Remarks at Standiford Airport, Louisville, Kentucky

Senator Cooper and my friends:

I am on a trip today to remind all my friends in this Nation of a very important duty they have. It is to vote. It is to exercise the greatest right that free government can confer upon a citizen.

Now, of course, I would like for you to vote for Senator Cooper and all the rest that are running on the Republican ticket from this State. But above all, it is your duty to vote. So I feel, also, that if there are enough people who vote, we will be all right, because I am quite certain that the great vast majority that voted in 1952 still feels the same way. Now if that vast majority votes again, then we will have Senator Cooper and those like him back in the Senate, and will have a Republican-led Congress in both Houses.

Now in 1952 this vast majority was made up of Republicans, and of independent-minded citizens of all kinds. Some were called Citizens for Eisenhower, Independents for Ike and Dick, Democrats for Eisenhower, and so forth. In any event, they believed and were conducting a crusade. And I have thought often of the simplicity of the crusade, the simplicity of the cause that was at the bottom of that crusade. Actually, as I see it, we were trying to substitute one three-letter word for one two-letter word in United States thinking.

For 20 years we had come to think of peace or prosperity. And these crusaders said we could have and would have peace and prosperity.

Now of course, this was only a change of a small word, but in meaning and significance a change of the most profound importance. All those years from 1933 to 1940 we continued to have very large unemployment; even when we began the preparation for war in 1940 unemployment was still, in that year, at an average of 8,100,000.

And then again in 1950, even though in that year we began again the great preparations for the Korean war, unemployment never fell to the 3 million mark. At the peak in that year, in February, it was 4,900,000.

Now these people in 1940 who had been without work for a long time, how did they get jobs? They went into the armed services or they went into war plants. And this happened again in 1950.

Is it any wonder, then, that the United States came to believe that we could have peace or we could have full employment or prosperity?

Now the crusaders said you can have both. For 2 years those crusaders--your representatives in the Congress, in the executive branch, and with your support--have been busy proving that formula ever since. And the record is a great one. It has been brought about through cooperation instead of division within our great economy--within our Nation. Government has tried to work with people, rather than to try to dominate them--rather than to boss them. There has been a new spirit of working together, of teamwork throughout--from the remotest hamlet in the middle of the country right on down to Washington, between the farm and the city, between Government and citizen.

In this matter of unemployment, we have seen a steady decline from the peak of last winter. Only this month there was another 400 thousand reduction. We are down to approximately 2,700,000 at this moment. Unemployment is still going down, and employment is still going up. There are 62 million Americans working--working at profitable wages. The weekly wage is still going up. The amount of money left the American people for expenditures after taxes is at its all-time high. Construction is breaking records every single month. Construction this month is 25 percent higher than last year, which was supposed to be the peak of all time.

Ladies and gentlemen, by every measure that we can determine the increase in the wealth and productivity of a nation, we are prosperous, we are going up; and this in spite of the fact that in certain areas there still is unemployment. And that unemployment engages the attention of your Government, and its cooperating municipalities and States and industry, every second of the day. As long as there is a single American citizen that wants a job, is capable of working, and can't find it, the Government will never let up on this.

We have prosperity--by far the most prosperous peacetime year in our whole history.

But now we said also, remember, peace and prosperity. Now by peace, if we are honest with ourselves, we don't mean merely an absence of shooting. We thank the Almighty every day of our lives that no longer do we read the casualty lists from those barren mountains of Korea, and we are glad, of course, that the shooting and the killing has stopped in southeast Asia. But we are talking about progress toward a peace of confidence and security, one in which we can believe, when we can begin to turn the full productivity of this great and prosperous economy to the advancement of human happiness.

We don't mean that we have really reached peace when we have to devote--and all the world is still devoting--so much of its sweat and toil and productivity to making the engines of war, in order that we can remain secure.

