October 8, 1952
IT'S A real personal pleasure for me to come to Shenandoah. I like this corner of Iowa, not only because it's one of the real garden spots of the world--but also because it's about as close as you can come to Jackson County, Mo., and still be in Iowa.
So I have the feeling today that comes when we associate with close neighbors.
I have the feeling also that a lot of you must have voted for me in 1948, because I carried Iowa as well as Missouri.
This year, you have the opportunity to elect as President the Governor of a great farm State--Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. Governor Stevenson is a man of great ability and long experience in civil government. He worked in the Triple-A back in the 1930's--and he knows firsthand what the farmers went through in those days. As Governor of Illinois, he has been just as close to the farmers during the last 4 years.
You also have the opportunity to elect as Vice President a man of complete integrity and a real progressive. John Sparkman was the son of a tenant farmer in Alabama; and if there's anything he doesn't understand about agriculture, I can't imagine what it is.
And to help them administer the affairs of this great country, I sincerely hope you will elect a Democratic Congress. I have had a chance to talk with your candidate for Congress from this district, Tom Keleher, who I am told is known as "Getting Things Done Keleher." My impression is that his nickname is just about right, and he will get things done for you back in Washington. And I heartily recommend to you your Democratic candidate for Governor, Herschel Loveless. And I hope you will elect him.
Now, I want to talk to you today about the farm programs of the Federal Government. Some time ago, I received a letter from a man in Missouri that brings home to us the importance of these programs. I want to read you a part of it.
"Dear Truman," he says. None of that "Dear Mr. President" stuff. He just talks to me like he is still my neighbor.
"I am wondering," he says, "when you might be on your way with some whistlestop talks to the voters of the western part of the country. I want to make a suggestion to you. When you do, I have some suggestions to shoot at the Republicans. They talk about deep freezes and mink coats but never mention Teapot Dome, 30-cent wheat, 10-cent corn, 10-cent oats, 3-cent hogs, 3-cent cattle, 5-cent cotton, and the bank failures.
"Here is an instance where a man I knew well shipped an old cow to the St. Louis market, worth now from $150 to $200. But when she got to the market under Hoover she had to send an S O S to her owner to send her 70 cents, as she lacked that much of paying her way to St. Louis. Well, the farmer did not have the 70 cents, nor did any of his neighbors. He rushed to the bank to try and get a loan of that much, but the bank failed before he got there. That cow was a great individualist but her ending was ignominious. She left the world owing 70 cents, and to this date it has never been paid."
His letter goes on to say:
"I was selling court supplies and legal blanks at that period, and every billboard in the courthouse was plastered with farm mortgage sales. I had a tremendous business in that line, but the printing presses had a hard time filling such orders. Today you never see a farm for sale under a mortgage. If so, there are a dozen buyers with the money to buy it.
"Now, do the farmers want a change back to those times?"
I wonder if they do?
There you have the story of the cow who met an ignominious end, and still owes 70 cents on her freight. I learned one thing from that letter I hadn't realized. I never thought the Hoover farm depression was good for anybody. But now I find it was. It was good for the man who sold the paper that the farm sales were printed on!
Now, a lot of the Republican newspapers have been saying that the Democrats have got to stop running against Herbert Hoover. I can see why they'd like to drop the whole subject. I would, too, if I were in their shoes.
There may be some of you folks so young that you don't remember the Hoover farm depression. But a lot of us older people do, and I don't think it's something the country can afford to forget.
The same thing could happen again, if the same Republican Party gets back in control of the National Government.
The Hoover farm depression hit us for a very simple reason. We did not have in Washington in the 1920's a party that was interested in all of the people. The Republican Party rushed to the rescue of the banks and the railroads. They bailed out the big interests, but they didn't lift a finger to help the farmer and the ordinary workingman.
The people who were left behind came mighty close to revolting here in the Middle West. Farmers sometimes took things into their own hands in those days, when the courthouse walls were plastered with mortgage foreclosures. But, fortunately for the country, they had a peaceful means of changing the order of things, and in 1932 they brought in a Democratic administration.
