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483030842
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Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Iowa City, Iowa
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document
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1
Source metadata
id
483030842
contentType
document
title
Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Iowa City, Iowa
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collections
President's Secretary's Files (Truman Administration)
Speech Files
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483030842
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18
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1948-09-18
month
9
year
1948
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S.TRUMAN
"NATIONAL
ARCHIVES AND
RECORDS
ENTER
SERVICE"
GOVERNMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
REAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT IONA CITY, IOWA
September 18, n1948 - 7:25 a. m. c.s.t.
Senator, Ladies and Gentlemen: It certainly is a wonderful wel-
come from Iowa's university city. I am certainly happy to be here, and I
am certainly happy to have these good Iowa Democrats on the train with me*
-
your candidate for Governor, your candidate for Congress and for the United
States Senate, and your State Democratic Senator.
You know, one of the first things that those ancestors of ours
who settled this part of the world thought of was education. The first
thing that they set up was a church. The next thing they set up was a school
house. The University of Iowa is one of the first of the educational in-
stitutions set up west of the Mississippi River and north of the Mississippi
line. You know, Missouri and Iowa were from the same territory, first
Louisiana, then Missouri territory, then Iowa decided they wanted to become
independent and became the great state of Iowa where the tall corn grows.
I contend that we grow corn as tall in Missouri but I have never been able
to prove it.
I am also very much interested in education. You know, we have
reached a saturation point in our educational institutions because there are
so many more people interested in getting an education. Your university,
like every other university in. this country, is crowded. It is short of
housing facilities, it is short of teachers, it is short of all those things
that go to make for proper education.
I have been fighting with the Congress of the United States in
an effort to get an educational bill through the Congress that would be
helpful to all those universities that are overcrowded, both in a housing
way and in a teacher's salary way, and in a way to help take care of the
crowded conditions in those schools.
There are some people who like to live back in the 1840's, who
think that education is not the backbone of this country, and who are not
really interested in the educational welfare of the country as a whole.
When our educational program breaks down, then we are fertile
field for "isms". Education is the best defense against totalitarianism.
It is because we know better that we don't believe in and that we don't have
those things.
I hope you will continue with your great educational program
here in this great state of Iowa, and that you will give me the support
which I need to implement it on a federal basis by sending to Washington
a Democratic United States Senator from Iowa, and a Democratic Congressman
from this district.
To help yourselves completely, you ought to elect a Democratic
Governor from the great state of Iowa. I am sure that is what you are
going to do, because Iowa has gone a time or two with a Democratic Governor.
I want to thank you very much for this privilege, and I would
like very much to introduce one of the members of my family who is with me,
my daughter, Margaret.
#