Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Evansville, Indiana

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE NATIONAL REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT THE ARCHIVES AND RECORDS COURT HOUSE, EVANSVILLE, INDIANA, SERVICE" SEPTEMBER 30, 1948, 3 P.M.c.s.t. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chairman: I certainly am most happy to be in Evansville today. Judging from the crowd before me I would say that Evansville is pretty prosperous these days. The truth is that Evansville, and the whole country are prosperous right now, and are more prosperous right now than ever before in their history. I think the people of Evansville and the rest of the country want to keep that prosperity by keeping a Democratic Government in Washington. That's the main issue of this political campaign: Whether we are going to stay prosperous with the Democratic Party or fall back on the boom and bust policies of the Republican. There are many fine Renublicans in this country, many Republicans who vote the Democratic ticket because they know the leaders of their own party haven't learned anything since the days of Warren G. Harding. Look at the record of the 80th Congress. For two years I have been trying to get the Congress to do something for the people. But the Republican leaders were too busy protecting the interests of big business and the bankers. They didn't have time to do anything for the people, but they did plenty to the people. Look at the record on labor. Under the Democratic administra- tions of the last sixteen years the working people of this country had made the greatest gains in the history of the world. But they haven't made these gains at the expense of the rest of them. We have all gone forward together -- farmers and businessmen, wage earners and factory owners. Most of us are better off now than we ever have been before in our lives. Democratic policy has been based on a great principle: that the wage earners of this country have a right to a fair share of the wealth they help to produce. Republican policy is based on the idea that working people have to be kept in bounds. That's why they passed the Taft-Hartley Act -- to put handcuffs on labor. Labor's right to organize in unions freely chosen by working men, and the right to bargain collectively were recognized by the Wagner Act, passed by a Democratic Congress. That is the Bill of Rights for labor. The first thing that Republican do-nothing 80th Congress tried to do was to tear up that Bill of Rights. Labor's standard of living was protected during the war and the reconversion period by à Democratic system of stabilizing prices and wages. With the election of the Renublican 80th Congress in 1946, the working people of this country have found out what the Republican leaders had in mind for them. Led by Senator Taft and Representative Hartley -- two men who would like to take the United States back to the 1890's -- the Republicans pushed throug the Taft-Hartley law, which converted the National Labor Relations Board into an agency to hamstring union labor. You people of Evansville will decide on Election Day what kind of Government you're going to have. If you want to, you can turn th Government over completely to a crowd of Tafts and Tabers, who single out one segment of the population for punishment, to satisfy the big businessmen and the bankers. Or you can give your country a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress with a positive program to help all America keep prosperity and build peace in the world. You can help a lot if you elect a Democratic Congressman from this district. This young man who introduced me, Winfield Denton, should go to Congress from this district. If you want decent government in Washington elect the Democratic ticket. And if you elect a Democratic Congressman you are bound to elect a Democratic President -- and I'll stay in the White House. OVER