Now what have we done in the last 21 months? You remember where we were in January 1953? We were still losing American boys in Korea, and the fighting was going on in Indochina. Beyond that, day by day we expected to pick up our papers and read that Iran with its great resources, 60 percent of the world's known reserves of petroleum, had fallen into Communist hands. And Suez: we expected to pick up the paper and read that it was going to flame into open disaster; Trieste, bothering our friends and the Italians and all Western Europe--those age-old irritations between Italy and Yugoslavia. And even in Guatemala, in our own hemisphere, the ugly head of communism--international communism--was menacing us.

Now, through patient work, through persistent work, through friendly partnership, all of these sore spots have either disappeared or have been so greatly accommodated that they are no longer the dangers that they once were. So that there has been developing a constantly better atmosphere in which the statesmen and diplomats of the world could work for peace.

Now, far more important, even, than these specific incidents of which I have spoken, is the better situation in Western Europe. Frequently we ask ourselves, well what about Western Europe, why do we worry?

My friends, we know what the menace in the world today is: it is international communism under the direction of the men in the Kremlin, who have announced their intent by aggression, by violence, by any way that is appropriate to them, or feasible or expedient, to destroy free government, to destroy your freedoms and mine, and those of every other citizen of the free world.

Now they have a vast empire. Right now they control at least 800 million souls, parts of it very productive. But think of Western Europe: 250 million more people, with a skilled labor element almost twice as strong as our own. Suppose all those people with their vast productivity fell under the domination of the Communists? The threat to. the rest of the free world, specifically to the United States of America, would be so grave and so great that what we are spending now for national defense would be a drop in the bucket.

So, ladies and gentlemen, Western Europe is not something that we can say is across the Atlantic. It is right here in Louisville, Kentucky, in its significance to our safety.

Now 2 years ago, we had been working for a long, long time to bring about some unity and strength in that region. It looked rather dismal. Prospects didn't look too good. They weren't good. But again, patient work, refusal to be defeated on the part of all the Western allies, with Great Britain and our own country acting as friendly partners throughout, finally the greatest Secretary of State of our time could come home and report to you people that a new spirit had been developing, a new pact was on the way for signature, which would guarantee the security of that nation, and therefore work to the great benefit of the United States and all the free world.

Now ladies and gentlemen, most sketchily but certainly I think most accurately, that is a rough outline of how far we have come on these twin roads of prosperity and peace in 21 months. That has been brought about by the cooperation of many people. And particularly in this area of foreign relations, let me make myself crystal clear: no one believes in bipartisan direction of foreign affairs more than I do. In the basic elements of our foreign policy, we must be America--we must not be parties. The world must know that when America speaks, it means to speak for this year and until some great change in circumstances forces America-not some political party--to change its mind.

But even in this field, my friends, leadership is necessary. The day by day operation of foreign affairs, the headaches and other incidents that come up that must be taken care of, demand a team of leaders.

Now in this whole economic development, this leading toward prosperity, this leading toward peace, you have had a team, a team of legislative leaders in the Senate and in the House, operating with their confreres and with their associates in the executive department.

What this election is all about, the one in which I am asking every one of you to vote, is to. determine whether we are to have a continuation of the kind of progress I have so roughly sketched out for you.

I tell you, my friends, the traffic of Government must not encounter red lights at every crossroads in Washington. We must all want it to flow ahead on proper lines in the same direction. And certainly, above all means, though two parties can work together, we must not conclude that both can at the same time be captains of the Ship of State. It just simply can't be. Somebody must, and one Party must, be responsible, so that you--you--the United States of America--you voters--can hold somebody responsible.

We must not by split Government, give to each Party a chance to. alibi against the other, to give to us excuses for failure.

Now, make no mistake, my friends. This decision is yours. Whatever your decision is is going to be loyally accepted by the people that are serving you in Washington. And I assure you, whatever your decision, no less devoted and dedicated will be my own efforts, or the executive branch's effort, to bring about this great prosperity and more and better peace.

But I say also: that as long as you have--as you must have--an executive branch in control of one Party for the next 2 years, progress toward peace will be more rapid, more assured and toward prosperity will be more certain, if we do not break up the team at this point.

And so I repeat, if we want the crusade that started 2 years ago to be guided through to fruition, let us all vote.

Thank you very much for the cordiality of your welcome.

Goodbye--God bless you.