Remarks in Cadillac Square, Detroit, Michigan

Mr. Mayor, Senator Ferguson, Mr. Leonard, my fellow Americans:

First of all, permit me to thank each of you for the cordiality of your welcome. I am truly grateful from the bottom of my heart.

Now I have come to talk to you a little while today about one of the most important things any American can do. That is to vote--to register his opinion as to his Government and the kind of Government he wants. And I have come for another reason. As most of you are aware, we are in a bit of a fight these days. And I have been in them before--but a different kind.

I think there is among this great audience many thousands of people who served with me in the armed services. Those men well know that it was my habit, when battles reached their climax, to try to get down and see what the people who were really doing the work were thinking and wanted to do--what was their state of mind, and how were things going with them.

I am out today to try to get as close to the people of this great city, and two or three others, in the few hours available to me.

How are we doing? I think, of course, we are doing fine.

Now, at such a time as this, there are a thousand things to talk about. There is peace, there is the progress toward a firm and secure peace, there are all phases of our economy, there is every kind of political doctrine and tenet to discuss, if we wanted to cover the whole field.

I am going to talk about something today that I think is of particular and important interest to all of you--that is, some of the dislocations that come about as a nation passes from war to peace, and what your Government can and is doing about them.

This kind of subject is of tremendous importance to a city like Detroit, because here is centered these great industrial facilities that make so much of our war munitions. Consequently, as we pass to peace--to a peace economy, a greater dislocation occurs here than it does in most places.

The goal of your Government, the goal of all Americans, is a strong, stable, growing, expanding economy, an economy that will bring higher standards of living to all of us, greater prosperity and strength at home, so that we can support the kind of military strength that makes us safe abroad.

Now for 20 years we have lived under a false belief that the only time America is really prosperous is when she is at war. The only time in 20 years we have had full employment has been at the height of the war years. And we had gotten to the impression that the two words war and prosperity were connected.

My friends, if there is one accomplishment that I believe your Government has some justifiable right to brag about, it is that in the last 2 years it has succeeded in working with industry in developing a cooperative attitude that has brought us from a war economy to a peace economy with a minimum of dislocation, and at this moment a growing prosperity throughout the land.

Now this outcome does not agree with the predictions of many of the prophets of gloom and doom. Sometimes, it seemed almost like they were anticipating this great and terrifying depression that they predicted with some satisfaction, in order to show that their opponents were not so smart.

Now maybe their opponents are not so smart, but when you take America's heart and America's industry and America's working man and work in cooperation with him, he can win the battle of peace as well as he proves so well in war he can win the battles of war.

So of course we know that good times in Detroit, in a great manufacturing city like this, demand good times throughout the country. You are a part--a very important part--of the whole economy. And that whole economy must prosper, if you are to prosper.

What have we done about this whole economy? The first thing we did, and the first thing that brought down these dire predictions of disaster, was to remove the controls from wages and prices a year ago last spring. And did all the disasters occur that were predicted? Not a bit of it.

American industry, released from these controls, functioned exactly as you would expect it to: more efficiently than ever before.

And then, my friends, we cut taxes--the biggest tax cut in history-$7,400,000,000. And how was that brought about? By saving governmental expenditures. Governmental expenditures have been cut by more than $11 billion, and that has made possible this tax cut, returning money to the people who we think know better how to spend it for themselves than Government does for them.

Within the last 2 years, my friends, social security has been made available to 10 million more Americans that did not have it before. Unemployment insurance is available to 4 million Americans that did not have it before. Great housing programs have been pushed ahead. Today-this month--there's 25 percent more construction going on in the United States than there was this same month last year. This is the greatest construction program in the entire history of the Nation.

There has been an expanded program--a regular program of road construction--which has been expanded and made bigger than ever before.

A farm program has been designed that will bring to an end the 7-year decline in farm income. Now, since January 1951 there has been a 25-point point drop in the parity index of the farmer. Nineteen of those points occurred before January 1, 1953. And we are still, my friends, operating under the laws that have been on the books for a long time. The new program is not yet in effect. But it will be started next year. We will get rid of these surpluses that overhang the market, and the farmers' future will be a brighter one.

My friends, after decades of frustration and effort of all kinds, this Congress and this administration passed the St. Lawrence Seaway Act.

The health of the people has engaged the attention of the Congress and the administration. Great new hospitals are being built to fill the requirements of our big cities and our rural populations alike. In every possible way, research in medicine is being pushed in order that we can bring health not only to the wealthy and the well-to-do, but to every man, woman, and child of this United States.

