Whereas Herbert Hoover had averaged about 5,000 letters a week, the number of people writing to Roosevelt leapt to 50,000. Suddenly the president seemed accessible. It almost seemed the other night, sitting in my easy chair in the library, that you were across the room from me.” Green said: “You have a marvelous radio voice, distinct and clear. Viola Hazelberger wrote: “I have regained faith in the banks due to your earnest beliefs.”Īnd James A. Virginia Miller wrote: “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your splendid explanation of the Bank situation on last evening’s broadcast.” “My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking-to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks.”Īfter Roosevelt’s address, letters poured into the White House in support of the president. “The Federal Government has assumed many new responsibilities since Lincoln’s time, and will probably assume more in the future when the States and local communities cannot alone cure abuse or bear the entire cost of national programs, but there is an essential principle that should be maintained in these matter.”īy contrast, Roosevelt’s first fireside chat started like this: Herbert Hoover had also used radio, both as a campaign tool and to give radio addresses, but he came across as much more formal than Roosevelt.įor example, during a radio address that Hoover gave on the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1931, a little over a year since the markets had crashed, Hoover started like this: Calvin Coolidge had given the first ever White House radio address, when he eulogized Warren G. Roosevelt wasn’t the first president to use radio to communicate with the country. The “ fireside chats,” as journalist Robert Trout coined them, became a cornerstone of American life, as the country struggled with the Great Depression and toppled towards war. Thus began a tradition that continued throughout Roosevelt’s presidency. On March 12, 1933, sixty million Americans listened to Roosevelt’s first radio address. ( to listen to this piece in podcast form click here) On this day in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the first of his famous fireside chats.
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