October 16, 1952
I AM more than happy to see so many people out here today to welcome the President of the United States in his capacity as the head of the Democratic Party.
Last week and the week before, I crossed the country from coast to coast. I gave the people a lot of reasons why Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman should be elected President and Vice President on November the 4th--and why they should be given a strong Democratic Congress to support them.
Now I have been traveling across the State of Connecticut with your candidates for the Senate and the Congress. And Connecticut will certainly be properly represented in the Congress of the United States, and its interests will be properly looked after, if you send Bill Benton, Abe Ribicoff, and the Congressmen from these districts in Connecticut to the Congress to look after your interests.
As I traveled, I also saw a lot of reasons why Democrats should be elected in November. I saw busy factories, rich farming lands, and prosperous people. I saw on every hand the signs of growth, of new enterprise, of new investment--of a spirit of confidence in the future of this great Republic of ours.
I know that in New England this week I am going to see the same spirit. I have already seen it in Connecticut this morning.
Now, the Republicans will try to tell you that the kind of government we have has nothing at all to do with whether we're prosperous or not.
I just say to you, "Look who's talking." It's easy enough to see why the Republicans would like to have you believe that. They're the people who had control of the National Government in the 1920's, and whose policies led us into the darkest depression that this rich country has ever seen.
Many of you in this audience are too young to remember the days when there were 14 million unemployed, when there were bank failures in almost every city, when there were breadlines and some soup kitchens, when food was burned because hungry people didn't have the money to buy it, and all the rest that took place under that Republican rule.
Well, the Republicans and their millionaire backers said there was nothing to be done about it at all, but just to wait. They said that Government action couldn't lick the depression and create employment. But the 'people didn't settle for that. They put the Democratic Party in power.
And we licked the depression.
Then we set out to do something about security. You remember what the Republican millionaires said to that. "The poor will be always with us," they said.
But the Democratic Party didn't settle for that, either. We passed unemployment compensation and old-age insurance. We provided Federal assistance for old-age pensions and aid to dependent children and to the blind. We passed measures to protect farm income. We got a start on slum clearance and on health programs.
In short, we put a good solid floor under family income and living standards--which in the Republican days could go down to zero without anybody in Washington caring a hoot about it.
Then came World War II, and they said we couldn't possibly fight the Japanese and the Germans without going bankrupt. But we won the war and came out with a stronger economy than ever before.
For the first time in history, my friends, a major war was not allowed to be followed by a major depression.
At the end of the war the Republicans said we couldn't provide 60 million jobs. But we did it. We now have over 62 million people employed in this great country.
By 1950, before the present defense program was launched, we were setting new records by almost every measure of prosperity you want to use. There were more people at work, more things being produced, more purchasing 'power in the hands of the people, higher corporation profits. And, of special interest to Hartford, there was more insurance in force.
You know that some of the insurance companies fought bitterly against social security in the early days with the old shopworn cry that this was socialism. Now they'll all admit, I believe, that social security has actually helped them increase their business.
Then came a national emergency, and the great economic strength of this country was really shown. In 2 years we launched a military buildup of tremendous proportions-and a buildup of our basic economic capacity on a scale never before matched. All this was carried on without reducing the standard of living or the real income of the average American one iota.
The Republicans are saying we can't afford this kind of military program. I say, thank God we have built the kind of economy that enabled us to carry out this tremendous defense program without any real strain on the economy. There have been no real sacrifices, except for the men and women in Korea and their families at home. Their sacrifices have been great--many of them very great indeed. This has saddened all of us. But those sacrifices are being made to defend this country against Communist aggression. Our men are fighting in Korea so that we will not have to fight in the United States. We are fighting to 'prevent the untold horrors of a third world war. If we can do that, it will be mankind's greatest victory for peace. It certainly ill behooves those of us who are left at home, with our families intact, to complain about the effect of the defense program on us.
