Campaign Address in Elizabethton, Tennessee

I am proud to have been invited as your guest in this celebration of your progress and this review of your part in national history.

When southerners go North or northerners go South to deliver public addresses they seem to feel it necessary to first launch into an explanation that all lines of sectionalism have disappeared in the United States. I am from the West, where our people are proud to be the melted product of both the North and the South. Our accent differs from that of the people of Alabama and Vermont, but we have the same hearts, the same kind of homes, the same ideals and aspirations. Every morning and evening we read the same news; every night we listen by radio to the same voices. Our mental and physical frontiers are gone. It happens that we need geographical divisions for statistical and descriptive use, but otherwise we could leave this question to orators and humorists.

Your celebration today raises many memories of our national beginnings. Patriotism is of many inspirations. It receives refreshment from many springs. None are more powerful than our traditions of service, of suffering, of accomplishment, and of heroism. The rivulets of these traditions from every part of our country in the course of history merge into that great stream of national memories which is the constant refreshment of national ideals. These memories are indeed the imponderable force which builds and cements our national life.

To the westerner, appreciative of history and tradition, this occasion presents a double significance. As you have shown today, this locality was once the Nation's frontier. Here were enacted some of the most stirring scenes in the brilliant drama of our pioneer era. Seven years before the Declaration of Independence there came to the banks of the Watauga—which was then the Far West—the first permanent settlers. They were soon followed by others from the back country of North Carolina. In these settlements, frontiersmen remote from the centers of civilization, freed by difficult distance from the sway of all governmental authority, voluntarily created their own frame of popular government. They erected what was to all practical purposes a free and independent state, under their own constitution.

In the Articles of the Watauga Association were implanted some of the great principles which later found permanent lodgment in our fundamental law. Similar associations sprang into being in other parts of these mountains. Historians of our frontier agree that no more striking proof of the native capacity of our early Americans for local self-government was ever given than by these associations. They not only created a government, the Watauga men, determined in their independence, rallied to the improvised army during the Revolution which at Kings Mountain struck a decisive blow for the colonial cause.

They with their compatriots from Virginia and the Carolinas attacked and disastrously defeated a formidable army under competent leadership, fading again into the forest as soon as their task was accomplished. No battle more dramatic or marked by courage and skill of a higher order has been fought on this continent. It was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. It compelled the retirement of General Cornwallis toward the coast, revived the flagging spirit of the discouraged colonists, and opened the way for the final victory at Yorktown. I wish to compliment you upon your pageant commemorating these achievements.

These States in common with those to the north began the greatest drama of all history—the spread of Americans from a feeble foothold on the Atlantic seaboard to the most powerful Nation in the world in scarce two centuries. The great West was won not by the action of the Government, but by the individual effort of intrepid and courageous men from all these Atlantic States. They builded their own self-government. Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas were gained by pioneers under Sevier, Robertson, Clark, Boone, Houston, and others. They won not only homes for themselves, but for a long time determined the course of history westward. The Mississippi River ceased to be a boundary, and year after year the powerful pulsation of westward expansion throbbed with heroism and sacrifice. They were ready to fight for the simple right of self-government. General Fremont, the pathfinder to the Pacific coast, came from Georgia, and true to tradition he fought for and erected the first self-government of my own State of California.

To me it is an inspiration to be standing on this spot, for in a sense I have a common heritage with you. The earliest ancestor of whom I have record, Andrew Hoover, a settler in Maryland about two centuries ago, migrated to North Carolina and built his home 100 miles from this spot. In Randolph County of that State he did his part in building the community, and his grave lies in the little burying-ground on what was then the Uharrie River farm. His son, my great-great-grandfather, was part of that movement which started west from your frontier.

As Secretary of Commerce I have been profoundly interested in the amazing progress of the South in this past 7½ years. In order that the Department might assist to the fullest extent in that progress, we increased our branch offices in the South from 3 in 1920 to 29 in 1928. As a result of the contact thus established we were able to observe your increasing prosperity.

