How to read a document part 2 | The historian's toolkit | US History | Khan Academy

So in our last video, we started looking at this speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which he gave at his inauguration in March of 1933. We took some time to just identify what was happening in this speech and also the context of this speech coming at the height of the Great Depression. So now we're going to dive deeper into our textual analysis and explore the source, figure out what is going on with Roosevelt's language and what he's trying to say and what his biases are. So let's get a little more into what else goes on in this speech, not just the very famous opening paragraph.

We start here with saying, "uh, people are facing the grim problem of existence, and a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment." And then what comes next? Well, so let's hear all of this in context. So, "yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we still have much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty, and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion rejections by the hearts and minds of men. Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action and action now."

What's interesting about this paragraph is that there's a lot of Bible stuff going on in here. There's a lot of biblical references that serve to do, I think, a lot of work for Roosevelt in this inaugural address. As you talked, I just underlined the things that really stood out to me as maybe kind of the heart of what he was saying, and you're saying these are like biblical references. So what do you mean by that? Some of them are.

When we're talking about "plague of locusts" and "money changers" specifically, we're looking at Old and New Testament references respectively. In fact, later in the speech, he refers to money changers being chased out of our nation's temple, which is a deliberate reference to the New Testament.

Okay, so this is very grand. We love to hear this speech so much because it has that kind of ringing of authenticity in a way that maybe a modern speech does not. Some of that authenticity comes through association with epic literature and the Bible, so he's making these allusions to great biblical events, right? Like the plague of locusts being visited upon Egypt, which was like a great and terrible plague, and he's using that as a counterpoint to the misery of the present moment. He's saying, look, things could be worse. We could be ancient Egypt in the Bible and locusts could be eating all of our crops. Things are bad, but it's not like God himself is willing destruction upon us.

Okay, yeah, I think this is also another one of the really interesting things about the Great Depression. I mean, it's true that there were farm failures during the Dust Bowl, but on the whole, it's not like people stopped producing food. This wasn't a famine. What it was was a crisis of confidence where prices went down significantly, and so farmers could not make a living on their crops. It's not that they didn't have food; it's that they didn't have money.

Right. I also feel like there's a different aspect to the reason that he uses this biblical language here, and I think that's because it's very authoritative. Right? When you stand up in front of a group of people, and you know Roosevelt has this powerful voice which really resonates with people, and you speak like a preacher would speak, it says, "This is a man of authority. This is a man who perhaps is in touch with the moral authority associated with the Christian Bible."

Sure. I mean, for a very long time, authority was kind of correlated with your ability to quote chapter and verse. I mean, we're talking about a man who has just put his hand on a Bible in order to swear himself in, so it really makes him seem not only like he knows what he's talking about, but also that he's got a handle on the situation.

So, what we're saying is that by harnessing this language, he's trying to harness the authority that people have invested in the church by using the language of the church. So what we're doing here, I might call step three, which is to identify how an argument is made. Right? So we're looking at his rhetorical strategies and seeing how they're effective or, in perhaps another case, not effective in conveying his opinion.

And I say opinion at this point, what would we say that his opinion of the Great Depression is? That it's specific people's fault? That it is at the fault of not just this wave of panic, but on account of some greedy people, the unscrupulous money changers and the rulers of the exchanges? So he's blaming bankers for the Great Depression, which I think is fair. I mean, there's very little regulation in the 1920s that would prevent the kind of fraud that could lead to a collapse of banking. For example, insider trading is not illegal or—most people bought stocks on margin, which is a terrible idea. Which means you only have to put 10 percent of the value of a bond down before you buy it, which means that there's a lot of theoretical money floating around out there that's not backed by much real money.

Oh, that sounds like a terrible idea.

It was a terrible idea. So it's like buying stocks on credit?

Exactly.

Oh man. His argument is that first, things could be worse. Second of all, the reason things are bad is because of these people. Thing number three: here's how we're going to get back on track.

Alright, so this is where we get here at the end. So "the nation asks for action and action now," which I'd say is not only a mention of how he's going to get things done but a covert poke at Herbert Hoover for not doing much. And then he says, "our greatest primary task is to put people to work." Remember there's an unemployment rate of 25 percent. That is so many people. Our current unemployment rate is less than five percent to give you an idea. This is no unsolvable problem. If we face it wisely and courageously, it can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, trading the task as we retreated the emergency of a war. But at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

This is a radical idea. It is a really radical idea. And this is one reason why historians love to study the Great Depression and the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt because this is kind of the decade where we threw out the rule book. And I think what Roosevelt is saying here is that he was willing to try anything to conquer the Great Depression, and one of the things he tries is bringing the government into the process of giving people work.

