Remarks to Delegates to the National Farmers Union Convention in Minneapolis.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Dechant, Senator Mondale, Chairman Robert Poage, ladies and gentlemen:

I thank you very much for this warm reception. It does a man good after the weather that we have had in Washington. I presume some of you have read that we have had a cool spell come through there lately. And along about the latter part of last week it got considerably colder.

But I wasn't at all surprised. "The Farmers Almanac" for a long, long time has been indicating some atmospheric disturbances might be moving in from the Senate.

So I flew down to the Southwest to spend Sunday with my grandson. We had a family gathering at the ranch. I was glad to learn that we had had good rains, things had warmed up a good deal, and we could stop our winter feeding. That does make a good deal of difference, when you can stop buying cottonseed cake.

I am very proud to be a part of your convention, and to be invited by Tony to come here today. I don't intend, by dropping by, to steal any honor away from your distinguished guest, one of the finest young men who has ever come to the Senate--Walter Mondale-who works for the farmer every day that he is there, and for all the people.

Minnesota has a way of picking good public servants. I have never known you to pick a better one than this young Senator.

I like both of your Senators. I like the way they vote, and I like the way they talk--except in election year sometimes.

One of the public servants that I am proudest of---I have worked with Gene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and all of your House delegation for years--is your present Vice President, who was once my leader in the Senate until I asked him to try to help us lead the Nation. I have never had any doubts about Hubert Humphrey, and I have no doubts this morning about Hubert's farm credentials.

I called him a little after 5 o'clock, before daylight down in our country. His Secret Service agent came back and said, "The Vice President cannot be reached." And I said to Jimmy Jones there at my bed, who had been reached about an hour earlier by me and told to come on up and let's get going, "Jimmy, it is bad when the President of the United States can't reach the Vice President."

He said, "Well, I know it, but he lives out of Minneapolis, out in rural Minnesota." He said, "He is probably up doing his chores before he goes in to greet us." He said, "lust quit fussing about the Vice President, because he is all right."

Then about that time the operator came on the line very pleased and said, "Mr. President, I have found the Vice President. He is in a downtown Minneapolis hotel suite."

I said, "Well, wake him up and put him on the line. I want to talk to him. I may come up there to see him today."

And while they were getting Hubert awakened--the Secret Service agent--Jimmy Jones explained, "I'll bet you what he has been doing, Mr. President, is milking the lines from his St. Patrick's Day speech last night in Pennsylvania."

You don't know how happy I am that we could meet together this morning. I don't believe anyone can claim that I am a new recruit to the farmer's cause.

You and I wear many of the same campaign ribbons. Some of them represent victories; a good many of them represent hopes that have been dashed, disillusionments and defeats. Mine go back to the thirties. Yours go back 66 years--during which the Farmers Union has been providing leadership for the farmers of this country.

You have produced many great leaders from your organization. I have known and liked and worked closely with Jim Patton, Tony Dechant, and your fine State presidents for many years. Much of the legislation that has helped the American farmer to a better day originated in the Farmers Union meeting, was lobbied through the Congress by Farmers Union leaders, and was signed because the Presidents thought that they were for the best interests of the farmers.

I think, I hope, I believe I know what the farmer wants--and I want the farmer to have it.

I think that all of you want a fair price for your products--and if I have the power, you will have it.

I think that all of you want assurance that rising costs will not wipe out a lifetime investment--and I pledge you that if I can help you, every resource of mine you will have, including assurances that we will do everything that we can to control rising costs.

You want parity--you want a fair deal-you want an even chance to share in the rich and good life of this Nation--and I want you to have it.

You want the justice, the decency, and the opportunity that every American has the right to claim as his native right--and you will have them.

And so long as I am your President, you will always have my understanding, my admiration, and my wholehearted support in fighting with you to try to reach these goals. And we know that it will be a fight.

Your great Secretary, Orville Freeman, a Minnesota product, spent some of this weekend preparing papers telling me just how tough the fight was going to be. I came here this morning to ask you to join us in this fight to try to reach these goals.

There are some people in this country who have forgotten that without farms there would be no factories. There are some people who must know that without our people, there would be no cities.

There are those who no longer believe, it seems, in the partnership between the farmer and the Government--who tell us, on the airwaves from time to time, that we should "Get the Government out of agriculture."

There are those who fail to realize that many of the problems of urban America are a reflection of the failures in rural America. And when you get the Government out of agriculture, you sometimes get the farmer off the farm.

