Marshaling Public Will:

FDR at the Depression

Contents

Public Will and Political Power

• "Public" does not mean "governmental." That we think of the two the same is testament to the power of government rhetoric in the 20th century to assume leadership of the public sphere. "Public" are those things that we decide to address as a community. Governmental power is acquired as the government is seen as leading public response. Thus, converting public commitment to governmental power is a rhetorical problematic.
• In a democracy, political power arises from organizing the public. In "normal" times "the public" is diffuse and unorganized. The public is various and divided. Leaders need to articulate the motivation for public action in a way that unites the public in commitment. When they do so, non-public or private matters pass into the public domain and become the focus of public will. The leaders who articulate the motivation for public action acquire political power. (Note that political power does not flow from having a governmental office, although that office can be a base for political power. Political power emerges when public will is organized toward public action.)
• In the early 20th century, the relationship between the government and community has ebbed and flowed.
• In the years prior to 1900, the power over the public agenda was in the hands of economic concentration -- the robber barons of American industrial development.
• Progressives sought to drain this power into governmental support. The progressives used a rhetoric of crime to characterize the robber barons and employ government to drain their power. Through political reform they sought to institutionalize government as public voice.
• In the 1920s, business (not the robber barons, but business big and small) controlled public power. "The business of America is business," said the Secretary of Treasury. Henry Ford promised a wage for the working man that allowed him to own a car. "We are within sight of eliminating poverty in American," President Herbert Hoover promised in 1929.
• But the depression came, and the New Deal offered itself "as the leadership of the great army of the people."

The Depression

• It was a personal collapse. Many found themselves destitute as a result of the loss of employment in an economy that did not provide programs such as social security and unemployment compensation. Not only were such governmental programs not available before the New Deal, but the traditional sources of charity were taxed beyond their ability to provide.
• It was an economic collapse. The price of wheat was $ 1.43 per bushel in 1925; 38 in 1932. The price of cotton was 23 in 1925; 6 in 1932. In Chicago, unemployment reached 40 percent in 1932. In Boston, 7400 families were on welfare in 1929; and 40,600 in 1932.
• It was an institutional collapse. The institutions with which communities provided for public commitments collapsed under the weight. Banks collapsed losing the life savings of depositors. Corporations collapsed leaving pockets of heavy unemployment. Churches that provided charity were overwhelmed and unable to provide for the needy. Local governments saw their tax receipts plummet at the same time the need for community services soared. Families who had lost jobs and had diminished wages could not support themselves and certainly could not support the elderly.
• Had capitalism collapsed? The boom of the 1920s had been described by public leaders in business and government as the miracle of capitalism. Thus, when the bust came in 1929, the question was being seriously asked whether capitalism had failed as an economic system. The Socialists and Communists were especially vocal in proposing this explanation.
• Was it a community problem? Devastation was all around. These could be told as individual stories, but the devastation seemed universal. The community began to think that individual resources were insufficient to address this problem, that community commitments were needed.

Franklin Roosevelt's Rhetorical Task

Roosevelt's Task was to convert the conditions to public will to action

• Roosevelt sought to capture the national mood in the face of the depression.
• He began the process with a huge election victory in Fall 1932

The Voice of Leadership

The rhetoric of the New Deal was fundamentally about establishing the power of governmental leadership in the public sphere. So, it behooves us to consider what the rhetorical power of leadership entails. Look for how Roosevelt accomplishes these in discourse as you study his speeches.

• To Give Voice: A successful rhetoric of situation. A voice of leadership is able to express people's frustrations and to articulate for them a viewpoint that makes the experiences of their lives make sense. Thus, a leader is able to made sense of, to give meaning to, the situations that a community faces.
• Direction: An encompassing rhetoric of action. A voice of leadership articulates a viewpoint on the situation that identifies action that will guide the community in responding in a way that will address the needs of the situation. This includes a rhetoric that provides a sense that actions are solutions -- that they promise effective response. There is, therefore, a faith in the efficacy of community action.
• Authority as Legitimacy: The leader's actions are right. Right in both senses of the term: that actions are the correct choices and that they are appropriate for effective leaders. A voice of leadership connects his/her actions with traditions of action and leadership in the community. They clothe their actions in accepted patterns of earlier leaders.
• Authority as Power: Naming targets for action & communicating effectiveness in addressing them. The voice of leadership asserts itself. It not only provides legitimacy -- that sense of rightness -- but it celebrates its success to reinforce that power.
• Mood or Attitude: Posturing the public. The voice of leadership not only directs action, but sets the mood of the community. It restores faith, directs anger, and channels these emotions into support for its leadership.

