Speech of Senator Harry S. Truman Before the Traffic Club at Reading, Pennsylvania

SPEECH OF SENATOR HARRY S. TRUMAN BEFORE THE TRAFFIC CLUB OF READING, PENNSYLVANIA, MARCH 2, 1944, 8:00 O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING. MR. CHAIRMAN, AND MEMBERS OF THE TRAFFIC CLUB OF READING: It is a privilege to speak to you on the sub ject of trans- portation. I am intensely interested in transpor ta tion problems and welcome the opportunity to discuss them'with a group such as yours. I know that each of you is concerned with one phase or another of this subject. Both as Chairman of the Special Committee Investigating the War Program and as a member of the Interstate Commerce Committee of the Senate, a good deal of my work as a Senator has been concerned with transpor tation. In a broader sense, the lives of all our eitizens are con- cerned with transportation. Upon it depends the supply of our armies and havies fighting in our defense. Upon it also depends our own food supply and our industrial production. It is a vital part of our bulwark against our enemies and an indispensable and basic feature of the structure of our national economy. Being so fundamental a part of both our war effort and our civilian economy, it follows inescapably that deterioration or im- provement in transportatio: service reflects itself in the weakness or strength of our military attack and the vigor or frailty of our industrial effort. If this view of transportation is not exaggerated, and I do not think that it is, it is well that we give some thought to fundamental policies and that we examine the possibilities of im- provement and development of transportation facilities and our methods of using them. Inattention and neglect might either prove disastrous or result in our failure to make the progress in achieving our national goals that proper consideration and decision might have made possible. There may be a tendency to postpone such consideratic on account of the war. I cannot agree. with this position. If improve- ment can be made now, without interfering with other war activities, by all means let us have the benefit of such improvement now when it is most needed. Achieving greater power at a faster rate through a healthier and stronger economy and improved supply of our fighting forces cannot help but shorten the war and make victory more certain. It goe almost without saying that extreme caution must be exercised in adopting innovations. Our transportation machine is delicate and should not be tampered with by amateurs. But this certainly is not an argument for doing nothing unless we are willing to confess that we have no skilled and trained persons capable of tuning up and improving its operation. That this is not true has been proved already in this war. When our coastwise and intercoastal traffic was shut off by sinkings and the demand for ships in other services, did we just let things go on as they were? Of course, we did not. That flow of traffic was diverted to an overland novement-hastil; and expertly sreated. In fact, this job was so swiftly and expertly done the t the general public does not yet realize, and próbably never will, the debt it owes to the unsung heroes who accomplished it. Similarly, about a. half year after we entered the war, it became imperative that we have more box cars, But materials were scarce-as well as the facilities to build them-so scarce in fact that in April of 1942, the War Production Board sharply reduced freight car cons truc tion. But measures were adopted which quickly and with surprising smoothness relieved this critical condition. This was achieved through the cooperation of all concerned and was the result of the heavier. loading and the lessening of turn- around time. The Office of Defense: Transportation has estimated that this created a loading capacity Lequivalent to more than 100,000 box cars. Looked at from this point of view it'seems like mágic. Yet. exams) NARA (OVER)