You know--as I know--that the farmer's problems are the problems of all America, and not any one group. And you know that the solutions to those problems are going to require the sympathy, the understanding, and the help of each good American in this country.

So I did my spring planting a little early this year. Three weeks ago, the President sent to the Congress a message on the farmer and rural America.

Just as I asked the mayors and the businessmen and other good Americans to read the report made by the national disorder commission on the problems in the cities, I ask each of you and all of you to get a copy of that message, and read the farm program outlined in that message. Try to help us preserve this freedom for the farmer and a reasonable amount of prosperity for his family.

Now, when you read that message, or when you see that message, much of it is going to sound familiar to the Farmers Union, because you and your leaders designed much of it, recommended much of it, and supported all of it.

Since I am a drop-in and not a dropout, and since your time is limited and they are waiting for me at the Capital now, I am just going to point out briefly some of the things that I asked for in that message, and that I need your help on.

I asked Congress to extend the supply management programs of the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965, and I asked them to extend it this year.

Chairman Poage tells me that his committee will give consideration to these recommendations shortly. We hope that with his assistance, and with Walter Mondale's assistance, with the help of all the Minnesota delegation, we can get permanent authority.

The farmer should not be asked to grow more than the market can take at a fair price.

I have asked the Congress to continue the direct payment programs of the 1965 act-they are the difference between profit and loss for many farmers each year.

I have asked the Congress to extend the Food for Freedom Act for an additional 3 years--because it is right for this Nation, whose sons came from many nations, to try to help hungry people eat when we have an abundance--and because I think it is good business for our farmers to help build new markets for our products in other lands around the world.

I have asked the Congress to authorize a National Food Bank--a security reserve for wheat, feed grains, soybeans--which would give the farmer higher prices, protect the consumer from food scarcities and shortages, and provide the Government with an emergency food "cushion" in reaching supply-management decisions so we would not get caught short when we had a bad estimate.

I have asked the Congress to find the ways to give the farmer more bargaining power in the marketplace. Our working people and our good laboring friends in this country have not met all their needs or their desires. They still have many objectives and goals that we want to help them reach.

But the reason the farmer's income does not compare favorably with a laboring man's income is one reason, primarily, in my judgment: Labor has bargaining power; the farmer has none.

If you are to continue to pay the prices that industry charges and sets, if you are to continue to pay the wages that American workers are entitled to get, you are going to have to be put on an equal basis with industry and labor in bargaining power.

As you have so many times in the past, the Farmers Union has joined with us to help us to work, strive, and fight in order to get bargaining power for the American farmer.

Finally, I have asked the Congress for the programs to bring parity of opportunity to the rural children in America; to give them better elementary education; to give them better library facilities; to give them better transportation; to give us better farm credit; to give us more rural jobs; to give us decent housing; to give us adequate diets, with adequate consumer protection for the housewives; to give us the chance to lead a full and productive life.

The average farm family doesn't ask for much: the right to earn enough to clothe the bodies of their children, and to fill the stomachs of their hungry; to provide a roof over their house where they live; to have a school that their children can attend and a church where they can worship according to the dictates of their own conscience; and occasional recreation--to ride a boat, to see a movie, or some little something once in a while.

That is not asking much. It is not too much. But until we get it, we are not going to be satisfied--and we are going to fight together--until we reach those goals, until we reach those objectives.

During the months to come, you are going to hear these programs cussed--you may hear something cussed besides programs, too--and you are going to hear them discussed. I tell you now, it is not going to be easy to pass them. It is going to be harder this session than it would be in a normal session, because some of you may remember that there is something coming up down the road in November.

Some voices today express doubt that the American farm and the American farmer can survive. They say that we must sacrifice that priceless heritage--that American dream--on the altar of progress.

I say that they are just as wrong as they can possibly be.

If the farmers of America will only wake up and speak up courageously and forcefully in their own behalf--if we and you together have the patience and the determination, and the good, common horse sense to preserve, improve, and build upon the progress we have made in our agricultural programs-if we trust our hopes instead of relying on our fears and the demagogues who would mislead us, American agriculture can grow and prosper as it has never grown before.

I believe--and I have been in most of the 50 States of this Union, and I am just a few hours away from rural America at this moment--that rural America stands for the very best in all America.

Now, there is another area in which all Americans--mothers and fathers, farmers and city dwellers--must demonstrate that same courage, that same patience, that same determination.

For many years we have been engaged in a struggle in Southeast Asia to stop the onrushing tide of Communist aggression.

