Skip to main content

Jerry Monaco's Library tagged history   View Popular

Fireside Chat 12: On the Recession (April 14, 1938) - Miller Center of Public Affairs

  • We are a rich Nation; we can afford to pay for security and prosperity without having to sacrifice our liberties into the bargain.



    In the first century of our republic we were short of capital, short of workers and short of industrial production, but we were rich, very rich in free land, and free timber and free mineral wealth. The Federal Government of those days rightly assumed the duty of promoting business and relieving depression by giving subsidies of land and other resources.



    Thus, from our earliest days we have had a tradition of substantial government help to our system of private enterprise. But today the Government no longer has vast tracts of rich land to give away and we have discovered, too, that we must spend large sums of money to conserve our land from further erosion and our forests from further depletion. The situation is also very different from the old days, because now we have plenty of capital, banks and insurance companies loaded with idle money; plenty of industrial productive capacity and many millions of workers looking for jobs. It is following tradition as well as necessity, if Government strives to put idle money and idle men to work, to increase our public wealth and to build up the health and strength of the people --to help our system of private enterprise to function again.



    It is going to cost something to get out of this recession this way but the profit of getting out of it will pay for the cost several times over. Lost working time is lost money. Every day that a workman is unemployed, or a machine is unused, or a business organization is marking time, it is a loss to the Nation. Because of idle men and idle machines this Nation lost one hundred billion dollars between 1929 and the Spring of 1933, in less than four years. This year you, the people of this country, are making about twelve billion dollars less than you were last year.



    If you think back to the experiences of the early years of this Administration you will remember the doubts and fears expressed about the rising expenses of Government. But to the surprise of the doubters, as we proceeded to carry on the program which included Public Works and Work Relief, the country grew richer instead of poorer.



    It is worthwhile to remember that the annual national people's income was thirty billion dollars more last year in 1937 than it was in 1932. It is true that the national debt increased sixteen billion dollars, but remember that in that increase must be included several billion dollars worth of assets which eventually will reduce that debt and that many billion dollars of permanent public improvements -- schools, roads, bridges, tunnels, public buildings, parks and a host of other things meet your eye in every one of the thirty-one hundred counties in the United States.



    No doubt you will be told that the Government spending program of the past five years did not cause the increase in our national income. They will tell you that business revived because of private spending and investment. That is true in part, for the Government spent only a small part of the total. But that Government spending acted as a trigger, a trigger to set off private activity. That is why the total addition to our national production and national income has been so much greater than the contribution of the Government itself.
  • The Government contribution of land that we once made to business was the land of all the people. And the Government contribution of money which we now make to business ultimately comes out of the labor of all the people. It is, therefore, only sound morality, as well as a sound distribution of buying power, that the benefits of the prosperity coming from this use of the money of all the people ought to be distributed among all the people -- the people at the bottom as well as the people at the top. Consequently, I am again expressing my hope that the Congress will enact at this session a wage and hour bill putting a floor under industrial wages and a limit on working hours -- to ensure a better distribution of our prosperity, a better distribution of available work, and a sounder distribution of buying power.
  • 2 more annotations...
03 Nov 09

Powell's Books - PowellsBooks.BLOG - A City Unbottled

  • Her Parthenon, published in 2003, wove unfamiliar episodes in the temple's history, notably its life as a mosque starting in the fifteenth century, into the tale of the monument's makeover into the quintessential icon of Western civilization. The Roman Triumph, from 2007, reassessed the sources for the eye-popping imperial parade billed as a triumph
  • legalistic, institution-minded bias of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians of the classical era attributed to the civic life of imperial Rome a far more regularized and ideologically orthodox dimension than it is likely to have enjoyed through most of its existence.
  • 18 more annotations...
07 Aug 09

Queens Library - The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy

  • The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy


    By Jenkins, Sally

    Author Stauffer, John
  • The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War--the "real" South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man's war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War. Knight's life story mirrors the little-known story of class struggle in the South--and it shatters the image of the Confederacy as a unified front against the Union.

Budd Schulberg, Screenwriter, Dies at 95 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

His 1950 novel, “The Disenchanted,” grew out of his attempt 12 years earlier to collaborate on a screenplay with F. Scott Fitzgerald, then in a long alcoholic tailspin. Mr. Schulberg, who was 24 at the time, had turned in a mediocre first draft for a film to be set at Dartmouth, called “Winter Carnival.”

www.nytimes.com/...06schulberg.html - Preview

schulberg movies history

  • “They say that you testified against your friends, but once they supported the party against me, even though I did have some personal attachments, they were really no longer my friends,” he said. “And I felt that if they cared about real freedom of speech, they should have stood up for me when I was fighting the party.”
  • After his testimony Mr. Schulberg came back with the story and screenplay for “On the Waterfront.” The idea grew out of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles written for The New York Sun about the power of mob bosses on the New York docks. Mr. Schulberg did months of independent research. He befriended a crusading priest, the Rev. John M. Corridan, who fought for the dockworkers’ cause and became a model for Father Barry.
  • 7 more annotations...
08 Jun 09