The record is impressive. There are in the South about 8 million families, and in this period they have shown increase in numbers by perhaps 10 percent. Contrasted with this, the manufacturing output has increased by over 60 percent. The number of employees has increased by over 30 percent. The value of crops has increased by over 45 percent. The shipments from Southern ports have increased by 50 percent; the net income of your railways has grown by over 140 percent; electrical power in use has been increased by 125 percent. The postal receipts have grown by 45 percent. That this enormous increase in wealth and production has had wide distribution can be seen on every hand. It is indicated by increased wages and decreased cost of living, in 20 percent of new homes, in a gain of 150 percent of automobiles, and 30 percent in telephones. Life insurance in force has increased by 70 percent and bank clearings have increased by 50 percent. Depositors in savings banks have more than doubled. Building and loan association assets have increased 180 percent. In nearly every case these percentages exceed the corresponding increase in the country as a whole. All this has been accomplished in 71/2 years.

In every phase of life the South is moving forward. New vistas of betterment are opening. The ability and energy of the people is constantly growing and is of more dynamic scope. They have engaged in every form of useful community effort to improve both the material and spiritual side of life.

I have had the honor to be president of the Better Homes Association. In that organization over 2,000 towns have actively cooperated throughout the South during this past year. Fourteen out of 24 of the annual prizes given by this association for the most successful work during the last 5 years have been awarded to the Southern committees for leadership in bettering homes. Moreover, as director in various national committees devoted to increase of playgrounds and public parks, I have had occasion to note with gratification the extraordinary progress made throughout the South in the provision for wholesome recreation. You have not been negligent of education. In the past 7 years the attendance in high schools has increased by 91 percent and in institutions of higher learning by 70 percent. Your moral and spiritual foundations have been strengthened.

I know that the people of the South will agree with me that these results could never have been attained but for helpful cooperation and sound policies in the National Government, and that change of these policies can bring only distress and disaster.

The South possesses vast resources of raw materials and electrical power, easy access to the sea, a great reserve of labor, a wealth of soil, a moderate climate. Most of these factors have been here always. Such resources exist in many other countries, but if they are not accompanied by fine leadership, by intellect and character as well as sound policies of government, there could be no such development as we have witnessed in the South during this last 7 years. That leadership has not been by immigration from the North. It has been the product of Southern men and women. The South has again proved to have in her blood that strain of leadership and fortitude which contributed so much to found our Republic and so much to build our own West.

I realize that I come here as the candidate of a political party with whose policies many of you within my sight and many within the sound of my voice have often differed. I respect your views regarding that difference. Yet so closely welded in common interest are the pressing issues of our Nation today that it should be no longer unusual for a citizen of any region to vote for a President who represents the principles which correspond with his convictions.

Our national officials are chosen in order that they may protect the political and economic health of the American people. In a contest such as this there is no place for personal bitterness. A great attribute of our political life has been the spirit of fair play with which our Presidential contests have been waged in former years and the sportsmanlike spirit in which we have accepted the result. We prove ourselves worthy of self-government and worthy of confidence as officials in proportion as we keep these contests free from abuse, free from misrepresentation, and free from words and acts which carry regret. Whatever the result, we remain fellow countrymen.

No better illustration of true sportsmanship in American politics can be found than in the historic contest waged in this State between two brilliant brothers, one of whom honors us with his presence at this meeting, the beloved Alfred Taylor of Tennessee. In the annals of chivalry no chapter portrays human nature to better advantage than your own "War of the Roses" in which Alfred Taylor, the Republican, and Robert Taylor, the Democrat, engaged in fierce political combat, attracted the attention of the whole Nation, and stirred this whole State from center to circumference. Yet in the heat of strife they kept in mind the advice of that good mother who had admonished her two stalwart sons never to forget the tie of brotherhood. It is in that spirit I wish to discuss the problems that concern our country and the methods I believe necessary to obtain their solution.

Our country has entered upon an entirely new era. For 14 years our attention in public life has been mainly given to the Great War and reconstruction from it. These 14 years have witnessed a revolution in our world relations, in many phases of our economic life and our relations of government to them. Due to the ingenuity and hard work of our people and the sound policies in government, we have come since the war to be the greatest reservoir of the world's wealth. We have transformed ourselves from a country borrowing capital from abroad to the foremost lender of capital to foreign countries. Our people, growing in efficiency and productive power, are pressing for expansion of world markets. Competition for these markets grows keener each year. Our increasing foreign trade has penetrated into every country in the world. Political diseases arising from the war misery of foreign countries have at times disturbed us by their infection of certain of our people. The poverty of Europe presses huge immigration toward us. We still have unsettled debts due us from the war. For all these reasons our international relations have vastly increased. By our growth of wealth and power we have a great burden of responsibility for the peace of the world. Abolition of the liquor traffic has become a part of our fundamental law and great problems of enforcement and obedience to law have arisen from it. From the violence of the war we have inherited increase in crime. Technicalities of court procedure have been used to defeat justice and to aid law violators. The invention of the gas engine has brought the automobile and the airplane. It has shortened distances, but it has brought new problems in roads and traffic.