Managing Permanence and Change

Roosevelt had to manage the dialectic of permanence and change that all leaders who support or oppose change must master.

• To achieve change, rhetoric must communicate continuity. There has to be a vision of how we will get from here to there along familiar paths. There has to be a sense that the change is "in character" for the community.
• To preserve, rhetoric must communicate adjustment to new circumstances. We must see new events in familiar ways. Old motives must be reinvigorated.

Roosevelt's task was in many ways to save capitalism, so he had to preserve the belief in capitalism. At the same time, he had to motivate change to address the crisis of the depression. How does he do it?

The New Deal Motive

The New Deal provided a rhetoric that provided a way of understanding events that motivated community response led by government. This motive lasted for fifty years and was one of the most long-lasting of American motives for government action.

• Problem-Solution structure
• Problem caused by human failure. Thus, it was manageable by controlling these failures.
• Problem is humanly addressable. Government passes laws to control such criminal actions.
• The personae
• The people as dispossessed. The human devastation in the community resulted not from characteristics inherent in the people so effected, but because the power of others affected their success.
• Oppressed by the irresponsible (greedy, negligent). Power had been exercised for evil purposes and to oppress the dispossessed.
• Government as leader. The New Deal offered the government as a power source to counter the greedy exercise of power. Government power could instantiate values of the community ignored by those who sought their personal interests.
• The action
• In human system. The New Deal saw power exercised by human beings against each other. The "automatic" adjustments of the marketplace were seen as overcome by powerful humans. So humans were caught in a system of power.
• Government provides power to solve. Government exercised its power to counter the power of others. Thus, government actions required limiting the abuses of the powerful.

This frame for talking about events drew problems into a rationale for governmental power. New problems incorporated into it enhanced governmental power and expanded the sense of public problem.

The Changing Media

Early in the century public speaking had been in the public square. By Roosevelt's day, radio was in its infancy. He learned to master this medium.

• In the 1920s, radio mushroomed in the United States. In the decade of business power, control of radio was established in a commercial system. The government was used as a registry for wave-bands, but little else.
• Radio narrowed the public sphere. Listening shifted from the public spaces such as the square and the lecture hall into the privacy of the living room. The home, which had been the location of the private domain, became a territory for the public as well. But access to voice was now controlled by the commercial decisions of broadcasters. To get access to the radio, you had to deliver a large audience. Those who would draw smaller audiences -- earlier to the square or the lecture hall -- were silenced in the new media. Yet, the growth of radio meant that the power to be on the radio became a power to influence the public sphere. The result was that the public sphere narrowed to community leaders and voices that could marshall a mass of listeners. Participation by the masses (newly defined by the "mass media") became the passive act of listening rather than the active role of an audience member.
• Franklin Roosevelt established his power through his ability to master this new medium. Roosevelt could make listening in the living room seem like a friendly chat in person. The strategies through which he did this established a source of his public power.

The New Deal

The New Deal was Franklin Roosevelt's proposals to address the devastation of the depression. The changes involved the three R's:

• Regulation: Rebirth of Progressivism. The New Deal reasserted regulatory power.
• Banks. Roosevelt called a bank holiday and instituted bank insurance to protect savings and the regulatory structure we have today to protect the quality of loans.
• National Reconstruction Act. Established "business codes" in which firms in particular industries met and developed standards to eliminate unfair business practices.
• Labor relations. The New Deal established the right of unions to collectively bargain with employers.
• Limits on production in agriculture. The idea was to support prices of agricultural goods by having the government enter the market to buy surpluses. Thus it used the free market to effect a reasonable price.
• Relief. Two major programs provided relief for those displaced by the depression.
• Works Progress Administration or WPA provided employment. It built public parks and roads, provided theatre and other arts, and organized the unemployed for useful work.
• Social Security Act. Established a governmental "insurance" program for the disabled, the elderly through the Old Age and Survivors Fund, and unemployment insurance.
• Reinvestment. Programs that attempted to enhance business development.
• National Industrial Recovery Act. Continued Hoover's strategy of loans to business to organize economic growth.
• Tennessee Valley Authority or TVA. Built a series of hydroelectric dams on the Tennessee River in one of the most undeveloped sections of the country. The cheap power and transportation would promote business development.
• Rural Electrification Act. Set up local electric cooperatives to provide power to farms. The New Deal "lit up rural America."

What the New Deal did was to promise governmental leadership of public efforts to address the depression.

Learning Resources

• On the Depression
• A Roosevelt biography
• On Franklin Roosevelt's Presidency