Address at the Municipal Auditorium, Hibbing, Minnesota

I certainly do appreciate this most cordial welcome. And you know what you have done? When we were in Pittsburgh, in the Mosque there, there are 4,208 seats, or something like that, and my daughter informed me that she had 50 more people in that hall than I did. You have overcome that. We have got twice as many people here as she had when she was in Minnesota. I am highly, highly pleased with this most cordial welcome, and I do want to say to you how very much I appreciated the most cordial welcome you gave to my daughter when she was here. You know, if you want to get at the old man, that is a good way to do it.

I like to campaign in Minnesota. In 1948 Minnesota treated me as well as any State in the country when I spoke here. And on election day, Minnesota gave the Democratic ticket the thing that counts--11 votes in the electoral college--and I needed them in 1948.

Now I have a very strong feeling that the same thing is going to happen this year. Minnesota is going to be among those States voting to make Adlai Stevenson the next President of this great country.

I hope, too, that you'll put a fine Democrat in the Governor's chair--the man who just introduced me, Orville freeman.

You have some great Democrats from Minnesota in the United States Congress, and we need more of them. You know that Hubert Humphrey is fighting your battles down in Washington, and fighting them with all of his great energy and ability. He needs another forthright fighter down there with him, and from what I can see, Bill Carlson is your man.

As for John Blatnik, I'm sure he doesn't need any help from me or anybody else. He has certainly earned a return trip to Washington. You know what we call him down in Washington?--"Mr. St. Lawrence Seaway." That great project has been held back by the railroad interests, the power interests, and a lot of other selfish groups that are trying to prevent the natural growth of this great region. But it is going to be built in spite of them.

Unless the Congress passes a law very soon, authorizing the United States to join in building the Seaway, Canada is going to build it alone. That will be of great benefit to this country, because under our treaty with Canada, our shipping can move through the Seaway at the same rates of toll as the Canadian shipping. But it would be a lot better for us to join in the project so that we could share in the control of it. If the country will give John Blatnik enough good Democrats in the House of Representatives to work with him, and give Hubert Humphrey enough good Democrats in the Senate to work with him, then we will join in the construction of the Seaway, as we should.

But one other way--we are going to get the Seaway, one way or another, and we are going to make a seaport out of Duluth-which will be one of the greatest things for this part of the world.

You know, I went to the Senate in 1935 from Missouri. I was elected in 1934 in a very bitter campaign. I have had a lot of bitter campaigns, as you all know. But one of the first votes I cast in the Senate in 1935 was a vote to establish the St. Lawrence Seaway. We were defeated. But we are still fighting, and we are going to keep up that fight.

Now, I was in St. Paul today, and there has been a vicious smear campaign started against Congressman McCarthy down there. They have started the same sort of campaign on Congressman Blatnik. I think that is one of the most outrageous things that has ever happened in the history of this country. It is not fair. It is not right. And I am just as sure as I stand here you are not going to let that sort of campaign have any effect on your votes for John Blatnik.

Up here in Minnesota, you have a way of tying three words together that I like-Democratic-farmer-Labor. Those three words fit together because the Democratic Party is the party of the farmer and the party of the laboring man.

The secret of the Democratic Party--the thing that distinguishes the Democratic Party--is that it has a deep feeling for the common people of this country. We are a party that has never been able to stand idle when people are in need or are oppressed. We do something about it.

When we are writing laws, we are thinking about human beings--about the way they live and work and raise their families. That's why the great humane measures of social security and public welfare came from the thinking of the Democratic Party. That's why farm security and rural electrification were dreams that the Democratic Party had--and they didn't believe in dreams, they carried them out.

And being for the farmer and the workingman doesn't mean that the Democratic Party has to be against any other group. Not at all. That's the beauty of it. If you work in the interests of the common people, you help everybody in the country in the long run.

The Republicans have always tried to drive a wedge between the farmer on the one hand and the miner and the factory worker on the other. In particular, they try to get the farmer vote by attacking labor and labor organizations.

But in the last 20 years, the Democratic Party has proved that what is good for the farmers is also good for the city people, and what helps the city worker is also good for the farmer.

Since 1932, wages have just about quadrupled. Now I wonder if that has hurt anybody? Has that hurt any of you because your wages were quadrupled? On the contrary, it means that the farmers and the city factories alike have a rich market, and everybody is better off.

