Speech of Senator Harry S. Truman Before the Roosevelt Women's Democratic Club at Springfield, Missouri

Delivered by U. S. Senator Harry S. Truman at Springfield, Missouri, , May 7, 1940, before the Roosevelt Women's Democratic Club. My good friends and members of the Roosevelt Women's Democratic Club of Springfield: It is a very great pleasure for me to be with you today. It gives me an opportunity to talk a little politics - to discuss current issues. The campaign will soon be on in earnest. We already hear the Anti New Dealers rolling out their slightly moldy chestnuts. The attack for 1940 will be the same streamlined Anti Roosevelt hymn of hate. We already hear the slogan of a "return to free enterprise". The keynote has been sounded both by the so called Conservative Democrats and the Republicans. They tell us that history shows that civilization and prosperity progress as government authority is restrained. That human liberty flourishes as the activities of the government are curtailed. We hear much of such talk as the time for the National Convention approaches. Let's look back at the Golden Age of "free enterprise" of some ten years ago. Let's look at that great age of Harding, Coolidge and the Great Engineer, Mr. Hoover. It is quite true that in the age which gives these gentlemen such nostalgic pains "free enterprise" bloomed as the green bay tree, government was exceedingly "restrained" and certain "liberties" flourished. Wonder if we may not list a few of those "liberties":- The liberty of business to go hog wild, to inflate sales, to exploit labor and the liberty to go broke and let the country take the consequences. The liberty to exploit the farmers and the producers; the liberty to create a Hawley-Smoot Tariff and ruin our foreign trade. The liberty of brokers and so called investors to turn Wall Street into a, Monte Carlo, to take abysmal plunges and high fliers, to engage in highly questionable practices and skulduggery. The liberty to pyramid paper profits as high às Al Smith's Empire State Building, and then to have them go smash in the greatest panic of all time which gave the victims an opportunity to sell apples and shoe strings or to jump off the same Empire State Building. Then there was the liberty to put your money and your hard earned wages into the banks without limit and without guarantee, and the same liberty for the banks to shut their doors in your face and call the police to keep you from getting your own money. There was the liberty to grow old without hope except the county farm and the constitutional privilege and freedom to starve or beg or live on relatives if there were no poor houses. 63 TRUMAN NARA