And the change that has taken place since then is almost unbelievable. The increase in farm prosperity has been so great, and has lasted so long, that a lot of farmers have forgotten all about the Hoover depression and have started voting Republican again. How they can do that, I just can't understand.
In this election campaign, both of the candidates for President have made speeches on their farm policies. I cannot say anything to improve on Governor Stevenson's speeches. They have been clear and forthright statements, and they make plain he stands on the Democratic record and the Democratic platform. We can count on him to continue and improve the Democratic programs which have already done so much for American agriculture.
The Republican candidate's farm speeches are unbelievable. They are a conglomeration of generalities, platitudes, half-truths, and just plain misrepresentation.
He makes the baldest attempt to steal the Democratic record that I have ever seen. He says the farm programs of the last 20 years were brought into being on a "nonpartisan basis." He says he understands they "have been overwhelmingly supported" by the Republican Party.
This just goes to show that in the field of agriculture, as in so many other fields, the General doesn't know much about what's been going on in the United States during the 40 years he's been in the Army.
Let's look at the record and see about that "overwhelming support" from the Republican Party.
The first Triple-A program was opposed by two-thirds of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. A large majority of Republicans voted against the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. The Triple-A Act of 1938, which is still our basic price support legislation, was opposed by the Republicans in Congress 5 to 1.
The 80th Congress did a lot of things, which most of you understood when you voted 4 years ago. That Republican Congress cut the soil conservation program, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted 12 to 1 to kill the agricultural conservation program entirely.
Probably the worst thing they did was to pass a bill which banned the Commodity Credit Corporation from providing grain storage.
I said at the time, and I say now, that this action was a great favor to the grain trade and a terrible blow to the farmer. It would have killed the price support program deader than a doornail if the Democratic 81st Congress had not changed the law in a hurry.
But there was a lot of harm done before the law could be changed. Many of you had to sell grain at less than support prices because you couldn't find enough storage space in either the grain trade or from the Commodity Credit Corporation.
The Republicans are mad now because I put the finger right on the trouble in 1948 and told the American people who was fighting them. Some are even telling big lies, now, about what happened in 1948. But I know they can't fool the farmers--you had personal knowledge on the ground of what was happening.
The Republicans didn't even learn anything when the voters repudiated that 80th Congress. Their obstruction has continued. When it was necessary to increase the borrowing authority of the Commodity Credit Corporation to make sure of meeting price support commitments, Republicans voted against it 74 to 59 in the House and 32 to o in the Senate. Not a single Republican Senator voted for that proposition.
The bills that continue to threaten to tax farmer-cooperatives out of existence are Republican bills. There's one by Noah Mason in the House, and one by John Williams in the Senate. Williams, by the way, is in the grain storage business, and he is the one that has done the most howling about the increased storage space. The Republican platform says kind words about farmer-cooperatives in principle, but offers no protection in practice.
The Republican candidate for the Presidency has said a few kind words about rural telephones. But I wonder if he knew that a majority of Republicans in the House voted against the new rural telephone program.
The Republicans claim to be in love with rural electrification, yet in the Republican 80th Congress the only way we could get large enough appropriations for REA was to put them through while the Republicans were absent. There were five record votes on REA appropriations in the House of Representatives during that awful Both Congress-and every time the issue came up, the Democrats voted almost solidly in favor of REA, while the Republicans opposed it almost unanimously. They are trying their best, down in this corner of Iowa, to claim that the Republicans are responsible for REA.
Now the Republican candidate for President calls the record of the last 20 years a nonpartisan record! I know it's hard to believe it, but that's what he did.
Now, you can expect the same kind of "overwhelming" Republican support for our farm programs in the future that we have had in the past. Look at the situation on price supports, for example. You can't analyze the Republican position in just a few words, because there are at least four positions.
I am going to tell you about those four positions. They are good.
First, there's the position of the Both Congress that gave you the sliding scale of support levels ranging down to as low as 60 percent of parity. Why, even in 1932 farm prices as low as they were still averaged about 60 percent of parity.
Second, there's the position taken in the 1952 platform. The key sentence in the Republican platform reads as follows: "We favor a farm program aimed at full parity prices for all farm products in the marketplace."
You've been left to the tender mercies of the marketplace before. And that's where you went broke about 20 years ago!
The third position is that taken by the Republican candidate at Kasson, Minnesota. He said you didn't have to pay any attention to the Republican Party's platform. Now, get that!--he said you didn't have to pay any attention to the platform. He said that price support at 90 percent of parity is fair and he'll support it until 1954.
Well, he couldn't say much else, because the law is already on the books. But it was put there by the Democrats. A majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives actually voted against it. Yet, he has the gall to say that the amendment was passed by votes of both parties in the Congress.
Then there is the fourth position, which we ought to call the General's "after breakfast." position. After his famous breakfast with Senator Taft, the Senator said he believed that the General "will be for a flexible farm support program after the present 2-year agreement for 90 percent parity is over."
The Senator is here today. He rode in the parade. He set his appearance up from 8:30 to 3:30 so he would have a crowd. I want you to give him a hearing. And then read the record, and you will find out what the facts are. I have told you the Republicans have four positions--one a matter of history, one a vague hope, one which is campaign oratory, and one "after breakfast."
When you get through, you come out right where you went in with the Republican 80th Congress.
And now the Republican candidate either in ignorance or in deceit, has taken up the old, discredited battle theory of "enslaving" the farmer. He seems to think you are wearing chains.
Such talk is downright silly. It insults the intelligence of farm men and women. You've lived with these price support programs for a long time--and have helped to run them. How many of you feel regimented? How many of you feel that the Federal Government is in charge of your farms ?
The Republicans know, of course, that our farm programs are all completely voluntary, except when the producers of a commodity vote controls on themselves, under conditions carefully spelled out in the law. Farmers fought for the right to use this economic protection, and I don't hear anybody except self-seeking politicians railing against it.
Democratic administrations have provided farmers a most unique and valuable system for governing farm programs on their farms. I am speaking of the soil conservation districts and the system of farmer-elected committeemen who administer price supports and other programs. These two systems alone would be great monuments to 20 years of progress under Democratic administrations. They make it possible for farmers to elect their neighbors to administer the farm programs on a nonpartisan basis.
Yet, the Republican platform does not mention continuing the farmer committee system and it threatens reorganization of the districts. In fact, the 80th Congress almost killed the committee system--that's what the Republicans really think about letting farmers have a voice in their own programs.
The Democratic Party has "regimented" farmers so badly that the vast majority now own their farms. That is terrible regimentation. In 20 years we have stopped and completely reversed the alarming trend toward tenancy of the preceding 50 years. From 1880 to 1930, the percentage of owner-operated farms dropped from 74 to 58 percent.
But, today, once again, about three-fourths of our farms are operated by their owners. That doesn't sound to me like either regimentation or creeping socialism!
Perhaps the Republican leaders can find regimentation in our farm productivity. With the help of the biggest agricultural research program ever undertaken, American farmers have stepped up farm output by 50 percent in 20 years. And there are not as many farmers on farms as there were 20 years ago.
We have new strength in our farmlands. We have improved crops and livestock. Our farms are well equipped with modern machines and tools. Nine out of ten have electricity.
No longer do we have 15-cent corn and 3-cent hogs.
But I think we remember them.
Now, let me talk for a minute about the Brannan plan. Charlie Brannan has done one of the greatest jobs that any Secretary of Agriculture has ever done. He's administered these price support programs fairly and honestly, and in such a way as to minimize the cost to the Government. Last fiscal year the price support operations gave the Federal Treasury a net income of over $100 million.
But Charlie Brannan has been concerned-and rightly so--about a big gap in our farm program, the problem of perishables. Much more than half of farm income comes from perishables. These are commodities like hogs and eggs and milk that people need more of and want more of. Also, the production of these commodities makes for sound, diversified agriculture.
So when Congress asked Charlie Brannan for his suggestions, he made the best recommendations to take care of perishables that anyone had thought of up to that time-and better than anyone has thought of since. He presented them to the Congress as a basis for serious discussion, but his political opponents decided to make a campaign issue of it instead. They decided to call it a plan and to call it socialism and thought if they could say it often enough people would believe it.
