Speech of Senator Harry S. Truman to Members of the Maryland Motor Truck Association at Baltimore, Maryland

ADDRESS OF SENATOR HARRY S. TRUMAN OF MISSOURI TO MEMBERS OF THE MARYLAND MOTOR TRUCK 1 ASSOCIATION, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, MARCH 25, 1939 AT 7:30 P. M. MEMBERS OF THE MARYLAND MOTOR TRUCK ASSOCIATION: I suppose everyone here knows that this is a day of appease- ment. Great nations, and some not so great, ask to be appeased. Some States in our own country want their share of appeasement. Many indus- tries seem to be clamoring for appeasement. Just now the majority of all American industry is anxiously looking for some form of tax appeasement. Appeasement seems to be in the air. It is therefore perfectly natural that our good friends, the railroad managers and executives, should be asking for their share of appeasement, too. They have written their ideas into a Bill which recent- ly has been introduced in the House, and is now before Congress. Other transportation bills have been introduced, and still others probably will be. These will come at an early date for consideration before the Senate Committee of which I am a member. I am not an appeaser. In considering transportation legislation I want to assure you gentlemen that I personally shall not attempt to ap- pease any form of transportation at the expense of any competitive form of transportation. In other words, I shall not attempt or even consider a policy of appeasement for the railroads, if that policy works to the dis- advantage of the trucks and buses, the waterways and the airlines, which are the railroad's competitors. Nor shall I attempt to appease the trucks and buses--although from what I hear, you gentlemen have not decided on details of an appeasement policy as yet--at the expense of other forms of transportation. I have heard that the trucking industry is somewhat alarmed by the influx of many proposed laws to help the railroads. I have been in- formed that the trucks and buses fear that the railroads seek Congression- al action to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. In my individual capacity as a United States Senator, I want to assure you tonight that I shall work to allay any such fears on the part of the trucking industry. Let me get this idea across to you clearly: the pending legislation to help the railroads will be considered, at least by me, in the light of a general transportation situation in which all forms of transport are con- cerned, and I feel that my attitude is the attitude of a great many of my associates--probably a majority of the Congress. There is much talk nowadays about the problem of the railroads. The problem before the country is not a railroad problem only, it is a transportation problem. Air, motor, waterway and rail transportation must be considered entirely in the light of the public interest. Every method by which we travel from place to place and move our goods and merchandise is absolutely essential to the welfare of the country. Legislation must be considered from the standpoint of the welfare of all, not for any one method of transportation. In 1887 when the Interstate Commerce Commission was created there was only one method of carrying interstate commerce and that was by rail. Financiers and rebates had succeeded in getting the transportation monoply into such a mess that Congress had to take a hand and proceed to regulate the railroads under the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States. Regulation has grown and grown. Every state has some sort of commission or board established to regulate transportation in one way or another. All these boards and commissions were created as was the Inter- state Commerce Commission to regulate railroads and it has been very dif- ficult for them to become aware of the fact that there really is competi- tion in transportation--that trucks and planes and inland waterways carry passengers and freight, and that the problems of these later methods of moving goods and merchandise and people and mail and express aren't ex- actly the problems of the iron horse moving down two streaks of rust. The creation of the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the Maritime Commission was due to the fact that water and air transportation were Date: