Saul Bellow described his own experience of listening to President Roosevelt, hold the nation together, using only a radio and the power of his personality.

“I can recall walking eastward on the Chicago Midway… drivers had pulled over, parking bumper to bumper, and turned on their radios to hear Roosevelt. They had rolled down the windows and opened the car doors. Everywhere the same voice, its odd Eastern accent, which in anyone else would have angered Midwesterners. You could follow without missing a single word as you walked by. You felt joined to these unknown drivers, men and women…”

The nation needed the assurance of those Fireside Chats, the first of which was delivered on March 12, 1933. Between a quarter and a third of the work force was unemployed. Every bank in America had been closed for at least eight days. It’s hard for us to imagine. It was the hardest time of the Great Depression.

The “Fireside” was symbolic£¨ÏóÕ÷ÐÔµÄ; most of the chats came from a small room in the White House basement. Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, described the change that would come over him just before the broadcasts: “His face would smile and light up as though he were actually sitting on the front porch(ÃÅÀÈ) or in the parlor with them. People felt this, and came to respect and love him.”