Rear-Platform Remarks at La Junta, Colo

I am glad to come back to La Junta. I have been here many times before. It looks to me as if things are a little bit better than they were in this section four years ago, the last time I went through.

I do not have to talk to you people about the Arkansas Valley. You know this end of it a lot better than I do. I can tell you, however, that I have had a tremendous interest in all of the plans for the whole watershed of the Arkansas, from away back in the Rockies to the point where it hits the Mississippi River.

This morning I described in Denver what we are doing. We have a perfectly definite and sound objective. We want to make every drop, every gallon of water that runs down the river serve some useful purpose to mankind on its way to the sea. That is what we are trying to do in developing these irrigation and flood control projects. In about an hour, incidentally, I am going to pass through the site of what will eventually be the Caddoa Dam.

I am sorry to be a little bit late for the melon season. But I believe they found a few late comers which are on board the train; and we are going to have them for supper tonight.

I am glad to come into a railroad town, because you people know of the splendid progress that railroad transportation has made in the last year. The reason that freight and passenger traffic is picking up all the time is that people on the whole have more money to spend.

Four years ago there were some tourists, but they were riding on the box cars and the roofs of trains. This year they are riding in Pullmans, and there are more of them, and there are going to be still more to come.

In connection with our railroad problem, we have been trying to tie it into the broad policy of social security; and that is one reason why the Railroad Retirement Act, that splendid piece of legislation, was passed by the Congress. I feel very certain that that statute, together with the Social Security Act, is going to do much good for the people of this country in the years to come.

If we can keep this new and sounder prosperity going at the same speed it is picking up at the present time, we need not worry much about paying back the comparatively small sum of money we borrowed to get recovery in the past four years.