Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Danville, Indiana

TRUM "NATIONAL IMEDIATE RELEASE ARCHIVES AND RECORDS LETTER IMMEDIATE RELE'SE SERVING RE'R PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT DANVILLE, ILLINOIS, October 12, 1948 1:10 P.M., C.S.T. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairmon. Thank you very much. Can you imagine this outpouring of Democrats in old Joe Cannon's town -- I just can't understand it! It is certainly good to be in Danville. I am proud of you for I hear that you are going to send Wayne Cook, one of America's great war heroes, to the Congress as your represen- tative. I also understand that Paul Dauglas, a great Merine hero, is going to the Senate, and that Addai Stevenson is going to Springfield as the Governor of this great State. You know, the first political benner I ever wore in my life, I was about seven or eight years old. It was a capwith a sign on it that said CLEVELAND AND STEVENSON -- Cleveland for President and Stevenson for Vice-President. He was the father of Adlai Stevenson. When I am here in Danville, I always think about a time, a hundred years or sb 280, when a group of Abraham Lincaln's lawyer friends put him on trial before a kangaroo court down at the old McCormick House because his lawyer fees were too low. Lincoln lost the case and was fined a jug of whiskey. I want you to think just how cut of place Lincoln would be with present-day Republicans. Republicans don't charge low fees any longer. The higher the better is their metto. They don't think any longer about "of the people, by the people, and for the people. The record cfthe Republican 80th Congress is proof of that. And the Republican candidate for President is standing squarely on the record of that Congress in his campaign. Can you imagine that! That Congress tore into the rights of the working man. It undermined the presperity of the farmer. It hurt every family in the country by refusing to do anything about high prices, or the housing shortage, or relieving the terribly crowded conditions of schools and hospitals all ever the Country. All that the Republican Congress did was to pass laws that the lobbies of the railroads and the private power companies, and big business asked for. They even passed laws to benefit the grain speculators. And the Republican candidate for President says that he is proud of the record of the 80th Congress. We don't have time now to go into all these issues. Let's look at just one of the things the Republican 80th Congress did that affects the prosperity of every mon, woman, and child in this State. The Commodity Credit Corporation, under the Dericaratic administrtions, developed a program to store grain when there were bumper crops, SD that grain could be marketed over a longer period of time. This helped the farmer to get good, steady prices for his crops, and gave him encouragement to reap big crops. If it hadn't been for thit accuragement, millions of people in the world would have starved to death. Well, the grain speculators don't like this because they make their killings when the form prices go up and down in a hurry. They don't care what happens to the farmers. The specu- laters have always exploited the farmer until the New Deal put an end to that speculating and exploitation. OVER