President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s October 31, 1936, campaign speech to a cheering audience in New York City’s Madison Square Garden culminated an aggressive campaign in which the Democratic incumbent drew enormous enthusiastic crowds. The substantive issue in the campaign was whether to continue to go forward with the New Deal reforms, particularly those adopted as part of what scholars call the Second New Deal, or to turn away from these changes as radical and dangerous to the idea of limited government. Although unemployment remained high, the New Deal had stimulated a significant degree of recovery from the low point of the depression, provided relief and government employment to millions of Americans, and instituted substantial social and regulatory reforms, most important the establishment of Social Security and a labor relations system designed to assist workers in establishing unions and winning collective bargaining rights.