The Great Depression - Progress and Pushback | 5

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After two of President Roosevelt’s closest advisors competed to create a new federal jobs program, the White House launched one of Roosevelt's keystone initiatives: the Works Progress Administration. Under this program, millions of Americans earned government salaries at a wide range of blue- and white-collar jobs — everything from building post offices and painting murals to delivering library books by horseback to rural communities.

However, the federal government’s increased reach worried FDR’s opponents, especially a wildly popular Catholic radio preacher. Father Charles Coughlin once helped FDR get elected, but as the president’s power increased, Coughlin turned up the volume on hateful and anti-Semitic undertones in his attacks.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to American History Tellers add free on Amazon Music,
0:05.6	download the app today.
0:07.0	Imagine this early morning on a fall day in 1937.
0:16.4	The sun's just starting to come up over the ridge ahead of you.
0:19.5	The contents of your saddlebag shift and sway with each step of your horse.
0:23.4	A thin column of smoke rises into the Kentucky sky.
0:27.2	You crest the ridge and see a small creekside cabin in the valley below.
0:31.2	A woman sweeping her front porch stops what she's doing and looks up.
0:34.5	She turns to the cabin and calls inside.
0:36.7	Well, you, look, ladies here.
0:38.9	When you're a few feet away from the porch, you rain in, step from the saddle, and tie
0:42.6	the horse to a nearby post.
0:44.5	Teenage boy walks out in dirty wool pants in a flannel shirt.
0:47.9	Hi there, Mary.
0:48.9	Good morning, Bill.
0:50.5	How are you?
0:51.5	Oh, swell, Mary.
0:52.5	And how's your ma?
0:53.5	Oh, she's fine.
0:54.9	She's still yammering about that darn radio program she heard last Sunday.
0:58.4	You know, the one with a angry preacher who hates Roosevelt so much?
1:02.2	You grit your teeth.
	...

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