Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Phoenix, Arizona

"NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND IMMEDIATE RELEASE RECORDS SEPTEMBER 24, 1948 SERVICE I'm happy to be here in Phoenix and I'm glad to see this nice crowd. I appreciate your coming out here at this time of the night. That shows that you are interested in your Government and interested in what is going to happen to your country. You should be interested. The results of this election will make a lot of difference to each of you personally. One of the finest things about our form of Government is that it gives the people a chance to shape their own destiny. They don't always take advantage of that chance as they should. Look at what happened in 1946. Almost two-thirds of the voters in the United States stayed home; and the other one-third elected that Republican Congress you've heard so much about. I'm glad to say that Arizona didn't have any part in that. You sent some fine Democrats to the Congress just as you had been doing. And if it hadn't been for the battle put up by your Senators and Representatives, and other Democrats like them, the Republican controlled 80th Congress would have done a lot more harmful things than it did. The Republicans are still un saving/ lot of special interest measures, hoping that in the next Congress there won't be so many Democrats to protect the people. We're going to show them they 're wrong. I know where Arizona will stand and I know the kind of people you 'll send to the Congress. They will be the right kind. I've been having a wonderful time on this trip. It's given me a chance to tell about the record the Democratic party has made during the last sixteen years. It's a record I'm mighty proud of, and I get so much pleasure out of telling about it that it reminds me of the Sunday School hymn, "I love to tell the story.' I say that no political party in the history of the world has ever done so much for a country as the Democratic Farty has done for the United States since Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932. You remember how we started out then from the midst of a terrible depression. You remember how the Nation responded when it found out we had a Government that was working for the people and not taking orders from Wall Street. That's right. Who was it that said, "The capital of the United States has been moved from Wall Street to Washington?" We made progress year after year under a Democratic Administration and a Democratic Congress. Sometimes the progress was rapid - sometimes it was slow. But we always made progress because we were headed forward. Now, the Republicans want us to turn around and start backward. They want to move the capital from Washington back to Wall Street. They have been working at it in the Congress for the last two years and they're now trying to capture the Executive Branch of the Government so they can complete the job. The things we have done since the people took over the Government in 1933 have paid big dividends to the Nation. And one of the things that has paid the biggest dividends is our aid in developing the resources of the West. That's part of the record I've talked about a lot on this trip, because the people of the West know what it means. They know that the Democratic party has done more for the development of the West in the last sixteen years than the Republican Party ever did. That's on the record and all the campaign oratory in the world can't change it. This is of great importance to you here in.Arizona. You are vitally interested in water for your cities and irrigation projects in the development of power from your rivers. (OVER)