So in Kasson, the Republican candidate fell in with this scheme. He indulged in some cheap name-calling. He called the Brannan plan "moral bankruptcy" and some other names. Did he say what was wrong with the Brannan plan? No, he did not. Not a word of specific criticism. He just promised that the Republicans would find some way to accomplish the same objectives that Secretary Brannan would accomplish-only without any bankruptcy in their morals.
Well, we can't criticize the morals of the Republican plan, because they haven't any plan to criticize. Now they've had 30 years to think up a plan. Their candidate now says they're going to start thinking. I hope they do. It's just about time they started thinking.
There are a lot of other policies of the National Government that are related very closely to farm policies. You ought to look at these, too, before you cast your vote.
You would have to ask both parties what their policies are on labor. Do they believe in full employment at good wages for the people who live in the cities? Those are the people who buy the things the farmers grow, and farmers cannot prosper unless the people who live in the cities can keep on buying.
You would have to ask both parties what their policies are on maintaining a true competitive system--through assisting small business and using the powers of Government to reduce the domination of the national economy by the giant corporations. The great reform measures of the last century, and many of those of Woodrow Wilson, arose out of this Midwestern soil, where farmers were being made the pawns of the railroads and the Eastern trusts.
You would have to ask both parties what their policies are on international cooperation and foreign trade. Republican tariffs deepened the depression of the 1920's by cutting off the foreign markets upon which American agriculture depends.
Read the Republican platform. Read the Democratic platform, and ask yourself which is the party of the people, and which is the party of the special interests. The big corporations and the special interests of all kinds have had the Republican Party as their servant--not only in the 80th Congress, not only in the days of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover--but all the way back to President McKinley and beyond. The Democratic party has fought the battle of the little man-of the farmer, the laborer, the white-collar worker, the small businessman--and it has fought it constantly year in and year out.
The Republicans know this--so now they ask for your vote as a gesture of sympathy. "It's time for a change," they say, because if you don't vote Republican this time, the poor old Republican Party is going to die and you won't have a two-party system any more.
The Democratic Party was once out of office for longer than the Republican Party has been out. And it didn't die. It still had a great mission. And the Republican Party won't die either if it has any reason for being saved. It had better start proving itself worthy of the trust instead of asking for votes on the basis of sympathy. Our Government cannot be run like a children's game of spin the plate or musical chairs.
The Democratic Party is the party of the young people. It is the party that is always looking forward. It is the party that has a future. It is the party that believes in the future of this great Nation of ours. And the young people ought to make a study of exactly what's gone on in the history of this great Nation of ours. And when they do that, they can't help but get in with the party that is looking to progress.
As I have said time and again, I wish I was 18 instead of 68. I would like to see the next half century. I would like to see what develops in this great Nation of ours. What has developed in the last half won't be a patching to what will come up in the next half. I would like to be here to help with it, and to see it done. And the way to get it done is to stay with the party that believes in progress and the future.
Now, the Democratic Party has fulfilled your trust through the most difficult and challenging period in all history. The Democratic Party offers you a program-and men who know how to make the program succeed--for prosperity, for strength, and for peace. The men on the ticket are just that sort.
The Democratic Party offers you the opportunity to vote for your own ideals, to vote for progress, to vote for the future, to vote in your own interests. You are the Government. You, the people, exercise the power and run the Republic of the United States. And you exercise that power when you go to the polls. And when you don't go to the polls, and you get bad government, you have nobody to blame for it but yourselves. And you get just exactly what you deserve.
Now, I want you to do this. Think these things over. Get the facts. What I want you to do is to study the facts, and then I urge you again to get out there on election day, and vote for your own future.
NOTE: The President spoke at 12:40 p.m. at the Shenandoah County fair and Harvest Jubilee. During his remarks he referred to Thomas J. Keleher, Democratic candidate for Representative, and Herschel C. Loveless, Democratic candidate for Governor, both of Iowa. The President also referred to Representative Noah M. Mason of Illinois, Senator John J. Williams of Delaware, and Charles f. Brannan, Secretary of Agriculture.