We have had some inflation, which was unfortunate. Part of it was inevitable; but a big part of it was due simply to the fact that the Republicans in Congress gutted the price control laws in order to let the special interests make a killing.
We've had higher taxes, which we've been able to pay out of higher earnings. The Republicans have tried to make you think that high taxes are a crime. But you've been buying something with your taxes more precious than anything you can buy in the marketplace. You've been buying the kind of military strength without which we could not hope to prevent a third world war. And if you don't buy that strength with taxes, you have to borrow and add to the National debt. The Democrats just don't believe in adding to our debts when we don't have to do it.
I've covered in a few words the story of 20 years of Democratic government. It's a story of progress from beginning to end. Nobody has summed it up better than the Republican candidate for President in his acceptance speech at the Chicago convention.
This is what he said: "We are now at the moment of history when, under God, this Nation of ours has become the mightiest temporal power and the mightiest spiritual force on earth."
And what do the Republicans say about this? They say: "It's time for a change."
Now, my friends, maybe that's an appealing slogan. I know many a baseball fan who was rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series just because the Yankees had won too many times. It was time for a change, they thought.
But you're not rooting at a ball game when you go to the polls on November 4. This isn't a ball game. And it isn't a beauty contest. This is your bread and butter. This is your chance for world peace.
No party is entitled to power just because it lost too many elections in the past.
Now, the Republicans lost those elections. They lost because they've put in 20 years of blind, thoughtless opposition to almost everything the Democratic Party has done to help the ordinary citizen.
They lost because they've been dominated by special privilege, by the lobbies--because they've always voted with the special interests and against the welfare of the people.
They lost because they've been against world cooperation, against a healthy foreign trade, against aid to other peoples around the world.
They lost because they've been against minorities of all kinds, against the immigration into this country of Jews and Catholics, against equality of opportunity.
Now, I don't mean that all Republicans are against all these things. All of us know a few Republicans who are progressive about some things, and some of them are from up here in New England. But those Republicans are a pretty lonesome group these days. I understand that there's still one New Englander left on the Republican candidate's train, but just look who surrounds him.
Every other berth on that train is filled by someone from the mossback, dinosaur, reactionary wing of the Republican Party--men who represent big money, the men who want to turn the clock back to 1896.
A couple of days ago, one of the Republican candidate's advisers riding on his train said that--and I quote--"The General's compromises are all behind him." This was reported by a correspondent who works for a paper that has endorsed the Republican candidate, so I guess you can believe what he said.
When I first called attention to the way the Republican candidate was compromising, some of the Eastern papers accused me of slinging mud. Now you don't have to have it direct from the candidate's train.
Maybe the correspondent thought his report would sound like good news. The candidate was at last through compromising. But the plain fact is, the candidate doesn't have much left to compromise.
Let me run down some of the list.
The candidate has compromised on foreign policy. Down in Illinois 2 weeks ago, when he traveled with some of the most dangerous isolationists in this country, he talked a straight-out isolationist line. He sneered at everything that's been done in Europe--even the things that he had a part in doing. He says our policies in Europe have been a failure. Senator Taft has him committed to slashing the budget with which we carry on our foreign policy.
He has compromised on national defense. First, he talked glibly about a $40 billion cut in the budget. Now, Senator Taft has said he and the candidate were agreed on a $20 billion cut--which would be enough to wreck our national defense program.
He has compromised on Korea. He has said we were right to go into Korea, but he's made vague promises about how he'll bring the boys back home. He has even criticized us for entering into truce negotiations, but what would he be saying if we weren't doing everything we could to end the fighting?
Now I want to say to you that he has also stated that he knows a panacea that will cure the Korean situation. He and one of his snollygoster foreign state advisers has said that he knows how to do that job. Now he has been my military adviser ever since I appointed him Chief of Staff of the Army, and I will say to you right here, if he knows a remedy and a method for that situation, it is his duty to come and tell me what it is-and save lives--right now.
