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

I DI IS RELATE IMMEDIATE RELEASE REAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT ROME, NEW YORK "NATIONAL October 8, 1948 - 12:43 P.M., , E.S.T. RECORDS Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I was discussing where we were awhile ago in this great State of New York and somebody said we would be in Rome in 20 minutes, and I said, "That's mighty quick -- to be in Rome in 20 minutes." And he said, "Oh, I mean Rome, New York." But I want to say to you that we are living in an age where that would not be beyond the bounds of possibility for the simple reason that we have gone forward at a terrific rate in the last decade, and in the last 30 years so much that you cannot recognize the same country when you 80 into it. I was out in Iowa at the beginning of this tour I have been taking around the United States, and they were having a plowin contest, and there were 100 thousand farmers at that meeting. And I asked them if there was any possibility of my having a chance to drive a four- mule team to two-gang plow, and they said, "No, that's obsolete. You're living in a past age. We have no mules on the place. You'll have to go to Missouri to get one." I said, "All right, I'm not one to turn the clock back." I wouldn't attempt to do that because when we try to turn the clock back we never profit by that procedure. And from 1933 until the present day we have been turning the clock forward. We have been doing things for the welfare of the people as a whole. We gave labor a Bill of Rights. We gave the farmer a farm program which has made him more prosperous than he has ever been in his history. We so arranged things that the distribution of the income of this country is on a fair basis for everybody. Now, I want to keep that condition going forward. But in 1946 a great many of the voters of this great country, and one-third of the people entitled to vote, elected a Congress that wants to turn the clock back. The first thing that 80th Congress did when it got in was to try to put a hallter on labor. They wanted to repeal labor's Bill of Rights, the Fair Labor Standards Act -- or the Wagner Act, as it is commonly known. The first thing they did was to pass the Teft-Hartley Act just as quickly as they could get to it, and they said they passed it SD as to put labor in its place. Now, I think labor is in its place when labor is prosperous, along with industry and along with the farmers. There were only 3 million people in labor organizations in 1932. There are about 16 million in those organizations now and they are getting about three times the pay they did in that day. The farmer is getting more income this year than he ever got in his history. They only received about four and one-half billion in 1932. Last year they had 18 billions -- and they weren't expecting to be sold out every minute either. You know, there were , 123 thousand farmers taken off their farms in 1932. There were less than 800 in last year. The farm debt has been reduced. Labor is in a better condition than it has ever been in the history of the country. There are 61 million people at work in this country. Nearly anybody who wants a job can get one in this day and age. There were some 12 or 15 million people walking the streets back in 1932, wondering where the next bread-crumb was going to come from, that they could live on. (OVER)