Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
284839136
label
White House Press Release, Statement by President Harry S. Truman
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
284839136
contentType
document
title
White House Press Release, Statement by President Harry S. Truman
citationUrl
collections
White House Press Release Files (Truman Administration)
White House Press Releases
largeImageUrl
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
284839136
levelOfDescription
item
productionDates
day
15
logicalDate
1946-08-15
month
8
year
1946
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
8c4332688324cd1c
ocrText
HOLD FOR RELEASE
HOLD FOR RELEASE
HOLD FOR RELEASE
407
AUGUST 15, 1946
The following statement by the President MUST BE HELD IN
CONFIDENCE until released. Release is for all regular editions of
newspapers appearing on the street NOT EARLIER THAN 6:00 o'clock
P.M., EASTERN STANDARD TIME, Saturday, August 31, 1946. The same
hour of release applies to radio commentators and news broadcasters.
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE PUBLICATION.
CHARLES G. ROSS
Secretary to the President
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
NARA
This Labor Day is one of great importance, We can look into
the future today with confidence, but not with tranquillity.
We still have a big job to do, and a long way to go, to assure
the domestic prosperity and international understanding necessary to
prevent depressions and war. But we can do it if we keep in our minds
constantly that people are our most important asset. We must utilize
them and conserve them.
The largest part of reconversion has been accomplished, and
much of the credit for the job done goes to the workers of this great
Union of states and free people.
Labor Day is a day set aside for labor by Act of Congress;
a day to review the accomplishments of working men and women, and to re-
state the aims and ambitions and needs of all those who work with their
hands and minds.
Since last Labor Day, these men and women have brought pro-
duction to new peacetime highs. Their work has produced a flood of
goods to meet the needs of the people who did without many essentials
and most comforts during the war years. These consumers have upheld
price and rent controls during the difficult postwar period of inflationary
pressure, and at the same time, as industrial and farm and home workers,
they have supported their stand with record production.
As a nation of working people, we can maintain and increase the
large production and nearly full employment which we have attained, if we
carry on together as we did during wartime.
Labor, management and farmers, with the help of government
wherever it could be useful, have made this great start toward peacetime
readjustment. If we continue to cooperate, to work, and to produce, we
can attain a richness of life that will be a credit and a benefit to all
of us now living, and a real hope and promise to those who come after us.
We must retain the safeguards against exploitation which labor
won after the last depression. Labor must continue to have the opportunity,
through free collective bargaining and free political action, to improve
the lot of workers and to increase their participation in public affairs.
Labor, perhaps more than any other group, has consistently
supported the objectives set forth in Franklin D. Roosevelt's memorable
"Economic Bill of Rights." We must now move forward to full achievement
of those objectives: useful and remunerative jobs for all; incomes high
enough to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation; freedom from
unfair competition and domination by monopoly; adequate health protection;
more effective social security measures; and educational opportunity for
all
Labor, too, has been in the forefront of the battle to end
intolerance and wipe cut bigotries of race, creed and color.-
I salute the hosts of labor for their magnificent job in war-
time and in the beginnings of peace, and urge them on to further efforts
in behalf of the rights and dignity of mankind.