy, his enthusiasm, above all, I think, in his feeling that government could do enormous amounts of good. Theodore Roosevelt was the great model for Franklin Roosevelt. He was invited to run for the state senate, mostly because his last name was Roosevelt.

He ran as a Democrat, although T. His father had been a Democrat, but I think the real reason was that Theodore Roosevelt had several sons, all of whom, everyone presumed, were going to have political careers in the Republican Party, and there was simply not enough room for another Republican Roosevelt.

He was offered the impossible task of running for office in Duchess County. No Democrat had ever been elected in 32 years. He wasn't a very good speaker in those early days. There would be horrible long pauses, and I would wonder whether he was ever going on again. He made a very vigorous campaign, and it just happening that that year was a Democratic sweep and he got in.

Otherwise, I don't think he would have started then at all. In Albany, in the rough-and-tumble world of state politics, he began his career in the style of his cousin Theodore. Within days of being sworn in, he led a rebellion against the leadership of his own party.

He lost and the bosses never forgave him. Party regulars couldn't stand him. They thought he was rich, spoiled, unwilling to compromise or cooperate -- a snob.

I remember the smell of Louis Howe more than anything else -- a gnome, gaunt, short wispy hair -- I mean, enough to scare a child, and I was. He never showers or bathes enough. He smokes these dreadful, smelly Sweet Caporal cigarettes and the ashes, you know, sort of coat his vest and tie. They want him out. He represents the worst, the smelliest, you know, stuff of politics. He drinks, he smokes, he curses. But still Louis Howe was a seasoned politician. As you might say, he knew where all the bodies were buried, and F.

It would last until Howe's death in Inafter only two years in Albany, the Democratic state senator with the famous last name was summoned to Washington. Impressed by his growing reputation as a reform Democrat and by Franklin's pedigree, President Woodrow Wilson offered him the job of assistant secretary of the Navy, the same job that Theodore Roosevelt had used to catapult himself to the presidency. He was just 31 years old.

Franklin loved the Navy. He pressed for the largest possible fleet, learned to deal with Congress, businessmen, labor, and he built a reputation as enthusiastic, efficient, hard-working. But just as he began to walk the corridors of real power, first he put his job and then his marriage in jeopardy. Washington for Franklin is a great liberation. You know, he never had a teenage rebellion. He never had a moment where he defied his mother or his wife. He had really been a dutiful son and he'd really been a dutiful husband.

Washington blew all that out of the water, if I may use a naval term for the assistant secretary of the Navy. He worked for Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, and he wanted his job -- ridiculed him behind his back, undermined his decisions.

I think he simply couldn't stand the notion that someone was giving him orders about something he was quite sure he knew much more about. Roosevelt undercut his boss time and again. He went over his head to the President from time to time, and Daniels put up with all of it.

When they looked at their picture taken together, Daniels told him, "I'll tell you why you're smiling. We're both looking down on the White House, and you're saying to yourself, 'Someday I will be living in that house. Daniels thought Roosevelt a wonderfully charming young man and, I think, must have been the most patient man in American history, because any other man would have fired Roosevelt for insubordination early on.

It was not a happy household. She had moral reservations, is the only way I can put it, about really enjoying herself. Overwhelmed with social obligations, she spent her days leaving her calling cards at the stately homes of the rich and powerful. And suddenly the most important thing is to be part of the social whirl of Washington, D. Franklin finds out that he's incredibly well suited for the small-talk, gossipy side of Washington life.

He's a great conversationalist, he loves telling stories, he loves small talk and he loves that kind of superficial connection between people -- and his vitality and his magnetism are beginning to show. One Washington hostess described him as the most desirable man she had ever met. Every summer, the Roosevelts seemed to find relief from the strains of Washington on an island off the coast of Maine -- Campobello.

Father loved life on the island more than any of us, but got to spend the least time there. Mother always liked it because she had her own home, which she ran. Father taught us to sail. This was the one activity he loved above all others, and wanted us to love. But as summer after summer went by, Franklin spent less and less time at Campobello.

Eleanor grew anxious and suspicious. In the summer ofFranklin wrote from Washington to calm her -- "Dearest Babs, you are a goosey girl to think or even pretend to think that I don't want you here all summer, because you know I do.

But honestly, you ought to have six weeks straight at Campo, just as I ought to, only you can and I can't. When America entered World War I, the Navy sent Franklin on an inspection tour of the western front.

He reviewed the troops, toured the battlefields, and got as close to the fighting as the military would allow him. As he was about to sail back to America, he was struck down by a strain of influenza and brought home severely ill. Franklin was 36 years old. He had handsome children, a dutiful wife, a famous name, and a rising career. As Eleanor unpacked his suitcase, she accidentally made a discovery that would change their lives forever -- a packet of love letters to her husband.

Lucy Page Mercer was Eleanor's own social secretary. She was a refined young woman from an old southern Catholic family. Lucy was tall and statuesque. She had a face, people say, that belonged in drawing rooms. She had a charm that was rivaled only by Franklin's charm. One thinks of Franklin in those days -- and indeed throughout his life -- as this incorrigible flirt.

Flirting was a part of his vitality, his magnetism, his charm. He loved to conquer women in conversation, so that's probably how it started with Lucy, but then I do think it became something more.

He had fallen in love. Eleanor Roosevelt really had a very romantic idea that she could have a perfect marriage, that they would love and trust and respect each other and be partners in love the way her parents never were, which is, I think, why her discovery of the Lucy Mercer affair was so devastating to her.

Eleanor's immediate response was not only to confront Franklin, but, from what we seem to understand, to offer him a divorce -- "If this is what you want, go. Roosevelt knew that his mother would withdraw all financial help -- she'd threatened him with that -- he would lose his family life and it really meant giving up his political ambitions, and that was something he had to think over more than once. And he finally decided to stay married and to try to make the best of the marriage.

Roosevelt's condition was that he never see Lucy Mercer again. Devastated, Eleanor went time and again to Washington's Rock Creek Cemetery. For hours she sat gazing at a monument to a woman who had killed herself. All her childhood fears had been confirmed. Those she loved most -- first her father, now her husband -- would always desert her. It was a marked turning point in her life. She had no persona, she felt destroyed.

