Rear-Platform Remarks at Emporia, Kansas

My friends, I am very glad to come to Emporia. But I do not see Bill White. (Laughter, applause.)

I wish he were here because I have known him for a great many years, and he is a very old friend of mine. He is a very good friend of mine for three and a half years out of every four years.

Hello, Bill, glad to see you. Come on over here. How are you?

Now that I see him, I shall not say anything about the other six months. (Laughter, applause.)

You get so much politics in Emporia both ways that you do not need any political speech, but I do want to say this: I have been tremendously impressed all through this summer and autumn with the great interest that is being taken by the voters of the United States in national problems. It has been demonstrated in the last week or two by an increased registration and by increased enrollments. I am quite confident that we shall have several million more voters go to the polls this election day. That is entirely as it should be. I believe also that the people, more and more, are making up their own minds. They are not believing everything that is said to them; and I am quite certain that they are not believing everything they read.

(Audience: "No.")

In other words, they are winnowing out the chaff from the grain; and it is a fine thing that the public in this country is taking such an interest in its own Government.

Yes, the people are not being swayed this year by some of the things that have swayed them in the past because, taking them by and large, our economic problems are in far better shape than they were four years ago. I think they are sounder than they have been for a great many years.

Certainly everything I have seen on this trip makes me know down in the bottom of my heart that the people appreciate that things are better and are sounder. We have a little more time than we had in those days to make up our minds about things. Thank the' Lord, we are going into this election with a smile on our faces.

The bitterness that comes up every four years in our American system of government does not last and that is good too.

And so, my friends, I am very glad to have had the chance to stop here. I always wish on these trips that I could go through by motor instead of by train; that I could talk to more people; that I could see more of the problems of industry and agriculture at first hand.

I think I must have been preordained for the career of the commercial traveler because I like to travel so much. It is one of the great privileges of the Presidency that I have the opportunity to go around this country so that I may get a first-hand picture of conditions.

Some day I hope I shall be able to come back to Emporia and spend a little more time with you and, when I get back, it may be in one of those three-and-a-half-year periods when Bill White is with me.