Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Mankato, Minnesota

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE "NATIONAL REAR PLATFORM REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT MANKATO, MINNE- ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SOTA, OCTOBER 14, 1948 at 8:08 a. m., C.S.T. 8.5. SERVICE" Good-morning! I can't tell you how very much I appreciate this wonder- ful reception this early in the morning. It shows very conclusively that you are interested in the welfare of this great Republic of ours or you wouldn't come out to hear the facts. It proves to me that you people here in Southern Minnesota are just as much concerned about the problems t'a t the Country has to face today as are the people everywhere else I visited. You know, I warned the peopleof this Country not to risk entrusting their destiny to recent converts to the principles of our foreign policy - I did that last night in St. Paul -- converts who would seek to curry favor by putting on the mantle of such principles in order to further their own political ambitions. You want to watch that closely. They are coming across now with a "me too", because I smoked them out. I am telling the facts and the facts are things they can't stand. They don't want you to know the facts. Mankato is a good example of the close dependence of farms on cities and cities on farms in this country. Farm prosperity makes for more busi- ness in the cities, just like this great city here, and more jobs in the great factories in your town. By the same token, when production and em- ployment are high and workers are receiving good pay, the farmer is able to find a ready market for his products. Whatever helps the worker naturally helps the farmer, and whatever helps the farmer, in reverse, helps the work- er. Look at the farm prosperity here in Minnesota today. I am going to give you some figures that will startle you. Back in the last Republican depression year of 1932, the farmers' income in the whole State of Minnesota was less than 250 million dollars. Last year the farmers of Minnesota made a billion and a half dollars, six times what they made in 1932. Now, that was not by accident. The prosperity didn't just happen. It was carefully planned and carefully administered by the Democratic administrations of the last sixteen years. And this Republican 80th Congress tried its best to tear up that program. Study the situation -- the Democratic plan which helped to develop the cooperatives through the Rural Electrification Act. We made loans to farmers' cooperatives to bring electric power to the farms. Back in the Republican days only one Minnesota farm in 14 had electricity. Now, thanks to Ru E. A. and the great work done by the farmers' cooperatives since then, six out of every ten Minnęsota farms has electricity -- and we're going to get those other four before we get through. But in order to do that you've got to vote for yourselves. You've got to put somebody in the White House and somebody in the Congress that will look after your interests. You have got a good man running for Congress, running here in this District, and I hope you'll send Mr. Maxwell back to the Congress to help to do these things I am talking about; and you must, by all means, send the man from Minneapolis, Mr. Humphrey, to the Senate in place of that liberal Mr. Ball who has been converted to reactionaryism since he has been in the Senate -- and I'm sorry to have to say that. No one here doubts that cooperatives are a good thing. They have been a tremendous boon to the farmer. They have improved the farmer's bargaining position in dealing with the huge corporations that farmers must sell to and buy from. Despite the immense benefits cooperatives have brought to the people of Minnesota and to the Mid Western States, the Republican Party in the last Congress, and every time they have had a chance, has fought them bitterly. For example, nine out of every ten Republicans voted against Rural Electrification last year. Three out of four Republicans in Congress voted against R. E. A. this year. Not quite so many of them voted against it this year because they had to go out and ask you for votes. The reason for Republican opposition is plain. Big business is opposed to cooperatives, and the big power companies are particularly opposed to rural electrification. You see, they don't get the rake-off when the farmers' cooperatives run the electric power for the farmers, and that's true of all municipal plants.