Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Bonham, Texas

HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE September 27, 1948 CONFIDENTIAL: The following address of the President, to be delivered in Bonham, Texas, this evening, Monday, September 27, 1948, IS FOR RELEASE IN ALL REGULAR EDITIONS OF MORNING NEWSPAPERS OF Tuesday, September 28, 1948. Radio release is at 8:15 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, today, September 27, 1948 - or upon delivery, if earlier. PLEASE USE CARE TO AVOID PREMATURE PUBLICATION OR RADIO ANNOUNCEMENT. CHARLES G. ROSS Secretary to the President - - - I have a warm spot in my heart for Texas. Texas has given me some of the best friends a man ever had. And I'm glad to be here today in the home town of one of the finest and best of them all -- Sam Rayburn. I understand that Sam asked you folks to come out here today so we could talk politics. I'm glad so many of you came, because it shows that you 're interested in your Government - and interested in the kind of government you're going to have after the elections in November. One thing is certain. In Texas, it's going to be Democratic government, as it has been in the past. That's a good way to keep it, because the Democratic Party is the party that works for the people. So far as the Federal Government is concerned, the Republicans are putting on an imnense propaganda campaign in an effort to take over this year. They are spending tremendous sums of money and lining up all kinds of strange bedfellows. I don't believe they're going to get away with it. We Democrats are going to see that the American people know the facts. When they do, I don't think the people will be taken in by slick Republican propaganda. I don't believe that Texas - or the rest of the United States - wants to go back to the days of Harding and Coolidge and Hoover. The country will make a fundamental decision on election day - a decision which will affect you every year and every day for the rest of your lives. The people will have to decide between the Democratic and Republican Parties; and that is really a decision between two different kinds of govern- ment. The Democratic Party will give you the kind of government that Sam Rayburn stands for - government in the interest of the farmer and the workingman and all the people. And when the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives, Sam Rayburn will have a powerful voice in seeing that you get that kind of government. Some people have wondered why I keep on talking about that Republican Eightieth Congress. Well, I'll tell you why. It's because they raised a clear storm warning that tells us what we could expect if we had a Republican President as well as a Republican Congress. We might have "unity" then. I don't know. But if we did have unity, what kind would it be? It would be the unity of the Martins, and the Tabers, the Wherrys and the Tafts. It would be unity in giving tax relief to the rich at the expense of the poor - unity in refusing to give aid to our schools - unity in letting prices go sky high in order to protect excessive profits - unity in whittling away all the benefits of the New Deal about which the Republicans are so scornful. Do you want that kind of unity? I don't either. Some things are worth fighting for. We have got to fight the special interest lobbies instead of being "unified" with them. We must fight isola- tionists and reactionaries, the profiteers and the privileged. The way to fight them is with votes. When the people know how the leaders of the Republican Party are tied up with big business and special OVER