Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Winona, Minnesota

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE REAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE "NATIONAL PRESIDENT AT WINON/, MINNESOTA, ARCHIVES AND RECORDS LIBRARY OCTOBER 14, 1948 - 11:45 A.M., C.S.T. SERVICE Thank you -- thank you very much. I can't tell you how very much I appreciate the cordial welcome which has been extended to me by the citizens of Minnesota. It is evident that the citizens of Minnesota are interested in the welfare of this great Nation, and that they want to know what the issues are in this campaign. And believe me, I have been telling them what the issues are! I have been traveling through Minnesota since yesterday at noon, when I crossed the St. Louis River and arrived in Duluth. It has been a thrilling experience. It has not only been fine to see your rich farmland, and the great grain elevators, and your cities enjoying greater prosperity than ever before in history, but it has been especially rewarding to travel through Minnesota and meet your fellow Minnesotans, and your great candidate for the Senate, Mayor Hubert Humphrey, and your fine candidates for Congress, and Karl Rolvaag, whom I am sure you are going to send to the Congress. You are also going to send Mayor Humphrey of Minneapolis to the Senate, and then we will have people in the 81st Congress with whom the President can work. The crowds that have come down to the stations prove beyond any doubt that you people are determined to elect a liberal, Democratic President and a liberal, Democratic Congressional delegation when you go to the polls on November 2. You know that this prosperity that I have seen all through Minnesota did not just happen. It was brought about by 16 years of control of the Government by Democratic Adminis- trations. Back in the Republican depression year of 1932, Minnesota farmers made less than a quarter of a billion dollars. Last year, the income of Minnesota's farmers was a billion and a half dollars. That is the difference between the right side of a proposition SO that everybody gets his fair share of the national income, and that spproach which gives only the special privileged few the national income. One key in the Democratic prosperity program was the Commodity Credit Corporation. One job of the Commodity Credit Corporation was to increase grain storage facilities, SO that bumper crops could be marketed over a longer period of time, thus making it unnecessary for the farmer to sell all his wheat or his corn to big speculators, at very cheap prices. The Commodity Credit Corporation did a wonderful job for years, and then something happened to it. Two-thirds of you stayed at home from the polls in 1946, and the Republicans got control of the Congress. That 80th do-nothing Congress came about because you didn't do your duty as voters. The farmers are just now beginning to realize what that means to them. Big business is against any aid to the farmers, and the Republican leaders in Congress are the errand boys of big business and special privilege. That is why the Republican 80th do-nothing Congress -- I mean do nothing for the people, they did something for the special interests all right -- that is why that Congress cut the Commodity Credit Corporation grain storage program down to almost nothing. Now there is a bumper crop, and the Commodity Credit Corporation no longer has the authority to provide storage space, and the farmers are being forced to sell their grain to speculators way below sup ort prices. And that situation will get worse. It has just now started. Right now, speculators are buying corn below the support price. That is just plain robbery of the farmers, and the farmers swe that ti the 80th Congress. Now, if you send an 81st Congress back like that one, you will get treated worse than that.