Category Archives: Franklin Roosevelt

A Surreal Landscape

In a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds locals are gathered in a cafe eating and chatting. An attractive blonde is on the telephone explaining that children at the local school were dive-bombed by attacking crows. An elderly lady in a beret and smoking cigarettes lectures the other diners that crows don’t behave in such an aggressive manner and that there has to be another explanation. The woman identifies herself as an ornithologist and holds forth explaining crows and even seagulls do not do such things. Immediately after her expert testimony all hell breaks loose outside the cafe window, with masses of birds swooping down on passersby. The scene is chaotic and bloody leaving no doubt these attacking birds are in fact lethal. As the nightmare scene ebbs, the camera catches the bird expert, her head bowed in grief and bewilderment, stunned everything she knew and believed no longer applied to any bird in her understanding.

That woman resembles this lifetime American history educator. I’m a fairly decent generalist in subjects ranging from PreColumbian America through today, give or take minutia. But I too, am stunned by the surreal landscape of what I believed about democracy has been easily undone by a vulgar man-child and a compromised and opportunistic Republican Party.

It feels like all my understandings of my country no longer apply. The epic and fraught-filled struggle of forging the Constitution, the furnace of Civil War, the reforms of the Progressive Age, the promise of the New Deal, and Great Society are gone, rapidly destroyed by sinister design. A totalitarian despot has seduced a once noble political party rendering the valiant patriotism of those whom came before moot. Simply writing this lament is difficult, as all I once believed and explored is no longer valid.

An online troll explained it as “no one cares about that anymore.”

That means the principled determination of General Washington to serve our nation doesn’t matter. The misguided genocide of the Five Civilized Tribes upon the Trail of Tears doesn’t matter. With nearly 700,000 deaths, the crucible of Civil War no longer matters. Those brave GI’s on Omaha Beach, (including my own grandfather) and at the Battle of The Bulge no longer matters. Those brave students who occupied lunch counter stools in the face of racial violence did so for nothing. Those boys who perished in the Vietnam War are irrelevant. In point of fact no veteran matters anymore.

American history and all the sacrifice of our forefathers and mothers doesn’t count.

That 47 can fly in a foreign “gift” aircraft with a classified budget is a good thing to do with our tax money. That he remodels a room in the White House in a golden gilt is a good thing. Who really cares if former medicaid recipients suffer.

Suck it up buttercup, these are the new rules of Trump’s America.

That he has done away with investments in the Arts and Humanities is a positive. That he has placed incompetent sycophants from Fox News in high Federal positions is good. Forget he stole top secret intelligence documents. The country elected him anyway. That he has drastically shifted the tax burden onto the middle class and off of the super wealthy is how God wants it, just ask today’s Christians.

That old white men rape girls is a good thing. 

The GOP bows at his feet and gleefully ratifies every stab-wound of domestic legislation is now to be celebrated, so pop a cork. In fact destroying America for profit is now simply wholesome and righteous. 

America’s heroes, like Sergeant Alvin York in the Argonne Forest, or Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Gettysburg endured their generations difficulties so that Trump can plow up Mrs Kennedy’s rose garden for a putting green. Suffragette Alice Paul who went on a hunger strike and endured the torture of forced feeding did so that the current president can manipulate votes is just fine. The murders of JFK, Dr King, Harvey Milk, or the murder of Minnesota State Senator Melissa Hortman is merely a part of the 24/7 news cycle.

Indeed nothing of our past story matters because Mr 47 has disqualified all of it to make money, and more money because that’s all that matters today. Plus of course he is a convicted felon and is terrified of going to jail where he belongs.

So when you see this disoriented American History educator with her forehead in her hand, much like the bird expert in the movie, please understand the gravitational pull of her entire life’s work is today rendered null and void. 

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

The Business of America

President Calvin Coolidge once famously proclaimed “The business of America is business,” which meant his administration would pursue a “hands off” approach toward the business sector over the interests of the American people. In office from 1923 to 1929 President Coolidge kept to his pro-business principles that, in turn charged the roar into the Roaring Twenties.

By the end of October 1929, six months into the new Hoover Administration, Coolidge’s lax policies came due dropping the Dow Jones Industrial into free fall. This financial catastrophe capped off a decade of easy money made through frenzied and unregulated trades, not only by wealthy holders, but by regular folks taking stock tips from friends or newspapers.

A large portion of these everyday newbies purchased shares “on-margin,” meaning 10% down with 90% on credit, usually borrowed from private banks. The only collateral required was the promise of certain and endless gains. And why not? The market had grown at an astounding rate from $27 billion in the mid-1920’s to $87 billion by 1929. 

Coolidge’s free-market detachment produced a carnival atmosphere with everyday people hot in the market game.

By 1932 the party was over. The now suffering nation had had enough of hands off and predatory money practices. Massive unemployment, thousands of bank failures, hunger, homelessness, and a Dust Bowl in the heartland brought America to its knees, and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House.

Seeing nothing beneficial for the American people in catering only to the rich, FDR brought an end to GOP policies. His administration instead offered a New Deal for economic revival. Through a massive legislative agenda Roosevelt and Congress intended to not only meet the emergency, but restore economic growth, and eliminate the conduct that led to the Depression in the first place.

One of the most popular New Deal relief programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps. Unemployed young men were put to work throughout the nation building trails and campsites in forests like the Great Smokey Mountain National Park, and urban building projects like the River Walk in San Antonio, Texas. (Consider that idle young men in Germany at the same time donned Black and Brown Shirts and broke heads for Hitler.)

Addressing the chaotic banking system FDR proposed systematic changes. Some 6000 banks had failed between 1930 and 1933 before the new president took office. Panicked depositors waited in long lines to demand their money until banks simply ran out of cash and locked their doors. Confidence collapsed. 

In his first days Mr Roosevelt announced a Bank Holiday where banks closed for four days to stop panic withdrawals. Auditors then inspected banking institutions across the country and surprisingly many banks were deemed solvent and reopened. Not finished with banking, FDR also took to the radio to explain the banking system, and with his cheerful confidence encouraged the public to take cash out of their mattresses, coffee cans, and backyard holes and return deposits to local banks. Thousands did just that. 

In order to prevent another such economic catastrophe the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), was passed by Congress to protect the public from high risk banking practices. One piece of the law was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, which is still in effect today. Depositors had the backing of the federal government to protect their funds from any loss. Moreover the Roosevelt Administration was determined to keep people in their homes, many of whom were facing foreclosure. The Home Owners Refinancing Act provided federal assistance to those who had paid their mortgages in good faith, but now faced eviction. 

In the first hundred days of Roosevelt’s New Deal 77 laws in total were passed by Congress, all aimed at restoring the health of the country. To the majority of Americans it felt like this president truly cared about their wellbeing. Roosevelt’s ascendency to the White House, next to Abraham Lincoln’s certainly stands as the most consequential in America’s continuing experiment in self government.

On a side note Franklin Roosevelt suffered from polio and could not walk, though he believed he’d walk again. FDR never gave up. And the truth of the matter is it took a man in a wheelchair to put the United States back on its feet. Franklin Roosevelt, unlike his predecessors knew that the business of America is “We The People.”

Gail Chumbley is a history educator, author, and playwright. Her work includes River of January, River of January: Figure Eight, both available on Kindle, plays Clay on the life of Senator Henry Clay, Wolf By The Ears a study of American slavery, and Peer Review where Donald Trump meets four past presidents.

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