October 6, 1952
I CERTAINLY appreciate that most cordial welcome. I have had a wonderful tour around the United States, starting in Washington, D.C., and going across North Dakota and Montana and the great States of Washington and California and Utah. I am reminded by the situation here on this stand of Barkley's dilemma--there's a clock right here in front of me. Barkley was speaking at a gathering--and Barkley is a great speaker, but he has one difficulty and that is he has no terminal facilities. He had a watch which he took out of his pocket and put it on the desk and he spoke about an hour, and then he picked up the watch and looked at it and then put it to his ear and shook it. And some old fellow back in the audience said, "Senator, there's a calendar on the wall behind you."
Now, with this clock in front of me, I won't need the calendar. The president of the university said I can take all the time I want.
I remember how cordial you were when I was here in 1948. I shall never forget that. I think I told you then about how my grandfather came out here and had a wonderful time with the train that they had refused to accept when he moved into Salt Lake City. And that he and Brigham Young made a deal by which my grandfather was saved, and the mercantile situation at Salt Lake City was helped at a time when they needed it very much.
I also appreciate very highly the way that Utah voted in 1948--although it did help to get me into a lot of trouble for 4 more years.
This year I'm making another campaign trip for the Democratic ticket, but this time there's a different man at the head of it. And he is a very fine man--a great and good Governor and a very great American--Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
The President of the United States always has a lot of work to do whether he is campaigning or not. His work follows him around day and night wherever he goes. Some of that work is pleasant; some of it is not. Today, I am glad to say, I had a very pleasant piece of work to do.
This morning I signed a paper appointing to the Federal Communications Commission a distinguished resident of your State, Eugene H. Merrill. I thought you might be interested in that, because I understand that Mr. Merrill's father was a member of the State board of this university. Of course, that was a good recommendation for him, as far as I was concerned.
You know, I hear a lot of talk about government by crony in Washington. Well that's sheer poppycock--and low politics.
The truth is, of course, that I try to find the best qualified people I can, for the many complicated jobs I have to fill. Some of them are people I knew before, but most of them are not.
Of course, I couldn't possibly know all these people. I have to rely on what other people tell me about them. I try in every case to find out all I can.
Mr. Merrill might be surprised at the big, thick file we went over before appointing him. But I don't want him to worry--or you, either--because his file was excellent.
Of course, all of you know that no system is infallible. My checking procedure can show what a man has done and what those who knew him think of him, but there is always a question that no check can answer finally--how will the man perform when he has the responsibility. When the trials come upon him in his new assignment, can he do the job? That's a matter of character, deep down inside a man. Most of the people I have brought into the Government have stood the test with flying colors--but some few have broken under it.
When that has come about, it has hurt, I can tell you. It has hurt me personally. But fortunately for me and for the public service, it has not happened often. Our Government officials and employees are being much abused in this election year. But I want you to know that there is no finer group of people in this world than those who work for you--your servants in the Government of this great country of ours.
I have done my best, these 7 years, to keep the quality of the Federal Service high, to attract good people and to keep them in their jobs, to defend them against unfair and unproven attacks. I have had some disappointments now and then along the way. But, overall, I am proud of the result--proud and rather confident that history will bear me out in what I say.
I hope that many of you young people will make Government service your career. I want to encourage you all I can. We are always on the lookout for good people in the public service. We want to keep our Government alive and vigorous. We don't want to get bogged down in old ideas and old ways. We want our Government to be full of youth and energy.
Now I want to say to you young people, you just don't know how difficult it is to find a man when you need one. Talk about there being no vacancies at the top--the top is always begging for people. So go to work, prepare yourselves, and be ready when the call comes so you can take your job and do your patriotic duty by your Government.
Most of you are too young to remember the youth, the energy, the boldness of franklin D. Roosevelt's first administration-after all those years of Republican pomposity and stagnation in Washington. But you are not too young to participate in the new energy, the new vigor, the fresh outlook which will come to Washington next year with Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
When Franklin Roosevelt came to Washington, he had to devise an entire set of basic policies. He had to start from scratch to determine the whole direction which the Government should take to meet the crisis of the early thirties. For his predecessors had no policies--had set no course which could conceivably have met the needs of the country, or the suffering of the 14 million unemployed.
