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BEST BROADCAST S OF 1938-39
Second Voice. — On February 14, 1932, the Union Guardian Bank in Detroit suspended business.
Third Voice. — A week later, the Guaranty Trust Company of Atlantic City failed.
Fourth Voice. — In June, the Arcadia Trust Company of Newark closed its doors.
Voice. — The richest land on earth.
Second Voice. — And the money hidden, the gold hoarded, the currency out of circulation.
Narrator. — And the senseless horror of panic seized the nation.
Voice. — In Michigan, in the winter of 1933, the governor closed all the banks. State after state followed his example. Commerce stood still. People bartered and traded, and in a little town in northern California, clamshells became the currency {pause) . . . and the nation held its breath.
Narrator. — Such was the situation on March 4, 1933, when the American people turned to their new leader, listened to the voice of their newly elected president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, in his inaugural address said . . .
Roosevelt. — This is the time to speak the truth, frankly and boldly. A host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimism can deny the dark realities of the moment. This nation asks for action and action now. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. I am prepared, under my constitutional duty, to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. I may ask the Congress for broad executive power to wage war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. We do not distrust the future of an essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed.
Music. — Hail to the chief.
Voice. — And to save the nation from chaos, the President’s first official act was to close all the banks in the land, to put a stop to senseless fear.
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