SpeechesKenneth WebbMarch 24, 2026Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, Madison Square Garden, New York, New York City, "The forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match", New York 31 October 1936Comment

Speeches F.D. Roosevelt, New York, 31 October 1936 ~ ~ The Forces of Selfishness and of Lust for Power met their Match

SPEECHES

'The Forces of Selfishness and Lust for Power Met Their Match'

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Madison Square Garden

31 October 1936

‘The forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match’

The new deal had created 6,000,000 jobs. Roosevelt had given America ideas, leadership and help. The depression had been mitigated. The spectre of unemployment no longer haunted the land. As Adolf Hitler instituted his German dictatorship and Benito Mussolini conquered Abyssinia, Roosevelt had vindicated American democracy and rescued the profit system.

Thus, wherever he spoke during the 1936 presidential campaign, he was greeted as a saviour. His last major speech was in Madison Square Garden in New York City and was considered his best of the campaign. His full speech- writers as well as the president spent more time on it than on any other as he ordered them to take off all gloves. The speech summed up the campaign as well as the record of the previous four years and showed Roosevelt’s supremely confident in the creativity of the new deal and determined to combat and defeat the forces that still opposed him, these opposition forces being the business leaders who thought that it was now their turn tool America again.

We would do well to remember this last observation in reviewing the record of the current 47th president.

The mounting cheers during each shouted sentence of his preparation rose to tumultuous applause as Roosevelt reached his final conclusion.

Brian MacArthur Editor
Speeches The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Speeches
First published by Penguin 1993 and republished 1999

Copyright © Brian MacArthur, 1992, 1993, 1999
All Rights Reserved

I submit to you a record of peace; and on that record a wealth-founded expectation for future peace - peace for the individual, peace for the community, peace for the nation, and peace with the world.

Tonight I call the roll - the role of honour of those who stood with us in 1932 and still stand with us today.

Written on it are the names of millions who never had a chance - men at starvation wages, women in sweatshops, children at looms.

Written on it are the names of those who despaired, young men and young women for whom opportunity had become a will-o’-the-wisp.

Written on it are the names of farmers whose acres yielded only bitterness, business men whose books were portents of disaster, home owners who were faced with eviction, frugal citizens whose savings were insecure.

Written there in large letters are the names of countless other Americans of all parties and all faiths, Americans who had eyes to see and hearts to understand, whose consciences were burdened because too many of their fellows were burdened, who looked on these things four years ago and said, “This can be changed. We will change it.”

We still lead that army in 1936. They stood with us then because in 1932 they believed. They stand with us today because in 1936 they know. And with them stand millions of new recruits who have come to know.

Their hopes have become our record.

We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the bread lines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organised money is just as dangerous as Government by organised mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness end of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

And what did republican leaders do in reply?

Republican leaders seized upon Roosevelt’s attack on the forces of reaction that had sought to block his programme and said he was trying to make himself “master” of the American people, but Roosevelt won every state except Main and Vermont and polled more than twenty-seven million votes against his opponent Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas, who got more than sixteen million votes.

As I look at events this week, this month ~ 23 March 2026 ~ it is as if I am whisked back in time to that incredible night in Madison Square Garden in New York City on 31 October 1936.

For the free world, this speech must have been a lighted torch, a signal of hope, a warning, also reassuring, and one of preparedness as people would have felt upon seeing the torches lighted all along the English Channel in 1588 upon sighting the Spanish Armada’s approach, and the invasion forces that dared to challenge the freedom of these British Islands.

In the grounds of Tewkesbury Abbey - my parish church as I live within its diocese - stands the Giant Copper Beech. Immoveable. Glorious. A reminder that dictators arrive and then depart, authoritarian regimes out of former powerful democracies quietly steal away in the darkness of night when freedom and democracy regain the ground.

This tree was planted in 1588 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in grateful recognition of the Nation’s freedom when the Armada was destroyed, no invader setting foot upon these shores.