When Adlai Stevenson comes down to Washington for his inaugural next January-as I am sure he will--I'm glad to say he'll find a very different situation. He will find a government which from Roosevelt's first days has been responsive to the people's needs. He'll find a government which has created policies and programs to meet and master each new situation in this difficult, dangerous, and fascinating century in which we live.
Governor Stevenson will not be confronted-as Roosevelt was--with an absence of proper basic policies. He will take over a government where basic policies are sound--sound and constant for the forward drive for permanent prosperity at home, sound in the careful, steady buildup of strength and security of the whole free world, sound in the search for progress, sound in the search for peace.
I am here to tell you young people that I sincerely wish that I was 18 instead of 68. We are facing the greatest age in the history of the world. And if we can do our duty and carry out the program which we have in mind for world peace, we can hope that God Almighty will give the Soviet Union's leaders a softening of the heart, so we can do just that--you young people will see the greatest age in the history of the world. I wish I could see it.
The Governor will have no need to invent new policies from scratch. Instead, he will be able to perfect, to improve, to modify as need be, the basic structure that we leave to him. I know he can do that admirably. For he is a man of thought as well as action. His speeches show how clearly and how deeply and objectively he has analyzed our domestic policies and our foreign policies. He has had much good experience and great training, in both fields.
Of all the men that I have met, Governor Stevenson ranks as perhaps the best informed, the most skilled student and practitioner of the great art of government. That is why I have confidence, that when he comes to Washington, he will continue to improve the Government machinery--to perfect it and make it the most efficient instrument for the service to the people.
And you, my friends, can feel an equal confidence. Many of you are young, and Adlai Stevenson's will be a young administration.
There will be a place in government for a good number of you who qualify to work and serve your countrymen in public life.
And in our country--under Adlai Stevenson-there will be places, good places, for those of you who choose to stay and work in private life, instead.
for Adlai Stevenson is not only a wise and a good man he is a Democrat. That means the basic spirit, the fundamental outlook, of the Democratic Party will continue to guide our Government in all its tasks as a servant of the people and as a leader of the world.
The underlying differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties boils down to a very simple thing. The Republicans believe that the power of the Government should be used, first of all, to help the rich and privileged people of this country. With them property comes first. The Democrats believe that the powers of the Government should be used to give the common man some protection, and a chance to make a decent living. With the Democrats the people come first.
The Democratic Party is a political organization that has a heart--it cares about the people--it cares about all the people, rich and poor alike. The Republican Party is ruled by a little group of men who have calculating machines where their hearts ought to be.
Sometimes the Republicans aid their clientele by special favors--like the rich man's tax cut bill which was passed by the 80th Congress over my veto--or like their attempts to give away the Nation's oil resources to all the big oil interests.
Sometimes the Republicans aid their special friends by doing nothing--by a philosophy of each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. That's why they've fought such measures as minimum wage laws, social security, and the protection of the right of labor unions to organize. All these things and others like them have been opposed by the Republicans. All of them have been supported and put through the Congress by such Democrats as your former Senator and my good friend Elbert Thomas.
The Republican philosophy is really something for you young people to ponder. If you were leaving college in a Republican world, where it was every man for himself, some few of you might do very well. You might get rich. But the devil would take an awful lot of you who happened to be the hindmost--or even in between.
That happened the last time we had a Republican administration in this country. Young people came out of college and found themselves competing with 12 or 14 million other unemployed people. A lot of college graduates were lucky to get day labor, at a dollar a day. Today the problem is very different. Today the problem for most college graduates is to decide which job to take.
Let me read you a clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle dated April 6, 1952. It says that thousands of students graduating from colleges and universities this June are facing a major employment problem-which job to take. Job placement officials in schools and across the Nation reported that in many cases jobs are so plentiful that students have already started choosing between five and ten offers, with starting salaries ranging from $250 to $700. And that is the way it should be. That is the kind of problem that Democrats want you to have.
