When the stock market crashed in 1929 and a bushel of wheat’s price decreased, farmers lost revenue but made up for it by producing more wheat as rain fell steadily. We are going to have a farm policy that will serve the national welfare. We are going to have long-time defenses against both low prices and drought. We are going to conserve soil, conserve water and conserve life. They stand ready to fit, and not to fight, the ways of Nature… With this fine help we are tiding over the present emergency. If terracing or summer fallowing or crop rotation is called for, they will carry them out. If trees should be planted as windbreaks or to stop erosion they will work with us. If certain wheat lands should be returned to pasture they are willing to cooperate. If overgrazing has injured range lands, they are willing to reduce the grazing. In the drought area people are not afraid to use new methods to meet changes in Nature, and to correct mistakes of the past. FDR applauded farmers in the Great Plains for adapting their farming methods for the betterment of the land and themselves when he points out: He educated the American people on the differences between grassland and farmland and the ways to remedy the land that had been poorly treated in the decades prior to the drought. In a physical and a property sense, as well as in a spiritual sense, we are members one of another.įurther, FDR understood that the Dust Bowl was not solely caused by a drought in the Great Plains. In the same way it is the purchasing power of the workers in these factories in the cities that enables them and their wives and children to eat more beef, more pork, more wheat, more corn, more fruit and more dairy products, and to buy more clothing made from cotton, wool and leather. The very existence of the men and women working in the clothing factories of New York, making clothes worn by farmers and their families of the workers in the steel mills in Pittsburgh, in the automobile factories of Detroit, and in the harvester factories of Illinois, depend upon the farmers’ ability to purchase the commodities they produce. Uniting people at a time of crisis was paramount, and FDR prioritized creating this unity as he announces:Įvery state in the drought area is now doing and always will do business with every state outside it. He goes on to address many American farmers’ concerns about feeding their families and working for a livable wage by emphasizing that the United States is comprised of many communities that must work together to succeed. It was their fathers’ task to make homes it is their task to keep those homes it is our task to help them with their fight. No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage. Yet I would not have you think for a single minute that there is permanent disaster in these drought regions, or that the picture I saw meant depopulating these areas. He then pivoted and focused on instilling confidence in the American people, declaring: He saw “cattlemen… compelled to sell all but their breeding stock” due to the “lack of grass” and “lack of winter feed” (FDR 1936). (Public Domain)įDR began his radio broadcast that Sunday evening by sharing his grief about the state of the environment and its devastating effect in the nine states that he witnessed during his travels through the Great Plains. Roosevelt Broadcasting his First Fireside Chat Regarding the Banking Crisis, from the White House, eight days after taking office, Washington, D.C. This section discusses the Fireside Chat delivered on Sunday, September 6, 1936. Radio broadcasts reached anyone with a radio in the 1930s, and it was a real-time method to update the American people with Washington D.C.’s concerns and policy changes that would directly affect families all around the country. FDR was the first president to use Fireside Chats as a way to communicate with the greater United States population. During these public broadcastings, ranging 11-44 minutes, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) clearly demonstrated his administration’s focus on surviving the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
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