We faced it when the Greek Communists were a few miles out of Athens a few years ago. We faced it when we had to fly zero weather into Berlin to feed the people when that city was beleaguered and cut off. We faced it on the Pusan Peninsula when our men were fighting for the hills of Korea and everybody said, "They are not worth it."

We fight Communist aggression the same today in Southeast Asia. This tide threatens to engulf that part of the world, and to affect the safety of every American home. It threatens our own security and it threatens the security of every nation allied with us. The blood of our young men this hour is being shed on that soil.

They know why they are there. I read 100 letters from them every week. They do not have the doubts that some at home preach. They have seen the enemy's determination. They have felt his thrust trying to conquer those who want to be left alone to determine their government for themselves, but whom the aggressor has marched over to try to envelop. Our fighting men know, from the evidence in their eyes, that we face a ruthless enemy. You make a serious mistake if you underestimate that enemy, his cause, and the effect of his conquest. They know from the carnage of the enemy's treacherous assaults that he has no feelings about deliberate murder of innocent women and children in the villages and the cities of South Vietnam.

They are not misled by propaganda or by the effort to gloss over the actions of an enemy who, I remind each of you, has broken every truce, and who makes no secret whatever of his intention and his determination to conquer by force and by aggression his neighbors to the south.

At the same time, during these past 4 years, we have made remarkable strides here at home.

We have opened the doors of freedom, full citizenship, and opportunity, to 30 million minority people, and we have sustained the highest level of prosperity for the longest period of time ever known.

But the time has come this morning when your President has come here to ask you people, and all the other people of this Nation, to join us in a total national effort to win the war, to win the peace, and to complete the job that must be done here at home.

I ask all of you to join in a program of national austerity to insure that our economy will prosper and that our fiscal position will be sound.

The Congress has been asked by the President--January, a year ago--to enact a tax bill which will impose upon the average citizen an additional one cent for each dollar in taxes. I ask you to bear this burden in the interest of a stronger Nation.

I am consulting with the Congress now on proposals for savings in our national budget--in nondefense, non-Vietnam, in other items all across the board.

If I can get the help of the Congress--and it is their will---we shall make reductions in that budget. They will postpone many needed actions that all of us would like to see taken in another time.

All travel outside the Western Hemisphere by Government officials and by all private citizens which is not absolutely essential to you should, in the interest of your country, be postponed.

I have already called for savings and cuts in expenditures and investments abroad by private corporations. We are going to intensify this program.

We have spent the weekend in an attempt to deal with the very troublesome gold problem. We have said that we are no longer going to be a party to encouraging the gold gambler or the gold speculator.

Most of all, I ask your help, and I come here to plead for your patriotic support, for our men, our sons, who are bearing the terrible burden of battle in Vietnam.

We seek not the victory of conquest, but we do seek the triumph of justice--the right of neighbors to be left alone; the right to determine for themselves what kind of a government to have. We seek that right and we will--make no mistake about it--win.

I am deeply aware of the yearning throughout this country, in every home of this land and throughout the Western world, for peace in the world. I believe all peoples want peace. I know that our peoples want peace, because we are a peace-loving nation. There is none among you who desires peace more than your own President and your own Vice President.

We hope to achieve an honorable peace and a just peace at the negotiating table.

But wanting peace, praying for peace, and desiring peace, as Chamberlain found out, doesn't always give you peace.

If the enemy continues to insist, as he does now--when he refuses to sit down and accept the fair proposition we made, that we would stop our bombing if he would sit down and talk promptly and productively-if he continues to insist, as he does now, that the outcome must be determined on the battlefield, then we will win peace on the battlefield by supporting our men who are doing that job there now.

We have a constitutional system. A majority of Americans have the right to select the leaders of their own choosing.

That is all we are asking for in South Vietnam.

You have provided your President with 100-odd ambassadors, the most trained men in every diplomatic outpost throughout the world.

Through West Point and Annapolis, you have provided your President with the best trained, best educated, most experienced and best led group of men that has ever formulated the strategy or the tactics for any nation,

Your President welcomes suggestions from committees, from commissions, from Congress, from private individuals, from clubs, from anyone who has a plan or program that can stand inspection and can offer us any hope of successfully reaching our goal, which is peace in the world.

We consider them all, long and late. We work every day of every week trying to find the answer.

But when aggressors in the world are on the march, as they were in World War I and II, as they were in Korea, as they were in Berlin, and as they were in other places in our national history, then we must unite until we convince them that they know they cannot win the battle in South Vietnam from our boys, as they are trying to win the battle from our leaders here in Washington in this country.

