Here are two people with whom I wouldn’t mind sharing a dinner table—Eleanor Roosevelt and Frank Sinatra. These two are enjoying a dinner together in Los Angeles, with an FDR doll along for company.
Artist J. Theodore Johnson created this 1937 mural of farmers for the Works Progress Administration—an organization created to employ millions of Americans to carry out public works projects. A great deal of these projects were aimed at promoting American art and culture with the hope they would give more Americans access to what President Franklin Roosevelt described as “an abundant life.”
You can learn more about the New Deal arts projects in the online exhibition “A New Deal for the Arts.”
“All people have … a vital interest in food.”
On June 7, 1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the delegates of the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture. He praised all those in attendance for their commitment to and diligence in assessing the global food supplies. Their work garnered information on the world’s ability to provide for all its citizens and what could be done to repair any discrepancies. Read through the address and see how Roosevelt thought food reform would help economies and morale.
And all people have, in the literal sense of the word, a vital interest in food. That a child or an adult should get the nourishment necessary for full health is too important all over the world—too important a thing to be left to mere chance.
