Depression, New Deal and Beyond (1932 – 1945)

Migrant Mother Family ~ Dorothea Lange, 1936

A fella ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul – the one big soul that belongs to ever’body. Then…then, it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be ever’-where – wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad – I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise, and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.” ~ Tom Joad, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

FDR and His Deal for a Desperate Time
        “And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval … with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need.” ~ John Steinbeck

Franklin D. Roosevelt (October 31, 1933)
        “On the eve of a national election, it is well for us to stop for a moment and analyze calmly and without prejudice the effect on our Nation of a victory by either of the major political parties.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt & Gold Confiscation
        “The Presidential Executive order of April 5, 1933, prohibiting the ownership of gold for Americans…” in MOST circumstances – but not in all!

Cong. LOUIS T. McFADDEN on the Federal Reserve Corporation, May 23, 1934
        “Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges here today against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, The Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of United States Treasury for numerous criminal acts, including but not limited to, CONSPIRACY, FRAUD, UNLAWFUL CONVERSION, AND TREASON.”

Wendell Willkie: Deja Vu All Over Again – Or is it Still? (December 8, 1939)
        “The history of government is the history of two conflicting principles: one is the supreme importance of the State; the other is the supreme importance of the individual. Either the people have believed that the State was merely the voluntary creation of individual citizens, responsible to them and designed primarily to protect their liberties; or else they have believed that the State was an authority in its own right to which individual citizens were subject and which could demand of them the suppression of their own desires and talents. The individual versus the State – that is the theme which more than any other has determined the course of civilization.”