He has compromised every principle of personal loyalty by abetting the scurrilous big-lie attack on Gen. George C. Marshall. General Marshall was his own commanding officer in World War II. General Marshall stands in a class by himself as a patriot devoted to the service of his country. The Republican candidate did have a few sentences in defense of General Marshall included in a draft of his speech in Milwaukee. But at the demand of Senator McCarthy, he struck those sentences out, and he has uttered no word in defense of General Marshall since. Instead of sticking by that great commander, instead of sticking by his friends, he joined hands in public with the Senator who defamed General Marshall. And he recommended that the Senator-along with other Republicans who have joined in the use of the big-lie technique on General Marshall--he recommended that that Senator be reelected to the United States Senate. I never heard of anything as awful as that in my life. I stand by my friends.
Only this week, the Republican candidate compromised with your property. He pledged his influence to give away the offshore oil resources which the Supreme Court has said are the property of every citizen in the United States. He even said that if you kept your property, that would be a shoddy deal.
Let me read you what a Republican Senator, who is a great lawyer and who himself comes from a coastal State, thinks about that. That Senator is Wayne Morse of Oregon, who says, and I quote:
"It is a sad thing that Eisenhower in apparent ignorance of United States Supreme Court decisions has been taken in by the selfish interests of Americans who seek to steal the tidelands oil belonging to all the people of the United States .... It is inexcusable from the standpoint of national defense to support the oil lobby on this issue."
I think Senator Morse gives the candidate a little too much credit. I think the candidate knows full well whom the Supreme Court has said these lands belong to.
Senator Morse said that the candidate's political expediency may win him the votes of certain coastal States on this issue. But I say that for every vote he gets in those oil-rich coastal States, he deserves to lose 10 votes in the other 45 States of the Union, including Connecticut--including Connecticut because it's your property that he's trying to trade away for votes.
Yes, it may be that the Republican candidate's compromises are all behind him. There's not much left to compromise.
I have nothing but sympathy for those Republicans who supported the candidate before the Chicago convention. I know they went to Europe because they were looking for a man of principle. I urge them to look again 4 years from now, and to look next time among the great civilians in this country-men whose records tell us where they stand, men who have proved they are too strong to be led around by lobbies in fields where they are not informed.
We have such a man this time as the candidate of the Democratic Party. He has been as clear and consistent in his speeches as the Republican candidate has been compromising. Adlai Stevenson in this campaign has not sacrificed principle for political expediency-no matter how many votes such sacrifices might bring him. Adlai Stevenson just isn't that kind of man. He isn't made that way.
And for those of you who still want something of a change in Washington, don't worry about Adlai Stevenson. He'll bring new youth and new energy to the Office of the Presidency. He'll protect the gains we've made and build upon them. He is the finest young leader our party has produced in a generation, and he was chosen spontaneously by the Democrats from all over the country who were looking for outstanding leadership.
I want a change, too. If I hadn't, I would have stayed there myself. But I want a change, my friends, that will not destroy all the good we've done.'
I know that on November the 4th you're going to look where your own interests lie, you're going to make a choice between the character of the men.
You're not going to vote Republican because of what little brass glitter still shows under the tarnish of the candidate's compromises. You're not going to vote Republican just out of sympathy for a party which has been out of office for 20 years because it hasn't made itself fit to govern.
You're going to vote the Democratic ticket and elect Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman President and Vice President of the United States. And you're going to give them the kind of congressional leadership that only men like Bill Benton, Abe Ribicoff, Tom Dodd, and Stanley Pribyson can provide.
Vote in your own interests.
NOTE: The President spoke at 12:40 p.m. from a speaker's stand erected in front of the Hartford Times Building. During his remarks he referred to, among others, Senator William Benton of Connecticut, Representative Abraham Ribicoff, Democratic candidate for the position left vacant by the death of Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut (see Item 219), Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army (1939-1945), Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. The President also referred to Thomas J. Dodd and Stanley J. Pribyson, Democratic candidates for Representative from Connecticut.