She'd have to make a life for herself, and that's what she did. His cousin Theodore had been 42 in this point in his career. Franklin was now ahead of schedule. As the campaign got under way, he threw open his mother's Hyde Park home for a party rally.

Sarah was proud, but appalled when 5, loyal Democrats trampled her lawn and invaded her stately home. Vice presidential candidates usually ran modest campaigns, but Franklin barnstormed more than 8, miles through 20 states in 18 days. Franklin pressed Eleanor to accompany him on the campaign.

Reluctantly she went along and hated every minute of it -- the smoke-filled rooms, the late-night card games, the hard-drinking politicians and reporters. Ever since her discovery of her husband's affair, she'd been cautiously embracing a life of her own. Before Lucy came into their lives, my own sense is that Eleanor was not happy simply as a wife and a mother, but she had no outlet for her energy. She had torrential energy and there was no outlet for it because in that day and age, it wasn't legitimate for a woman to have a career outside the home.

The Great Depression - The Stock Market Crash and Beyond

The affair with Lucy Mercer enabled her to see herself in perhaps a different light, and I personally believe that F. She meets with all of these political women -- they were suffragists, they were progressives -- they are dedicated to making things better for most people. They were women who knew things, who could educate her, who could teach her parliamentary law, who could tell her about the labor movement, labor unions and so on. It also was slightly rebellious of her. She was breaking bounds.

Inwomen were voting in their first national election, and Franklin, never missing a political beat, was ardently courting their vote. He loved every minute of the campaign, but when an aide asked him if he thought he would be elected, he replied, "Nary an illusion.

For the Democrats, the election was a disaster. For the Republicans, the victory, one observer said, "was more than a landslide, it was an earthquake. Americans all across the country now knew his name. He had met and won the good will of thousands of party leaders.

He stood ready to aim higher than the vice presidency next time. At 38, he was young, strong, energetic and impatient. In the summer ofhe visited a Boy Scout camp serving city children. He enjoyed himself immensely, posing for pictures for the newspapers and joking with the boys. This is the last photograph of Franklin Roosevelt standing on his own two feet. When he said goodbye, he took with him the good will of the campers and a mysterious, undetected virus already multiplying and circulating throughout his body.

August 14, - "We have had a very few anxious days," Eleanor wrote from Campobello. By Friday evening, he lost the ability to walk or move his legs. The doctor feels sure he will get well, but it may take some time. It started with a cold, the feeling of malaise, ache in the back and lack of appetite and he said he thought he wouldn't have dinner and he went up to his room, and he never walked again, and ultimately, at the high point, he was helpless.

For a man as energetic, who'd led such a charmed life, to suddenly be paralyzed must have been almost unbearable. He asked Louis Howe why God had deserted him, at one point. He tried to put on a brave front zynga takes back stock options the children, but he was terrified.

They didn't know what it was. They didn't know add select options dynamically they could do about craigslist how much money does it make. Certainly, it was the blackest moment of his life and seemed to be the end of his life.

Eleanor remembered he was out of his head. Eleanor responds immediately with help, with support, with courage in facing the severity of what he's going through. She stays up 24 hours, she's by his side. She doesn't run away from it. The diagnosis, he told them, was perfectly clear -- infantile paralysis, polio.

He couldn't believe this had happened to him, but even in those circumstances, he kept to the Roosevelt code, which was that you did not complain and that you tried to convince everyone that everything was going to be fine.

He was very careful to be cheerful in front of his mother, and she was very careful to be cheerful in front of him, and only after she left him did she cry. With every curve and jounce, he winced in pain. He was 39 years old. No one knew what sort of life might now be possible for him, but one thing seemed certain -- his political career was finished.

He was an aristocrat. He had always had everything. All of a sudden, there he was, crippled in a day when it was a very difficult thing to be crippled.

In the s, why, polio was a terrifying thing. Something like 25 percent of people who caught polio died of it within the first two weeks. If you survived and you had paralysis, they didn't know what to do, and "nice" families kept their disabled members at home in the back bedroom with the blinds drawn. There was a certain shame attached to it somehow. His mother decided that the best thing to do was for him to come home to Hyde Park and to live the life, really, that his father had lived as an invalid.

She would take care of him and he could pursue his hobbies and small interests, but he would have to give up politics. It's one of those moments that is absolutely a defining moment for Eleanor, because she knows that docmd.sendobject outputformat options Sarah has her way, Franklin's soul will be destroyed.

So she has to do something she's never done before. She has to confront Sarah directly to tell her, "You're wrong and I'm not going to let this happen. He's going to be able to get out of this house, he's going to walk again, he's going to get into politics, and I don't care what you say. She became the voice for his inner needs, his inner feelings, and in some ways, that's what she becomes all of their lives.

She had a discipline and a willpower that was staggering. She said to me once, "The only time in my life that I cried in his presence when he had polio was when he called us up into the room and he showed us -- 'Look,' he said, 'what I can do.

He got himself down from the bed and he showed them with great pride how he slithered on the floor, using his elbows to get oldest stock still traded the door.

And with that, Mrs. Roosevelt broke down in tears and fled. And she said that was the only time she didn't control herself in front of him. He would devote the next seven years to one single goal -- to get back on his feet. The doctors told him that his only hope was exercise.

With heavy steel braces grappled to his legs, he began the awkward struggle to learn to walk. Polio exercises were very painful, very tedious, humiliating. They took up endless time. And I think it's a measure of his ambition and his grit that he kept at them as long and as hard as he did. The rules that applied to other people did not apply to Franklin Roosevelt, and he refused to believe that he was not going to get better.

He tried everything -- sunlamp treatments -- special electric belts that were supposed to make him somehow stronger -- pulley arrangements to do his exercises automatically.

Deep massage, light massage, range-of-motion exercises -- and sometimes they hung him on a harness from the ceiling. And even in the last weeks of his life, he was trying a new method to see if he couldn't get back on his feet.

It's either madness or enormously admirable. He never spoke to anyone about the feelings he had with his paralysis. His mother said that he had never spoken to her about it. Eleanor said he simply didn't accept his paralysis and he didn't talk about it and he wouldn't admit it. I suppose psychologists might call it denial.

