Thus to the New Dealers what was needed to transform American industrial relations was a new public philosophy.
Corporations are equally dependent on an adequate supply of labor and good relations with workers. Just as the national government relies on corporations for economic prosperity, so do corporations rely on the national government for fair regulation of markets, for political stability and sometimes for subsidies of capital (money) and land. Many early supporters of Roosevelt's agenda as president, called New Dealers, believed it was archaic to think of the modern corporation as purely an independentĪctor in the nation's economic system. Defenders of the old economic structure, Roosevelt declared in his first inaugural address, had tried, but failed in their efforts to maintain an outdated economic tradition. In 1932 campaign speeches, Roosevelt called for a new role of government to assist business in the development of a new economic system.
In fact nothing short of a new economic order would suffice. The language in Roosevelt's first inaugural address clearly alluded to a mandate for sweeping reform. The possibility of piecemeal improvements of the old economic structure was rejected. But the moneychangers, Roosevelt went on to proclaim, had "fled from their high seats in the temple of civilization." No longer esteemed as the oracles of economic faith, the economic depression attested to the failure of the old economic order. The business elites, whose aims focused on unregulated financial markets, had neglected the greater economic good, serving only to precipitate the economic collapse. As a result of the Great Depression, the boom years of the 1920s now became commonly viewed as the result of greedy excess. Roosevelt (served 1933–1945) denounced the "rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods," the "unscrupulous money changers," for failing to preserve the prosperity of the nation. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, President Franklin D. National Industrial Recovery Act 1933-1935 Introduction