Now the income of the average farmer has increased 10 times since 1932. I wonder if that's been bad for anybody? I think it's quite the opposite. It means that the rural areas of America are a rich market, too, for the products of the mines and the factories.

This system of mutual prosperity is broader than just a farmer-labor prosperity.

When the farmers and the workingmen do well, then the insurance agent, the grocery store owner, and everybody rise who has something to sell can count on having customers. That's just plain commonsense. Why anybody wants to think about helping any other party than the Democratic Party is more than I can understand. That's the reason I am out working for them. Now even though the executives of most big corporations attack our programs, these same corporations are making the highest profits in the history of the country.

Everybody in the country has a stake in everybody else's prosperity. And you folks here in Minnesota have been among the first to recognize it, with your basic idea of farmer-labor unity in politics. And I hope you will continue that from now on.

You can sum it all up in a phrase from this atomic age: Prosperity is a chain reaction. Remember that: Prosperity is a chain reaction.

In 20 years the Democratic Party has learned how to use the powers of government to keep this chain reaction going. We believe in prosperity for all the people, and we know how to get it.

The question you can't help but ask is this: When the Democratic Party has brought unparalleled prosperity, why do they hate us so?

Why are the steel executives so bitter in their swanky clubs? Why are the millionaires so vindictive against the party that keeps their business good? Why have they hated and abused franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman? Why are they willing to spend millions of dollars to defeat Adlai Stevenson and the Democratic Party in this campaign?

That's what they're doing. But I'll tell you right now it's not going to work. With all their money, they're not going to beat Adlai Stevenson.

I remember back in 1948, every special privilege organization was against the President of the United States but the people, and we licked them to a standstill. And we are going to do it again.

Now I think I can tell you why they hate us--why they are spending all that money. It's because in that great election of 1932 we reestablished an old American principle of government--one that had almost gotten lost in close to a century of predominantly Republican rule. We reestablished the principle that the people--people like you folks right here tonight--and not just the privileged few were going to run this country. Each of you was going to get just as much consideration, and have the same rights, as the richest man who contributed to the Republican Party.

That was the meaning of the election in 1932, when we made franklin Roosevelt President of the United States.

Workingmen were going to be allowed to organize, and their representatives were going to be heard in our legislative halls. Government was going to pay attention to their need for steady jobs, and for security, in this complex new industrial society.

Farmers were going to be heard, too, and they were going to be given some protection against depression and crop failure and against the market manipulators who used to get rich from the farmers' labors. And still those manipulators are trying to get special legislation through the Congress to defeat the farmers again. And I'll say to you, if any farmer votes the Republican ticket this year, as I said in 1948, he ought to have his head examined.

The minorities in this country--the Negroes, the foreign-born--were going to be heard, too, and they were going to be treated as Americans ought to be treated.

That was a revolution that took place in 1932, when the common man came into his own at last. It was a peaceful, wholesome, constructive revolution. And thank God the Democratic Party had the genius to guide a peaceful revolution, or we would have had the other kind.

But to all the people who lost their special privileges, their preferred position, their right to exploit the farmer and the workingman--Franklin Roosevelt became a symbol of their loss. That's why they hated him. I am proud to have followed in his footsteps. And that's why they have heaped abuse on me.

I don't think there's anything mean in the dictionary that is possible to be said, that hasn't been said about me. It hasn't hurt me much, as you can see. I am still giving them something to abuse me about, and I am going to continue that until I die because I am going to be a Democrat as long as I live.

Make no mistake as to what they are after when they shout, "It's time for a change." They want to rule the country again and get back those special privileges.

Now, I honestly don't think the Republican candidate for President understands all this. He was in the Army all during the 1920's and the 1930's, when this great struggle was going on. And he hasn't had much opportunity to learn how our economy and our Government work.

I wonder if he's asked the millionaires who are financing his campaign what they expect to get out of it? I just wonder if he has asked them that question? I'll bet you a dollar and a half he hasn't.

Now I am going to tell you a few things that some of them expect to get out of it.