IT'S A real personal pleasure for me to come to Shenandoah. I like this corner of Iowa, not only because it's one of the real garden spots of the world--but also because it's about as close as you can come to Jackson County, Mo., and still be in Iowa.
So I have the feeling today that comes when we associate with close neighbors.
I have the feeling also that a lot of you must have voted for me in 1948, because I carried Iowa as well as Missouri.
This year, you have the opportunity to elect as President the Governor of a great farm State--Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. Governor Stevenson is a man of great ability and long experience in civil government. He worked in the Triple-A back in the 1930's--and he knows firsthand what the farmers went through in those days. As Governor of Illinois, he has been just as close to the farmers during the last 4 years.
You also have the opportunity to elect as Vice President a man of complete integrity and a real progressive. John Sparkman was the son of a tenant farmer in Alabama; and if there's anything he doesn't understand about agriculture, I can't imagine what it is.
And to help them administer the affairs of this great country, I sincerely hope you will elect a Democratic Congress. I have had a chance to talk with your candidate for Congress from this district, Tom Keleher, who I am told is known as "Getting Things Done Keleher." My impression is that his nickname is just about right, and he will get things done for you back in Washington. And I heartily recommend to you your Democratic candidate for Governor, Herschel Loveless. And I hope you will elect him.
Now, I want to talk to you today about the farm programs of the Federal Government. Some time ago, I received a letter from a man in Missouri that brings home to us the importance of these programs. I want to read you a part of it.
"Dear Truman," he says. None of that "Dear Mr. President" stuff. He just talks to me like he is still my neighbor.
"I am wondering," he says, "when you might be on your way with some whistlestop talks to the voters of the western part of the country. I want to make a suggestion to you. When you do, I have some suggestions to shoot at the Republicans. They talk about deep freezes and mink coats but never mention Teapot Dome, 30-cent wheat, 10-cent corn, 10-cent oats, 3-cent hogs, 3-cent cattle, 5-cent cotton, and the bank failures.
"Here is an instance where a man I knew well shipped an old cow to the St. Louis market, worth now from $150 to $200. But when she got to the market under Hoover she had to send an S O S to her owner to send her 70 cents, as she lacked that much of paying her way to St. Louis. Well, the farmer did not have the 70 cents, nor did any of his neighbors. He rushed to the bank to try and get a loan of that much, but the bank failed before he got there. That cow was a great individualist but her ending was ignominious. She left the world owing 70 cents, and to this date it has never been paid."
His letter goes on to say:
"I was selling court supplies and legal blanks at that period, and every billboard in the courthouse was plastered with farm mortgage sales. I had a tremendous business in that line, but the printing presses had a hard time filling such orders. Today you never see a farm for sale under a mortgage. If so, there are a dozen buyers with the money to buy it.
"Now, do the farmers want a change back to those times?"
I wonder if they do?
There you have the story of the cow who met an ignominious end, and still owes 70 cents on her freight. I learned one thing from that letter I hadn't realized. I never thought the Hoover farm depression was good for anybody. But now I find it was. It was good for the man who sold the paper that the farm sales were printed on!
Now, a lot of the Republican newspapers have been saying that the Democrats have got to stop running against Herbert Hoover. I can see why they'd like to drop the whole subject. I would, too, if I were in their shoes.
There may be some of you folks so young that you don't remember the Hoover farm depression. But a lot of us older people do, and I don't think it's something the country can afford to forget.
The same thing could happen again, if the same Republican Party gets back in control of the National Government.
The Hoover farm depression hit us for a very simple reason. We did not have in Washington in the 1920's a party that was interested in all of the people. The Republican Party rushed to the rescue of the banks and the railroads. They bailed out the big interests, but they didn't lift a finger to help the farmer and the ordinary workingman.
The people who were left behind came mighty close to revolting here in the Middle West. Farmers sometimes took things into their own hands in those days, when the courthouse walls were plastered with mortgage foreclosures. But, fortunately for the country, they had a peaceful means of changing the order of things, and in 1932 they brought in a Democratic administration.
