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    "label": "Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Holdenville, Oklahoma",
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    "title": "Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Holdenville, Oklahoma",
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            "day": 29,
            "logicalDate": "1948-09-29",
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    "ocrText": "IMMEDIATE RELEASE\nIMMEDIATE RELEASE\nREAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT\n\"NATIONAL\nAT HOLDENVILLE, OKLAHOMA, SEP. 29,1948\nARCHIVES AND\nRECORDS\n9:11 A. M. c.s.t.\nSERVICE\"\nThank you very much, Governor.\nIt certainly is heartening to see all these smiling faces here at Holden-\nville this morning. You certainly must be interested in the welfare of your\ncountry, you must be interested in the issues in this campaign, or you wouldn't\nturn out like this to hear what I have to say about them.\nThese issues are well known. As I've said time and again all over the\ncountry, the issue is the people against special privilege; and this 80th\nCongress conclusively proved that that is the issue.\nI just want to discuss one particular thing in which I know you are vitally\ninterested in this farm community, and that's the soil conservation issue.\nYou're more interested in that in Oklahoma, I think, than in any other part of the\nfarm program.\nOklahoma is sort of like Missouri. This good top soil of this great state\nhas washed away and blown away to the extent that if we don't commence to do\nsomething about it very soon we won't have any soil; and that's true in Missouri\nI think Missouri and Oklahoma would lose one county after another down the\nMississippi River.\nBack in the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover days soil conservation was something\nwith which the Government wasn't supposed to have anything to do. Soil was\njust another of those natural resources that was just there to be plundered.\nYou people here in Oklahoma know better than anybody, because you know what\nhappened under that system. You remember the dust storms when good, hard-\nworking farmers in this state and others saw the soil, on which their livelihood\ndepended, blown away, and the rich farmlands were about to become a desert.\nThat was one of the great crises faced by President Roosevelt when he took\noffice in 1933. He saw that our land would have to be saved if our Nation\nwere going to be saved. He initiated a great soil conservation program,\nunprecedented in the Nation's history. That program has been continued by me.\nWe have only just begun to fight this battle of the land.\nThe Republicans have never rotten away from their Hoover philosophy. They\nstill are doing their best to stop my efforts for soil conservation SO that our\nland and your land cannot be plundered.\nLook at the record of the 80th Congress. House Republicans cut the\nappropriation for soil conservation one-third. Fortunately, we got most of\nthis cut back in the Senate. Again in 1948 the House voted to cut the soil\nconservation appropriation. 100% of the Democrats voted for that appropriation,\nand 95% of the Republicans voted against it. That shows how they stand.\nIn the Senate the Democratic leaders over there got these 'cuts restored.\n100% of the Democrats in the Senate voted to support that restoration, and 93%\nof the Republicans voted against it. The result was that 371/2014 million dollars,\nor 12%, of the soil conservation payments proposed by this Administration\nwere cut out by the 80th Congress.\nCan anyone doubt what a Republican Congress and a Republican President\nwould do to these very Democratic farm programs if they get into power? You can\nsee now what I've been saying: that the Republican Party belongs to big business\nand the Democratic Party bel ongs to the people.\nThat's why I urge you, here in this great Democratic county, to got out on\nElection Day. Get up early and get out and roll up a majority in Oklahoma that\nwill let these special privilege fellows know where you stand. If you do that\nyou'll have Bob Kerr in the Senate and Tom Steed in the House, and you can't go\nwrong.\nI want to express my appreciation to these young people and these school\nchildren who cone out to see their President, because this campaign and the\nissues in this canpaign will affect you for the next generation if the Republicans\nset control of the country. Remember that, and bear it in mind, and when you grow\nup you' be saying that President Truman either saved the country from special\nprivilege or special privilege overwhelned the country. Bear that in mind, you\nyoung people, because you'll be talking about it for a generation.\nThank you a lot."
}