If there's one thing that the Democratic Party has proved in the past 20 years, it is that we can have full employment in this country if we have wise government policies.
We have shown that it's good economics to have some protection for the farmers, so that they will have some assurance of good prices and a steady income.
We have shown that it's good economics to have full employment at good wages.
We have shown that it's good economics to help the small businessman, so that he can add to the enterprise that is building up this country.
We have shown that it is good economics to develop the great natural resources of the country, particularly the water resources of these Western States.
All of these measures reinforce one another. If the farmers are prosperous, then industry and labor in the cities have a better market. If the workingmen are prosperous, then the farmers can sell their products in the cities. If both are prosperous, then the storekeepers and the salesmen can be assured of having customers.
It's the faith that this can happen, and the courage to take Government action to make it happen, that guides the Democratic Party.
I tell you that it's right to have a job, to have the opportunity to work and to earn a decent living.
And if the Democrats win this election, you will have men in office who are determined that the powers of your Government shall be used to keep those opportunities for all of you, and enlarge them all the time.
A national objective of full employment-and that is the Democratic Party's objective-reflects faith in the future and the courage to do something about it. These qualities show up in international affairs, no less than in domestic affairs.
We can take credit for a good many expressions of faith in the last few years-the United Nations, the Marshall plan, the North Atlantic Treaty, the Japanese Peace Treaty, the point 4 program. So far, our faith has been rewarded.
The United Nations has not yet become all we hoped it would be--and you can blame nobody but the Soviet Union for that but it has done a tremendous amount of. good in a few years' time.
Our faith in the people of Western Europe, and their faith in themselves, resulted in one of the greatest achievements of international cooperation in the world's history--the Marshall plan, followed by the mutual security program. I think everyone now agrees that this venture in cooperation saved Western Europe from communism.
We had a lot of Republican help on those programs for a while, but we also had a lot of Republican opposition. If the Republican opposition had prevailed, I have no doubt that France and Italy and almost all of Western Europe would be under the Communist yoke today. And now the Republican opposition appears to be in complete control of the Republican Party.
The fact is, the Republican Party just does not seem able to see or understand what it takes to meet the menace of Communist aggression and subversion.
Let me give you an example.
Of all our many programs to stop communism, we get the most return for the least money under the point 4 program. In that point 4 program we teach other people what we have learned, and they use our technical knowledge and material aid to increase their standards of living. When people in the underdeveloped countries start making real progress against disease and poverty, they can stand against communism and its false promises. When they feel hopeless about the future, that's when communism makes its inroads.
You in Utah probably know more about point 4 than almost anybody else. The former president of Brigham Young University, Dr. Franklin Harris, was one of the pioneers in point 4 work--long before it was called point 4. He spent a long time in Iran, giving technical assistance, and after that a lot of students came from Iran and studied here in Utah. Then they went back to Iran and put into practice what they had learned. That's the simple inexpensive idea we built on when we launched our point 4 program.
Before I left Washington, I asked whether men from Utah were still working in Iran under point 4. I found that 23 men from Utah, five of them from right here in Provo, are in Iran today. I know you are proud of them, and I am sure I am.
I often think whether Iran, with all its troubles, will be able to keep its freedom and independence, and that, I think, will be determined by the unselfish, people-to-people help under point 4; the kind of help in which the former president of this university was a pioneer.
Now, what do the Republicans think about this program?
On March 21, 1950, the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted by more than 4 to 1 to kill point 4 even before it could get started.
Over in the Senate, the Republicans voted 28 to 5 to kill the program, while setting up another commission to make another study.
Only last May, the Republicans in the House voted by 132 to 36 to cripple the point 4 program in all Asia, by cutting the appropriation request in half.
That is the kind of reckless, shortsighted opposition we have faced all along the way. This is isolationism.
Some of you may have thought all the celebrating at the Republican Convention in July meant that the Republican Party had finally buried its isolationists.
