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Second Narrator. — But 15 million people were still unemployed.
Third Narrator. — Thirty million hands idle . . . hands that once had run machinery, hands that had kept books, hands that had painted pictures and composed music and held test tubes, hands that had tilled the soil and run the engines and fished the seas of the nation. Hands skilled and unskilled hands that were now rusting and idle . . . hands through which no money passed. Thirty million idle hands, some of them I, some 2, some 3, some 4 years idle. The wealth of the nation wasting away.
Narrator. — The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Second Voice. — Backed by solidly Democratic Congress, backed by the confidence of a despairing nation. President Roosevelt begins a series of the most colossal experiments in social engineering in the history of the world.
Voice. — Through Congress was rushed the Federal Emergency Relief Act, which authorized the spending of 500 million dollars for relief.
Second Voice. — But this was direct relief. This was a dole.
Voice. — And the American feels peculiar about such things. . . .
Man. — I’ll be darned if I’d take it if it weren’t for Ella and the kids. I don’t want a handout. I don’t want charity. I want
a job. . . .
Voice. — Yes, a job and the radio and the refrigerator and an automobile . . . the symbols of the American way of life.
Narrator. — But most of all a job.
Second Narrator. — To put these millions of hands to work quickly, led to a new organization, the Civil Works Administration.
Narrator. — Through this administration, launched in October of 1933, the government put 4 million people to work in less than 90 days, put them to work at any jobs that could be found, leaf raking, snow shoveling, road building.
Second Voice. — And for the first time in years, there were wages in 4 million pockets.
Music.
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