At the end of the Second World War, Americans elected a new president with a vision to take them into the new age. President Truman came up with a famous list of 21 points, some based on President Roosevelt’s 1930s “New Deal” reforms that provided aid to the poorest, and others Truman’s own that distributed the wealth of the new more prosperous era. It represented a middle ground between the economies of Roosevelt’s time and Truman’s, and between Truman’s progressive politics and the strong conservative opinion that was suspicious of concentrated government power. Truman called it the “Fair Deal.”

On this day, January 5th, in 1949, President Truman gave a State of the Union address to Congress, in which he said “every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.”

Truman successfully made illegal the practice of employer discrimination on the basis of race or religion, and doubled the minimum wage from 40 to 80 cents an hour. His other proposed reforms, like universal health care and the repeal of legislation limiting unions and strikes, failed to pass.