Any hope that such a glorious event had actually occurred, must surely have been squelched, when Senator Taft began to dictate his presidential candidate's position. To get Senator Taft's support, the candidate has had to swallow isolationism whole. The fine principles he once expressed about international cooperation, have now become mere differences of degree between him and Senator Taft.
Every 4 years the Republicans take their outworn, discredited philosophy and dress it up in a new disguise--and try to sell it to the American people. They try to convince the people it's been made over into something different.
This year, they tried to clothe it in the shining armor of a national hero. But before the campaign has ended, each 4 years, the new disguise wears mighty thin. In fact, you can see through it, and you can see that nothing's changed. This year, I fear that the disguise came off even sooner than usual.
It's the same old Republican Party, no matter who may carry the banner out front. It's the same old party that has opposed every progressive step these past 20 years. It's the same old party that has tried to turn the power dams over to the private power companies, and has restricted social security, has fought Federal aid to education, and tried to kill the point 4 program even before it began. It is the party without faith, without vision, and without courage.
And you young men and women must realize you can not make your way into a brave new world under a Republican regime.
The future does not lie with them--it rests with the Democratic Party.
Twenty years ago, my friends, we nearly lost our free society. Twenty years ago, millions of our young people went out into an America that seemed almost hopeless to them, worthless and destructive of their own human rights and needs. If it had not been for franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, our free society might truly have collapsed from within, and the whole course of our history might have been changed.
You young people, in your generation have not had any such experience. You come into a world that has had its dangers, many of them, but they are external dangers, not of our own making. They are dangers we can face together, with courage and conviction, because we have a way of life that is worthwhile to all of us.
That we may keep that way of life we should by all means elect these good Democrats-and send Adlai Stevenson to the White House.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:05 a.m. in the Brigham Young University Stadium at Provo, Utah. During his address he referred to, among others, Vice President Alben W. Barkley, Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson, President of the University, Eugene H. Merrill, newly appointed Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, and his father, Joseph F. Merrill, a member of the Board of Trustees of Brigham Young University, 1939-1952.
I CERTAINLY appreciate that most cordial welcome. I have had a wonderful tour around the United States, starting in Washington, D.C., and going across North Dakota and Montana and the great States of Washington and California and Utah. I am reminded by the situation here on this stand of Barkley's dilemma--there's a clock right here in front of me. Barkley was speaking at a gathering--and Barkley is a great speaker, but he has one difficulty and that is he has no terminal facilities. He had a watch which he took out of his pocket and put it on the desk and he spoke about an hour, and then he picked up the watch and looked at it and then put it to his ear and shook it. And some old fellow back in the audience said, "Senator, there's a calendar on the wall behind you."
Now, with this clock in front of me, I won't need the calendar. The president of the university said I can take all the time I want.
I remember how cordial you were when I was here in 1948. I shall never forget that. I think I told you then about how my grandfather came out here and had a wonderful time with the train that they had refused to accept when he moved into Salt Lake City. And that he and Brigham Young made a deal by which my grandfather was saved, and the mercantile situation at Salt Lake City was helped at a time when they needed it very much.
I also appreciate very highly the way that Utah voted in 1948--although it did help to get me into a lot of trouble for 4 more years.
This year I'm making another campaign trip for the Democratic ticket, but this time there's a different man at the head of it. And he is a very fine man--a great and good Governor and a very great American--Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
The President of the United States always has a lot of work to do whether he is campaigning or not. His work follows him around day and night wherever he goes. Some of that work is pleasant; some of it is not. Today, I am glad to say, I had a very pleasant piece of work to do.
This morning I signed a paper appointing to the Federal Communications Commission a distinguished resident of your State, Eugene H. Merrill. I thought you might be interested in that, because I understand that Mr. Merrill's father was a member of the State board of this university. Of course, that was a good recommendation for him, as far as I was concerned.
You know, I hear a lot of talk about government by crony in Washington. Well that's sheer poppycock--and low politics.
The truth is, of course, that I try to find the best qualified people I can, for the many complicated jobs I have to fill. Some of them are people I knew before, but most of them are not.
