Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Schenectady, New York

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT SCHENECTADY, TRUMAN NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8, 1948 - 10:00 A.M., E.S.T. Thank you very much. I appreciate this welcome more than I can tell you. I appreciate the high compliment that your good Mayor has paid to me, and I hope that I can live up to it for the next four years. I think I can. You know, I have been going up and down these United States of America, meeting people, talking to people, and telling the people just what the issues are in this campaign, and telling them in very plain language just where I stand on those issues. I think you are entitled to know what those issues are. This is one of the most important campaigns in the history of the country. You are going to make a decision on Election Day as to whether you want your Government operated for special privilege or whether you want it operated in the interests of the people, as it has been for the last 16 years. I base those statements on facts which have taken place as a result of two-thirds of you staying at home in 1946 and electing this awful 80th Congress which has tried its best to give the country back to the special interests. If I had not been standing there with the veto, they would have succeeded in'it. One of the first thin they did was to pass a law putting a halter on labor. Then they passed that awful Taft-Hartley Bill which takes some of the liberties away from labor - it's a step in the direction in which they want to go. You see, when the Democrats got control of the Government in 1933, one of the first things that they did was to pass a bill of rights for labor, known as the Wagner Labor Act - Senator Wagner of New York sponsored that bill. That bill has been in effect for 16 years, and it has made the working man prosperous. Since that Bill went.into effect, there were 3 million members of labor unions. Today, there are nearly 17 million men in labor unions that are working for the benefit of the country. The next thing that they attempted to do was to put the farmers out of business. Now, the farmer's interests and the laboring man's interests and the small-businessman's interests are all the same. When farmers and laborers are prosperous, the country is prosperous. In 1932 we had 15 million people walking the streets trying to find someplace to work. We now have 61 million people at work, and any man who wants a job can have it, and his rights are protected under the laws put on the books by the Democratic Administration during the last 16 years. I understand you have a very fine college here in this town, and that you have got a very able professor running for Congress. I want to say a word or two to you about the educational situation in this country. The educational plant in this country has become, to some extent, obsolete, because there are so many more people interested in education now than ever before in the history of the country. Young people have found out that there is one thing that cannot be taken away from them and that is the brains they have in their heads. If they organize those brains and educate them as they should, their outlook on life is much better for the country and for themselves. Well now, the educational plant of the country and the pay of teachers is below what it ought to be for a country as rich and prosperous as we are. But we inaugurated the Federal aid to education bill, and that bill passed the Senate but the Republicans killed it in the House. They don't want Federal aid to education. I am anxious to see that educational bill become the law, so that every young man and young woman in this country who wants it may have an education that will fit him for his future in life. OVER