Okay, so we've got a sense of what he's arguing and how he's arguing it, but let's take a higher-level look now. So I would say step four is seeing if you can analyze the potential bias of a source. And I want to be clear that all sources are biased. I think a common misconception is that if you're looking at a source, it's either biased or it's not, right? It's written by someone who has an agenda or someone who is completely impartial, and that is never the case.

What about a photograph? If I take a photograph of something or someone, isn't that an objective rendering of that person or object?

Well, it certainly shows what was there at that moment in time, but even photographers are making choices. Right? When you pick up a camera and you take a picture of a thing, you are taking a picture of that thing and not something else, which is in itself a form of bias to say, "I think this is important" or "this is what I want you to see."

So where we put the frame is a choice.

Yes. So, the question is, what is Roosevelt not saying in this speech? What is he not taking a photograph of? What's just outside the view of his camera? And why is he taking this photograph of a speech? Right? When he sat down to write this, what was motivating him? And what are some of the perhaps even less obvious factors about why he makes the argument that he does?

Well, I mean, obviously, the man has a bias in favor of his own politics. I mean, these are his administration's ideas, right? So he's going to be coming out in favor of those very strongly. So FDR is a Democrat, and there really haven't been many Democrats in office since before the Lincoln administration, sure, the 1860s. So that's a new thing. I mean, this is the popular base rejecting Hoover and the Republican Party because of the Great Depression, right? So he's bringing Democratic political ideas to the table here.

So he's trying to make a case for those political ideals in this speech. He was elected by a majority of American voters, but now he has to make the case to the rest of the United States. He has to make a case to the people that didn't elect him. Right? And so he's saying that direct recruiting by the government itself—government jobs—having the powers as if the depression were war, that is a case for really strong government intervention, which is a keystone of the Democratic Party compared to Republicans who generally advocate for a smaller government. So he's saying this is what's going to work. The Democratic platform of using the government in the economy and in social programs is what's going to work to get us out of this depression.

So he's making a big strong case for federalism.

Exactly. What I think is interesting, though, here is that there's a lot he doesn't say, and I think that's also important to look at when you're analyzing a primary source. There's a lot that you could talk about, but you make choices about what to talk about and what not to mention.

So what could you say he doesn't mention here?

He doesn't mention how any of this is going to work.

Yeah, I think that's maybe the biggest missing piece here, right? I mean, this is broad strokes. This is getting people on board, but nowhere does he say, "Okay, here's exactly what I'm going to do. Let me tell you how many dollars I'm going to spend, how many people I'm going to hire, what sort of cabinets I'm going to create." This is not a time for specifics. She says this is almost more of an inspirational speech to say "Okay, I gotcha."

Alright, so we've looked at the source, we've kind of analyzed its rhetorical strategies and its potential bias. So the last thing we might want to do with this is now think about how we could use it as a source.

Okay, so we're taking this primary source and we're turning it into a secondary source, right? So say that you are sitting down to write an essay about the Great Depression, and you've got to say, "Alright, now how can I use Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inaugural address to make my point in my essay?"

So let's say step five would say synthesize, perhaps it's my big word, as a tool for your own argument. So I would say that this speech is the frame that Roosevelt is putting on the Depression. This is how he is creating the narrative that he wants Americans to adopt.

Yeah, he is identifying the crisis, and this is how he wants people to see it.

Yeah, so this might be a great primary source to tell you about Roosevelt's strategy or his communication strategy. What might it not be a very good primary source to help you make an argument for?

It probably wouldn't be a very good primary source for the Republican legislative response. You know, you might want to go with Senator Reid Smoot of Utah for something like that, right? And it's probably not a great source for really diving into the specifics of the New Deal. Right? I mean he doesn't say anything about the Civilian Conservation Corps, he doesn't say anything about the National Recovery Administration. This is not the nuts and bolts of the New Deal, it's the grand idea behind it, right? He's trying to sell the New Deal.

Right, so I think it's a really powerful primary source for understanding the impetus behind the New Deal, but not the programs.

Sweet! Alright, well, thank you for bringing your sweet grammarian skills to the table as we look at Roosevelt's speech.

My pleasure, thank you for bringing your sweet historian skills to the table.

Kim and David out! Scholarly high five!