Of course, I couldn't possibly know all these people. I have to rely on what other people tell me about them. I try in every case to find out all I can.
Mr. Merrill might be surprised at the big, thick file we went over before appointing him. But I don't want him to worry--or you, either--because his file was excellent.
Of course, all of you know that no system is infallible. My checking procedure can show what a man has done and what those who knew him think of him, but there is always a question that no check can answer finally--how will the man perform when he has the responsibility. When the trials come upon him in his new assignment, can he do the job? That's a matter of character, deep down inside a man. Most of the people I have brought into the Government have stood the test with flying colors--but some few have broken under it.
When that has come about, it has hurt, I can tell you. It has hurt me personally. But fortunately for me and for the public service, it has not happened often. Our Government officials and employees are being much abused in this election year. But I want you to know that there is no finer group of people in this world than those who work for you--your servants in the Government of this great country of ours.
I have done my best, these 7 years, to keep the quality of the Federal Service high, to attract good people and to keep them in their jobs, to defend them against unfair and unproven attacks. I have had some disappointments now and then along the way. But, overall, I am proud of the result--proud and rather confident that history will bear me out in what I say.
I hope that many of you young people will make Government service your career. I want to encourage you all I can. We are always on the lookout for good people in the public service. We want to keep our Government alive and vigorous. We don't want to get bogged down in old ideas and old ways. We want our Government to be full of youth and energy.
Now I want to say to you young people, you just don't know how difficult it is to find a man when you need one. Talk about there being no vacancies at the top--the top is always begging for people. So go to work, prepare yourselves, and be ready when the call comes so you can take your job and do your patriotic duty by your Government.
Most of you are too young to remember the youth, the energy, the boldness of franklin D. Roosevelt's first administration-after all those years of Republican pomposity and stagnation in Washington. But you are not too young to participate in the new energy, the new vigor, the fresh outlook which will come to Washington next year with Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
When Franklin Roosevelt came to Washington, he had to devise an entire set of basic policies. He had to start from scratch to determine the whole direction which the Government should take to meet the crisis of the early thirties. For his predecessors had no policies--had set no course which could conceivably have met the needs of the country, or the suffering of the 14 million unemployed.
When Adlai Stevenson comes down to Washington for his inaugural next January-as I am sure he will--I'm glad to say he'll find a very different situation. He will find a government which from Roosevelt's first days has been responsive to the people's needs. He'll find a government which has created policies and programs to meet and master each new situation in this difficult, dangerous, and fascinating century in which we live.
Governor Stevenson will not be confronted-as Roosevelt was--with an absence of proper basic policies. He will take over a government where basic policies are sound--sound and constant for the forward drive for permanent prosperity at home, sound in the careful, steady buildup of strength and security of the whole free world, sound in the search for progress, sound in the search for peace.
I am here to tell you young people that I sincerely wish that I was 18 instead of 68. We are facing the greatest age in the history of the world. And if we can do our duty and carry out the program which we have in mind for world peace, we can hope that God Almighty will give the Soviet Union's leaders a softening of the heart, so we can do just that--you young people will see the greatest age in the history of the world. I wish I could see it.
The Governor will have no need to invent new policies from scratch. Instead, he will be able to perfect, to improve, to modify as need be, the basic structure that we leave to him. I know he can do that admirably. For he is a man of thought as well as action. His speeches show how clearly and how deeply and objectively he has analyzed our domestic policies and our foreign policies. He has had much good experience and great training, in both fields.
Of all the men that I have met, Governor Stevenson ranks as perhaps the best informed, the most skilled student and practitioner of the great art of government. That is why I have confidence, that when he comes to Washington, he will continue to improve the Government machinery--to perfect it and make it the most efficient instrument for the service to the people.
And you, my friends, can feel an equal confidence. Many of you are young, and Adlai Stevenson's will be a young administration.
There will be a place in government for a good number of you who qualify to work and serve your countrymen in public life.
