I just want to, in a certain sense self-reflect, or initiate a process of reflection, because actually what we are trying to discuss here with this seminar, is a vision for the 21st Century. We are not talking just about geopolitics, financial crisis—all of this; but, in a very fundamental way, we are struggling with the question: How can we make mankind more human? How can we make the political order on this planet more worthy of the dignity of man? And that has gone completely awry.

Now, for me, even though I'm a full-blooded politician and I'm working on this perspective of what we are doing here in the LaRouche movement for more than 35 years, I still look at the world, and say, "How could we come to this point? What went wrong with this world, that we have come to a point, where two continents are dying...

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This Week in History

January 24-30, 1934

Dancing for the President's Birthday: — How FDR Conquered Polio—Twice!

On the night of Jan. 30, 1934, there were 6,000 balls held across the nation to celebrate President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's birthday. The motivation for these "Birthday Balls," as they were called, was to raise money for the conquest of polio. President Roosevelt addressed the participants on a nationwide radio hookup, saying that he was speaking not so much as the President, but "more as the representative on this occasion of the hundreds of thousands of crippled children in our country."

Most of the more than $1 million raised by the balls went to create an endowment for the Warm Springs rehabilitation facility which Roosevelt had created in Georgia. In the following year, the proceeds from the Birthday Balls were spent differently—70% of the proceeds went to provide care and treatment for crippled Americans in the communities where the money had been raised. The other 30% was used for medical research to develop prevention and immunization against polio.

The story of how FDR created the conditions for the conquest of polio begins in 1921, when he was stricken with infantile paralysis. After the critical phase had passed, Roosevelt began an extensive correspondence with polio victims across America, and with the doctors treating them, a practice he continued throughout the rest of his life. At first, he was seeking advice and exchanging ideas, but gradually through his work at Warm Springs he became an innovator in rehabilitative medicine, and was providing advice to others.

Roosevelt first learned of Warm Springs in a letter from his friend George Foster Peabody, who was the co-owner of a run-down hotel there, a resort which had seen its heyday before the Civil War. Peabody told FDR about a young man, Lewis Joseph, who had been confined to a wheelchair by a serious childhood case of polio. But after Lewis swam in the mineral-rich, 88-degree waters of Warm Springs, he was able to abandon the wheelchair and walk with the aid of two canes.

Roosevelt, who had tried every possible available remedy for polio, to no avail, travelled to Georgia, and met with Lewis. FDR found that the buoyant water would hold him up so that he could actually walk in the pool and exercise for up to two hours. He set up residence in a cottage at Warm Springs, and when the Atlanta Journal learned of the former Vice Presidential candidate's presence at Warm Springs, it sent a reporter there to do a story. The article he wrote for the paper's Sunday magazine of Oct. 26, 1924, was entitled "Franklin D. Roosevelt Will Swim to Health," and was syndicated nationwide. Soon letters from polio sufferers poured into Warm Springs, and ten patients arrived at the train station unannounced.

The aging inn and cottages at Warm Springs were designed as a resort, not a medical facility, but Roosevelt threw himself, crippled as he was, into the task of organizing a transformation. Patients were boarded with the townspeople until repairs were made to the cottages and inn. FDR planned exercise sessions in the pool, and led them himself. By the summer of 1925, there were more than 25 patients at Warm Springs.

Roosevelt had ramps built into the old inn, supervised the repair of cottages, and designed a treatment table 12 inches below the surface of the pool, which became the model for the standard equipment of all water therapy. He also worked closely with the patients to create exercises and treatment procedures. In that process, he drew up a muscle chart which he used to test the patients' muscle strength on a regular basis, in order to record any gain or loss of strength from a particular therapy. The patients jokingly called him "Doctor Roosevelt." The appellation stuck, and reporters during the 1930s called FDR "Doctor New Deal," while during World War II, he was described as "Doctor Win-the-War."

In the spring of 1926, Roosevelt paid $200,000, more than two-thirds of his personal fortune, for the purchase of the Warm Springs Resort. He had planned to finance the rehabilitation side of Warm Springs by attracting wealthy vacationers to its resort. But the inn's healthy patrons complained constantly about having to share the pool or dine with the polio victims. So, in February of 1927, FDR, and his friend and law partner Basil O'Connor, established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation as a nonprofit permanent institution which could accept charitable contributions. The Foundation bought Warm Springs from Franklin Roosevelt for a one-dollar demand note, and the vacationers at the inn were sent packing.

Roosevelt then brought in an orthopedic specialist from the New York Department of Health to be the resident physician, along with a trained physical therapist. When the doctor's report showed that all 23 polio cases had shown marked improvement, the American Orthopedic Association, which at first had rebuffed Roosevelt, endorsed "the establishment of a permanent hydrotherapeutic center at Warm Springs."

Money now had to be raised for the center, especially to support patients who could not afford the treatment, even though it was given at cost. Roosevelt stated that he "wouldn't want anyone to be sent away for lack of money." A fundraising brochure was produced, which contained a description of what made Warm Springs so different: "To the special methods of treatment must be added the psychological effect of the group treatment, the stimulus caused by a number of people pursuing the same end, and each spurring the other on to more and better effort."

Because of the prejudice against polio sufferers and crippled people in general during the 1920s, most victims had been isolated, shut up in back bedrooms, or left languishing in grim "hospitals for the crippled." When they came to Warm Springs, fun, laughter. and companionship often worked magic on them, and increased their ability to function. The classes on using muscles for everyday practical activities were usually the occasion for much laughter, since severe paralysis can cause absurd predicaments and everyone could recognize themselves in their fellow-patients' difficulties.

As the Foundation's reputation grew, physical therapists from across the nation applied for admission to its training programs. The brace shop also acquired a national reputation for excellence and innovation in prosthetic devices. Many of the staff members published articles in professional medical journals. The physical plant grew as FDR called in architect Henry Toombs, and together they drew up a master plan for the next 20 years.

When Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York in 1928, he was able to spend much less time at Warm Springs, but he consulted frequently with O'Connor and maintained his fight to gain competent treatment for the paralyzed. His 1929 message to the New York Legislature contained a startling proposal: "I conceive it to be the duty of the State to give the same care to removing the physical handicaps of its citizens as it now gives to their mental development. Universal education of the mind is, after all, a modern conception. We have reached the time now when we must recognize the same obligation of the State to restore to useful activity those children and adults who have the misfortune to be crippled."

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