Discoveries in electricity have meant an immense expansion in power and communication, which bring also their problems of regulation to protect public rights. The war has vastly increased the expenditures of the Government. The assessment of taxes and expenditures of public monies have come to bear a vital part in business stability. During these years we have adopted a measure of Federal control of credit. Errors in that delicate adjustment can cause us fabulous losses. The war has dislocated our transportation relations both within our country and with foreign countries. Development of inland waterways, of merchant marine, and consolidation of railways are forced upon us. More acute than all are the readjustments in the world's producing and consuming power. Great expansion of agricultural production in Canada and the Southern Hemisphere, combined with increasing efficiency and larger production by our own farmers, has rendered unstable those branches of our agriculture which are dependent upon foreign markets. These circumstances have brought a long train of difficulties to the American farmer. With fewer men needed upon the farm and with more needed in other lines of production, our great cities have, within this 14 years, a little less than doubled in population, with resultant social problems. Increasing skill and prosperity have brought us more material comfort and greater leisure but also serious questions as to how we should use our leisure time. New inventions, including the automobile and the radio, have brought us into closer relations with our neighbors, and given us a keener knowledge of each other, a broader vision of the world, and higher ambitions. This higher standard of living, this new prosperity, is dependent upon an economic system vastly more intricate and delicately adjusted than ever before. It now must be kept in perfect tune if we would not, through its dislocation, have a breakdown in employment and in the standards of living of our people. From all this, new moral and spiritual as well as economic problems crowd upon us.

Our government was created in the belief that economic activities—that is, the forces of business and commerce—would translate themselves into widely distributed public welfare if left alone by the Government. The Government has come more and more to touch this delicate web at a thousand points. We indeed wish the Government to leave it alone to the utmost degree, but yearly the relations of government to national prosperity become more and more intimate regardless of what we wish to think. All this places a greater strain upon the flexibility of our government and should give us deep concern over every extension of its authority lest we overburden it to the breaking point.

I wish to remind you of something which may sound humble and commonplace, but it vibrates through every hope of the future. It is this—the unit of American life is the family and the home. It is the economic unit as well as the moral and spiritual unit. But it is more than this. It is the beginning of self-government. It is the throne of our highest ideals. It is the source of the spiritual energy of our people. For the perfecting of this unit of national life we must bend all of our material and scientific ingenuity. For the attainment of this end we must lend every energy of the Government.

I have before emphasized that the test of our government is what it does to insure that the home is secure in material benefit and comfort; what it does to keep that home free from bureaucratic domination; what it does to open the door of opportunity to every boy and girl within it; what it does in building moral safeguards and strengthening moral and spiritual inspiration. From the homes of America must emanate that purity of inspiration only as a result of which we can succeed in self-government. I speak of this as a basic principle that should guide our national life. I speak of it as the living action of government in the building of a nation. I speak of it as the source from which government must rise to higher and higher standards of perfection from year to year.

I cannot within the limits of time discuss in detail the policies of our government or the solution of the multitude of issues that confront us and the attitude of my party and myself toward them. I shall mention shortly those which have more particular interest to the South.

As never before does the keeping of our economic machine in tune depend upon wise policies in the administrative side of the Government. And from its stability do we assure the home against unemployment and preserve its security and comfort.

I advocate strengthening of the protective tariff as Henry Clay of Kentucky advocated it; not as an abstract economic theory, but as a practical and definite policy of protecting the standards of living of the American family. The purpose of the tariff is not to balance the books of business corporations but to safeguard the family budget. With the increasing pressures from countries of lower standards of living it has become the fundamental safeguard of the American workman and the American farmer. I wish to see complete protection for the farmer of our home market. It is vital to the South as well as to other parts of the country. It would produce a needed further diversification of southern agriculture. A retreat would ruin millions of our farmers today.