Now, by every measure--by every index by which we measure the wealth of a nation, this is by far the best peacetime year of our whole history. And I am quite sure that Americans don't want to pay for any pseudo or false prosperity in the blood of their sons and brothers on the battlefields.

Today, my friends, 62 million Americans are working, with good jobs. The workweek is lengthening, the steel output climbing, consumer spending is at an all-time peak. Personal incomes, after taxes, are greater than ever before. Construction is setting record peaks, wage rates the same. Weekly earnings are on the rise again. And the national output exceeds even that great war year of 1944.

Now, let's look for a moment at this always troublesome question: unemployment.

In this month, unemployment is down 400,000. It stands at 2,741,000, as of my last report, and is still going down. The great employers of this city have reported to me that they are calling back men to work every day, and on October 15, in this city alone, 60 thousand more people were working than on September 15.

Now, the number of men and women who want work and are unemployed today is one-third the number that were unemployed in 1940, despite our much greater population. There are not nearly so many as were unemployed in 1950.

And how did those people who were unemployed in 1940 and in 1950 get jobs? Because they either went to war or they went into war plants.

And we are getting employment without that.

Now this does not mean by any means, that I come to you, my fellow Americans, and talk about unemployment in mere terms of statistics. Unemployment is not that. Unemployment is heartache, it is privation, it is discouragement--and we know it. I assure you of one thing. You have got a Government with a heart as well as a head.

As long as there is a single American citizen who honestly wants work, is able to work, and can't find it, there's a problem that your Government will try to help solve.

Now, as I say, this is the finest economic year in our history, and we are on the upgrade by every index that we have.

And I hope you will allow me to mention just a word or two, now, about the subject that I believe is of the greatest importance to all Americans: the growth, the development, the progress toward peace.

My friends, 2 years ago, if you will cast back your minds for a moment, there was war in Korea, in Indochina; daily we feared that we would pick up our papers and read that Iran, with 60 percent of the oil reserves of the world, was under Communist domination. Trieste was a terrible problem, causing trouble in a sensitive spot. Suez was another. In Guatemala, communism was already raising its ugly head. And in Europe there was discouragement and disillusionment.

All those hot spots have been cooled off. They are gone. They are not troubling us. We don't read about them.

And in Europe, my friends, only a few days ago, there came back to report to you, and to all of us, the greatest Secretary of State of our time, on the developing plans in that area that bring to us promise of increased strength in the free world, that we can reside in our homes with greater confidence that this menace of international communism heading up in the Kremlin is not going to be successful in its efforts against us and our friends all over the world. Growing confidence everywhere that we can live in peace, a peace that will grow to be a permanent and lasting and just peace--that is what we are talking about.

And now, I have only one or two points I want to mention briefly before I go. I said things are on the upswing. The best analyst in this whole motor field, in which you are interested, says that in December we will be up to a peak production of 615,000 motor vehicles. What a wonderful prediction and outlook on the economic side. We are pushing ahead with a great road program, a road program that will take this Nation out of its antiquated shackles of secondary roads all over this country and give us the types of highways that we need for this great mass of motor vehicles. It will be a nation of great prosperity, but will be more than that: it will be a nation that is going ahead every day. With Americans being born to us--with our population increasing at five every minute, the expanding horizon is one that staggers the imagination.

And as, along with that, our economy advances and keeps up with that kind of rate, we are of course, certainly within 10 years, we are going to see a year when we will have a $500 billion income, meaning $3,000 more to every family now existing in the United States.

That is the kind of future we are looking for--and we are going to have!

And so, as I say goodbye, I want to remind you of this: I have tried to give you a few of the reasons why you should vote. I want to point out the importance of one vote. Three Presidents of the United States have been elected by one electoral vote. One of those had the election thrown into the House of Representatives, and he was elected in the House by one vote. And the Congressman who cast the deciding vote was elected in his District in Indiana by one vote. And that one vote was of a sick man who ordinarily could not have gone to the polls, but he insisted they put him on a litter and take him to the polls where he voted. That, my friends, is some measure of the value of one vote. Five States have been admitted to the Union by one vote in the Congress.

That is why we need every voter to come out and make certain that we have a Congress that continues under the leadership that we have had in the last 2 years, to bring about these great things I have been telling you about so roughly and so briefly.

That means that from this great State of Michigan we want that part of the leadership. After all, you have the Senator who is the head of the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate body. By all means you must send him back and support him with the big delegation that you are capable of sending.

You have nominated great State and national tickets, your Governor, your Senators, your Congressmen, your State officers.

Do the rest of the work, and elect them.

Please vote!

Goodbye.