President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat on Banking” (March 12, 1933)
Eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his first national radio address or “fireside chat,” broadcast directly from the White House.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt Broadcasting his First Fireside Chat Regarding the Banking Crisis, from the White House, Washington, D.C.National Archives and Records Administration (6728517).
“We had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people’s funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This was, of course, not true in the vast majority of our banks, but it was true in enough of them to shock the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. It was the Government’s job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible. And the job is being performed.”
Source and Complete Text- Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Fireside Chat on Banking,” March 12, 1933. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
“At the time, the U.S. was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with between 25 and 33 percent of the work force unemployed. The nation was worried, and Roosevelt’s address was designed to ease fears and to inspire confidence in his leadership. Roosevelt went on to deliver 30 more of these broadcasts between March 1933 and June 1944. They reached an astonishing number of American households, 90 percent of which owned a radio at the time.
Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase “fireside chat” to describe Roosevelt’s radio addresses, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people about his hopes and dreams for the nation.”