It certainly served him well and allowed him to become President of the United States instead of a stamp-collecting invalid. Of course it's denial. It worked, and denial's a very useful thing in its place. I mean, it's a way online option payoff calculator excel coming to terms with a difficult fact.

He was running away. Drifting lazily off the coast of Florida -- swimming, fishing, cavorting with his friends -- he filled his days with aimless good times. He was there partly to exercise and get the sun, which he thought was going to help him -- but he was also there because life at home with five children and his mother and his wife fighting over him was unbearable.

These were very grim years for him, for the family. He was struggling to get better. In spite of his optimism, he really wasn't getting much better. I think that the guy was dealing with depression. There's a bulls make money tab deal of anger, a great deal of grieving, a great deal of frustration that comes with paralysis -- franklin d.

roosevelt stock market crash, severe, serious paralysis -- and this is very hard stuff to deal with. We had no tangible father, work at home jobs asheboro nc father whom we could touch and talk to, only a cheery letter-writer.

Louis Howe convinced her that it was up to her to keep Franklin's name alive. If Eleanor had not stepped forward, Franklin's political career might well have been over. Louis Howe decided that I better go in the women's division of the state political set-up in New York and I must be able to speak.

And so, Louis Howe used to go with me to meetings and blue chip stocks to buy march 2016 in the back and make fun of me afterwards. Louis Howe is absolutely central to Eleanor Roosevelt's political education.

He monitors her every word. He attends all of the speeches that she gives, and he tells her, "You said this right, you said that wrong. Why did you giggle here? Your voice went up 10 decibels here. Why did it do that? And she very quickly, in two or three years, moved to the top in the women's division in the New York State Democratic Party.

She could get up and talk on pretty much any subject and with some ease. And she talked informally. She ran a very good meeting. Publicly, she spoke in Franklin's name. Privately, she was developing her own ideas. People go to her for advice, stock market dtc go to her to raise money.

People go to her and ask her to speak. She berkshire hathaway stock buy or sell in her memoirs she's done it all for F. I think she was profoundly impressed and believed in her heart that helping other people, enabling other people -- particularly when you were in a position of privilege -- was the way she wished to conduct her life.

She was becoming a voice for those who had none. She had abdicated her role as wife. He invited her very many times to come down, but he was with the friends whom she didn't especially care for -- the congenial friends, the friends from the Lucy Mercer days, the people who liked to live on a houseboat and swim and drink -- and he was with Missy LeHand. Missy had started working for Franklin when she was 20 years old inand I think fell in love with him and never stopped loving him all the rest of her life.

It would be Missy who would sit by his side as they went fishing. She learned every activity that he liked and became an expert at it. Eleanor is nowhere in sight during this period of time. Since politics have become her choicest interest, all her charm has disappeared. During the s, they had once again redefined their marriage. They were bound together by politics, respect and real affection, but they led separate lives. For the first time, Eleanor had a home of her own two miles from Hyde Park, a simple cottage built for her by Franklin.

She called it Val-kill after the brook running past its door. She can invite who she wants there. Her mother-in-law has to knock before she enters. There are no sliding doors.

Sarah is shocked that Eleanor Roosevelt would prefer to live in what she calls "that hovel," rather than the proper house, the big house with the proper number of servants. Eleanor Roosevelt's very happy at Val-kill. She defied convention, befriending so-called "new women" who lived with one another. Eleanor found in these friends the kind of emotional closeness that Franklin could not provide.

All through the s, Eleanor flourished. She became financially independent, writing articles for newspapers and magazines. She taught at a private school in New York which she co-owned.

She continued to campaign for progressive political causes. She was at ease with herself and for the first time in her life, began to have fun. Val-kill was Eleanor's, but throughout his life, Franklin was a frequent and welcome guest. Eleanor's friends became his friends, supporting his hopes to one day return to political life. Inthe former candidate for vice president was invited to the Democratic National Convention. He delivered a rousing speech, but he played no further part in the presidential campaign.

He was still far too weak. That fall, there was talk of Franklin running for governor of New York, but he quickly rejected yahoo finance australian stock market idea.

He would not seek public office, he said, until he no longer needed crutches. Determined to find a cure, he once again headed south. He had heard of pools of steaming mineral water in Warm Springs, Georgia, whose marvelous healing powers were the stuff of local legend.

Gushing out of the side of a mountain, the waters were 90 degrees and astonishingly buoyant. Some called them "miracle waters. Elmer Loftin, Warm Springs Resident: Well, there wasn't much here. There was only one hotel downtown, you know, and the grocery store. And they called it "Bullochville. It wasn't considered a town, what I would call a town. I thought it took a lot of stores to make a town back in those days.

But I just called it a greasy spot, and I think they named it Warm Springs, Georgia after Mr. Roosevelt -- about the time he began to come here.

By the time Franklin arrived, its glory had faded to a cluster of ludacris - money maker ft. pharrell free mp3 download in need of repair and a run-down hotel. Franklin dreamed of restoring its original charm and turning it into a modern rehabilitation center for those with infantile paralysis, but first foreign exchange rates forex would need hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Roosevelt borrowed a lot of money from his mother and put in a lot of his own. His wife was absolutely opposed and thought it was a terrible idea. She thought it was going to cost too much money. She thought that it would give him something else to attend to and take him away from politics, that you couldn't do everything and Warm Springs was going to completely dominate his life.

She worried about it. One of the few times we know in which he really got angry at her was when she gently suggested that perhaps this was not a good idea. And he was furious. He really exploded and said, "This is something I really want. You either support me or you don't. Soon people with polio from across America were making forex dss pilgrimage to the Georgia back woods.

As Franklin struggled to rehabilitate his own state five problems facing the nigerian stock exchange limbs, 60 second binary options mt4 ru devoted himself for the first time to helping others.

Warm Springs was a wonderful place. Roosevelt was a patient just like all the others. Roosevelt," as the others called him, was really remarkably creative. He brought in blacksmiths and they designed braces and crutches -- a crutch design that's still used, the Warm Springs crutch.

Roosevelt invented a muscle-testing technique -- a way of grading how strong a muscle is -- that is still in use, and it was a remarkably inventive time. His prescription -- swimming, sunlight and belief on the patient's part that the muscles are coming back. He was just glowing with it and oh, that smile, and he'd laugh.