And the change that has taken place since then is almost unbelievable. The increase in farm prosperity has been so great, and has lasted so long, that a lot of farmers have forgotten all about the Hoover depression and have started voting Republican again. How they can do that, I just can't understand.
In this election campaign, both of the candidates for President have made speeches on their farm policies. I cannot say anything to improve on Governor Stevenson's speeches. They have been clear and forthright statements, and they make plain he stands on the Democratic record and the Democratic platform. We can count on him to continue and improve the Democratic programs which have already done so much for American agriculture.
The Republican candidate's farm speeches are unbelievable. They are a conglomeration of generalities, platitudes, half-truths, and just plain misrepresentation.
He makes the baldest attempt to steal the Democratic record that I have ever seen. He says the farm programs of the last 20 years were brought into being on a "nonpartisan basis." He says he understands they "have been overwhelmingly supported" by the Republican Party.
This just goes to show that in the field of agriculture, as in so many other fields, the General doesn't know much about what's been going on in the United States during the 40 years he's been in the Army.
Let's look at the record and see about that "overwhelming support" from the Republican Party.
The first Triple-A program was opposed by two-thirds of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. A large majority of Republicans voted against the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. The Triple-A Act of 1938, which is still our basic price support legislation, was opposed by the Republicans in Congress 5 to 1.
The 80th Congress did a lot of things, which most of you understood when you voted 4 years ago. That Republican Congress cut the soil conservation program, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted 12 to 1 to kill the agricultural conservation program entirely.
Probably the worst thing they did was to pass a bill which banned the Commodity Credit Corporation from providing grain storage.
I said at the time, and I say now, that this action was a great favor to the grain trade and a terrible blow to the farmer. It would have killed the price support program deader than a doornail if the Democratic 81st Congress had not changed the law in a hurry.
But there was a lot of harm done before the law could be changed. Many of you had to sell grain at less than support prices because you couldn't find enough storage space in either the grain trade or from the Commodity Credit Corporation.
The Republicans are mad now because I put the finger right on the trouble in 1948 and told the American people who was fighting them. Some are even telling big lies, now, about what happened in 1948. But I know they can't fool the farmers--you had personal knowledge on the ground of what was happening.
The Republicans didn't even learn anything when the voters repudiated that 80th Congress. Their obstruction has continued. When it was necessary to increase the borrowing authority of the Commodity Credit Corporation to make sure of meeting price support commitments, Republicans voted against it 74 to 59 in the House and 32 to o in the Senate. Not a single Republican Senator voted for that proposition.
The bills that continue to threaten to tax farmer-cooperatives out of existence are Republican bills. There's one by Noah Mason in the House, and one by John Williams in the Senate. Williams, by the way, is in the grain storage business, and he is the one that has done the most howling about the increased storage space. The Republican platform says kind words about farmer-cooperatives in principle, but offers no protection in practice.
The Republican candidate for the Presidency has said a few kind words about rural telephones. But I wonder if he knew that a majority of Republicans in the House voted against the new rural telephone program.
The Republicans claim to be in love with rural electrification, yet in the Republican 80th Congress the only way we could get large enough appropriations for REA was to put them through while the Republicans were absent. There were five record votes on REA appropriations in the House of Representatives during that awful Both Congress-and every time the issue came up, the Democrats voted almost solidly in favor of REA, while the Republicans opposed it almost unanimously. They are trying their best, down in this corner of Iowa, to claim that the Republicans are responsible for REA.
Now the Republican candidate for President calls the record of the last 20 years a nonpartisan record! I know it's hard to believe it, but that's what he did.
Now, you can expect the same kind of "overwhelming" Republican support for our farm programs in the future that we have had in the past. Look at the situation on price supports, for example. You can't analyze the Republican position in just a few words, because there are at least four positions.
I am going to tell you about those four positions. They are good.
First, there's the position of the Both Congress that gave you the sliding scale of support levels ranging down to as low as 60 percent of parity. Why, even in 1932 farm prices as low as they were still averaged about 60 percent of parity.
Second, there's the position taken in the 1952 platform. The key sentence in the Republican platform reads as follows: "We favor a farm program aimed at full parity prices for all farm products in the marketplace."
