Middletown, Orange County, New York

To most Americans, both of these totalitarian ideologies seemed clearly repugnant to democracy. Democracy was not putting beans on the table, however. Among intellectuals and even some radical workers, Communism seemed to offer a viable alternative to what was apparently the nation’s failed capitalism. Slowly but surely, the gunpowder scent of revolution tainted American air. The Epoch of FDR Born to wealth in Hyde Park, New York, in 1882, Franklin Delano Roosevelt never experienced poverty firsthand. The product of Groton School, Harvard University, and Columbia University Law School, young Roosevelt became a Wall Street lawyer. He devoted some of his time to free legal work for the poor and by this means came to know and sympathize with the plight of the so-called common man. FDR worked his way to prominence in Dutchess County (New York) politics and was appointed assistant secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration. In 1920, FDR was running mate to James M. Cox, the democratic presidential hopeful who lost to Republican Warren G. Harding ...»