Franklin D. Roosevelt — Fear Itself

On March 4, 1933, a quarter of the American workforce was out of a job and banks across much of the country had shut their doors. Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath on the East Portico of the Capitol, gripped the lectern, and turned to the crowd.

The speech was short. In its first minute he said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Then he told them the nation asked for action, and action now.

Two days later he closed every bank in the country. Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act in a single sitting, and when the sound banks reopened the following Monday, deposits outran withdrawals.

Roosevelt looks left in a pale, silvery blue, the pince-nez picked out in a single fine line, the hair swept back, the collar and tie just visible. The silhouette fades toward the bottom of the sheet. The words come in low and heavy — four lines of bold red serif, ranged center, the largest type in the collection — so the sentence sits on the shoulders of the man who said it. The attribution below is small. The page is calm, and the type is not.