Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Ogden, Utah

EDTATE RELEASE MMEDIATE RELEASE TRUNNY NATIONAL RECORDS AND REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT OGDFN, UTAH, SEPTELBER SERVICE" 21, 1948, 11.15 p.m.m.s.t. Well! I certainly appreciate that reception by your able and distinguished Congressman. If anybody stayed at home in Ogden tonight, I doubt it very much. This morning, when I started out about 6.45 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, I thought everybody in western Colorado and eastern Utah were there. I was grossly mistaken. We finally got into Price and Springville and Provo and Salt Lake City, and now in Ogden; and I think I must have seen at least half the population of the great State of Utah. And I am glad I did get to see them. I have just been made a member of the Sheriff's Mounted Posse of Weaver County, Utah. That Mounted Posse is the same situation as the plowing contest at Dexter, Iowa. I asked those people to bring me four mules SO I could run a plow in the old-fashioned way. They told me they did not have a mule in the county, that everything was done by tractor. Now I wonder if the Mounted Posse rides in Jeeps? If it does, why I might have some chance. If it's a bucking bronco, I'll be out of luck. I am happy to be in Ugden, Utah, this evening, because it is getting late in the evening, and I am doubly pleased that this tremendous crowd has turned out. You know, these eastern newspapers just won't believe it when they are told that past eleven o'clock there are ten or twelve thousand people out to listen to me in Ogden. They just think it is not possible. But here you are! Somebody I hope will take a picture of it and send it to all the eastern newspapers. The prosperity which I have seen in Colorado and through Utäh today is a prosperity which I am finding throughout the whole country, and I am finding it especially in the West. I spent yesterday in Colorado, and I thought everybody in Colorado came out to see me, and I think they did. We had a good time, and I told them some things that I thought they ought to know. And I said the same things today in telling you people here in Utah some of the things I think you ought to know. I want to keep the West prosperous. I made that very plain tonight at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. And I want to say to some of you young men over there, that if you want to come up here and make a speech, I will abdicate and let you do it. The Democrats have a program for continued improvement and growth of the West, and for continued prosperity of the country, but there are serious obstacles in the way. They are the refusal of the Republican leadership to do anything about high prices, and the outright sabotage of the Western States. You know, this last Congress -- this Republican 80th do nothing Congress -- tried its best to take all your prosperity away from you. I wish you would read the record of that Congress. Then if you send another one back there like it, you will deserve what you Let. Let us look at what the Democratic administrations have done for the Western States -- Utah, for example. In 1934, the Yaden River Project was begun. That one project alone began making water available for 25 thousand acres of farm land. On a project like this, the cash income of Utah farmers has risen SO fast that it is now six times what it was in 1932 -- six times what it was in 1932! That cash income of all Utah people rose from less than 150 million dollars in 1932 to more than 700 million dollars in 1947. And that is why I wonder, that is why I wonder -- back in 1946 you said you wanted a change; and only a third of you -- two-thirds of you stayed at home -- only a third of you went to the polls, and you elected that lawful 80th Congress. And you got just what you deserved. I don't feel sorry for you about it at all. OVER