Boston Review — Home

  • While this has some validity, presidential buyer’s remorse is as old as the process itself and may develop even when a president nominates a lifelong ally or a well-known public figure. By the time of his nomination, Earl Warren had established himself as a dedicated conservative: he had been the attorney general and three-term Republican governor of California and Thomas Dewey’s running mate in the famously narrow loss to Harry Truman and Alben Barkley. In short, Earl Warren hardly seemed an unknown quantity when Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him as Chief Justice in 1953; and yet it was Earl Warren—the same Earl Warren who as attorney general during World War II backed the internment of Japanese citizens —who as chief justice inaugurated a liberal revolution on the court and became a champion of minority rights.
  • The conventional story also misses the fact that justices often drift slowly over their tenures—not as if they were rudderless but as if their ideological bearings changed mid-course. Despite his own personal aversion to the death penalty, Blackmun took decades to move to the left on capital punishment. Having begun his time on the bench upholding death-penalty statutes, he ended his career with one of the most stark conclusions in the Supreme Court records—a declaration in Callins v. Collins that he would “no longer tinker with the machinery of death.” Similarly, Justice David Souter, known at first as the “stealth justice” for his low profile, initially emerged as a moderate conservative; a few years into his tenure, however, his opinions took a turn leftward. This gradual shift is not uncommon. Indeed, according to Lee Epstein, justices tend to vote in accordance with the political philosophies of the presidents who appoint them during their first five to ten years on the court, but after that the correlation fades considerably.
  • 22 more annotations...
03 May 09

Latest News - Leaked Torture Memo: Full Text

  • In order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, 18 U.S.C. § 2340A (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority. Congress lacks authority under Article I to set the terms and conditions under which the President may exercise his authority as Commander-in-Chief to control the conduct of operations during a war. The President's power to detain and interrogate enemy combatants arises out of his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief. A construction of Section 2340A that applied the provision to regulate the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief to determine the interrogation and treatment of enemy combatants would raise serious constitutional questions. Congress may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield. Accordingly, we would construe Section 2340A to avoid this constitutional difficulty, and conclude it does not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.

FDR Madison Square Garden Speech 1936

This is a recording and transcript of Franklin Roosevelt's1936 campaign speech where he says of the rich and powerful "They are unanimous in their hatred of me and I welcome their hatred." The difference between an Obama and a Roosevelt can be seen clearly. Obama wants to be liked by everyone, even the rulers and the rich. Roosevelt knew the rich would hate him if he tried to do anything to change the rules of the game. Roosevelt saved capitalism in spite of the capitalists who opposed him. But he knew the ruling class from the inside and knew that to do something decent he would provoke the hated of the rich, even if his actions were ultimately to the benefit of the system from which the rich benefit. It takes a person who knew the ruling class intimately to oppose them in this way. Obama on the other hand is needful of the respect of the rulers and will never welcome the hatred of the rich, even though this is exactly what a reformer needs to do in order to win reforms.

history.sandiego.edu/...fdr1936.html - Preview

FDR New Deal Madison Square Garden speech political speech history Roosevelt class struggle ruling class hatred

  • For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.



    For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.



    We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace‹business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.



    They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.



    Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me‹and I welcome their hatred.



    I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
  • 8 more annotations...
29 Mar 09

Julius Caesar the life and times of the people's dictator AquaBrowser Library ® - Queens Library

  • "In this profile, Luciano Canfora offers a radically new interpretation of one of the most controversial figures in history. The result of a comprehensive study of the ancient sources, Julius Caesar: The Life and Times of the People's Dictator paints a detailed portrait of this complex man and the times in which he lived. Basing his argument on many years of research, Canfora focuses on what we actually know about Caesar, the man of politics and war, in a narrative chronologically structured around the events in Caesar's life. The result is a full biographical portrait of the dictator whose mission of Romanization lies at the very heart of modern Europe."--BOOK JACKET.

BBC - History - Roman Empire: The Paradox of Power

  • Roman Empire is the sheer diversity of the geographical and cultural landscapes
  • a European empire in the sense that it controlled most of the territory of the member states of the present EU, except part of Germany and Scandinavia
  • 4 more annotations...

BBC - History - Roman Empire: The Paradox of Power

  • Again, we find ourselves gazing back at the Roman world not as a model, but as an alien and terrifying alternative. No concept here of human rights: slavery required the systematic use of physical punishment, judicial torture and spectacular execution. From the crucifixion of rebel slaves in their thousands to the use of theatrical enactments of gruesome deaths in the arena as a form of entertainment, we see a world in which brutality was not only normal, but a necessary part of the system. And since the Roman economy was so deeply dependent on slave labour, whether in chained gangs in the fields, or in craft and production in the cities, we cannot wonder that modern technological revolutions driven by reduction of labour costs had no place in their world.
28 Mar 09

Populism and Paranoia: Interesting Times: Online Only: The New Yorker

  • Populism could spring up on the right and the left, and at times—as in the case of Father Coughlin and his Depression-era Social Justice Movement—it was hard to tell them apart. “The phenomenon I am concerned with,” Hofstadter wrote, “involves not so much the progression from one political position to another as the continued coexistence of reformism and reaction; and when it takes the form of a progression in time, it is a progression very often unattended by any real change in personal temper.”
  • what Hofstadter, citing Theodor Adorno, called “status politics,” which we now call cultural politics.
  • 3 more annotations...
1 - 20 of 993 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo