October 1, 1952
Senator Magnuson, Governor Mitchell, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
I have been looking forward to this evening.
I have been coming to the State of Washington for a good many years. I know of no better place to get an idea of what the word "progress" means. I like what I see here in this State, and I like what I see here in this auditorium, too.
I like thriving farms, and busy industries, the happy and prosperous people. I like to think of the immense advances you have achieved out here in a few short years. I want you to continue those advances.
And that is why I am asking you to vote this year for a Democratic President and Vice President to carry on the policies that will continue your prosperity. I am asking you to vote for Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman. And you can't make a mistake if you do that.
These men are dedicated to the programs that have made us strong and prosperous. They are devoted to the cause of the people. They are devoted to world peace.
And I am asking you to vote for the Democratic candidates in your State for Governor and Senator and for Congress.
In your own interest, vote the whole Democratic ticket. It is an all-star ticket this year.
You have an unusually able candidate for Governor, Hugh Mitchell. As Senator and Congressman, he has done a lot for your State already, and he has won the respect of everybody in Washington, D.C.
You have one of the best legislators I know running for the Senate in Scoop Jackson. He is a real leader of the liberal forces in the House of Representatives. In experience and ability, he stands at the top.
In Don Magnuson you have a man who has already proved he will work and sacrifice for the cause of justice and humanity. And by the way, that name, Magnuson, already stands for something fine and progressive in the United States Senate.
You have another progressive candidate, who understands the needs and problems of this area, in Robert Dellwo. Now you have an excellent State ticket from top to bottom, and along with the national ticket I just don't see how you can do anything else but vote the Democratic ticket.
So vote to put this all-star team to work for you, and back up Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman in their fight for your prosperity and welfare.
Now, I want to talk to you about that prosperity, and what the Government has to do with it.
Your prosperity out here is an example of what is happening throughout the whole country. Everywhere people are better housed, better fed, better clothed, and enjoying more leisure than ever before. Everywhere the people are busily at work, contributing to the Nation's strength and welfare.
The only people who don't take any satisfaction in the Nation's well-being are the Republican politicians. You know, they say that none of it is real. They say it's just a reflection in a mirror, and that you are not prosperous at all. You haven't got what you have got--it has gone somewhere else; and you are in a bad fix and you ought to vote the Republican ticket. If you believe that, you ought to have your head examined.
You have heard these doubting Thomases and false prophets before. They are the same fellows who called your Grand Coulee development "a useless pyramid"; and said it was a "power in the desert." They are the same people who said back in 1936 up in the Grand Coulee country there's no one to sell power to except the coyotes and jackrabbits and there never will be. My, how much crow they have had to eat! And I'm still feeding it to 'em. Today they are talking the same way about our country's economy. They can't see any future in it.
Their attack is aimed especially at me, and I am going to answer them. And believe me, I will enjoy it. And I don't think they will.
My administration has been criticized for a lot of things, and some of it may be justified-but I doubt it. In one respect, however, I will yield to no administration in the history of the country; and that is the way we have created the basis of sound prosperity for all the people--all the people, not just a few.
It has been my guiding principle that this country can be true to its promise, and lead the world to freedom and peace, only if it has continued and wide prosperity at home. In his Chicago acceptance speech, the Republican candidate for President paid an unconscious tribute to the Democratic Party. He said, and I quote: "We are now at the moment in history when under God, this Nation of ours has become the mightiest temporal power and the mightiest spiritual force on earth." I couldn't have 'put that as eloquently myself. It's a truthful description of America after 20 years of Democratic administrations. The Republican candidate said that before the special interest groups got control of him. He isn't talking like that now. He has seen Taft.
Now that the snollygosters have taken over, we are hearing other kinds of talk. The words have an old familiar ring. They have been served up to frighten people in every presidential election that I can remember.
Words like "government deficits" and "national bankruptcy" are the favorites again. Stale Republican lies, just as usual. The truth is that during the past 6 fiscal years-the past 6 fiscal years, which ended June 30th, this year, the Government has more than paid its way. We have produced a budget surplus of nearly $4 billion and we have reduced the public debt.
Now, a lot of you may be surprised. But that's the truth. You'd never guess it by reading the papers--especially if you read that second worst paper in the United States, the Spokesman-Review. That paper never told the truth in politics in its life, and it wouldn't know the truth if it met it coming down the road.
I am afraid that the future historians will have something to say about Harry Truman, and one of the things is that he is one of those old-fashioned fellows that believes in balancing the budget. But you never saw that in your hometown paper.
Now here's something else the snollygosters are talking about. They're saying taxes are too high, that they are destroying us, that we can't afford our defense program. The answer to that is very simple.
If we really want to destroy ourselves, the way to do it is to encourage the aggressors to think that we cannot afford what it takes to stop them. Can you imagine a greater invitation to the Kremlin, than to announce that we can't pay for more than so much national defense? That's the craziest idea I ever heard of.
Our taxes are high because that is what it takes to make us stronger, and to build our defenses.
We could have taken the easy road and done nothing about Korea. That would have been nice and cheap--and fatal.
We could have taken another easy road, too, and tried to build defenses without taxes. That would have meant going into debt for our defense and inviting runaway inflation. That wasn't my way of doing it. I have always believed in paying for what I get.
And when we decided to pay as we go, we again could have taken the easy road, and slapped the cost on the little fellow by using a general sales tax. That's what a lot of Republicans wanted to do. Instead, we did the decent American thing--we spread these costs through income and profits taxes in accordance with ability to pay.
The cost of defense comes high. Modern military equipment is expensive. A fighter plane now costs more than a bomber did in the Second World War. And the modern up-to-date bomber costs as much as a battleship did in the Second World War.
'The Republicans know, but don't bother to tell you, that in our present $79 billion Federal budget, civilian activities cost less than $10 billion, and that we have kept them down below that figure for over 4 years. They don't tell you that. They don't tell you that. More than 75 percent of the Federal budget goes for the payment of past wars, and to keep us out of an anticipated third world war.
This $10 billion pays for everything your Government is spending for all civilian activities, from the largest to the smallest.
To put it another way, this 10 billion is less than 4 percent of the present income of the American people. This 4 percent is all that we would save if we stopped every Federal activity that is not related to national security. Yet these fellows who want to misrepresent the facts will tell you that the budget can be balanced from the civilian expenditures. And it's just a damn lie.
We could save another 4 percent by refusing to take care of the veterans and by reneging on the public debt. You know we can't do that. And they know we can't do it, too.
All the rest of our tax bill goes to pay for defense. And to say that you can cut our defense expenditures $10 or $20 billion next year is just sheer poppycock of the lowest demagoguery kind.
I also hear a lot of talk about taxes being so high that they are driving business to the wall and killing incentives.
The truth which they don't tell you is that business profits even after taxes are almost quadrupled in the past 12 years. Never has America had so many new businesses and so much incentive to expand and invest.
We all enjoy thinking about the things we could do with the tax money we would save if defense costs were cut back. Well, with God's help and in time, we will come to that, too.
But to cut our defense program now would undo most of our efforts to build security. The loss of freedom is too high a price to pay for tax relief.
Now, these birds, after softening us up with the sad story of taxes, the Republican snollygosters feel that we are ripe for the next point--and that's their story about the high cost of living. They carefully take no responsibility for it to themselves. It reminds me of the campaigns in the 1930's, when they charged the Democrats with creating the Republican depression.
In 1948, I told the people from one end of this country to the other that we were suffering high prices because the Republicans killed price controls.
Now, my friends, that's what they tried to do again this year. They don't want price controls. In the last session of Congress, they all but wrecked the limited price controls we were able to squeeze through in 1951. In fact, in the House of Representatives they voted to abolish them.
Don't let anybody tell you the Republicans are for holding down prices. The first thing they would do, if they were elected, would be to remove all price controls and let everything that the common, everyday man has to buy go sky high.
Despite the Republican obstruction, we have been able to keep some controls and to produce enough goods to keep prices from going through the roof.
The prosperity we have today--in spite of necessarily high taxes and unnecessarily high prices--has deep roots. The Republicans are claiming that it is only a war-boom prosperity. But this is not so either.
We Democrats have demonstrated over 20 years, that the way to sound and continuing prosperity is through steady employment at good wages and large farm output at fair prices. With these basic conditions maintained, businessmen have had the most stable and profitable markets they have ever known.
This is a far cry from the trickle-down theory of that great Republican era of the 1920's. The theory then was that the poor would always be with us and that they should exist on what trickled down from the rich-for whom the Republican administrations served as a board of directors. Now, I was over in Montana all day today, and the Governor of Montana told me that the Montana people, particularly the farmers, were more prosperous than they had ever been in their history. And he had a sad case to relate to me, in which he said a farmer had come to him and told him that he was in such a hard fix that he had to wash his own Cadillac.
Many people in this country are now eating regularly. They are not ashamed of the clothes they wear, and after a 40-hour week (with overtime if they want to), they can return to their own homes, secure from the fear that the sheriff might knock at the door. This is the kind of country Americans want! This is the kind of country they were destined to make for themselves.
We have had to take a lot of hard knocks in bringing these conditions about. But when I leave the White House next January, I shall carry with me the conviction that we have achieved a firm basis for continuing prosperity--and all this in the face of unrelenting Republican obstruction.
As I see it, we Democrats differ from the Old Guard Republicans in that we believe-and they deny--these three fundamental propositions:
First, that prosperity is the right of all the people.
Second, that to make the American people prosperous, we must improve the lot of all the people in relation to the privileged few.
Third, that America's continued strength rests on the spirit and economic health of all her people and on their confidence in the future. Those are the three things on which the fundamental basis of the prosperity of this country rests.
There is nothing in my philosophy of life stronger than my belief in the common man. I truly believe he was intended to share in all the fruits of God's blessings.
Free enterprise, as we Democrats understand it, is not limited to political royalists and vested interests. It is the opportunity for those in the ranks of labor, in farming, or in business, to raise their families in dignity, to provide their children with opportunities, to rise to leadership, and to render public service. That is the right of every man, woman, and child in this country.
We have made much progress in the last 20 years, but it wasn't accomplished overnight. Our path has been marked by many a battle, by anxious moments, and many heartaches and setbacks.
And much remains to be done.
The fact that we have achieved something substantial and enduring is now recognized by the whole world. They come to us from across the seas to learn how we did it, and how they can rebuild their own lives in the image of the United States. They derive inspiration from what Americans have done for themselves.
But in this election year we are being told that none of this is true. The Republicans are telling us that the system which operates in the spirit of the common people is fraught with danger. They tell us that we must put it aside, for it will lead to our destruction.
They have been telling us that for a generation. But the faith we have in ourselves is too strong to be frightened. And after meeting each challenge we have gained more strength.
I'll never understand why the Republican Old Guard persists in underestimating the American people; why it remains out of step with the forward progress of the country. It looks as if the more the country gives these Republicans and the better it treats them, the more eager they are to sell it short--but always at a profit for themselves.
Take my word for it, the Republican stories haven't changed a bit; they believe now what they believed 20 or 30 years ago.
It's my firm conviction that the Republican Party basically distrusts the common people; that it wants to restore the social and economic differences we have narrowed by the New Deal and the fair Deal.
Republicans--the Old Guard Republicans, and they are in control of the Republican Party, there's no doubt about that believe that the way to handle a depression is to let nature take its course. They believed in 1930--and many believe today--that depression is good for us. They like it because it brings down wages and prices, and because it weeds out what they call the "inefficient" businessman.
Now, there are many fine Republicans! I know a lot of them. There had to be or there wouldn't have been so many voting for us these last years! As individuals I know many fine Republican citizens. I have had some of them helping me in Washington. But when they get together as a party to decide how to run the country, they simply can't think beyond their own pocketbooks. So they always recommend policies that would wreck the whole prosperity, to help just a few.
When the time comes that the Republican Party places the interests of all the people above special privilege, then, and only then, will there be two parties in which we can have confidence. Only then will you have a real choice.
Many Republicans have tried to change the policies of their party and restore it to the integrity which Abraham Lincoln gave it. But Lincoln Republicans have lost ground. In fact, they are almost extinct. The rulers of the Republican Party long ago repudiated everything Abraham Lincoln stood for, except his sense of humor--and now they are trying to repudiate that.
I honestly and truly believe that this country needs an enlightened Republican Party. I am sorry to see the abject surrender of their presidential candidate to the reactionary, vindictive wing of the Old Guard.
If we had an enlightened Republican Party, we could bury the useless controversy of whether the progressive measures of the New Deal and the fair Deal have been good for the country. And then we could go on to more up-to-date issues.
But we don't have that kind of Republican Party. Neither the Republican platform nor their candidate reveals the slightest understanding of the basis of our prosperity, or how to go about preserving it.
Only those with sympathy for humanity can preserve and expand the economic liberty and fullness of the life that we have attained.
I am proud of the scars I have received in this office. I know I have received them because I have been fighting for the people. That fight must be carried on. But it needs more youth than I possess.
In Governor Stevenson, you have a man who combines humanity and humility. He has youth, he has experience, he has compassion, and he has the courage to preserve and improve the program that has served America so well. With him, our hard-won system of prosperity and security will be made safe.
This election presents us with a choice between all we have learned about our economy over the last 20 years, and the discredited theories of the Old Guard. The future hangs on that choice.
Now, I have said ever since I started out on this campaign, that you are the government. By the Constitution, the power of government rests in the people. You have a right to exercise your authority when you go to the polls. When you vote for people who believe in the welfare of the whole Nation, who believe that every man has equal rights, that every man has a right to the things that are good in this world, if he has the ability to get them, then the country will be safe.
But it is your responsibility. On election day, if you go to the polls and vote against your own interests, you will get what you deserve.
Now, I am asking you, when I retire from public office, I want to feel confident--and I am asking you--I want to feel confident that things will go forward. And I am asking you to go to the polls and vote for your own protection. Vote for your own good. Vote for the welfare of this great Nation. Vote for the peace of the world, by voting a straight Democratic ticket.
NOTE: The President spoke at 8 p.m. in the auditorium of the Eagles Lodge at Spokane, Wash. In his opening words he referred to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, and Representative Hugh B. Mitchell, Democratic candidate for Governor, both of Washington. Later he referred to Representative Henry M. Jackson, Democratic candidate for Senator, and Don Magnuson and Robert Dellwo, Democratic candidates for Representative, all of Washington.
Senator Magnuson, Governor Mitchell, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
I have been looking forward to this evening.
I have been coming to the State of Washington for a good many years. I know of no better place to get an idea of what the word "progress" means. I like what I see here in this State, and I like what I see here in this auditorium, too.
I like thriving farms, and busy industries, the happy and prosperous people. I like to think of the immense advances you have achieved out here in a few short years. I want you to continue those advances.
And that is why I am asking you to vote this year for a Democratic President and Vice President to carry on the policies that will continue your prosperity. I am asking you to vote for Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman. And you can't make a mistake if you do that.
These men are dedicated to the programs that have made us strong and prosperous. They are devoted to the cause of the people. They are devoted to world peace.
And I am asking you to vote for the Democratic candidates in your State for Governor and Senator and for Congress.
In your own interest, vote the whole Democratic ticket. It is an all-star ticket this year.
You have an unusually able candidate for Governor, Hugh Mitchell. As Senator and Congressman, he has done a lot for your State already, and he has won the respect of everybody in Washington, D.C.
You have one of the best legislators I know running for the Senate in Scoop Jackson. He is a real leader of the liberal forces in the House of Representatives. In experience and ability, he stands at the top.
In Don Magnuson you have a man who has already proved he will work and sacrifice for the cause of justice and humanity. And by the way, that name, Magnuson, already stands for something fine and progressive in the United States Senate.
You have another progressive candidate, who understands the needs and problems of this area, in Robert Dellwo. Now you have an excellent State ticket from top to bottom, and along with the national ticket I just don't see how you can do anything else but vote the Democratic ticket.
So vote to put this all-star team to work for you, and back up Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman in their fight for your prosperity and welfare.
Now, I want to talk to you about that prosperity, and what the Government has to do with it.
Your prosperity out here is an example of what is happening throughout the whole country. Everywhere people are better housed, better fed, better clothed, and enjoying more leisure than ever before. Everywhere the people are busily at work, contributing to the Nation's strength and welfare.
The only people who don't take any satisfaction in the Nation's well-being are the Republican politicians. You know, they say that none of it is real. They say it's just a reflection in a mirror, and that you are not prosperous at all. You haven't got what you have got--it has gone somewhere else; and you are in a bad fix and you ought to vote the Republican ticket. If you believe that, you ought to have your head examined.
You have heard these doubting Thomases and false prophets before. They are the same fellows who called your Grand Coulee development "a useless pyramid"; and said it was a "power in the desert." They are the same people who said back in 1936 up in the Grand Coulee country there's no one to sell power to except the coyotes and jackrabbits and there never will be. My, how much crow they have had to eat! And I'm still feeding it to 'em. Today they are talking the same way about our country's economy. They can't see any future in it.
Their attack is aimed especially at me, and I am going to answer them. And believe me, I will enjoy it. And I don't think they will.
My administration has been criticized for a lot of things, and some of it may be justified-but I doubt it. In one respect, however, I will yield to no administration in the history of the country; and that is the way we have created the basis of sound prosperity for all the people--all the people, not just a few.
It has been my guiding principle that this country can be true to its promise, and lead the world to freedom and peace, only if it has continued and wide prosperity at home. In his Chicago acceptance speech, the Republican candidate for President paid an unconscious tribute to the Democratic Party. He said, and I quote: "We are now at the moment in history when under God, this Nation of ours has become the mightiest temporal power and the mightiest spiritual force on earth." I couldn't have 'put that as eloquently myself. It's a truthful description of America after 20 years of Democratic administrations. The Republican candidate said that before the special interest groups got control of him. He isn't talking like that now. He has seen Taft.
Now that the snollygosters have taken over, we are hearing other kinds of talk. The words have an old familiar ring. They have been served up to frighten people in every presidential election that I can remember.
Words like "government deficits" and "national bankruptcy" are the favorites again. Stale Republican lies, just as usual. The truth is that during the past 6 fiscal years-the past 6 fiscal years, which ended June 30th, this year, the Government has more than paid its way. We have produced a budget surplus of nearly $4 billion and we have reduced the public debt.
Now, a lot of you may be surprised. But that's the truth. You'd never guess it by reading the papers--especially if you read that second worst paper in the United States, the Spokesman-Review. That paper never told the truth in politics in its life, and it wouldn't know the truth if it met it coming down the road.
I am afraid that the future historians will have something to say about Harry Truman, and one of the things is that he is one of those old-fashioned fellows that believes in balancing the budget. But you never saw that in your hometown paper.
Now here's something else the snollygosters are talking about. They're saying taxes are too high, that they are destroying us, that we can't afford our defense program. The answer to that is very simple.
If we really want to destroy ourselves, the way to do it is to encourage the aggressors to think that we cannot afford what it takes to stop them. Can you imagine a greater invitation to the Kremlin, than to announce that we can't pay for more than so much national defense? That's the craziest idea I ever heard of.
Our taxes are high because that is what it takes to make us stronger, and to build our defenses.
We could have taken the easy road and done nothing about Korea. That would have been nice and cheap--and fatal.
We could have taken another easy road, too, and tried to build defenses without taxes. That would have meant going into debt for our defense and inviting runaway inflation. That wasn't my way of doing it. I have always believed in paying for what I get.
And when we decided to pay as we go, we again could have taken the easy road, and slapped the cost on the little fellow by using a general sales tax. That's what a lot of Republicans wanted to do. Instead, we did the decent American thing--we spread these costs through income and profits taxes in accordance with ability to pay.
The cost of defense comes high. Modern military equipment is expensive. A fighter plane now costs more than a bomber did in the Second World War. And the modern up-to-date bomber costs as much as a battleship did in the Second World War.
'The Republicans know, but don't bother to tell you, that in our present $79 billion Federal budget, civilian activities cost less than $10 billion, and that we have kept them down below that figure for over 4 years. They don't tell you that. They don't tell you that. More than 75 percent of the Federal budget goes for the payment of past wars, and to keep us out of an anticipated third world war.
This $10 billion pays for everything your Government is spending for all civilian activities, from the largest to the smallest.
To put it another way, this 10 billion is less than 4 percent of the present income of the American people. This 4 percent is all that we would save if we stopped every Federal activity that is not related to national security. Yet these fellows who want to misrepresent the facts will tell you that the budget can be balanced from the civilian expenditures. And it's just a damn lie.
We could save another 4 percent by refusing to take care of the veterans and by reneging on the public debt. You know we can't do that. And they know we can't do it, too.
All the rest of our tax bill goes to pay for defense. And to say that you can cut our defense expenditures $10 or $20 billion next year is just sheer poppycock of the lowest demagoguery kind.
I also hear a lot of talk about taxes being so high that they are driving business to the wall and killing incentives.
The truth which they don't tell you is that business profits even after taxes are almost quadrupled in the past 12 years. Never has America had so many new businesses and so much incentive to expand and invest.
We all enjoy thinking about the things we could do with the tax money we would save if defense costs were cut back. Well, with God's help and in time, we will come to that, too.
But to cut our defense program now would undo most of our efforts to build security. The loss of freedom is too high a price to pay for tax relief.
Now, these birds, after softening us up with the sad story of taxes, the Republican snollygosters feel that we are ripe for the next point--and that's their story about the high cost of living. They carefully take no responsibility for it to themselves. It reminds me of the campaigns in the 1930's, when they charged the Democrats with creating the Republican depression.
In 1948, I told the people from one end of this country to the other that we were suffering high prices because the Republicans killed price controls.
Now, my friends, that's what they tried to do again this year. They don't want price controls. In the last session of Congress, they all but wrecked the limited price controls we were able to squeeze through in 1951. In fact, in the House of Representatives they voted to abolish them.
Don't let anybody tell you the Republicans are for holding down prices. The first thing they would do, if they were elected, would be to remove all price controls and let everything that the common, everyday man has to buy go sky high.
Despite the Republican obstruction, we have been able to keep some controls and to produce enough goods to keep prices from going through the roof.
The prosperity we have today--in spite of necessarily high taxes and unnecessarily high prices--has deep roots. The Republicans are claiming that it is only a war-boom prosperity. But this is not so either.
We Democrats have demonstrated over 20 years, that the way to sound and continuing prosperity is through steady employment at good wages and large farm output at fair prices. With these basic conditions maintained, businessmen have had the most stable and profitable markets they have ever known.
This is a far cry from the trickle-down theory of that great Republican era of the 1920's. The theory then was that the poor would always be with us and that they should exist on what trickled down from the rich-for whom the Republican administrations served as a board of directors. Now, I was over in Montana all day today, and the Governor of Montana told me that the Montana people, particularly the farmers, were more prosperous than they had ever been in their history. And he had a sad case to relate to me, in which he said a farmer had come to him and told him that he was in such a hard fix that he had to wash his own Cadillac.
Many people in this country are now eating regularly. They are not ashamed of the clothes they wear, and after a 40-hour week (with overtime if they want to), they can return to their own homes, secure from the fear that the sheriff might knock at the door. This is the kind of country Americans want! This is the kind of country they were destined to make for themselves.
We have had to take a lot of hard knocks in bringing these conditions about. But when I leave the White House next January, I shall carry with me the conviction that we have achieved a firm basis for continuing prosperity--and all this in the face of unrelenting Republican obstruction.
As I see it, we Democrats differ from the Old Guard Republicans in that we believe-and they deny--these three fundamental propositions:
First, that prosperity is the right of all the people.
Second, that to make the American people prosperous, we must improve the lot of all the people in relation to the privileged few.
Third, that America's continued strength rests on the spirit and economic health of all her people and on their confidence in the future. Those are the three things on which the fundamental basis of the prosperity of this country rests.
There is nothing in my philosophy of life stronger than my belief in the common man. I truly believe he was intended to share in all the fruits of God's blessings.
Free enterprise, as we Democrats understand it, is not limited to political royalists and vested interests. It is the opportunity for those in the ranks of labor, in farming, or in business, to raise their families in dignity, to provide their children with opportunities, to rise to leadership, and to render public service. That is the right of every man, woman, and child in this country.
We have made much progress in the last 20 years, but it wasn't accomplished overnight. Our path has been marked by many a battle, by anxious moments, and many heartaches and setbacks.
And much remains to be done.
The fact that we have achieved something substantial and enduring is now recognized by the whole world. They come to us from across the seas to learn how we did it, and how they can rebuild their own lives in the image of the United States. They derive inspiration from what Americans have done for themselves.
But in this election year we are being told that none of this is true. The Republicans are telling us that the system which operates in the spirit of the common people is fraught with danger. They tell us that we must put it aside, for it will lead to our destruction.
They have been telling us that for a generation. But the faith we have in ourselves is too strong to be frightened. And after meeting each challenge we have gained more strength.
I'll never understand why the Republican Old Guard persists in underestimating the American people; why it remains out of step with the forward progress of the country. It looks as if the more the country gives these Republicans and the better it treats them, the more eager they are to sell it short--but always at a profit for themselves.
Take my word for it, the Republican stories haven't changed a bit; they believe now what they believed 20 or 30 years ago.
It's my firm conviction that the Republican Party basically distrusts the common people; that it wants to restore the social and economic differences we have narrowed by the New Deal and the fair Deal.
Republicans--the Old Guard Republicans, and they are in control of the Republican Party, there's no doubt about that believe that the way to handle a depression is to let nature take its course. They believed in 1930--and many believe today--that depression is good for us. They like it because it brings down wages and prices, and because it weeds out what they call the "inefficient" businessman.
Now, there are many fine Republicans! I know a lot of them. There had to be or there wouldn't have been so many voting for us these last years! As individuals I know many fine Republican citizens. I have had some of them helping me in Washington. But when they get together as a party to decide how to run the country, they simply can't think beyond their own pocketbooks. So they always recommend policies that would wreck the whole prosperity, to help just a few.
When the time comes that the Republican Party places the interests of all the people above special privilege, then, and only then, will there be two parties in which we can have confidence. Only then will you have a real choice.
Many Republicans have tried to change the policies of their party and restore it to the integrity which Abraham Lincoln gave it. But Lincoln Republicans have lost ground. In fact, they are almost extinct. The rulers of the Republican Party long ago repudiated everything Abraham Lincoln stood for, except his sense of humor--and now they are trying to repudiate that.
I honestly and truly believe that this country needs an enlightened Republican Party. I am sorry to see the abject surrender of their presidential candidate to the reactionary, vindictive wing of the Old Guard.
If we had an enlightened Republican Party, we could bury the useless controversy of whether the progressive measures of the New Deal and the fair Deal have been good for the country. And then we could go on to more up-to-date issues.
But we don't have that kind of Republican Party. Neither the Republican platform nor their candidate reveals the slightest understanding of the basis of our prosperity, or how to go about preserving it.
Only those with sympathy for humanity can preserve and expand the economic liberty and fullness of the life that we have attained.
I am proud of the scars I have received in this office. I know I have received them because I have been fighting for the people. That fight must be carried on. But it needs more youth than I possess.
In Governor Stevenson, you have a man who combines humanity and humility. He has youth, he has experience, he has compassion, and he has the courage to preserve and improve the program that has served America so well. With him, our hard-won system of prosperity and security will be made safe.
This election presents us with a choice between all we have learned about our economy over the last 20 years, and the discredited theories of the Old Guard. The future hangs on that choice.
Now, I have said ever since I started out on this campaign, that you are the government. By the Constitution, the power of government rests in the people. You have a right to exercise your authority when you go to the polls. When you vote for people who believe in the welfare of the whole Nation, who believe that every man has equal rights, that every man has a right to the things that are good in this world, if he has the ability to get them, then the country will be safe.
But it is your responsibility. On election day, if you go to the polls and vote against your own interests, you will get what you deserve.
Now, I am asking you, when I retire from public office, I want to feel confident--and I am asking you--I want to feel confident that things will go forward. And I am asking you to go to the polls and vote for your own protection. Vote for your own good. Vote for the welfare of this great Nation. Vote for the peace of the world, by voting a straight Democratic ticket.
NOTE: The President spoke at 8 p.m. in the auditorium of the Eagles Lodge at Spokane, Wash. In his opening words he referred to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, and Representative Hugh B. Mitchell, Democratic candidate for Governor, both of Washington. Later he referred to Representative Henry M. Jackson, Democratic candidate for Senator, and Don Magnuson and Robert Dellwo, Democratic candidates for Representative, all of Washington.