January 20, 1937: For the 1st time, following the 20th Amendment moving it from March 4, the Inauguration of the President of the United States takes place on January 20.
In spite of a steady rain, more people come to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt be sworn in for a 2nd term, by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, than came for his 1st Inauguration. Of course, thanks to his New Deal programs, the economy was considerably better, and more people had the means to come.
FDR had cut unemployment in half, from 31 percent when he took office on March 4, 1933 to 14 percent. But this still wasn't enough. Perhaps spurred on by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and her tours of the poorer sections of America -- she had coined the saying, "We are all better off when we are all better off" -- FDR said, using the long-established "I see" construction of political speeches:
I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves. They are making their country a good neighbor among the nations.
I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.
But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation, I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who, at this very moment, are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives, in city and on farm, continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot, and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory, and, by their poverty, denying work and productiveness to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope, because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out.
We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern. And we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on.
Challenging the greedy and supporting the needy was what FDR did best. He not only said it, but he'd spent the last few years -- including while he was Governor of New York -- trying to do something about it.
Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, later to be his Vice President and his successor, later said that FDR may have understated the case: It probably wasn't 1/3rd of the nation's people, 33.3 percent, that didn't have proper housing, clothing and food, it was more like 2/5ths, 40 percent -- and, in rural American, 1/2, 50 percent.
But FDR was also a canny politician. He knew that this speech would be considered radical then -- and, following the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and into the era of Donald Trump, it sounds radical now. But if he cited the figures that Truman suggested, it would sound like he was blaming his opponents. And that's not what he wanted to do: He wanted to challenge his opponents to join him in working to solve the problem.
More was done in his 2nd term. But it took America entering World War II, reducing the job market, to truly bring unemployment to heel.
Lyndon B. Johnson had been sworn into his 1st term in Congress, from a district in the "Hill Country" of South Texas, 17 days earlier. He considered FDR his political role model. In 1964, starting his 1st full year as President after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, LBJ declared "War On Poverty." As FDR did before him, he had significant, if only partial, success.
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January 20, 1937 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were scheduled for the NHL. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.
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