![]() It was not unusual for the White House to receive forty thousand letters from around the country after a broadcast. By the late 1930s, around five hundred of the nation's eight hundred radio stations were carrying the speeches, and estimates of the audience range as high as one hundred million. The first fire-side chat was carried by around 150 radio stations and entered an estimated twenty million homes (reaching perhaps sixty million Americans). ![]() The impact of these talks on the American people would be difficult to overestimate. He also sometimes changed words here and there as he delivered the speech. He would dictate initial versions of certain passages, review each draft meticulously, require changes and rearrangements, and practice speaking the sentences until he had the material just the way he wanted it. But the accounts of all the participants agree that the president himself was an active participant in the speechwriting process. The wartime fireside chats had the additional advantage of two legendary American writers, Robert Sherwood and Archibald MacLeish. Some of them were political operatives with other duties, advisers such as Samuel Rosenman, Harry Hopkins, Rexford Tugwell, Adolph Berle, and a half dozen others. Roosevelt had the benefit of a team of talented speechwriters. The president would be wheeled into the room about ten minutes before airtime, carrying his reading copy and smoking the usual cigarette. Normally the president invited a small audience to be present-twenty or thirtyįriends, civil servants, and houseguests, all seated on folding chairs. About a third of the talks were given on Sunday evenings. Most of the fireside chats were delivered by Roosevelt from the diplomatic reception room on the first floor of the White House, seated at a table loaded with microphones from the major radio networks. Although Roosevelt occasionally shared bad news in the fireside chats, their prevailing tone was patriotic, inspirational, and upbeat-the president of the United States trying, in his neighborly way, to encourage optimism, pride in America, and confidence in the future. The final eighteen talks (aired from September 1939 through January 1945) addressed the issues and dangers raised by the war in Europe and, once the United States entered, reported on the progress toward ultimate victory. The first thirteen of these radio talks (aired from March 1933 through July 1938) were devoted to domestic policy, explaining aspects of the New Deal and asking for political support for his various programs. ![]() I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, and why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be." ItĪddressed the banking crisis, and the everyday language and easy tone of the opening sentences set the pattern for all the fireside chats that were to follow: "My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking-to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. The first fireside chat was given on March 12, 1933, only a week after Roosevelt's inauguration. Roosevelt, who had experimented with this use of the radio when he was governor of New York, was a master of that form of communication he had a clear, bell-like voice and developed an unpretentious and good-humored style that endeared him to millions of Americans across the country. These speeches were intended to be relatively brief and informal reports to the American people, delivered in a conversational tone and in simple, unadorned language. ![]() The public, the press, and Roosevelt himself adopted the homey appellation, and the label stuck. During his twelve years as president, Franklin Roosevelt delivered thirty-one radio addresses called "fireside chats," a name coined in May 1933, immediately before the second of them, by Harry M. ![]()
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