FEAR ITSELF
Official program for the inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner. Published by Inaugural Committee, (Wash DC), 1933.
On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States. He had won in a landslide over the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover. Millions tuned in to hear a live radio broadcast of FDR’s inaugural address. “So, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he assured the nation. “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work,” he proclaimed. “We must act and act quickly.” FDR’s first hundred days in office would bring a raft of relief programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations. The New Deal had begun.