The oil millionaires expect to get something. First, they expect to get control of the immensely rich offshore oil reserves that are owned by all the people of the United States, including all you people in this audience tonight. On that question, the Republican presidential candidate has already committed himself. Under pressure from the oil lobby, he has promised to sign a bill giving to three States the oil lands that the Supreme Court has said belong to everybody in the United States, including the people in Minnesota. That transaction would make Teapot Dome look like chicken feed. Now he didn't even consult you folks who own that property. I vetoed a most vicious bill that would have given all your rights away. He'll have an opportunity to veto it, if he gets to be President-- which I hope he won't--and I don't think you are going to let him. He won't veto it.

If he gets the votes in those three Coastal States by that kind of deal, people like you ought to see to it that he loses ten times as many votes everywhere else in the country. And that's just what's going to happen to him, and he's not going to get those three States, either. I have got a mighty good friend in Texas by the name of Sam Rayburn. And he told me that there are 5 million people in Texas that don't own any oil wells and have no chance of getting any oil wells, and don't own any cattle ranches; and they're going to vote the Democratic ticket. Now, see what happens in Texas!

The electric power millionaires expect to get something out of a Republican administration, too. They expect to get control of all the transmission lines that carry power from Government-owned dams, including those that service REA cooperatives. They expect to get monopoly control of all the remaining good power sites on the country's rivers. Their spokesmen have even started the propaganda mills churning to get the existing public power dams turned over to the power companies.

Now the National Association of Manufacturers and the other big business organizations expect something from the Republicans. They expect to get out from under the antitrust laws. They expect laws which will break the power of the labor unions.

The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by the Republican 80th Congress, was only their first step. They have a lot of other steps in mind--including a whole range of punitive antilabor measures they tried to put across during that horrible "do-nothing" 80th Congress. Representative Hartley introduced them and one of his chief lieutenants was a Representative by the name of Nixon, who is now the Republican candidate for Vice President.

If the National Association of Manufacturers can get its way, antiunion employers will be in a position to break the unions. Then we'll be back where we were in the 1920's. The worst employers would set up the wage scale, and the workingman will either have to take it or lose his job to a scab. Is that what you want?

Well, the National Association of Manufacturers is going to be badly disappointed, of course, when the Democrats win this election, as they are going to. Now the grain speculators expect something out of the Republican Party. You see, I am telling Ike what he is going to have to do if he ever gets to be President.

They hope to tax the farmer cooperatives out of business. They have tried it time and again since I have been President. They expect to see the Government's price support operations and grain storage program modified to give them a better crack at the farmer. They got a large part of what they wanted from that Republican "do-nothing" Both Congress. That Congress wrote the "sliding scale" formula for price supports, and denied to the Government the right to acquire storage facilities. The Democratic 81st Congress upset both those deals, but the speculators who have powerful representation in the Congress know that their awful deals can always be made again, if they can get control of the Congress. And that is what they want. They have got people now who are doing everything they possibly can to put the cooperatives out of business. They want to get absolute control so that they can skin the farmer like they used to back in the 1920's. We are not going to let them do it. I know you are not going to let them do it.

Now there's a lot at stake for the millionaires, too, if another set of Andy Mellon tax laws can be written.

There's a great deal at stake for them if they can get Republicans who see things their way on the Federal Power Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the great other regulatory bodies which have been set up to protect the people of this country.

These are the reasons that millions and millions of dollars are flowing into coffers of the Republican Party. And I want to tell you one thing, it's not money that wins elections, it's people who win elections. In 1948 the Republican coffers were bulging and bursting with money. In 1948 we didn't have money enough, sometimes, to get the whistlestop train out of the station. But who won that election? The people won that election. And you're going to win this one, too!

Maybe the Republican candidate for President doesn't understand what all of his backers are after. I am sure he doesn't. Or maybe he just thinks the same way they do, as he has shown on so many of the issues.

There's a lot at stake in questions like these, and if you elect Republicans you'll find it out over a 4-long-year period.

The Republican Party's long-established policy of running the Government in the interests of big business is bad enough just in itself. But it's doubly bad because those policies are bound to put this country into another Republican depression sooner or later.

The Republican candidate for President keeps getting angry when I say things like that. He says his party has no intention of putting this country into a depression.

Well, I have never said he was going to do it deliberately, right after January 20.

I said, and I mean, that a depression is just the natural outcome of their kind of economics. And I'm going to prove it to you.

During the 1920's, the Republican Party wrote its tax laws, its tariff laws, its oil laws, and all the other laws so as to help big business. There was some reasoning behind these policies. Many shortsighted people honestly believed that, if big business got along all right, enough wealth and income would trickle down to the rest of the population to keep the system going.

