Chapter 1: Waiting for Hope CHAPTER 1 Waiting for Hope On the gray, cold morning of March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt woke in his room at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. This was a big day, perhaps the biggest day of Roosevelt''s life. But he started the morning the same way he had for years at home in New York--he ate breakfast in bed. Roosevelt wasn''t lazy, not a bit. As governor of New York, he had often worked while he ate--reading newspapers and going over important documents. Then a personal aide would take away the breakfast tray and lift Roosevelt from the bed to a wheelchair and help him use the bathroom. FDR was used to this morning routine, used to having someone help him with the most basic things. His legs had been completely paralyzed for nearly twelve years.
Once the aide helped him into his underthings, Roosevelt strapped on the metal braces that allowed him to stand up for short periods of time. Though the braces were heavy and uncomfortable, they were frequently part of FDR''s routine. On most days, Roosevelt wore a business suit. But on this morning, he chose formal striped trousers and a morning coat. After all, at noon Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be inaugurated president of the United States. Meanwhile, in Herndon, Virginia, twenty-five miles west of Washington, Woody Wilson started his own morning routine. It was nothing like Mr. Roosevelt''s.
The walk from Woody''s back door to the outhouse could be frigid on such a damp day, but he was used to it, never having had an indoor toilet. He was also used to wearing the same worn clothes day after day, because that was all he owned. Eighteen-year-old Walker Woodrow Wilson--named for President Woodrow Wilson, who was in office when he was born--lived with his parents in the small house his father had built. He would have liked to be out on his own like his five older brothers and sisters were, but he didn''t see a way to do it. Woody was stuck with no money, no job, and no place to find work. He''d quit school five years earlier at the end of eighth grade and found temporary jobs here and there for a while. But for the last three years--well, the economy had been in ruins. Woody couldn''t even find enough work to help his parents buy food for the three of them, and it hurt to feel useless, especially with his father unemployed.
Thomas Wilson, Woody''s dad, had worked for years on the railroad that collected milk from dairy farms in Virginia''s hilly countryside and delivered it to the dairies that processed it in and near Washington, DC. Back and forth, every day--hundreds of gallons of milk. But people could no longer afford to buy all that milk or any of the other factory and farm goods that trains hauled.1 As a result, Tom Wilson lost his job. And he wasn''t alone. All over the United States, thousands and thousands of men and women faced unemployment as the big spending of the 1920s slowed and the economy slid into a depression: a depression that had worsened every day for three years. How had it happened? Economic depressions are like the flu: contagious. Suppose a factory closes and the workers lose their jobs.
Since they don''t have money coming in, they stop buying new clothes. After a while the clothing stores go out of business and those workers lose their jobs. The factory workers and the clothing store workers stop going to restaurants. Pretty soon the restaurants close and those workers lose their jobs. The spiral widens and widens, pulling everything down with it, like water swirling into a drain. There had been depressions before, but none like the one that started in 1929 and became known as the Great Depression ("great" meaning huge, not wonderful). The stock market--where people can buy small pieces, or shares, of businesses in hopes of making a profit when they sell their shares later--had crashed. Instead of growing, businesses failed and the shares many people had spent their savings on were now worthless.
Banks collapsed and lost their customers'' savings. Thousands of factories went bankrupt, leaving their workers without jobs. As everything fell apart, people wanted to know why it had all happened. But three years later, on Franklin Roosevelt''s Inauguration Day, ordinary people like the Wilsons didn''t care anymore about what had caused the Great Depression. They didn''t care why the stock market had collapsed or why banks lost all that money. They just wanted to know what the new president was going to do to fix things so they could find jobs again and be able to feed, clothe, and house their families. Economies and Depressions An economy is everything anyone in a country does to make, buy, and sell goods and services. That includes finding resources, building factories, hiring workers, trucking goods to stores, advertising, and on and on.
When the economy is doing well, most people can find jobs and afford decent housing and food. An economy that is doing very well is said to be in a boom. When economic activity slows down, people lose jobs, buy fewer things, and spend less money. That means that they can''t afford the things they normally buy, and businesses can''t sell everything they produce. An economic slowdown is called a recession. A very serious slowdown is called a depression. The worldwide depression that started in 1929 was the worst economic slowdown in modern history. It lasted for a decade and is known as the Great Depression.
At ten fifteen, President-Elect Roosevelt, his wife, Eleanor, and their invited guests entered St. John''s Episcopal Church near the White House for a brief service. Some members of the congregation saw that Mr. Roosevelt kept his head bowed for a very long time. Thinking about the economic crisis and the problems FDR would face as president, they decided that if he was praying for strength and guidance, he had good reason. Meanwhile, a mile east at the end of the National Mall, reporters and cameramen tried to ignore the bone-chilling wind as they set up their equipment on the grounds of the United States Capitol. The streets in Washington had been nearly empty earlier in the morning, but now people began to gather. Hundreds and then thousands of spectators made their way toward the lawn in front of the huge domed building.
They stamped their feet and pulled their scarves tighter against the cold as they waited for the ceremony to begin--but they didn''t say much to one another. One man said the crowd was "as silent as a group of mourners around a grave."2 The mood was the same around the rest of the country. On most Saturday mornings people would be busy with trips to the market, the barbershop, the bank, and more. But during the past week, the governors of most states had ordered all the banks to close. So many banks had failed--and so many others teetered on the edge of failing--that the governors feared violence and rioting. That had already happened in some places when banks couldn''t give customers the money that was supposed to be in their accounts. People had panicked.
With all the banks closed, even men and women who had money in a solid, safe bank couldn''t get to it. Businesses couldn''t pay their workers. Guests at fine hotels in Washington who''d come for the inauguration couldn''t cover the cost of their rooms. This was long before credit cards or ATMs, so what were people supposed to do? Just before eleven o''clock, Roosevelt arrived at the north entrance to the White House in the back of an open touring car, a convertible. He waited with a heavy blanket over his thin, braced legs as President Herbert Hoover came to join him. The two men rode toward the Capitol together, hardly speaking at all. There really wasn''t anything to say. Hoover had run for a second term against Roosevelt in November and been trounced.
He knew Americans were angry as well as frightened. During the presidential campaign, some people had even thrown rotten eggs at his car as he rode by.3 Four years earlier, Herbert Hoover had won election easily. But now voters blamed him for the terrible financial disaster that was destroying their lives and their country. The blame wasn''t entirely fair. The Depression began about eight months after Hoover took office in 1929. But the problems that led to it had been growing for several years. When the economy fell, Hoover actually did more to try to lift businesses and banks than any president had ever done before.
However, nothing he did seemed to help, and millions of Americans found themselves hungry and homeless. For three years President Hoover assured Americans that the economy was getting better even when everyone knew it was getting worse. He tried to explain that he was doing everything a president could do, and he meant what he said. He believed that "voluntary organizations and community service"--people helping one another--were the best way to get money and food to the needy. The federal government (the government of the whole country) didn''t belong in citizens'' personal economic lives.4 But the crisis was too deep. As Inauguration Day approached, Hoover told an aide, "We are at the end of our string. There is nothing more we can do.
"5 Franklin Roosevelt disagreed. He believed that in such terrible circumstances the federal government had.