I AM more than happy to see so many people out here today to welcome the President of the United States in his capacity as the head of the Democratic Party.
Last week and the week before, I crossed the country from coast to coast. I gave the people a lot of reasons why Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman should be elected President and Vice President on November the 4th--and why they should be given a strong Democratic Congress to support them.
Now I have been traveling across the State of Connecticut with your candidates for the Senate and the Congress. And Connecticut will certainly be properly represented in the Congress of the United States, and its interests will be properly looked after, if you send Bill Benton, Abe Ribicoff, and the Congressmen from these districts in Connecticut to the Congress to look after your interests.
As I traveled, I also saw a lot of reasons why Democrats should be elected in November. I saw busy factories, rich farming lands, and prosperous people. I saw on every hand the signs of growth, of new enterprise, of new investment--of a spirit of confidence in the future of this great Republic of ours.
I know that in New England this week I am going to see the same spirit. I have already seen it in Connecticut this morning.
Now, the Republicans will try to tell you that the kind of government we have has nothing at all to do with whether we're prosperous or not.
I just say to you, "Look who's talking." It's easy enough to see why the Republicans would like to have you believe that. They're the people who had control of the National Government in the 1920's, and whose policies led us into the darkest depression that this rich country has ever seen.
Many of you in this audience are too young to remember the days when there were 14 million unemployed, when there were bank failures in almost every city, when there were breadlines and some soup kitchens, when food was burned because hungry people didn't have the money to buy it, and all the rest that took place under that Republican rule.
Well, the Republicans and their millionaire backers said there was nothing to be done about it at all, but just to wait. They said that Government action couldn't lick the depression and create employment. But the 'people didn't settle for that. They put the Democratic Party in power.
And we licked the depression.
Then we set out to do something about security. You remember what the Republican millionaires said to that. "The poor will be always with us," they said.
But the Democratic Party didn't settle for that, either. We passed unemployment compensation and old-age insurance. We provided Federal assistance for old-age pensions and aid to dependent children and to the blind. We passed measures to protect farm income. We got a start on slum clearance and on health programs.
In short, we put a good solid floor under family income and living standards--which in the Republican days could go down to zero without anybody in Washington caring a hoot about it.
Then came World War II, and they said we couldn't possibly fight the Japanese and the Germans without going bankrupt. But we won the war and came out with a stronger economy than ever before.
For the first time in history, my friends, a major war was not allowed to be followed by a major depression.
At the end of the war the Republicans said we couldn't provide 60 million jobs. But we did it. We now have over 62 million people employed in this great country.
By 1950, before the present defense program was launched, we were setting new records by almost every measure of prosperity you want to use. There were more people at work, more things being produced, more purchasing 'power in the hands of the people, higher corporation profits. And, of special interest to Hartford, there was more insurance in force.
You know that some of the insurance companies fought bitterly against social security in the early days with the old shopworn cry that this was socialism. Now they'll all admit, I believe, that social security has actually helped them increase their business.
Then came a national emergency, and the great economic strength of this country was really shown. In 2 years we launched a military buildup of tremendous proportions-and a buildup of our basic economic capacity on a scale never before matched. All this was carried on without reducing the standard of living or the real income of the average American one iota.
The Republicans are saying we can't afford this kind of military program. I say, thank God we have built the kind of economy that enabled us to carry out this tremendous defense program without any real strain on the economy. There have been no real sacrifices, except for the men and women in Korea and their families at home. Their sacrifices have been great--many of them very great indeed. This has saddened all of us. But those sacrifices are being made to defend this country against Communist aggression. Our men are fighting in Korea so that we will not have to fight in the United States. We are fighting to 'prevent the untold horrors of a third world war. If we can do that, it will be mankind's greatest victory for peace. It certainly ill behooves those of us who are left at home, with our families intact, to complain about the effect of the defense program on us.