And likewise the great manufacturing industries of the South are dependent upon it. Your vast spinning industry, your iron and steel industries, are the product of it. No more beneficent exhibit of the result of the Protective Tariff Act of 1922 exists than in this very city. Here factories are in course of erection and expansion whose establishment within the United States is due solely to that tariff act. Directly and indirectly they will provide improved livelihood to more than 15,000 homes. If it were not for that protection these goods would be imported today as the product of foreign labor.

We must continue our endeavor to restore economic equality to those farm families who have lagged behind in the march of progress.

In the past 7½ years Congress has passed more than a score of constructive acts in direct aid of the farmer and the improvement of his marketing system. They have contributed greatly to strengthen the agricultural industry. Our party has undertaken to go farther than this and to still further reorganize farmers' marketing systems, placing it on a basis of greater stability and security. I may repeat these proposals. We stand specifically pledged to create a Federal Farm Board of men sympathetic with the problem, to be clothed with powers and resources with which not only to further aid farmers' cooperatives and assist generally in solving the multitude of different farm problems which arise from all quarters of our nation, but in particular to build up with initial advances of capital from the Government farmer-owned and farmer-controlled stabilization corporations which will protect the farmer from depressions and the demoralization of summer and periodic surpluses. Such an instrumentality should be able to develop as years go on the constructive measures necessary to solve the farmers' new problems that will inevitably arise. It is no proposal of subsidy or fee or tax upon the farmer. It is a proposal to assist the farmer on to his own feet into control of his own destinies. This is not a theoretic formula. It is a business proposition designed to make farming more profitable. No such far-reaching and specific proposal has ever been made by a political party on behalf of any industry in our history. It marks our desire for establishment of farmers' stability and at the same time maintains his independence and individuality.

I do not favor any increase in immigration. Restriction protects the American home from widespread unemployment. At the same time we must humanize the laws but only within the present quotas.

The purpose of the 18th amendment is to protect the American home. A sacred obligation is imposed on the President to secure its honest enforcement and to eliminate the abuses which have grown up around it; I wish it to succeed.

I believe in continued development of good roads. They bring the farmers' produce to market more cheaply, and by them we gain in neighborly contacts and uplift of spirit.

I advocate the enlarged and vigorous development of our inland waterways because they tend to diversify industry, they cheapen the transportation of farm produce, and they bring larger returns to the farm home.

I rejoice at the enactment of legislation authorizing the construction of flood control works of the Mississippi and other rivers, for they give protection to thousands of homes and open the opportunity for new homes. We should complete these works with the utmost energy.

Because 3 million of our homes obtain their support from manufacture of articles which we import and export, we must continue to promote and defend our foreign trade.

We must assure a sound merchant marine to safeguard our overseas trade against foreign discrimination.

We must inexorably pursue the present policies of economy in government, for through every tax reduction we leave more income in every home.

It is vital that the Government continue its effort to aid in the elimination of waste in production and distribution, through scientific research and by direct cooperation with business. By it we have made great gains in stability. From stability in business come increased consumption of farm products, regularity of employment, and certainty to the family budget.

We must maintain our Navy and our Army in such fashion that we shall have complete defense of our homes from even the fear of foreign invasion.

Our foreign policies must be ever directed to the cause of peace that we never again need sacrifice our sons on the field of battle.

To our veterans who gave freely of their all in times of danger we must continue to be not only just but generous in enacting and interpreting laws for their relief.

To protect our people from violence at home we must revise our court procedure to produce swifter and surer justice and we should begin with the Federal Government.

I believe in the merit system of the Civil Service, and I believe further that appointive offices must be filled by those who deserve the confidence and respect of the communities they serve.

It is absolutely essential to the moral development and the enlarged opportunity of the boys and girls in every home that we increasingly strengthen our public school system and our institutions of higher learning.

All legislation, all administrative action, must stand the supreme test that it provide equal opportunity for all our citizens, not for any special group.

I do not favor any general extension of the Federal Government into the operation of business in competition with its citizens. It is not the system of Lincoln or Roosevelt. It is not the American system. It not only undermines initiative but it undermines State and local self-government. It is the destruction of States' rights. Democracy, however, must be master in its own house. It can assure the conservation of our governmentally controlled natural resources in the interest of the people. It has demonstrated that by the power of regulation it can prevent abuse; it can and must control natural monopolies in full public interest. It can do so without abdicating the very principles upon which our nation has been founded and through which we have reached a standard of living and comfort unparalleled in the world. Violations of public interest by individuals or corporations should be followed by the condemnation and punishment they deserve, but this should not induce us to abandon progressive principles and substitute in their place deadly and destructive doctrines. There are local instances where the Government must enter the business field as a byproduct of some great major purpose, such as improvement in navigation, flood control, scientific research, or national defense; but they do not vitiate the general policy to which we should adhere.

