Rear-Platform Remarks at Red Oak, Iowa

I am glad to have a chance to come into this section. I have been hearing a lot about it from Congressman in Washington for a good many years.

It is a big problem that we are facing. It is a problem which is going to be solved for one very good reason, and that is that the people of the United States know more about government today than they did four years ago.

I realize, of course, that you have had a drought in this part of Iowa, a pretty severe drought. You know the steps we are taking in cooperation with the local and State Governments to remedy these drought conditions, and so to order things that, while we shall have droughts again, their effects, in the future, will not be so serious as they have been this year.

Yet, at the same time, we know that there can be conditions which are the exact opposite of drought— the possibility of piling up surpluses of agricultural products such as we were faced with when I first went to Washington. We all know the results of those surpluses as well as we know the results of droughts. What we are trying to do is to bring about a balanced system of economy in the United States, and I believe that the people all over realize that no one section of the country can be prosperous unless the other sections of the country are also prosperous.

The city dwellers have to have money to buy food and more food. Last year, somebody in the Department of Agriculture, in cooperation with a lot of expert doctors and dietitians, made a survey of what the people of the United States eat. Then they classified as Class A, the diet that we all ought to have. Diet B was graded as a pretty good diet but not the best. And they found that, as a Nation, we are living today in the United States, on the average, on Diet C. That is the actual fact.

Why is it? It is because people have not the purchasing power for either a B-diet or an A-diet. Incidentally, if all of us had the proper kind of diet in the United States, we would have to put 40,000,000 acres more land into the production of foodstuffs.

In these past three and a half years it has been a tremendously interesting experience to go around the United States and survey agricultural problems. We have made some real strides, but we have not gone far enough yet. We are going further along the lines we have laid down already, and, at the same time, we are going to work on new things.

Somebody in this campaign said something about a farm policy that changes its model every year. Well, isn't the automobile better than it was twenty years ago? It is the same principle. Every year they get .out a model that is a little better than it was twenty years ago. And so, while Model-T farming may have been all right ten years ago, we have got away from it and we now have a model 1936 farming.

It is mighty good to see you. I wish I could go through the country in an automobile instead of on a train; but I am going to come back during the next four years.