Remarks at Marshalltown, Ia.

I am glad to come back to Iowa after an absence of nearly a year. As you know, this is not a campaign trip. I am merely doing what I think every President ought to do, and that is, once a year, to try to see something of the country at first hand. I suppose that in the last twenty-five years I have seen a good deal more of the United States than almost anybody in public life except Jim Farley. I am keen to see more of it and I propose to keep on traveling.

I believe that so far on this trip things look a good deal better than they did in 1936. I know a lot of you good people here are interested in one of the objectives of government- the stability of crop prices. We know what happens to the country when corn and cotton and wheat and other major crops fluctuate up and 'down the scale, and people have no idea, when they plant their crops, what they are going to get for them when they reap them.

That is something, I believe, that modern civilization must solve and can solve—and I am not speaking in a party spirit, as you know. I think the time has come when the government can devise ways and means which will stabilize prices that farmers get for what they grow. And I believe, too, that that can be done without bankrupting the government.

On this trip I expect to talk with many people about methods to be used in obtaining those ends. You know, a lot of people mix up objectives with methods; and, sometimes, when they do not like the objectives, they say, "Oh, yes, we do like the objectives, but we don't like the methods proposed by this particular fellow." Well, I am not in love with any particular method; but I am in love with the particular objectives which the people are after and I am after.

That is why tomorrow, when I shall be in the beet sugar area and cattle area, I shall be trying to learn at first hand what the people are thinking about; and trying to learn at first hand the best methods to be used in gaining the objectives, because I am certain that we are in accord as to what those objectives are.