You've been left to the tender mercies of the marketplace before. And that's where you went broke about 20 years ago!
The third position is that taken by the Republican candidate at Kasson, Minnesota. He said you didn't have to pay any attention to the Republican Party's platform. Now, get that!--he said you didn't have to pay any attention to the platform. He said that price support at 90 percent of parity is fair and he'll support it until 1954.
Well, he couldn't say much else, because the law is already on the books. But it was put there by the Democrats. A majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives actually voted against it. Yet, he has the gall to say that the amendment was passed by votes of both parties in the Congress.
Then there is the fourth position, which we ought to call the General's "after breakfast." position. After his famous breakfast with Senator Taft, the Senator said he believed that the General "will be for a flexible farm support program after the present 2-year agreement for 90 percent parity is over."
The Senator is here today. He rode in the parade. He set his appearance up from 8:30 to 3:30 so he would have a crowd. I want you to give him a hearing. And then read the record, and you will find out what the facts are. I have told you the Republicans have four positions--one a matter of history, one a vague hope, one which is campaign oratory, and one "after breakfast."
When you get through, you come out right where you went in with the Republican 80th Congress.
And now the Republican candidate either in ignorance or in deceit, has taken up the old, discredited battle theory of "enslaving" the farmer. He seems to think you are wearing chains.
Such talk is downright silly. It insults the intelligence of farm men and women. You've lived with these price support programs for a long time--and have helped to run them. How many of you feel regimented? How many of you feel that the Federal Government is in charge of your farms ?
The Republicans know, of course, that our farm programs are all completely voluntary, except when the producers of a commodity vote controls on themselves, under conditions carefully spelled out in the law. Farmers fought for the right to use this economic protection, and I don't hear anybody except self-seeking politicians railing against it.
Democratic administrations have provided farmers a most unique and valuable system for governing farm programs on their farms. I am speaking of the soil conservation districts and the system of farmer-elected committeemen who administer price supports and other programs. These two systems alone would be great monuments to 20 years of progress under Democratic administrations. They make it possible for farmers to elect their neighbors to administer the farm programs on a nonpartisan basis.
Yet, the Republican platform does not mention continuing the farmer committee system and it threatens reorganization of the districts. In fact, the 80th Congress almost killed the committee system--that's what the Republicans really think about letting farmers have a voice in their own programs.
The Democratic Party has "regimented" farmers so badly that the vast majority now own their farms. That is terrible regimentation. In 20 years we have stopped and completely reversed the alarming trend toward tenancy of the preceding 50 years. From 1880 to 1930, the percentage of owner-operated farms dropped from 74 to 58 percent.
But, today, once again, about three-fourths of our farms are operated by their owners. That doesn't sound to me like either regimentation or creeping socialism!
Perhaps the Republican leaders can find regimentation in our farm productivity. With the help of the biggest agricultural research program ever undertaken, American farmers have stepped up farm output by 50 percent in 20 years. And there are not as many farmers on farms as there were 20 years ago.
We have new strength in our farmlands. We have improved crops and livestock. Our farms are well equipped with modern machines and tools. Nine out of ten have electricity.
No longer do we have 15-cent corn and 3-cent hogs.
But I think we remember them.
Now, let me talk for a minute about the Brannan plan. Charlie Brannan has done one of the greatest jobs that any Secretary of Agriculture has ever done. He's administered these price support programs fairly and honestly, and in such a way as to minimize the cost to the Government. Last fiscal year the price support operations gave the Federal Treasury a net income of over $100 million.
But Charlie Brannan has been concerned-and rightly so--about a big gap in our farm program, the problem of perishables. Much more than half of farm income comes from perishables. These are commodities like hogs and eggs and milk that people need more of and want more of. Also, the production of these commodities makes for sound, diversified agriculture.
So when Congress asked Charlie Brannan for his suggestions, he made the best recommendations to take care of perishables that anyone had thought of up to that time-and better than anyone has thought of since. He presented them to the Congress as a basis for serious discussion, but his political opponents decided to make a campaign issue of it instead. They decided to call it a plan and to call it socialism and thought if they could say it often enough people would believe it.