Well, my friends, it didn't work, and now we know why. We now know that during all that decade of the Republican 1920's, a great concentration of wealth and income took place. By 1929, I percent of the population was getting 14 percent of the national income, after taxes.

During what we used to call the booming twenties, all the increase in income was at the top 5 percent of the population. The mass of the population--the 95 percent-experienced an actual decline in income.

When that concentration of wealth and income that the Republicans fostered had reached a certain point, the money just couldn't be spent. The people who had the most money simply couldn't spend it. The people who needed things didn't have the money to buy. So buying declined, production declined, investment declined, and we had another type of chain reaction downward--a reaction that lasted until the bottom of the pit was reached in 1932.

Now then, the Democratic Party came in and reversed the whole chain reaction. We recognized that the key to national prosperity is the income and the purchasing power of the 95 percent of the population--the farmer, the laborer, the white collar worker and the small businessman.

We got results. By 1948 the lower 99 percent of the population had an income more than twice as high as in 1929. The income of the top 1 percent went up only a little bit. But that spread the purchasing power the way it had to be spread. Prosperity can now exist and be maintained.

But here's what upsets the Republicans. The top percent of the population has been getting only 6 percent of the national income, instead of 14 percent.

And while in 1929 there were 513 individuals with incomes of a million dollars, in 1948 there were only 149.

Now, tomorrow the Republican papers all over the country will tell people that I've been up in Hibbing, Minnesota, saying nasty things about millionaires. They will even say that I picked a safe place, where I wasn't apt to find a single millionaire in the audience.

But, my friends, the Democratic Party isn't really mad at millionaires. We don't hate anybody. We don't care if people are rich, so long as the concentration of wealth doesn't wreck the economy.

But we do know two facts. One of them the Republicans proved in the 1920's--that policies which help only the rich, which bring about too great a concentration of wealth and income, end in a crash and a depression. The other fact is one the Democrats have proved since 1932--that real prosperity can only exist when it rests on the solid base of prosperous farmers and fully-employed, well-paid workingmen.

When I say that a return to Republican policies is sure to bring a depression, I'm simply talking economics. The Republican candidate might turn out to have the best intentions in the world, I just don't know about that--and I don't think anybody else does. But I do know that the policies of an Old Guard Republican Congress will lead us as surely to a depression as they did in that dreadful decade of the 1920's.

When you go to the polls on November the 4th, think about the big issues, the real issues.

First, think about what party is best able to maintain prosperity in the United States.

Second, think about which party is the most deeply committed to building up the strength of the free world to stop Communist aggression and prevent a third world war.

Third, think about which party believes most truly in civil liberties, and equal rights for all our people.

On all three of these great and fundamental issues, your choice can only be the Democratic Party--which has shown by action what it believes and what it does.

The Democratic Party is proud to present to you a candidate for President who will be a superb leader in attaining these objectives. He is a man of long experience in civil government. In 4 years as Governor of a great Midwestern State, and before that in various Federal posts, he has learned to understand the conflicting pressures and the interests that a President must deal with. He believes in the true equality of human beings. He believes deeply in the policies that have made this country the leader of the free world alliance. He has not found it either necessary or expedient to compromise those policies in his campaign.

In short, Governor Stevenson is a man in the finest tradition of franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. In capacity, in understanding, in experience, he measures up to the need of our great country in these times.

So, to everyone in this audience, to everyone listening in tonight, I say make your vote count. Get out your friends and neighbors all through the Iron Range, all through St. Louis County, all through Minnesota. Get them to go to the polls and use a little judgment. I have been going around over this country trying to get people to think, trying to get people to understand just exactly what is at stake in this present campaign. It is the most important campaign, for a policy in this country that will mean 20 more years of prosperity, than any campaign we have had since the Civil War.

And I ask you to think. I ask you to think about the welfare of the free world. Think about the greatest Nation in the history of the world--this United States of America; and finally come right down to brass tacks and think about exactly what it means to you.

If you will just think about those things, if you will study the record--if you will study the Republican record in Congress-that is where you will find out what they will do--study the Democratic record in Congress--and then my friends, if you turn out the biggest vote in the history of Minnesota, I know that victory will go to the Democratic Party and its great leader. We will have Adlai Stevenson of Illinois in the White House, and we will have good government for another 4 years.