Janice Howe Raper, Physical Therapist: After everybody had treatment, they would all go out into what was called the "play pool," and they would play vigorous games of ball.

He played with them forex xo indicator he was just as tough as any of the children. Whether or not people got better at Warm Springs, they felt that they were better and they felt that with him present, anything was possible. For the rest of his life, in times of stress he would retreat to the piney woods and the warm waters. It became his second home. Franklin loved to drive and he drove fast. He designed his car himself, with ingenious levers and pulleys so he could drive without berkshire hathaway stock buy or sell legs.

For the first time since he was paralyzed, he felt free. Over the years, his drives through the Georgia countryside would provide him with a valuable political education. Fowler, Warm Springs Resident: He was interested in the people. He got out and visited with them. Even after he was president, he would 401k fund options away from his bodyguards and get out and ride the back ways and back roads and meet people, stop and talk with them.

But he'd never met people like that before. He usually talked to you. He started the conversation. Whatever he wanted to know, axis bank forex rates calculator ask.

He didn't hesitate about asking if he saw something he wanted to know. I didn't know how come I loved him like I did. It wasn't -- he hadn't done anything for me personally. We would walk to Warm Springs just to see him just board the train. He'd come on down the --"Hello, Warm Springs.

Well, he wasn't the President then. He wasn't even the governor of New York, I don't guess, but how much money does a nurse make in trinidad was just Mr.

Roosevelt in those days. After he became president, they were very, you know, polite, but they used to call him, in the early days, "Rosie," which I think was a wonderful name. Go beyond like -- they loved him.

I don't think he changed completely -- there were certain things that were always there -- but he certainly learned to understand what suffering meant in a way that he'd never known before, because he could understand how people could suffer in ways that he had not experienced.

And I franklin d. roosevelt stock market crash that grew out of his polio experience. And he certainly gained enormously in patience. That gave him some of the patience that was needed to meet the problems both of the New Deal and the war.

I've heard people say to him that, "If we do this, we don't know if we will be successful," and I've seen my husband time after time say, "There are very few things we can know beforehand. We will try and if we find we are wrong, we will have to change. He wanted to be President and it was just unthinkable in those days that a person in a wheelchair could be elected President of the of the United States, and in fact it's pretty unthinkable right now.

And so he had to walk. And since he wasn't getting better, he developed better techniques for appearing to look better. Alice Converse, Physical Therapist: He was very anxious to walk. He would plant the crutches on the floor so hard you would think that the boards would break, and then drag himself along. It had been five years since the onset of polio.

His upper body was very strong, but his legs were pretty weak, so we tried to get him to use his body muscles in such a way that they would help lift up a leg at a time and take a step. He knew they were political poison. They would, he said, inspire pity. He learned instead to appear in public with a cane. And he developed this technique that looked like walking.

His sons were strong men -- they took exercises so their arms would be as strong as a parallel bar -- and he would lean on one son's breakout forex trading strategy, putting all his weight on it, and then he would switch his weight from the son's arm onto a cane which he carried in the other hand so that he could switch his weight from side to side and thus progress.

And he instructed his sons, "You must not let people see that this is difficult or takes effort or it hurts. And it was show biz, but it worked.

The goal, really, was simply to take enough steps to get from a car into a building, or from his seat on andreas gursky stock market stage to the podium and back again. If he could do that without seeming hopelessly crippled, he'd succeeded. Roosevelt had no hip muscles, and if a breeze, or someone should jostle him, something like that, he could just pivot and fall down.

He was not stable at all. It was not a safe way of locomotion, of moving around. It was not a practical way, but it was a political way. The Democratic Convention was in Houston and Eleanor had written him, "I'm telling everyone you're going to Houston without crutches.

All through the s, Franklin had kept up his contacts with Democratic Party leaders. Now he'd been asked to nominate the governor of New York, Al Smith, for president. Smith was a tough, worldly Catholic from New York City, and one of his advisors argued, "You're a Bowery mick and he's a Protestant patrician. He'll take some of the curse off you. With 15, delegates watching, Franklin set out to walk to the podium with a cane, without the aid of crutches.

An accidental fall would leave him sprawled helplessly on the convention floor, his political hopes destroyed. With one hand he gripped the cane. With the other, he balanced precariously on his son Elliott's powerful arm. He appeared to be walking.

One reporter described the scene: For the moment we are lifted up. We offer one who has the will to win, who not only deserves success, but commands it. Victory is his habit -- the happy warrior, Alfred E. When Smith urged him to run for governor of New York, Roosevelt said he was ready.

Someone asked Smith why he'd put Roosevelt back in the political limelight. Roosevelt won office by the slimmest of margins, campaigning more vigorously than anyone expected.

Now, as governor, he would continue to surprise everyone. He took command at once. In his first six months, he advocated tax relief for farmers and cheap electric power for consumers, but when disaster suddenly struck the economy, no one was sure what Roosevelt would do. On October 24,the stock market crashed. It was the beginning of the worst calamity the United States economy had ever known.

Banks closed, millions were put out of work. Homeless people were soon camping just a few blocks from the townhouse Sarah Roosevelt had built for Franklin and his bride years before. Eleanor gave instructions to the cook to provide anyone who came to the door with hot coffee and sandwiches. There's only one word that adequately describes it and that's surely despair -- a sense of helplessness, a sense of hopelessness. About a third -- imagine, a third -- of labor totally unemployed, 14 million people.

There was a sense of fright, a sense of horror. It was a feeling that what was happening? Was it possible that something like this could occur in the country? After one gloomy White House meeting, his secretary of state said, "It was like sitting in a bath of ink to sit in his room.

The crisis would have to resolve itself without the aid of government. At first, Roosevelt agreed with Hoover. But as the crisis deepened, Roosevelt began to change. All his life, he had believed that relief should come from private charities, but face to face with the problems of the Depression, he became convinced that only massive government intervention could help.

For the first time, Roosevelt began to experiment with bold new ideas -- assistance for the aged and the country's first program to provide relief for the unemployed. InPresident Hoover invited the nation's governors to a White House making money with blogging.pdf. With his presidency in jeopardy, he wanted to size up the man from New York with the progressive programs, who was rapidly becoming the Democratic front-runner.

