Address at Boston, Mass.

Governor Curley, Mr. Mayor, my friends of Boston:

I return to the New England from which came most of my ancestors. I come from visiting many other States. Hardly one among them has not received men and treasure, brawn and brains, from New England's inexhaustible reserves.

The average American as I have met him on these voyages is no longer indifferent to the problems of Government. And it is my opinion that there is more downright political intelligence than ever before in our entire history.

In a world which in many places has gone undemocratic, we have gone more democratic. It is a bad sign for those who believe that the American people can be swept off their feet by rabble-rousers this year. The American mind today is above the rabble level. Two weeks from today, the day after election, the American air will be cleaner and American democracy will be safer.

I want to speak to you briefly and simply about the prosperity of all the Nation, for in that prosperity all New England has an immediate and a direct interest. The golden State House dome symbolizes in itself the preservation of the political unity of the Nation. But New England is heir to the lasting fruits of another great New England tradition—the tradition of being a part in the economic development of the entire Union, and of sharing in all of its prosperity.

In the most immediate sense, the problems of the great population of the West and South are your problems too. Their welfare and prosperity are your welfare and prosperity.

The sale of New England's shoes depends in part on the price of Kansas' wheat and Georgia's cotton. Prosperity for the California fruit grower depends in part on the prosperity of the New England textile mill. New England savings have prospered in developing Western mines and railroads and stockyards and farms.

I have thought much of this interdependence as I have traveled through the great Western country.

And I am confident that level-headed New England knows how true that is, knows it in spite of a cantankerous minority that in every difficult time has found spokesmen to try to persuade New England that its interest is not the interest of the rest of the Union. They tell New England today as they have told it before that it has been ruined by Government policies designed to benefit only the rest of the Union.

We all know that New England has had its troubles. We all know that New England is coming out of its troubles.

If you need figures to prove that, here they are for the State of Massachusetts: Payrolls for the first half of 1936 are up 32 percent over the first half of 1933. Retail sales are up 20 percent. Farm income, excluding benefit payments, is up 37 1/2 percent. Building construction in sixty-two Massachusetts cities is up 100 percent. Does that look to you like the end of private enterprise?

For many years under Republican Administrations, New England was handicapped. What were the causes?

Every realistic business man of New England knows. First: That New England had established standards of wages and of living which put some of its industries at a competitive disadvantage with sections of the country which had not reached those standards.

Second: That those lower standards were exploited by an absentee landlordism which exported from New England too much of its capital—capital that was used elsewhere to compete with industries at home.

Third: Concentrated wealth and economic power gobbled up or wiped out or moved away hundreds of small independent New England businesses—the kinds of businesses with which at one time New England had conquered the markets of the world.

What did Republican leadership do to meet those difficulties? A high protective tariff alone could not help New England meet the unfair competition from domestic competitors on the one hand, and the unfair competition of monopoly on the other. To make matters worse, that tariff shut off the foreign commerce on which the sea coast population and industrial population of New England had lived.

The full fruit of these Republican policies of twelve years is found in the record of what happened to New England's industries under those policies. New England was engulfed by the depression five years before the rest of the country. That is New England's debt to the Republican leadership of the boom era.

What has this Administration done?

We have raised wages and living standards in other sections of the country. They are being brought up toward the standards of New England. That kind of unfair competition is being destroyed. Most of us are in favor of that.

We have begun the first real offensive in our history against that concentrated wealth and monopolistic power which almost destroyed the small businesses and diversified industries of New England. Most of us are in favor of that.

By reciprocal trade agreements, we have begun to reopen foreign markets for New England products and New England shipping and trade. Most of us are in favor of that.

We have increased the purchasing power of New England's customers out on the farms and in the cities of the Nation. And most of us are in favor of that.

New England has traditionally been a land of moderate-sized independent business, a land of economic democracy. Its farseeing statesmen have always understood that democracy was impossible under the relentless pressure of concentration and monopoly wielded by the new power of high finance. The New England Puritan spirit of simplicity, the New England passion for democracy, the New England genius for democratic statescraft, are the very sources of that program of this Administration which set itself to end such concentration of wealth and economic power.

Daniel Webster spoke for all that was wisest in New England when he said at Plymouth Rock: "The freest Government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless. Universal suffrage could not long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property."

What have we done in our fight against monopolies?

We have taxed the intercorporate dividends of holding companies. We have graduated taxes on corporations according to income, just as taxes on individuals were graduated long ago. We have made it harder for big corporations to retain the huge undistributed profits with which they gobble up small business. We have raised the surtaxes on big incomes and the estate taxes on big fortunes. We have regulated the financial markets through which mergers and consolidations and monopolies are created with other people's money.

Way back in 1776 John Adams wrote to his friend Patrick Henry:

"The decree is gone forth, and it cannot be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth, must be established in America. The exuberance of pride which has produced an insolent domination in a few, a very few, opulent monopolizing families, will be brought down nearer to the confines of reason and moderation, than they have been used to."

I am glad to travel in the company of John Adams and Daniel Webster. Boston and Massachusetts and New England have not lost the spirit that has made the Nation great.