So in Kasson, the Republican candidate fell in with this scheme. He indulged in some cheap name-calling. He called the Brannan plan "moral bankruptcy" and some other names. Did he say what was wrong with the Brannan plan? No, he did not. Not a word of specific criticism. He just promised that the Republicans would find some way to accomplish the same objectives that Secretary Brannan would accomplish-only without any bankruptcy in their morals.
Well, we can't criticize the morals of the Republican plan, because they haven't any plan to criticize. Now they've had 30 years to think up a plan. Their candidate now says they're going to start thinking. I hope they do. It's just about time they started thinking.
There are a lot of other policies of the National Government that are related very closely to farm policies. You ought to look at these, too, before you cast your vote.
You would have to ask both parties what their policies are on labor. Do they believe in full employment at good wages for the people who live in the cities? Those are the people who buy the things the farmers grow, and farmers cannot prosper unless the people who live in the cities can keep on buying.
You would have to ask both parties what their policies are on maintaining a true competitive system--through assisting small business and using the powers of Government to reduce the domination of the national economy by the giant corporations. The great reform measures of the last century, and many of those of Woodrow Wilson, arose out of this Midwestern soil, where farmers were being made the pawns of the railroads and the Eastern trusts.
You would have to ask both parties what their policies are on international cooperation and foreign trade. Republican tariffs deepened the depression of the 1920's by cutting off the foreign markets upon which American agriculture depends.
Read the Republican platform. Read the Democratic platform, and ask yourself which is the party of the people, and which is the party of the special interests. The big corporations and the special interests of all kinds have had the Republican Party as their servant--not only in the 80th Congress, not only in the days of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover--but all the way back to President McKinley and beyond. The Democratic party has fought the battle of the little man-of the farmer, the laborer, the white-collar worker, the small businessman--and it has fought it constantly year in and year out.
The Republicans know this--so now they ask for your vote as a gesture of sympathy. "It's time for a change," they say, because if you don't vote Republican this time, the poor old Republican Party is going to die and you won't have a two-party system any more.
The Democratic Party was once out of office for longer than the Republican Party has been out. And it didn't die. It still had a great mission. And the Republican Party won't die either if it has any reason for being saved. It had better start proving itself worthy of the trust instead of asking for votes on the basis of sympathy. Our Government cannot be run like a children's game of spin the plate or musical chairs.
The Democratic Party is the party of the young people. It is the party that is always looking forward. It is the party that has a future. It is the party that believes in the future of this great Nation of ours. And the young people ought to make a study of exactly what's gone on in the history of this great Nation of ours. And when they do that, they can't help but get in with the party that is looking to progress.
As I have said time and again, I wish I was 18 instead of 68. I would like to see the next half century. I would like to see what develops in this great Nation of ours. What has developed in the last half won't be a patching to what will come up in the next half. I would like to be here to help with it, and to see it done. And the way to get it done is to stay with the party that believes in progress and the future.
Now, the Democratic Party has fulfilled your trust through the most difficult and challenging period in all history. The Democratic Party offers you a program-and men who know how to make the program succeed--for prosperity, for strength, and for peace. The men on the ticket are just that sort.
The Democratic Party offers you the opportunity to vote for your own ideals, to vote for progress, to vote for the future, to vote in your own interests. You are the Government. You, the people, exercise the power and run the Republic of the United States. And you exercise that power when you go to the polls. And when you don't go to the polls, and you get bad government, you have nobody to blame for it but yourselves. And you get just exactly what you deserve.
Now, I want you to do this. Think these things over. Get the facts. What I want you to do is to study the facts, and then I urge you again to get out there on election day, and vote for your own future.
NOTE: The President spoke at 12:40 p.m. at the Shenandoah County fair and Harvest Jubilee. During his remarks he referred to Thomas J. Keleher, Democratic candidate for Representative, and Herschel C. Loveless, Democratic candidate for Governor, both of Iowa. The President also referred to Representative Noah M. Mason of Illinois, Senator John J. Williams of Delaware, and Charles f. Brannan, Secretary of Agriculture.