Speech of Senator Harry S. Truman, Democratic Candidate for Vice President, at Peoria, Illinois

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SPEECH OF HONORABLE HARRY S. TRUMAN, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR VICE- PRESIDENT, TO BE DELIVERED AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS Reliar after Brandent Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, farming is our greatest industry. There can be no true prosperity for this country unless our farmers are prosperous. I think I know the farmer's problems and how he thinks about them. I ought to. I not only was raised on a farm. I spent twelve of the best years of my adult life actually working a big Missouri farm, raising corn and wheat and caring for livestock. My brother and many of my lifelong friends and neighbors around Independence, Missouri, still work farms. They are constantly talking to me about problems of the farm. The farmers have some very real troubles. Life on the farm is hard. The farm is no place for the lazy or the shiftless. Time and weather wait for no man, and the farmer must work from early morning until late at night. And then all too often he loses a crop through no fault of his own. But there are some real compensations in the life of a farmer, A farmer is his own boss. He can come and go when and wheme he pleases. He is respected by everyone in his community. He owns his own land. What he builds and what he raises belongs to him. His children eat good wholesome food and plenty of it, and they grow up with fine sturdy bodies, America is proud of its farmers. The rest of the world envies them. Our farmers have suffered many hardships during critical periods of our history. The Republican party would have them forget, but our farmers remember what happened to them under Harding and Coolidge and Hoover. Harding was elected under a campaign slogan of "Back to Normalcy". I hope we never go back there again. The Republicans talked about free initiative, but the farmers found out what that meant. It meant that the farmers had to try to get along any way they could and without any government help. The government under the three Republican administrations was too RUMAN busy helping big business to spare any time for the farmers. NARA The Republicans boasted about the wonderful prosperity they were creating for business in the twenties at the very same time that