Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Sacramento, California

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE REAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, SEPTEMBER. 22, TRUMAN 1948 at :17 p. m. C. d. S. t. "NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I am astonished. This crowd's bigger than the crowd was when I was here on my non-political trip. You're very C ordial and I appreciate immer sely the hospitality which has been shown to me. in California today, and this, this makes me feel -- well, It's right here. I can't express it to you as it. should be done. I'm happy to be here because there are a few things I would like to tell you. You remember I talked here in June and I didn't want to talk politics at that time because I was out to let you know something about your Government and how it ran, and let you see the President and what he looked like. I'm making a poli- tical trip now. I'm going to talk to you about some practical politics, Practical politics is Government. Government starts from the grass roots. Government starts when you vote, and whenever a men is a politician and he honestly carries that designation, it means the t he is interested in Government. Usually, after he dies, they call him a statesman. As I travelled across the country I have become more and more convinced that it is the simple democratic principles of our forefathers which constitute the secret of growth and prosperity in this great country. But it's a strange thing that some of these simple, old principles which are the secret of our growth and pros- perity are under attack today. Let me explain what I mean by discussing issues which are of vital importance to you people here in the Central Valley of California. Take the basic principle of small business and the public distribution of publicly produced power. These principles are being attacked by monopolies, monopolistic public utilities, and by special interests, just as they always have been the special in- terests. You know, there are a class of people who believe that there ought to be a strata of people at the top who milk all the cream, and whatever drops through to the bottom of the separater ought to go the little man. The Democratic Party doesn't believe that. The Democratic Party believes that there ought to be a fair distribution of all the wealth so that the farmer, the laboring man end the small busi- ness man e-so that the every-day citizen such as you and me can have a fair share in the proper way. That's what I'm fighting for right now. I'm calling this trip 8 crusade. It's a grusade of the people against the special interests, and if you back me up we're going to win that crusade. Sacramento was the scene of one of the greatest struggles by the people against monopoly which the country has ever seen. It was the struggle of the people of California to remove the strangle-hold grasp of a railroad monopoly. That was the fight which Frank Norris dramatized in his famous book, "The Octopus". You all remember that. I suppose there are a lot. of citizens here who indulged in that fight, and it was a good one. We are in the same kind of a fight today. The effort of your Federal Government to keep the resources and the development of America free from the grasp of monopoly are being attacked now as radical and un-American. It is the same false charge which was leveled against your fathers when they fought the railroad mooveroly. OVER