Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Utica, New York

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE TROMAR REAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT "NATIONAL AT UTICA, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8, 1948 at ARCHIVES AND RECORDS 12:10 p. m., E. S. T. SERVICE Mr. Mayor, and fellow Democrats of Utica: This is certainly heartening and encouraging, when the citizens of this great country are in- terested enough in the views of the President of the United States, to turn out at this time of day and on a day like this -- although this is Democratic weather. I have been most agreeably surprised and heartened at the way the people have turned out since I started to tour the United States and in- struct them on just what the issues are in this campaign. They are very grave issues, and you must study them very carefully -- and then I want to urge you to vote in your own interest. If you know what your interests are, and if you know what the issues are, you can't help but do just one thing on election day, and that is to vote for yourselves - and if you do that, you will vote the Democratic ticket. Over the last fifteen to sixteen years, the Democratic Party has been in control of the Government, and we took some very forward-looking steps while we had control of the Congress. We passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, better known as the Wagner Labor Relations Act. That act was labor's Magna Carta, that act gave labor certain rights and privileges. Then, in addition to that, we abolished child labor -- we put a floor under wages -- we passed the farm program which has caused the farmers to become more pros- perous than they ever were in the history of the world. We so arranged things and passed laws to prevent monopolies from taking over the entire business of the Country. Well now, in 1946, about one-third of the people exercised that privilege to vote. You are a shirker when you don't exercise your voting privilege, because you are the Government. When you exercise that voting privilege, you run the Government. When you don't exercise it, you get just what you got in 1946 -- you got this backward- looking Congress, the 80th Congress, which has been going to turn the clock back ever since they met in January, 1947. The very first thing they did was to hog-tie labor by passing the Taft-Hartley Act which I vetoed. I wish you would read that veto, would find out just exactly -- I haven't the time tc tell you -- exactly what that Taft-Hartley Act did to laboris rights. Now, under the hepublicans, up to 1932, we had about 3 million people organized. Under the policies pursued by the Democratic administra- tion, there are some 16 million people organized. At that time, in 1932, there were about 12 to 15 million men who weren't working at all, and when the Democrats came in, we began to put measures into effect which abolished that idleness of labor. Now there are 61 million people at work in this country and any man who wants a job can get one now at reasonably fair pay. There were only 3 million people in 1932 -- 12 to 15 million walking the streets, trying to get a job. Now, the income of the man who worked in 1932 was less than a third of what it is now. People who work are receiving somewhere in the neighborhood of 134 billion dollars in income. It was less than 31 billions in 1932. The farmers in 1932 received about four and a half billions in income. Now they are receiving 18 billion, and they are not afraid that they are going to get kicked off their farms the next day. There have been fewer farm foreclosures in 1947 than ever before in the history of the Country. There are fewer people now out of work than ever before in the history of the Country, and your lifetime savings are guaranteed. We haven't had a bank failure in this Country in three years. Back in 1932, you were afraid to go into a bank for fear it would blow up in your face. That doesn't happen any more. NOW, I want you to weigh all these things and consider that the Republican policies haven't changed one little bit. They immediately began to show what they thought as soon as they went in there. They began to want to turn the clock back. You can't turn the clock back. We have got to go forward with progress, or we have got to go backward into the ditch. (OVER)