The President has primarily the great task of administering the biggest business in the world—the United States Government. It is a business involving an expenditure of $3,500 million a year and the employment of hundreds of thousands of people. Its honest and efficient administration touches the welfare of our people to a degree perhaps as great as the legislative and political policies. The President also has the responsibility of cooperating with Congress in the enactment of laws and securing their enforcement. In the determination of policies he is not only the leader of a party. He is more than this. He is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people. The Presidency is no dictatorship. It is not intended to be. Safeguards are provided to prevent it. Our fathers knew that men were not made for government but government for men—to aid and to serve them. Our government rests solely upon the will of the people; it springs from the people; its policies must be approved by the people.

From my experience in government in the past years both in war and peace I have been profoundly impressed with the fact that we have increasing need to replace dictation by law to the fullest extent possible by cooperation between the administrative side of our government and the forces in the community. Scores of activities organized in these years through cooperation with voluntary bodies on both the economic and welfare sides have convinced me that far more of the problem of progress can be accomplished by voluntary action assisted with cooperation by the Government than has been supposed.

One test of our economic and social system is its capacity to cure its own abuses. New abuses and new relationships to the public interest will occur as long as we continue to progress. If we are to be wholly dependent upon government to cure every evil, we shall by this very method have created an enlarged and deadening abuse through the extension of bureaucracy and the clumsy and incapable handling of delicate economic forces. And much abuse has been and can be cured by inspiration and cooperation rather than by regulation of the Government.

I have had the good fortune of many journeys to the South and of many warm friendships there. To me came the opportunity of service during the long months of the greatest disaster which has ever come to our own country outside of war—the Mississippi flood. In that service I came to even more fully appreciate not only the character and the devotion of the southern people, but I found proof of a phase of our American life that I had long believed existed but was difficult of demonstration. I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life, of the stature and character of our people. More particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character. When it came to the organization necessary to meet that great catastrophe, the pressure of time alone made it necessary to rely wholly upon the leadership, intelligence, the devotion, the sense of integrity and service of hundreds of towns and villages on the border of the flood. It was they who must undertake the instant work of rescue, the building of gigantic camps, the care of children, the provision of food, the protection of health of three-quarters of a million of homeless people. All that we who were in the direction could do was to outline the nature of the service that every town and village should perform, assist them with resources. In the face of that terrific problem that would test the stamina and quality of any people, there was not a failure in a single case. This perhaps stands out larger in my mind than in most men because under similar conditions of great emergency I have had the duty to organize populations abroad. And in no country does there exist the intelligence, the devotion, the probity, the ability to rise to a great emergency that exists in the Main Street of the American town and village. I do not wish to disparage the usefulness of Broadway, Pennsylvania Avenue, or State Street, but it is from Main Street and its countryside that the creative energies of the Nation must be replenished and restored.

I rejoice with you at the wonderful development in the South not alone because of the benefits which it has brought but because it represents something more fundamental. Many of our most difficult problems in national life have come because of the extraordinary growth of our great cities. History shows that crowded cities too often breed injustices and crimes, misery and suffering. The people of the South, and of New England especially, are showing the country how to join industry with agriculture to their mutual benefit. The importance of your effort and your success cannot be overstated.

The Federal Government can assist this movement of wider spread of industry by scientific research, by surveys of the resources of each region and study of its interest in and adaptability to various industries. And the Government can do more. It can directly assist not only the South but the whole Nation in this course by the improvement of our roads, waterways, and ports, and by the encouragement of the spread of electrical power to factory and farm, by building up of the merchant marine, and expansion of the foreign markets natural to each section.

I have endeavored in this address to present to you the policies which have made and will make for prosperity of our country. They hold the hope of the final abolition of poverty. They make for better homes. They make for more individuality in life. They open the door of opportunity to boys and girls of town and country as well as of the great cities. From these accomplishments comes the lift of moral and spiritual life. From them comes an America greater and higher in purpose.