James ,I strongly disagree.FDR saved the working man during very hard times. I didn't live those times but my Father & Mother did. I grew up hearing the stories often. I remember many of those stories including this one. Being deep in West Virginia most were farmers,timbermen or coal miners at that time, there was little equipment most things were done by hand. The depression hit,banks in this area went broke, if one had money in them most of it and sometimes all of it was lost. No FDIC back then...There was a new gas pipeline to be laid from my grandfathers farm over several miles to a station. The word spread by mouth, No phones, No internet, No TV that the pipeline would hire a crew first of the week, hundreds of men showed up needing a job, about fifty were hired and here is how they were picked, the superintendent stood on the porch of a large tool shed and said " The first fifty men to come out with both a shovel and a maddock have a job the rest go back home. My grandfather watched as men fought for their lives literally to get tools.. Most left unemployed and bruised or bleeding just trying to get a job that paid ten cents per day. Then the programs came out and most of those men found work with the WPA they called it here, they did road work and built outhouses.Folks in West Virginia would have watched their families starve along with themselves if it had not been for FDR..
I have heard my Mother tell of the time her Father needed to mail a letter and didn't have the two cents to pay for the stamp. Can any of us truly even imagine not having TWO pennies ???????
My parents never got clear past that fear, They always stayed very conservative and deep down were always braced for the next great depression.