Alonzo Fields, White House Butler: And the night of the dinner, with a cane in his hand, he started going to the dining room, dragging his legs from his hips and supporting himself on the cane and his bodyguard's arm.

And he walked at the angle, a degree angle, to the table. And I was alerted to a nod that was telling me he was going to take the seat. Well, when he did, he literally fell in the seat, and that scene was witnessed by all the guests at the dinner table. And everybody said, "Well, that man, what is he thinking about? How is he going to be president? He's only a half-man. Roosevelt, having received more than two-thirds of all the delegates voting, I proclaim him the nominee of this convention for President of the United States.

Roosevelt, Democratic Presidential Nominee: This is more than a political campaign, it is a call to arms. Give me your help not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.

I used to say, "If I go to Washington on the 4th of March next," but now at the -- very nearly the end of this swing, I am not saying "if," I'm saying "when. The great war against depression is being fought on many fronts in many parts of the world. One observer remarked, "If you put a rose in Hoover's hand, it would wilt.

He gave the impression to the American public that he was just out of control, and Roosevelt gave the impression that he knew what the country needed and he was going to give it to them.

We face that crisis. We face it with singleness of purpose and above all with faith. Keep that faith constant, keep that faith high. So shall we win through to a better day. Americans wanted a leader and people everywhere warmed to the big smile, the confident toss of the head, clear delight in people. When it was over, Roosevelt had won a smashing victory. By midnight, the country already knew that Franklin Roosevelt was the winner and a very large winner.

One man sent Herbert Hoover a wire, saying, how much does a cashier make at target for Roosevelt and make it unanimous.

Let me thank you again and tell you that I hope to see you all very soon and bid you an affectionate good night. But for myself, I was deeply troubled. This meant the end of any personal life of my own. The turmoil in my heart and mind was rather great that night. It would be four months before Roosevelt would take office, the worst months yet of the Depression.

Five thousand banks closed. Each month, 20, farmers lost their land. The economy had collapsed. Americans everywhere waited for the president-elect to tell them what he was going to do, but Roosevelt gave no clues. At one point, reporters asked him a question and he simply holds up his finger and goes, "Shh. During the campaign, he had promised what he called "a new deal for the forgotten man," but as yet he had said nothing about what that new deal might be.

Meanwhile, Eleanor was expected to give up her teaching and writing to become the nation's first lady. Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady: To get together -- and you are here -- and forget that there is such a thing as a depression for a time and forget all the troubles that weigh us down and simply sing is a grand thing to do.

In two days, Franklin Roosevelt would become the 32nd President of the United States. Eleanor sat quietly by herself. She feared she was about to lose her hard-won independence. The President-elect's mother Sarah was, as always, confident in her boy. In the last car, Franklin Roosevelt sat alone. It was the night he was elected President.

Tonight I think I'm afraid of something else. I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God. It was the night he was elected president.

In two days, this man with legs crippled by polio, whose greatest strength seemed to be his charm, would become the 32nd President of the United States. Now, Roosevelt would have to face the nation's gravest crisis since the Civil War. Fourteen million Americans were out of work.

Nine million had lost their life savings. People were down and out in their feelings, not only in their stomachs and in their pocketbooks. How to trade options in bse was a tremendously depressing period of time.

There were not a few people who really saw the possibility that the country was going to disintegrate. Halfway across the country, Iowa farmers threatened to hang a lawyer foreclosing on their farms, and in Detroit, men who had lost their jobs were stealing food from grocery stores. As the president-elect's train pulled into Washington's Union Station, no one knew what to expect from this man who had promised aberdeen global emerging markets share price new deal for Americans.

The country was in a hell of a mess, and everybody was looking to this new man to do something about it. They didn't know what. His promises had been all over the lot, but action, action, action was what they were looking for.

Inauguration Day began with a service at St. John's Episcopal Church, with hymns selected by Roosevelt himself. His Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, described the scene. If ever a man wanted to pray, that was the day. He did want to pray and he wanted everyone to pray for him. The weather was cold and bleak. General Douglas MacArthur had prepared his troops for a possible riot. On his last morning in office, President Herbert Hoover said, "We are at the end of our strength.

There's nothing more we can do. Hoover detested Roosevelt, thought him an opportunist, sure to drag the country even deeper into despair. On the ride to the Capitol, Roosevelt tried to make conversation, but Hoover sat stony-faced.

The crowds were so tremendous and you felt that they would do anything if only someone would tell them what to do. As he made his way to the podium, Roosevelt appeared to be walking, but it had taken years of practice to perfect that illusion. In fact, he was pressing down on his son's arm with an iron grip, propelling himself forward with the help of a cane and his powerful upper body.

One has to imagine millions of people clustered around their radio sets in towns all across the country. They don't know what to expect of this new president -- he's not shown them much yet -- and then they hear, coming through their loudspeakers, this voice This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.

This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. Suddenly this man came in and he made clear to the country that there was really nothing to fear except the fear that was in one's own heart. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror. The country was so excited that one had a live leader finally, at long last in the White House, that he could have suggested we all get ready to walk to the moon and we would have followed him.

It was just an unbelievable change in mood. It has an electrifying effect. Nearly a half a million people write to him. This is unheard of. American presidents in the past generation have gotten as few as letters in a week. Now, nearly a half a million write to Franklin Roosevelt and overnight he establishes himself as the leader that the country has been looking for.

Roosevelt, I am writing to you for help. We have eight children to take care of and nobody working but my husband. He's getting such little pay for his work and we have a sick child. Roosevelt, don't let them take our home away from us. Roosevelt, I have never as yet begged, but I would appreciate some kind of help. I have always put up a good fight and have worked many a day until I was almost unable to stand up, but all to no avail.

March 4, -- Roosevelt's first day in office. With the banks closed, investment at a standstill, many Americans believed that the free enterprise system was failing. One aide wrote, "We were confronted with a choice between an orderly revolution or a violent overthrow of the whole capitalist structure.

Let nature take its course. In the end, he would work from no systematic plan. Instead, he would experiment. You try a play. If that play doesn't work, you turn to another play. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something.

