Address at Phoenix, Arizona

Governor, Senator McFarland, Congressman Murdock:

I can't tell you how very highly pleased I am to be your guest here tonight, and I am sincerely sorry that I couldn't have gotten here sooner. But I am under the impression if I had gotten here sooner, there wouldn't have been room for anybody else.

I have been here before. I remember coming here one night, and making a speech in behalf of Carl Hayden, when he was running for reelection. We had a lot of fun on that, and you sent Carl back to the Senate.

I want to say to the great State of Arizona, that when you have men like Carl Hayden and Ernest McFarland, and John Murdock, and this young man Patten, who is going back there now, the country is well-helped by that sort of treatment from this great State.

I can't tell you how very much I appreciate your coming out here at this time of night. That shows you are interested in your Government and interested in what is going to happen to your country.

You should be interested. The results of this election will make a lot of difference to each one of you personally.

One of the finest things about our form of government is that it gives people a chance to shape their own destiny. They don't always take advantage of that chance as they should.

Look at what happened in 1946, when two-thirds of the voters in the United States stayed at home; and the other third elected that Republican 80th "do-nothing" Congress. You've heard a lot about that Congress, and I am going to tell you a lot more about it, before I get through with this campaign.

I'm glad to say that Arizona didn't have any part in that. You sent fine Democrats to the Congress just as you had been doing all along. If it hadn't been for the battle put up by your Senators and Representatives, and other Democrats like them, the Republican-controlled 80th Congress would have done a lot more harmful things than it did. The Republicans are still saving up a lot of special interest measures, hoping that in the next Congress there won't be so many Democrats to protect the people. God help the country, if that happens.

We're going to show them that they're wrong. I know where Arizona will stand, and I know the kind of people you'll send to the Congress--just as the men I named awhile ago, that's the sort of people we want in the Congress.

I've been having a wonderful time on this trip. It's given me a chance to tell about the record of the Democratic Party, and that record was made in the last 16 years.

It's a record I'm very proud of, and I get so much pleasure out of telling about it that it reminds me of the old Sunday School hymn, "I love to tell the story."

I say that no political party in the history of the world has ever done so much for a country as the Democratic Party has done for the United States since the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

You remember how we started out from the midst of a terrible depression. You remember how the Nation responded when it found out that we had a Government that was working for the people, and not taking orders from Wall Street.

That's right. You remember! Who was it said, "The capital of the United States has been moved from Wall Street to Washington"? And that is where we want to keep it.

We made progress year after year under a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress. Sometimes the progress was rapid--sometimes it was slow. But we always made progress, for we were headed forward.

Now, the Republicans want to turn around and start backward. They want to move the capital from Washington back to Wall Street. They have been working at it in the Congress for the last 2 years and they're now trying to .capture the executive branch of the Government, so that they can complete the job.

The things we have done since the people took over the Government in 1933 have paid big dividends to the Nation. And one of the things that has paid the biggest dividends is our aid in developing the resources of the West.

There is a part of the record I've talked about a lot on this trip, because the people of the West know what it means. They know that the Democratic Party has done more for the development of the West in the last 16 years than the Republican Party did in the last hundred. That's on the record and all the campaign oratory in the world can't change it.

This is of great importance to you here in Arizona. You are vitally interested in water for your cities and irrigation projects, and in the development of power from your rivers.

Just now you are very much interested in the completion of the Davis Dam and a network of transmission lines. This will give you the power you have to have to carry on, and you will get it at a much cheaper rate. Our goal for the completion of that project is 1950. We can finish it on schedule--if we can keep the Republicans from throwing more monkey wrenches into the machinery.

You are fortunate here in Arizona that the private power facilities and the public power agencies have shown a fine spirit of cooperation with the Federal Government in the development and transmission of power. This example of the mutual advantage of cooperation between private utilities and the Government agencies should be a matter of interest to people in other areas, where the power trust is trying to bottle up power, until they can get a rake-off on it.

The harnessing of the Colorado River for beneficial uses is a dramatic thing as well as a matter of good business. It's the kind of empire building I like. I want to see the day when all the waters of that mighty river will be put to their best possible use.

Today, half the water that could be supplied by the Colorado system is still flowing down to the sea without being used. That water ought to be put on the land, and used to turn out power. That's where it is needed for homes and crops and industries.

The big problem, of course, is to settle the division of the waters among the States of the Colorado Basin, since there is not enough to meet all the needs. The Upper Basin States have recently arrived at a basic agreement, which I hope will soon be translated into a working compact.

The question of the water rights of the Lower Basin is a tough one and involves many complex problems.

This is of tremendous importance to Arizona, because your population, and your industry and agriculture have advanced more rapidly than water resources have been made available to sustain them. The lack of water is the limiting factor in your development, right now. And in order to plan intelligently for the future, you need to know how much water you can count on.

The Secretary of the Interior has just sent to the Congress a detailed report on a vast project for bringing water to central Arizona. He has found that investigations made over a period of years show this project to be economically feasible. But it depends on taking a lot of water from the Colorado River. And the Secretary pointed out that Arizona's right to take this water from the Colorado River is challenged by her sister States. His recommendations for favorable consideration of the project was therefore conditioned upon Arizona's claims to the water being substantiated.

I have talked about water, because I know of your interest in it, and because it's one of the many examples of Republican broken promises.

In their platform for this year--1948--they say they "favor progressive development of the Nation's water resources for navigation, flood control, and power, with immediate action in critical areas." They also said they favored a comprehensive reclamation program. When it comes to making promises, they come right along saying, "Me, too."

But when it comes to making good on those promises--well, that's something else again. I will cite you some examples.

They said they were in favor of immediate action in critical areas. Well, I gave them a chance for immediate action. I called a special session of the Congress, after they wrote that hypocritical platform.

And when I got this Republican Congress back in session, I pointed out to them where the cuts they had made in irrigation and power projects would delay the use of water or the furnishing of power by more than a year. All this power was badly needed and most of it was in critical areas, by anybody's definition.

One of the projects I listed was Davis Dam--and you folks here know how badly you need the power from Davis Dam right now, and how serious it is that Republican cuts in appropriations will delay your getting this power.

So, I told the Republican Congress they ought to restore the cuts they made in the Davis Dam project, and others like it in other parts of the West, and let the work go ahead.

Here was the Republican's chance for immediate action of the kind they promised in their platform. You know, they wiped out the whole appropriation for the Davis Dam, and your Senators and Congressmen made them put part of it back, but they didn't put it all back.

What happened ? The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives wouldn't even let the House consider restoring the money for these projects. And when the question was put to a vote in the Senate, the Republicans killed the appropriation there. Thirty-one out of thirty-five Democratic Senators voted for immediate action in these critical areas. But 45 out of 46 Republican Senators voted against it.

Now, I will cite you the chapter and verse, so you can get the record. You read the Congressional Record, the 7th of August, 1948, at page 10256, and you will see just exactly what they did, and they can't lie out of the record.

That's the kind of leadership the Republican Party has nowadays. That's the way you can expect it to carry out campaign promises.

It's safer to stick by the Democratic record of performance.

That, I know, is what you are going to do on election day.

Go to the polls--go to the polls, and vote the Democratic ticket straight, just like you always do.