That is very dangerous for them, to think for a moment that they can attack the moral fiber of our own country to the point where our people will not support the policy of their own Government, of their own men whom they have committed to battle.

You may not have a boy in that battle that is going on now---or you may. But whether you do or you don't, our policy ought to be the same. We ought not let them win something in Washington that they can't win in Hue, in the I Corps, or in Khe Sanh. And we are not going to.

Now, this one final word: We ask every Senator, every Congressman, every farmer, and every businessman to join with us in our program of trying to unite this Nation, and trying to support our commitments and our own security.

We thought in the early years of World War I, before the Lusitania was sunk, that we had no concern with what happened across the waters. But we soon found out that we couldn't stand on that position.

We thought in World War II that we had no concern with what Hitler was doing in other parts of the world, and he wasn't very dangerous anyway, and we could sit this one out.

But we soon found that we lived in a very small world.

Even though we hadn't gone beyond our shores, they sank our fleet at Pearl Harbor.

We soon learned that we must never permit an aggressor's appetite to go uncontrolled because the person he eats up today may make him more hungry for you tomorrow.

We want peace and we are ready to meet now, this minute.

But you may want peace with your neighbor, too, and you may be willing to go across the road and into his yard to try to talk him into it. But if he keeps his door barred and every time you call him the call goes unanswered, and he refuses to meet you halfway, your wanting peace with him won't get it for you.

So as long as he feels that he can win something by propaganda in the country--that he can undermine the leadership-that he can bring down the government--that he can get something in the capital that he can't get from our men out there--he is going to keep on trying.

But I point out to you the time has come when we ought to unite, when we ought to stand up and be counted, when we ought to support our leaders, our Government, our men, and our allies until aggression is stopped, wherever it has occurred.

There are good, sincere, genuine people who believe that there are plans that could bring us to peace soon.

Some think that we ought to get it over with, with a much wider war.

We have looked at those plans, and looked at them carefully.

We have looked at the possible danger of involving another million men.

We have tried to evaluate how you could get it over with, with less cost than we are now paying.

We do not seek a wider war. We do not think that is a wise course.

There is another extreme that thinks that you can just have peace by talking for it, by wishing for it, by saying you want it, and all you need to do is to pull back to the cities.

We had that plan tested in the Tet offensive. They killed thousands and thousands in the cities.

Those of you who think that you can save lives by moving the battlefield in from the mountains to the cities where the people live have another think coming.

If you think you can stop aggression by getting out of its way and letting them take over, roll over you, you have another think coming, too.

Most of these people don't say, "Cut and run." They don't say, "Pull out." They don't want a wider war. They don't want to do more than we are doing. They say that they want to do less than we are doing. But we are not doing enough to win it the way we are doing it now, and we are constantly trying to find additional things that it is reasonable, and prudent, and safe to do.

So you have one extreme that says, "Let's go in with flags flying and get it over with quickly, regardless of the dangers involved."

You have another group that says, "We are doing too much. Let's pull out. Let's be quiet. We want peace."

Then you have a third group that says, "We don't want to conquer you. We don't want to destroy your nation. We don't want to divide you. We just want to say to you that we have an obligation. We have signed 42 alliances with people of the world. We have said that when an aggressor comes across this line to try to dominate other people, and they call on us to help, we are going to come and help, until you decide to leave your neighbors alone."

We think that we are making progress on getting them to decide. They think they are making progress on getting us to decide to give up and pull out.

But I think they will find out in the days ahead that we are reasonable people, that we are fair people, that we are not folks who want to conquer the world.

We don't seek one acre of anybody else's soil.

We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing more than surrender and cowardice.

We don't ask anybody else to surrender. We just ask them to sit down and talk, meet at a family table and try to work out our differences. But we don't plan to surrender, either; we don't plan to pull out, either; we don't plan to let people influence us, pressure us, and force us to divide our Nation in a time of national peril.

The hour is here.

This Government has the best diplomats. This Government has the best generals. This Government has the best admirals. This Government has the best resources in every corner of the globe.

Although I have had more Secretaries of State than any President in modern times, or more would-be Secretaries of State, I still think this Government has one of the most able and patriotic men I have ever known sitting in that chair, and I think his policy is sound.

So as we go back to our homes, let's go back dedicated to achieving peace in the world, trying to get a fair balance here at home, trying to make things easier and better for our children than we had them, but, above all, trying to preserve this American system, which is first in the world today.

I want it to stay first, but it cannot be first if we pull out and tuck our tail and violate our commitments.

Thank you very much.