And in our country--under Adlai Stevenson-there will be places, good places, for those of you who choose to stay and work in private life, instead.
for Adlai Stevenson is not only a wise and a good man he is a Democrat. That means the basic spirit, the fundamental outlook, of the Democratic Party will continue to guide our Government in all its tasks as a servant of the people and as a leader of the world.
The underlying differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties boils down to a very simple thing. The Republicans believe that the power of the Government should be used, first of all, to help the rich and privileged people of this country. With them property comes first. The Democrats believe that the powers of the Government should be used to give the common man some protection, and a chance to make a decent living. With the Democrats the people come first.
The Democratic Party is a political organization that has a heart--it cares about the people--it cares about all the people, rich and poor alike. The Republican Party is ruled by a little group of men who have calculating machines where their hearts ought to be.
Sometimes the Republicans aid their clientele by special favors--like the rich man's tax cut bill which was passed by the 80th Congress over my veto--or like their attempts to give away the Nation's oil resources to all the big oil interests.
Sometimes the Republicans aid their special friends by doing nothing--by a philosophy of each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. That's why they've fought such measures as minimum wage laws, social security, and the protection of the right of labor unions to organize. All these things and others like them have been opposed by the Republicans. All of them have been supported and put through the Congress by such Democrats as your former Senator and my good friend Elbert Thomas.
The Republican philosophy is really something for you young people to ponder. If you were leaving college in a Republican world, where it was every man for himself, some few of you might do very well. You might get rich. But the devil would take an awful lot of you who happened to be the hindmost--or even in between.
That happened the last time we had a Republican administration in this country. Young people came out of college and found themselves competing with 12 or 14 million other unemployed people. A lot of college graduates were lucky to get day labor, at a dollar a day. Today the problem is very different. Today the problem for most college graduates is to decide which job to take.
Let me read you a clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle dated April 6, 1952. It says that thousands of students graduating from colleges and universities this June are facing a major employment problem-which job to take. Job placement officials in schools and across the Nation reported that in many cases jobs are so plentiful that students have already started choosing between five and ten offers, with starting salaries ranging from $250 to $700. And that is the way it should be. That is the kind of problem that Democrats want you to have.
If there's one thing that the Democratic Party has proved in the past 20 years, it is that we can have full employment in this country if we have wise government policies.
We have shown that it's good economics to have some protection for the farmers, so that they will have some assurance of good prices and a steady income.
We have shown that it's good economics to have full employment at good wages.
We have shown that it's good economics to help the small businessman, so that he can add to the enterprise that is building up this country.
We have shown that it is good economics to develop the great natural resources of the country, particularly the water resources of these Western States.
All of these measures reinforce one another. If the farmers are prosperous, then industry and labor in the cities have a better market. If the workingmen are prosperous, then the farmers can sell their products in the cities. If both are prosperous, then the storekeepers and the salesmen can be assured of having customers.
It's the faith that this can happen, and the courage to take Government action to make it happen, that guides the Democratic Party.
I tell you that it's right to have a job, to have the opportunity to work and to earn a decent living.
And if the Democrats win this election, you will have men in office who are determined that the powers of your Government shall be used to keep those opportunities for all of you, and enlarge them all the time.
A national objective of full employment-and that is the Democratic Party's objective-reflects faith in the future and the courage to do something about it. These qualities show up in international affairs, no less than in domestic affairs.
We can take credit for a good many expressions of faith in the last few years-the United Nations, the Marshall plan, the North Atlantic Treaty, the Japanese Peace Treaty, the point 4 program. So far, our faith has been rewarded.
The United Nations has not yet become all we hoped it would be--and you can blame nobody but the Soviet Union for that but it has done a tremendous amount of. good in a few years' time.
Our faith in the people of Western Europe, and their faith in themselves, resulted in one of the greatest achievements of international cooperation in the world's history--the Marshall plan, followed by the mutual security program. I think everyone now agrees that this venture in cooperation saved Western Europe from communism.