He pledged billions to save their farms and their homes from foreclosure. He provided relief to unemployed. He restored confidence in the banks and guaranteed the savings of millions of Americans. I can assure you that it is safer for you to keep your money in a re-opened bank than to keep it under the mattress. His key was somehow to prop up capitalism.

That was unquestionably in back of his mind, but he was a pragmatist. He was seeking to find solutions to the practical problems that beset people today. The banks were closed -- get the banks open. The NRA was designed to tame the unruly cycles of American capitalism by encouraging business and government to work together.

Each industry was allowed to set its own wages and prices. Labor was promised the right to bargain collectively. I went to the top of the Empire State Building on a day in, I think, June There was this enormous National Recovery Act parade, you know with -- they had this symbol, the blue eagle, everywhere. It was on cigarette packages, in stores and so on. It was an immensely moving thing.

I mean, there must have been two million people, it seemed like, up and down Fifth Avenue and everywhere, all just cheering, and the country just lifted itself up.

This was a great thing that was happening. The country was coming out of this incredible mood. Roosevelt was changing national despair to hope. Everything was up for grabs in a country that was basically a conservative country, but now had a leader to whom anything and everything was possible. The least ideological person that ever lived -- that's why I think he was such a great success. A few timid people who fear progress will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing.

Sometimes they will call it fascism and sometimes Communism and sometimes regimentation and sometimes socialism. But in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.

In the present spirit of mutual confidence, the present spirit of mutual encouragement, we go forward. An aide who worked with him during the Wilson years marveled, "That fellow in there is not the fellow we used to know. There's been a miracle here. The White House, which for some presidents was a prison, was for F.

Oh, I think there's no question that Roosevelt loved being president. You know how he used to say, "I love it? I have a feeling he loved getting up in the morning, loved going to his office, enjoyed the people that came in. I can't imagine another president being more suited for the presidency and enjoying it as much as Roosevelt did.

Roosevelt believed that he belonged in the White House. His idea of who a president should be was himself as president. He thought it was the grandest job in the world. He was a man of cigarettes. It would be a constant flow of laughter and jokes. There was never a moment that one had a feeling that he suddenly felt helpless or suddenly uncertain of what to do.

He knew what to do and he would do it. He was immensely cunning, and what people had not realized was his extraordinary guile. I mean, I think he was quite capable of telling what Winston Churchill called "a terminalogical inexactitude" and never blush.

And he had this marvelous face of, you know, total, placid sincerity and earnestness and he had a great gift of seeming to think that you were about the wisest man that he'd ever consulted on anything until you found he had no use for you the moment you left. Fifteen years earlier, Roosevelt's affair with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer had ended the intimacies of their married life, but they had developed a political partnership and Eleanor had built a life of her own.

My grandmother had real reservations about moving into the White House. She knew the social role. She knew how all-consuming it could be. She had become a figure in her own right, and within the Democratic Party even somewhat of a power.

And the thought of going to Washington -- she was appalled. All she saw was social, ceremonial jobs which she hated. She always said she was never good at small talk. I'm sure she imagined that in the First Ladyship she'd be talking small talk for all the years they were in there. I was lucky in having a supple hand which never ached. I realized," she said, "that if I remained in the White House all the time, I would lose touch with the rest of the world.

She wanted her freedom. She didn't want to be curtailed by protocol, by being the wife of the head of a government. She wanted to pack up her bag, get into her little car and go out into the country.

Never before had a first lady taken to the road and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on her own, supporting her husband. What she was looking for was the human detail that she could bring back to her husband to let him understand what the people of his land were thinking, feeling and hoping. She became his legs. She became his emissary. She could go places that he couldn't go, and she went everywhere. Her popularity ratings were sometimes even higher than her husband's.

He could make a great speech, but Mrs. Roosevelt went out and intermingled with the people. Well, she would sometimes pick up someone off the street and bring him in for lunch, and she would invite people to the White House to dinner for a state dinner.

And they had never had a tuxedo on in their lives and they'd come there and on track and no tuxedo and they're supposed to be at the dinner, say, "What will we do? More and more, Eleanor became the White House advocate for women, factory workers, tenant farmers, blacks, often pressing her husband to move faster than he was prepared to move.

Eleanor sent so many memos into his bedroom at night that after a while he had to create an "Eleanor" basket just to hold all these memos. And then, after a while, he had to make a deal with her, saying, "Eleanor, three memos a night -- not 12, not 20, not I will initial them and deal with them by morning. What they had together -- our grandmother and grandfather -- was what I call a creative tension. They both basically believed in the same things, but they had different roles to play.

He had to work with the Congress. He was President of the United States, which meant not the liberals in the United States.

It meant everybody in the United States. She was able to influence issues and he was delighted, but he could also disown her and did with the press. He would say, "Well, you know my missus.

I don't dictate what she says," or, "I don't control her. The Depression was too deep. The origins, the roots of the problem were too deep. The numbers of people who are on welfare rise to a quarter of an American city. One reporter in comes upon a couple living in a cave in Central Park in New York. And there was a sense that the New Deal, although it had improved things greatly from the worst days of the Great Depression, was not really getting the country back to prosperous days again.

Violent protests and strikes swept across the country. Bewildered and frightened, many Americans were drawn to agitators calling for reforms more radical than Roosevelt's. Father Charles Coughlin, a maverick Catholic priest from Detroit, turned radio into a pulpit from which he blasted the New Deal, demanding a living annual wage and nationalization of the banks.

Father Charles Coughlin, National Union: Who then is the inflationist -- Roosevelt or the National Union? And Senator Huey Long from Louisiana, with his "Share Our Wealth" program, had his eye on the presidency.

I can out-promise him and he knows it. His mother's watching him and she won't let him go too far. He's living on an inherited income. People will believe me and they won't believe him. Roosevelt's consensus was beginning to unravel. During the euphoria of his first days in office, even Republicans had supported him. Now they turned against him. Fletcher, Chairman, Republican National Committee: The New Deal is government from above. It is based on the proposition that the people cannot manage their own affairs and that a government bureaucracy must manage for them.

We do not want to see these alphabetical bureaucratic agencies become permanent fixtures in our national political life. When he regulated the stock exchange and the banks, the captains of American industry were outraged. They thought he had come in, he had done a very good job, those first days were all right, but now he should give us a chance to take back and run the country as we always had been accustomed to running it.

