Fifteen Broadsides Promoting the Reelection of Franklin Roosevelt

New York City: Allied Printing, 1936. Fifteen sheets of colored paper measuring approximately 7 ½ x 12 inches. Some marginal damage and wrinkling; overall excellent.. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for reelection against Kansas governor Alf Landon. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression, and during Roosevelt's first term he had enacted a number of sweeping reforms, collectively known as the New Deal, to combat it. Offered here are fifteen campaigning broadsides for Roosevelt's reelection. They focus on his "alphabet agencies"—the AAA, TVA, CCC, and so on—and contrast his presidency with that of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. In particular, they highlight the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which was purported to help farmers and manufacturers but instead led to retaliatory tariffs and worsened economic conditions, and point to higher prices and wages for farm workers under the New Deal. They describe how New Deal policies lowered electricity prices, provided relief for the unemployed and social security for the elderly, refinanced home loans and built low-cost housing, fought soil erosion, and much more. Though quite wordy, most are illustrated and feature slogans like "Compare Your New Deal with Your Old Deal". Roosevelt would win the election in a landslide, though it would take the outbreak of World War II to fully bring the US out of the economic crisis.

The broadsides are titled: "Keeping the Budget Unbalanced… But Keeping Children Fed / Families Together / Men at Work"; "Democratic Blackboard / Republican Blackmail"; "Trade is an Endless Chain. Farmers and Foreign Trade. From Us / To Us"; "Champions of Civil Service / Democratic Deeds Answer Republican Claims"; "Saved / More Than a Million Homes"; "'Let's Look at the Record' / Democratic Pledges and Performance"; "Roosevelt or Reaction? / Wager Earners - Your Vote is Your Answer"; "Don't Go Back and Backward with Republicans"; "Your Electric Bill, 1936"; "The Truth About Taxes"; "Our Wealth of Earth and Water"; "Farmers - Make Your Choice"; "Facts - Mr. Business Man"; "Through Tariff Walls / Higher, Higher They Climbed"; and "The Farmer Remembers Longer Than the Elephant".