These unhappy times call for the building of plans… that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Franklin D. Roosevelt used this language during the Great Depression, when mass unemployment and bank failures had discredited “trickle-down” assumptions and intensified demands for federal action. As a presidential candidate in 1932, Roosevelt framed his program as a reorientation of economic policy toward ordinary wage earners, farmers, and the unemployed—those he called the “forgotten man.” The phrase helped define the moral and political rationale for what would become the hookup of New Deal relief, recovery, and reform: stabilizing finance and industry while prioritizing purchasing power and security for people at the base of the economy rather than privileging large corporations and financiers.

The quote argues that economic reconstruction should start with those most vulnerable to downturns. “Bottom up” planning implies that broad prosperity depends on restoring the livelihoods and purchasing power of ordinary people, not on policies designed primarily to benefit elites in the hope that gains will diffuse downward. By invoking the “forgotten man,” Roosevelt casts economic policy as an ethical choice: government should measure success by whether it protects and empowers those with the least leverage. The image of an “economic pyramid” underscores hierarchy and concentration, while the call to “build” suggests deliberate, structural reform rather than temporary charity.