NARRATOR: When Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated as president 80 years ago, on March 4, 1933, the country was in the grips of the Great Depression. Several million Americans heard Roosevelt's address, which was broadcast on radio nationwide. He had won a landslide victory over the incumbent Herbert Hoover. And in his speech, he began laying the groundwork for his New Deal policies and economic programs. This five-minute archival film is from the FDR Presidential Library.

[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- [INAUDIBLE] President of the United States, [INAUDIBLE], Franklin D. Roosevelt. As I look out, [? there ?] are 150,000 [? faces ?] [INAUDIBLE].

- So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves, which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours, we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels. Taxes have risen. Our ability to pay has fallen. Government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income.

The means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade. The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side. Farmers find no market for their produce. And the savings of many years and thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence. And an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence-- their failure and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the heart and minds of men. True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition.

Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading carefully for restored confidence. They only know the words of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision. And when there is no vision, the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truth. The measure of restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values, more noble than mere monetary profit. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money. It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profit.

These dark-- recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political positions are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit. And there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.

NARRATOR: That was a portion of Franklin Roosevelt's March 4, 1933 inaugural address, the first of four inaugurations.