FDR's First Fireside Chat: Public Confidence and the Banking Crisis. By Amos Kiewe. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. xiv, 153 pp. Cloth, $32.95, ISBN 978-1-58544-597-4. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-58544-607-0.)

Abstract

Scholars and journalists have often noted that psychology is 90 percent of the American economy. Whatever the percentage, there is little question that confidence is a primary factor in the nation's economic health, and the orderly functioning of the banking system is a central component of public confidence. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt ascended to the presidency on March 4, 1933, that system had virtually collapsed. Restoring faith in the nation's banks became a product, in no small measure, of Roosevelt's rhetoric. Amos Kiewe, a professor of communication and rhetorical studies at Syracuse University, provides a recounting of Roosevelt's rhetorical skills through the medium of his first fireside chat. Though Kiewe's work includes no notable new information, it contains some eminently useful material on the economic crisis of 1932–1933, particularly on Roosevelt's inspirational and clearly limned message to the American people about the stability and instability of banks. Kiewe opens with a reprinting of the chat of March 12, 1933. He then goes on to discuss Roosevelt's masterly use of the radio as governor of New York, with special emphasis on the so-called Forgotten Man Address. Then he examines, in turn, the U.S. financial situation in the winter of 1932–1933; the run on the banks and the multiple failures that followed; President Herbert Hoover's inability to rally the country, either through policy or rhetoric; the Hoover-Roosevelt discord during the interregnum preceding fdr's inauguration; the contribution of Hoover Treasury Department officials in the decision for a bank holiday, including the initiation of emergency banking legislation; and the role that holdover Hoover administration officials, especially Undersecretary of the Treasury Arthur A. Ballantine, played in the drafting of Roosevelt's first fireside chat. Of all of this material, some of the most interesting is in the ascribing of primary responsibility in the writing of this address. Finally, Kiewe dissects the chat itself and the important rhetorical contribution the president made to reviving confidence in the banks. His concluding section, in which he reprints some public and journalistic reactions to the speech, helps illustrate the chat's impact.