He had a different idea about that. Angry businessmen founded the Liberty League, dedicated to stopping further New Deal legislation. The discovery of what a political wizard he was was what fired a lot of hatred of Roosevelt, because they'd thought of him as somebody they could manipulate -- a splendid, well-meaning, rather genteel type. That's what they thought.

Then they discover they have an absolute master politician, mischief-maker, cunning man and they hated him all the more because they'd been fooled. They declared the NRA -- the National Recovery Act -- unconstitutional, and it was just the first blow. The court was moving against Roosevelt's efforts to abolish child labor, establish a minimum wage, boost farm prices.

Law by law, the court would attempt to dismantle the work of the first days. But with millions still unemployed, Roosevelt continued to use the power of the federal government to relieve the suffering caused by the Great Depression. Congress, at Roosevelt's request, enacts the Emergency Work Relief Appropriations Act, which is the largest single peacetime appropriation in the history of this country or any country in the history of the world.

New York City -- federal jobs for thousands at the rate of a hundred a minute, while all over the nation, Works Progress administrators are hurrying to transfer millions of idle from relief rolls to work payrolls.

One thirty-eight Greene Street, New York, tomorrow morning 9 o'clock. Municipal Building, Borough Hall, Brooklyn tomorrow morning, 9: Men and women hired by the government worked on more than 5, schools, 2, hospitals, 1, landing fields, 13, playgrounds. Even artists went to work for the WPA. But for Roosevelt this was just the beginning. He would bring power to rural America where nine out of every 10 families still lived without electricity. For millions of Americans -- impoverished children, the unemployed, the elderly with no savings, the disabled -- he offered the Social Security Act.

He sold it as an insurance policy for everyone, but the poor, Roosevelt was saying, had rights too. The great tradition in the United States had been private charity, community charity. Families take care of their own and so the notion that somehow the government would take care of the poor or the unemployed or the old -- this is something that was just not part of our tradition. We didn't know of it. This Social Security measure gives at least some protection to 30 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

The rich felt the sting of higher taxes and workers acquired the right to bargain collectively. Soon great American industries -- steel, rubber, automobiles -- would be unionized for the first time, and the men F.

People from Franklin Roosevelt's class when he first was elected had no idea that he was going to anything as radical as he did do. They really believed that because he was one of them, more or less -- propertied and coming from old New York society -- that the last thing he would do would be anything that would cause anguish to his peers. People who held a position in society that was basically inherited and family-oriented instinctively felt that this was being lost and that "that man in the White House," Franklin D.

Roosevelt, was responsible and hence he was a traitor to his class. They hated him, and I know this from my personal experience of people who would come up to me, not just when my grandfather was alive, but ever since, but particularly, say, in the 10 or 15 years after he died, and express their vitriolic hate towards Franklin D.

Roosevelt in a way that is totally irrational. A great yachtsman in Marblehead, Mass. Crowninshield, when he -- on entering in his log book of his yacht a description of something really terrible, he'd refer to it as "a Roosevelt. In spite of persistent hard times, the President had given them hope. The most astounding thing was the pictures of Roosevelt you saw -- framed photographs, framed bad watercolors, good photographs, bad photographs -- but everywhere.

Bus stations, libraries, barbershops, homes -- there were pictures of Roosevelt. I went into this lodge and as we were checking in, I looked and saw this photograph, you know, where the clerk was checking us in, and it was rather bad. It had been -- very bad color with sort of rouged cheeks.

And I made a joke about this, you know, the way they'd done him up, and we were throw out. Now, that was the striking thing. It had nothing to do with partisanship. You know, for the time being, the entire country's decided he was the savior. I don't believe five Americans in a hundred knew he was paralyzed. I think if it had been absolutely common knowledge, it would have been very difficult to elect him.

The country just simply didn't perceive Roosevelt as being handicapped, and they would look and they just would not see what they were seeing. People wanted him to be president, he wanted to be president. There was this little matter of being crippled in the way.

The President was always performing. He was performing before crowds, before visitors of state, the Congress and so forth, but also for his family and everyone else. When he met Orson Welles, he said, "Orson, you and I are the two best actors in America," and he was right, you know. He's appearing in public. It's politically important that he not look helpless. He's got to plan how will he enter a room? How will he move across to the chair?

Who will help him sit down? How will he do it? Who will take the cane? How -- do they know? Is the chair stable? Milton Lipson, Secret Service: We became experts at designing ramps, and there would be ramps that would be erected either on a permanent or temporary basis to allow for the wheelchair. Of course, there were times when he would be helped by a couple of agents in a fireman's carry, and all he would do was drape his arms around us and we'd form a fireman's carry and carry him.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - policy, war, domestic, foreign, second, new deal

For large crowds, they would build a ramp for the car, so the car would come into the stadiums, drive up on the ramp and then the President, still seated, would address the public.

And they had the braces painted black, even though they were shiny steel. He wore black shoes, black socks, black trousers -- black trousers cut long so that the braces all but disappeared if you weren't looking closely.

Most of the pictures you see of him, he's either standing up and if you look carefully he's holding onto somebody's arm or he's sitting in a chair. There are very few pictures of him in a wheelchair. This was not exactly a conspiracy, but it was a conspiracy of consent between photographers and the White House, something that could never exist today.

Biden, FDR and the Invention of Television - icoqerum.web.fc2.com

At Hyde Park, they have something like more than 40, still photos of Franklin Roosevelt and of those 40, there are only two of him in a wheelchair, and they were family photos.

And there was never a cartoon of him being handicapped or being in a wheelchair or otherwise. He was always running and jumping or in a boxing ring, hitting -- knocking a Republican out of the ring or something like that.

People were more polite back then, and the press loved Franklin Roosevelt because he took care of them. I can't be truthful and say that I am glad to get back. I'm awfully sorry to get back, but while I've been having a wonderful time, I gather also that both houses of Congress have been having a wonderful time in my absence.

He was awful good at charming you. You had to be awful careful you didn't get badly seduced and a lot of people did. He had the press with him heart and soul.

If he made a crack, the place would bust into an uproar as though they were doing it to applaud a TV comedian. And I have come back with all sorts of new lessons which I learned from barracuda and sharks.

