History Repeats Itself

12-28-1932 - Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan

The year 1932 to some is the year of the Lindbergh kidnapping. To some, the year of the Shanghai-Manchuria Adventure. To some it was the third year of the Great Depression. But in the United States, at least, it might well be named the Year of the Forgotten Man.

It was his year. It was he who swung the country from conservative Republicanism to mildly progressive Democracy by a plurality of nearly seven million votes. It was he who swung the American Legion from anti-bonus to pro-bonus, the American Federation of Labor from passive to aggressive. It was he who marched on Washington for the bonus, he who ran the farm strike. It was he, and nearly 12,000,000 of him who were unemployed, who set the country pondering and planning for the future.

Without precedent was the overturn by which, casting well over 33 million Democratic votes, the Forgotten Man climbed into the political driver’s seat. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and an overwhelming Democratic House and Senate was the common man’s effort to cope with conditions he had never seen before.