We have had some inflation, which was unfortunate. Part of it was inevitable; but a big part of it was due simply to the fact that the Republicans in Congress gutted the price control laws in order to let the special interests make a killing.
We've had higher taxes, which we've been able to pay out of higher earnings. The Republicans have tried to make you think that high taxes are a crime. But you've been buying something with your taxes more precious than anything you can buy in the marketplace. You've been buying the kind of military strength without which we could not hope to prevent a third world war. And if you don't buy that strength with taxes, you have to borrow and add to the National debt. The Democrats just don't believe in adding to our debts when we don't have to do it.
I've covered in a few words the story of 20 years of Democratic government. It's a story of progress from beginning to end. Nobody has summed it up better than the Republican candidate for President in his acceptance speech at the Chicago convention.
This is what he said: "We are now at the moment of history when, under God, this Nation of ours has become the mightiest temporal power and the mightiest spiritual force on earth."
And what do the Republicans say about this? They say: "It's time for a change."
Now, my friends, maybe that's an appealing slogan. I know many a baseball fan who was rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series just because the Yankees had won too many times. It was time for a change, they thought.
But you're not rooting at a ball game when you go to the polls on November 4. This isn't a ball game. And it isn't a beauty contest. This is your bread and butter. This is your chance for world peace.
No party is entitled to power just because it lost too many elections in the past.
Now, the Republicans lost those elections. They lost because they've put in 20 years of blind, thoughtless opposition to almost everything the Democratic Party has done to help the ordinary citizen.
They lost because they've been dominated by special privilege, by the lobbies--because they've always voted with the special interests and against the welfare of the people.
They lost because they've been against world cooperation, against a healthy foreign trade, against aid to other peoples around the world.
They lost because they've been against minorities of all kinds, against the immigration into this country of Jews and Catholics, against equality of opportunity.
Now, I don't mean that all Republicans are against all these things. All of us know a few Republicans who are progressive about some things, and some of them are from up here in New England. But those Republicans are a pretty lonesome group these days. I understand that there's still one New Englander left on the Republican candidate's train, but just look who surrounds him.
Every other berth on that train is filled by someone from the mossback, dinosaur, reactionary wing of the Republican Party--men who represent big money, the men who want to turn the clock back to 1896.
A couple of days ago, one of the Republican candidate's advisers riding on his train said that--and I quote--"The General's compromises are all behind him." This was reported by a correspondent who works for a paper that has endorsed the Republican candidate, so I guess you can believe what he said.
When I first called attention to the way the Republican candidate was compromising, some of the Eastern papers accused me of slinging mud. Now you don't have to have it direct from the candidate's train.
Maybe the correspondent thought his report would sound like good news. The candidate was at last through compromising. But the plain fact is, the candidate doesn't have much left to compromise.
Let me run down some of the list.
The candidate has compromised on foreign policy. Down in Illinois 2 weeks ago, when he traveled with some of the most dangerous isolationists in this country, he talked a straight-out isolationist line. He sneered at everything that's been done in Europe--even the things that he had a part in doing. He says our policies in Europe have been a failure. Senator Taft has him committed to slashing the budget with which we carry on our foreign policy.
He has compromised on national defense. First, he talked glibly about a $40 billion cut in the budget. Now, Senator Taft has said he and the candidate were agreed on a $20 billion cut--which would be enough to wreck our national defense program.
He has compromised on Korea. He has said we were right to go into Korea, but he's made vague promises about how he'll bring the boys back home. He has even criticized us for entering into truce negotiations, but what would he be saying if we weren't doing everything we could to end the fighting?
Now I want to say to you that he has also stated that he knows a panacea that will cure the Korean situation. He and one of his snollygoster foreign state advisers has said that he knows how to do that job. Now he has been my military adviser ever since I appointed him Chief of Staff of the Army, and I will say to you right here, if he knows a remedy and a method for that situation, it is his duty to come and tell me what it is-and save lives--right now.