We had a lot of Republican help on those programs for a while, but we also had a lot of Republican opposition. If the Republican opposition had prevailed, I have no doubt that France and Italy and almost all of Western Europe would be under the Communist yoke today. And now the Republican opposition appears to be in complete control of the Republican Party.
The fact is, the Republican Party just does not seem able to see or understand what it takes to meet the menace of Communist aggression and subversion.
Let me give you an example.
Of all our many programs to stop communism, we get the most return for the least money under the point 4 program. In that point 4 program we teach other people what we have learned, and they use our technical knowledge and material aid to increase their standards of living. When people in the underdeveloped countries start making real progress against disease and poverty, they can stand against communism and its false promises. When they feel hopeless about the future, that's when communism makes its inroads.
You in Utah probably know more about point 4 than almost anybody else. The former president of Brigham Young University, Dr. Franklin Harris, was one of the pioneers in point 4 work--long before it was called point 4. He spent a long time in Iran, giving technical assistance, and after that a lot of students came from Iran and studied here in Utah. Then they went back to Iran and put into practice what they had learned. That's the simple inexpensive idea we built on when we launched our point 4 program.
Before I left Washington, I asked whether men from Utah were still working in Iran under point 4. I found that 23 men from Utah, five of them from right here in Provo, are in Iran today. I know you are proud of them, and I am sure I am.
I often think whether Iran, with all its troubles, will be able to keep its freedom and independence, and that, I think, will be determined by the unselfish, people-to-people help under point 4; the kind of help in which the former president of this university was a pioneer.
Now, what do the Republicans think about this program?
On March 21, 1950, the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted by more than 4 to 1 to kill point 4 even before it could get started.
Over in the Senate, the Republicans voted 28 to 5 to kill the program, while setting up another commission to make another study.
Only last May, the Republicans in the House voted by 132 to 36 to cripple the point 4 program in all Asia, by cutting the appropriation request in half.
That is the kind of reckless, shortsighted opposition we have faced all along the way. This is isolationism.
Some of you may have thought all the celebrating at the Republican Convention in July meant that the Republican Party had finally buried its isolationists.
Any hope that such a glorious event had actually occurred, must surely have been squelched, when Senator Taft began to dictate his presidential candidate's position. To get Senator Taft's support, the candidate has had to swallow isolationism whole. The fine principles he once expressed about international cooperation, have now become mere differences of degree between him and Senator Taft.
Every 4 years the Republicans take their outworn, discredited philosophy and dress it up in a new disguise--and try to sell it to the American people. They try to convince the people it's been made over into something different.
This year, they tried to clothe it in the shining armor of a national hero. But before the campaign has ended, each 4 years, the new disguise wears mighty thin. In fact, you can see through it, and you can see that nothing's changed. This year, I fear that the disguise came off even sooner than usual.
It's the same old Republican Party, no matter who may carry the banner out front. It's the same old party that has opposed every progressive step these past 20 years. It's the same old party that has tried to turn the power dams over to the private power companies, and has restricted social security, has fought Federal aid to education, and tried to kill the point 4 program even before it began. It is the party without faith, without vision, and without courage.
And you young men and women must realize you can not make your way into a brave new world under a Republican regime.
The future does not lie with them--it rests with the Democratic Party.
Twenty years ago, my friends, we nearly lost our free society. Twenty years ago, millions of our young people went out into an America that seemed almost hopeless to them, worthless and destructive of their own human rights and needs. If it had not been for franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, our free society might truly have collapsed from within, and the whole course of our history might have been changed.
You young people, in your generation have not had any such experience. You come into a world that has had its dangers, many of them, but they are external dangers, not of our own making. They are dangers we can face together, with courage and conviction, because we have a way of life that is worthwhile to all of us.
That we may keep that way of life we should by all means elect these good Democrats-and send Adlai Stevenson to the White House.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:05 a.m. in the Brigham Young University Stadium at Provo, Utah. During his address he referred to, among others, Vice President Alben W. Barkley, Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson, President of the University, Eugene H. Merrill, newly appointed Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, and his father, Joseph F. Merrill, a member of the Board of Trustees of Brigham Young University, 1939-1952.