This optimism, however, as it soon turned out, had false roots. For instance, when the US Federal Reserve's conceptualization of the need to discourage stock speculation led it to attempt a raise of interest rates the result was an initial recession. This recession had a rather drastic impact on the collective organizational sector and consequently, the national economy. The recession had firms that had been caught unaware terminating their plans of further purchase of producer durables that, in turn, led to the inevitable decline of the production rates of firms making producer durables.

The high rate of inconsistency within the job market, furthermore, made for a prevalence of would be consumers being left unemployed and robbed of their purchasing power. And while this fall in the collective purchasing power of wannabe consumers impacted the organizational sector considerably; of even more deteriorative relevance was the fact that consumers who did have the jobs cut back on their purchases of consumer durables due to the persistent economic uncertainty that had continuously fretting about the tenure of their jobs. The resultant fall in demand made for a fall in prices and deflation, both ailments that were further contributed to as a result of the inevitable decline of overall production rates (Eagles, 1986).

A phenomenon rendered rather unsurprising when considering it in light of the primeval nature of the era and the society is that this slump resulted in a significant degree of religious propaganda being broadcast with an essence of being economically and politically relevant. There were a significant handful of people lobbying the idea of socio-political and economic revolutions propagated via societal welfare and equality.

The popularity of their lobby, moreover, was considerably promoted as a result of the fact that the crash of the stock market (DeLong, 1997) had caused a large number of workers in Lincoln, Nebraska and Iowa to lose their jobs. People began to anxiously ponder anew about big businesses, power held in the hands of an anonymous few thousands of miles away and the means to get that power so as to end the strife they were facing.

They jumped to whatever propaganda, religious or political, they saw as yielding even the slightest possibility of redemption. This also renders understandable; moreover, reason why the masses flocked to Father Charles Couglin's proposed ideology when he resorted to taking his suggestions on the radio waves. The people of the time, with the working class in particular, had become a desperate lot on account of the uncertainty that they saw stretching out on all social fronts.

Father Charles Couglin & his radio program
Born and bred in Canada, Charles Coughlin eventually joined the priesthood after which he moved to Royal Oak, Michigan in the 1920s. He started a small radio program on WJR Station in Detroit when his new church needed to raise funds to pay off a diocesan loan that had been needed in order to refurbish the Church after it suffered damage. His program was comprised, initially, of nothing more aggressive than short sermons and homilies concluding with the church’s need for donations so as to pay of the loan.

The beginning of the Great Depression, however, saw the tone and theme of Couglin’s sermons on air changing rather dramatically. By the early 1930s the flavor of his broadcasts had shifted totally from theology to economics and politics. He began to stress more vocally upon socialism than religion and gradually became increasingly anti Semitic. In addition to this, moreover, his understanding of the inconsistence within the socio-economic sector (s) induced him to the use the situation to his advantage in as much as proposing programs that would ‘restore power to local communities and the individual’ (Brinkley, 1983).

He proposed social justice upon the grounds of asserting the existence of what he termed as his social gospel, a critique of the distribution of wealth that was melded into an ideology built upon an ‘imagined Jewish banking conspiracy’ (Harvey & Goff, 2004). While he was initially a good friend of Roosevelt and supported him on his radio program, Couglin and the president eventually fell out over several issues.

It would be noteworthy to here consider that when Couglin first turned from theology to politics and social activism, he overtly supported Roosevelt with the coining of the phrase ‘Roosevelt or Ruin’ (Hadden & Swann, 2004). He took to offering radical economic theories to the president as to how the latter should deal with the depression and expected to be taken in as a personal advisor. However, this all ended when Roosevelt accepted neither Coughlin's personal approaches nor his economic theories.

The relevance of Couglin’s program to the Great Depression
This led to Coughlin bitterly taking his revenge in as much as forming the National Union for Social Justice and its attendant political branch, the Union Party, to unseat the president in the 1936 elections; his plans were unsuccessful. However, a good orator with an exceptionally modulated voice, Couglin effectually took advantage of the economic situation during the era and soon established himself as one of the most influential names of the period. His fame was especially promoted due to his putting forward a well-developed socio-economic theory predicated on monetary reforms (Harvey & Goff, 2004). It was particularly as a result of the mass media relevance that he received that Father Couglin’s name stands out as one of the more instrumental individuals within the Great Depression.

Take into consideration, for instance, the fact that by 1930, his sermons became so popular [with listeners approximately amounting to 100.000] that the Columbia Broadcasting Service (CBS) had begun to broadcast Coughlin's sermons nation-wide.
The priest went on to establish the Radio League of the Little Flower as a result of which he was receiving 80,000 letters a week within a year’s time (Marcus, 1973). In addition to this, moreover, he was also getting an equally significant influx of financial contributions from his listeners, something that indicated that the waves of Anti-Semitism that he was creating were being rather well received.

The radical propaganda that Couglin preached seemed to have an almost mystical impact on the ever-increasing number of the listeners on his talk show in as much as inducing an [otherwise] unimaginable number of people to become politically aware and active. This awareness, moreover, in spite of being fueled by a sentiment as negativistic as Anti-Semitism, turned out to have a neutralizing impact on the Great Depression. In addition to this, furthermore, the exceptionality of the scope of Couglin’s audience also established a new medium with a political voice. This is something that is emphasized when considering the title he earned; ‘the Radio Priest’ (Warren, 1996).

The decline of Couglin’s program and his popularity
It was basically as a result of having his views rejected by Roosevelt and having the consequent seeds of bitterness and jealousy growing within him that Couglin began to experience rapid decline in spite of the exceptionally significant degree of support that he had been receiving.

The falling out with Roosevelt, for instance, had left him proverbially soar and this led to his becoming even more bitter towards the Jews. The exceptional limits of his Anti-Semitic remarks eventually brought forth the radio channels request that his texts be pre-censored before being put on air. The radio channels owner was a Jew and when he didn’t give in to Couglin’s demands to do a national broadcast of his Anti-Semitic sentiments grounded into economic theory; Couglin set up his own network in order to have the show broadcast as per his specifications.

His failure to unseat Roosevelt in 1936, however, was what actually caused him to become so significantly bitter and hateful towards those in financial and political power. He was especially hateful towards the Jews upon the imagined pretext that they were controlling the US via a banking conspiracy. Eventually, the height of Coughlin’s anti-Semitism caused the newly created Federal Communications Commission to yank him off the air.

This is not surprising when considering the extent to which he had reached. Take into consideration, for instance, the fact that he retired from the airwaves in 1936 only to return the next year with newly rejuvenated hate against the Jews that was practically fanatical in its proportions. He strongly criticized the world participation in World War II for the prime reason that he saw the protection of the Jews as the only aim of the war. ‘Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany’ (Witt, 2002) was the question he put forth in order to justify his opposition of the war. It would be relevant to acknowledge that Couglin was an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini due to the economic and social vehicles they promoted.