He has compromised every principle of personal loyalty by abetting the scurrilous big-lie attack on Gen. George C. Marshall. General Marshall was his own commanding officer in World War II. General Marshall stands in a class by himself as a patriot devoted to the service of his country. The Republican candidate did have a few sentences in defense of General Marshall included in a draft of his speech in Milwaukee. But at the demand of Senator McCarthy, he struck those sentences out, and he has uttered no word in defense of General Marshall since. Instead of sticking by that great commander, instead of sticking by his friends, he joined hands in public with the Senator who defamed General Marshall. And he recommended that the Senator-along with other Republicans who have joined in the use of the big-lie technique on General Marshall--he recommended that that Senator be reelected to the United States Senate. I never heard of anything as awful as that in my life. I stand by my friends.
Only this week, the Republican candidate compromised with your property. He pledged his influence to give away the offshore oil resources which the Supreme Court has said are the property of every citizen in the United States. He even said that if you kept your property, that would be a shoddy deal.
Let me read you what a Republican Senator, who is a great lawyer and who himself comes from a coastal State, thinks about that. That Senator is Wayne Morse of Oregon, who says, and I quote:
"It is a sad thing that Eisenhower in apparent ignorance of United States Supreme Court decisions has been taken in by the selfish interests of Americans who seek to steal the tidelands oil belonging to all the people of the United States .... It is inexcusable from the standpoint of national defense to support the oil lobby on this issue."
I think Senator Morse gives the candidate a little too much credit. I think the candidate knows full well whom the Supreme Court has said these lands belong to.
Senator Morse said that the candidate's political expediency may win him the votes of certain coastal States on this issue. But I say that for every vote he gets in those oil-rich coastal States, he deserves to lose 10 votes in the other 45 States of the Union, including Connecticut--including Connecticut because it's your property that he's trying to trade away for votes.
Yes, it may be that the Republican candidate's compromises are all behind him. There's not much left to compromise.
I have nothing but sympathy for those Republicans who supported the candidate before the Chicago convention. I know they went to Europe because they were looking for a man of principle. I urge them to look again 4 years from now, and to look next time among the great civilians in this country-men whose records tell us where they stand, men who have proved they are too strong to be led around by lobbies in fields where they are not informed.
We have such a man this time as the candidate of the Democratic Party. He has been as clear and consistent in his speeches as the Republican candidate has been compromising. Adlai Stevenson in this campaign has not sacrificed principle for political expediency-no matter how many votes such sacrifices might bring him. Adlai Stevenson just isn't that kind of man. He isn't made that way.
And for those of you who still want something of a change in Washington, don't worry about Adlai Stevenson. He'll bring new youth and new energy to the Office of the Presidency. He'll protect the gains we've made and build upon them. He is the finest young leader our party has produced in a generation, and he was chosen spontaneously by the Democrats from all over the country who were looking for outstanding leadership.
I want a change, too. If I hadn't, I would have stayed there myself. But I want a change, my friends, that will not destroy all the good we've done.'
I know that on November the 4th you're going to look where your own interests lie, you're going to make a choice between the character of the men.
You're not going to vote Republican because of what little brass glitter still shows under the tarnish of the candidate's compromises. You're not going to vote Republican just out of sympathy for a party which has been out of office for 20 years because it hasn't made itself fit to govern.
You're going to vote the Democratic ticket and elect Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman President and Vice President of the United States. And you're going to give them the kind of congressional leadership that only men like Bill Benton, Abe Ribicoff, Tom Dodd, and Stanley Pribyson can provide.
Vote in your own interests.
NOTE: The President spoke at 12:40 p.m. from a speaker's stand erected in front of the Hartford Times Building. During his remarks he referred to, among others, Senator William Benton of Connecticut, Representative Abraham Ribicoff, Democratic candidate for the position left vacant by the death of Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut (see Item 219), Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army (1939-1945), Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. The President also referred to Thomas J. Dodd and Stanley J. Pribyson, Democratic candidates for Representative from Connecticut.