November 4 - Will Rogers is Born

On this day in Labor History the year was 1879. 

 

That was the day that Will Rogers was born in Oologah, Indian Territory, in what later became Oklahoma. 

 

Rogers grew up on a ranch, and by 10thgrade had dropped out of school to be a cowboy. 

 

Skilled with a lasso, he became a cowboy entertainer first in vaudeville then in silent film. 

 

Rogers also had a syndicated column and a radio show where he became a popular political commentator. 

 

With quick wit and humor Rogers helped to shape public opinion. 

 

He brought humor to serious issues in a way later echoed by the likes of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. 

 

Rogers often talked about the plight of the American worker. 

 

In 1931 he was asked to give a radio address for President Herbert Hoover’s Organization on Unemployment. 

 

Rogers expressed the urgency of the unemployment that was sweeping the nation during the Great Depression. 

 

He said, “The only problem that confronts this country today is at least 7,000,000 people are out of work. 

 

That’s our only problem.  There is no other one before us at all.  It's to see that every man that wants to is able to work, is allowed to find a place to go to work, and also to arrange some way of getting a more equal distribution of the wealth in country…So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world—there’s not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of it than any other country ever had on the face of the earth—and yet we’ve got people starving.”