Statement of the Vice President of the United States on Unemployment, Wilmington, DE

The decline in unemployment throughout the country reported last week by the Departments of Labor and Commerce is good news for America. It must have come as a disappointing surprise to the opposition camp from which we are hearing so much foreboding talk about the future these days.

Listening to the opposition, one would never know that there are almost 68 million Americans at work in our $500 billion economy and that Americans are earning at a record annual rate of over $408 billion. One will never learn from my opponent that employment declined less than seasonally last month and that unemployment went down more than seasonally. Unemployment dropped not only as to number but also as a percentage of the labor force.

His pessimistic talk today recalls to my mind the situation in 1953 when the Eisenhower administration assumed responsibility for the Nation's affairs. The economy was still in the shackles brought on by the Korean war, the dollar was badly eroded, the budget was seriously out of balance and scheduled to be out of balance for several years.

During these past 8 years unprecedented economic progress has been made by Americans according to virtually every available measure and all this has been accomplished without the stimulus of war spending or make-work programs. Controls have been removed to make way for freedom, fiscal responsibility has been established, erosion in the value of the dollar has been checked, confidence in the future has been restored in an environment remarkably free of inflationary psychology, and America has again come to know prosperity with peace.

But we are not satisfied. There are problems and challenges that constantly require our close and active attention. Times of hesitation in our economic growth, such as we have experienced in recent months, are far from unusual; history shows that they mark a dynamic, free economy as purely as periods of surging expansion. But we can always do better and I am determined that we shall do better in quickening the pace of our economic advance and in minimizing interruptions to it. I am determined to undertake every sensible measure to that end, to lift to ever higher levels the number of jobs in America, to reduce unemployment further, and to utilize more fully our industrial capacity in steel and other lines

To achieve that goal we must release fully the greatest creative force in human affairs - the spirit of individual enterprise in 180 million Americans. That effort calls for a many-sided program which I have been developing, and will continue to develop, in this campaign.

My program calls for mobilizing our human resources to the full by combating racial discrimination, by stimulating scientific research and development, by forging an adequate national program in support of State, local, and individual efforts in education.

My program calls for mobilizing our natural resources by a dynamic teamwork policy of encouraging their conservation and wise development, by constructively rebuilding our farm program, by mounting a sound local-Federal attack on the stubborn problems of depressed areas.

My program calls for keeping our economy fit by fighting feather-bedding whether in government, labor, or business, by keeping our money straight through rigorous economy and control of the Federal budget, by revising our tax system to stimulate job-creating investment, by sound improvements in our ways of handling national emergency strikes, by timely and vigorous Government action to forestall both inflation and recession, and by efforts to foster new and small business.

These are the elements of my program to generate confidence, not fear, as to the future of the American economy. It is a program that will spur our economic growth, that will raise living standards and not merely living costs. It is a program that runs with, not against, the grain of freedom. It is a program under which the American people themselves will grow in capacity and character as they are asked to shoulder more, not less, economic, political, and social responsibility. It will show that freedom works.

In judging this philosophy and program the American people are confronted in this campaign with the glowing promises of my opponent. Remember this when you hear his case: On the record opposition promises aren't worth a plugged nickel.

Consider their whole 20-year record.

For 6 years in the 1930's the opposition failed miserably to solve the problem of unemployment. In 1939, when war came in Europe, unemployment in America, after 6 futile years of their trying to solve it, stood just under 9½ million. Let's face it: It took war to solve the unemployment riddle for them.

After the war was over opposition spokesmen forecast some 6 million unemployed. Why? Because, recalling their prewar experience, they couldn't see what would keep the economy going and create jobs when Government war orders were cut back. What saved the opposition from their own dire predictions were, first, the huge demands to meet the emergency needs of a war-torn world whose productive facilities had been destroyed and, second, the accumulated needs of the civilian economy at home which had been starved by the depression the opposition couldn't bring us out of and by several years of war.

When these emergency postwar demands were on the way to being satisfied, the opposition was faced with a recession. That was the Truman recession of 1949. Unemployment jumped to almost 5 million. What saved the opposition this time from a dragging economy? The Korean war. Once again the economy surged to levels that they so like to cite.

So what judgment is to be made of the opposition's 20-year stewardship of the Nation's economic affairs?

1. Its policy was a tragic failure in solving the problem of unemployment during the peacetime years from 1933 to 1939.

2. During the following 6 years, preparation for war and war itself solved the unemployment problem for them.

3. Emergency demands, deferred from the decade of depression and the war period, kept the economy active during the first 4 postwar years.

4. The emergency period over, we had the Truman recession of 1949 from which the country was bailed out by the Korean war.

5. To cap it all, the American dollar lost half of its buying power in their two decades of power.

That is the record.

It is a record of spend-and-spend, tax-and-tax, borrow-and-borrow, inflate-and-inflate.

But more important, the programs that my opponent offers today to meet the dynamic needs of America in the sixties are but retreads of the programs that produced this dismal record of failure to make the American economy work except in time of war, preparation for war, or aftermath of war. In the light of this record the American people can have no confidence in opposition claims that they can assure jobs and progress in the peacetime America we are determined to have. The American people cannot run the risk of entrusting their prosperity to such hands as these.