Change in Mentality
"At the beginning of the New Deal, they called it a revolution. Then they began to say it wasn't a revolution.. what really happened was a revolution in point of view. We backed into the Twentieth Century describing our actual economy in terms of the small enterprises of the Nineteenth Century. "
- Gardiner C. Means, 1970
Terkel, Studds "Hard Times:An Oral History of The Great Depression" W.W. Norton & Co. 1970
- Gardiner C. Means, 1970
Terkel, Studds "Hard Times:An Oral History of The Great Depression" W.W. Norton & Co. 1970
Following the New Deal, a revolution in American mentality took place. The former idea that The Supreme Court had been supporting for the past 50 years, that any regulation or intervention in the economy was an attack on individuals rights was forever changed by Roosevelt's plan. Americans began to see the fate of the market as being in their own hands, and the ability to correct unfavorable situations directly in their reach. The government now had a responsibility for making our economy run. A stronger free market emerged, along with ideas such as "Ford-ism" and industrialization.
"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."
- Franklin Roosevelt
From the undelivered Thomas Jefferson Day Speech to be delivered on April 14, 1945.
"We were an economy of huge corporations, with a high degree on concentrated control. It was an economy of huge corporations, with a high degree of concentrated control. It was an economy that was in no sense described by classical theory. What Roosevelt and the New Deal did was to turn about and face the realities... A hundred years from now when historians look back on it, they will say it was a big corner turned. People agreed that old things didn't work. What ran through the whole New Deal was finding a way to make things work."
- Gardiner C. Means( Co-author of "The Modern
Corporation and Private Property"
Terkel, Studds "Hard Times:An Oral History of The Great Depression" W.W. Norton & Co. 1970
"This country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold persistent experimentation.It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." |
"I was enthusiastic when Roosevelt came in. I thought; we're in serious trouble. Something has to be done, and here is a man who is going to do it." |