I'm a tough guy. I've heard him tell women how hard it was for him to go through the press conference because these men were so alert and so sharp that he had to keep on his toes, so to speak, every minute. Well, it wasn't so. They were all with him. And he liked jokes and he liked trading jokes. And I used to make dirty cracks at something under the New Deal, and he'd come back and make dirty cracks at my publisher or me or we'd play poker with him, which was a rather good index to his character.

He was a great bluffer, and a lot of reporters would lose to him and enjoy putting down on the expense account, "Lost to President Roosevelt at poker.

Unemployment was still high, but six million people had been put back to work. Corporate profits were rising. Detroit was now rolling out almost as many cars and trucks as were being produced before the Depression began. At the Democratic Convention, there was little doubt that Roosevelt would be renominated by acclamation.

We are fighting, fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world, and so I accept the commission you have tendered me.

I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war. The mood of the country was that something is happening. I never had any doubt that Roosevelt was going to be reelected in ' You could smell it. Mile after mile, the Roosevelt entourage could barely get through the streets of well-wishers, and people could hear individuals call out, "He gave me a job," "He saved my home.

He saved his fire for the leaders of big business. Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.

They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred. Eleanor Roosevelt also came under attack for her tireless advocacy of New Deal reforms, and especially for her sympathies with the struggle of black Americans. Dorothy Height, National Council of Negro Women: For the things that we, as African-Americans, loved her, there were too many Americans who hated her.

Here was a woman coming from the top class in our country and here she was, moving into poor neighborhoods. Here she was, sitting in groups of people of all races and all backgrounds. She didn't have a program, but a lot that she did helped to lay the groundwork that we could build upon in later years in civil rights.

And of course, many hated her for it. Ann Cottrell Free, Journalist: The whole thing was a paradox. She was loved and despised both, depending on where you sat, you might say, what your needs were. Was she filling your needs or was she stepping on your toes?.

On election night, Franklin Roosevelt was at Hyde Park, and when the first returns came in, he let out a puff of cigarette smoke and said, "Wow.

Roosevelt would carry every state in the country except Maine and Vermont. Singer, New Lost City Ramblers: Wherever African-Americans were allowed to vote, they abandoned the party of Abraham Lincoln to vote Democratic. Inner-city immigrants, working men and women, white southerners -- Roosevelt had created a new Democratic Party coalition. Roosevelt became overconfident from that overwhelming victory.

He thought he had the country in the palm of his hands. I think his guard was down. January 20,the day of his second inauguration -- he had already developed a plan to take them on. Roosevelt was about to challenge the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Supreme Court had been leading the opposition to the New Deal, rejecting one Roosevelt law after another. Now, Roosevelt feared that the court was preparing to strike down the Social Security Act and the law that gave unions the right to collective bargaining. Immediately after his inauguration, Roosevelt vented his anger at a Democratic Party dinner.

The Democratic administration and the Congress made a gallant, sincere effort to raise wages, to reduce hours, to abolish child labor and to eliminate unfair trade practices. Roosevelt not only wanted a court that would rule favorably on New Deal legislation, he wanted a measure of revenge, because he took personally a number of the opinions, a number of the actions of the court.

And I defy anyone to read the opinions concerning the AAA, the Railroad Retirement Act, the National Recovery Act, the Guffey Coal Act, and the New York Minimum Wage Law and tell us exactly what, if anything, we can do for the industrial worker in this session of the Congress with any reasonable certainty that what we do will not be nullified as unconstitutional.

He was upset -- he had good reasons to be upset, but one of the few times in his life, I think, that he miscalculated. On Capitol Hill, critics argued that Roosevelt's bill challenged the Constitution itself. Frederick Van Nuys, DIndiana: I shall not be a party to breaking down the checks and balances of the Constitution. Pettengill, DIndiana: A packed jury, a packed court and a stuffed ballot box are all on the same moral plane.

This is more power than a good man should want or a bad man should have. Vandenberg, RMichigan: This is a non-partisan battle to preserve an independent Supreme Court. He dangled promises of federal projects, hinted at judicial appointments, threatened to withdraw patronage.

At a picnic for Democratic congressmen, he turned on all his charm. This time it didn't work. On July 20th, he asked his vice president, Jack Garner, what his chances were with Congress. You haven't got the votes. And the price that he paid was very high. It was a loss of confidence on the part of the country.

It was a recognition by his opponents in politics that they could beat him. It was a recognition on his part that he had lost some measure of power. The stock market crashed again, businesses failed, and by December, two million more people had lost their jobs. His opponents called it "The Roosevelt Recession.

Congress was reasserting its authority. The press was turning more critical. And he now faced an even more terrible crisis. Far away, fascist armies were marching. Adolf Hitler's Germany had seized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini's Italy crushed Ethiopia. Emperor Hirohito's Japan ravaged China. Roosevelt privately called them "the three bandit nations. Inhe had written his ambassador in Berlin, "Everything seems to have broken loose again in your part of the world.

All the experts say there will be no war, but as president, I have to be ready, just like a fire department. We had an army the size of the army of Sweden. You know, people think of us today as being a tremendous military power. The United States never wanted to be a military power. The habit had been after a war -- you mobilized two million guys and they immediately demobilized.

There's no thought in the minds of the great bulk of Americans that they will ever send another land army to Europe to fight in a war again. This is the abiding feeling in the United States -- avoid involvement in any war. Memories of the First World War were not all that far behind, and Americans were very disillusioned about it, so they became isolationist.

Congress had passed a series of neutrality laws forbidding the President to take sides. Whenever Roosevelt suggested that the United States play any part on the world stage, he met with violent isolationist opposition. Two congressmen even threatened him with impeachment. For a long time, the principal battle in American politics and in Washington was between the internationalists and the isolationists, and the people who hated Roosevelt said, "He's trying to get us into war.

You may have heard that I was about to plunge the nation into war, that you and your little brothers would be sent to the bloody fields of battle in Europe, that I was dragging the nation into bankruptcy and that I breakfasted every morning on a dish of grilled millionaire. Roosevelt, from the start of his presidency, is troubled by Hitler and privately he's deeply concerned, but he's not going to say anything in public. He knows the country is so opposed to anything that would involve it in European power politics.