Rear-Platform Remarks at Pacific Junction, Iowa

Good morning.

We have had an awfully interesting couple of days. I can see by looking at your corn that you people out here in this corner of the State have been through a drought. As you know, we are doing all we can by the principle of cooperation between local government and State Government and Washington to improve drought conditions all through this area from here west. I think we are getting somewhere.

Of course there are all kinds of campaign stories going around to which the average citizen with a little common sense does not pay much attention. Just for example, we got a telegram on the train this morning from a certain section of the country that there are a lot of people going around to people's homes saying that, if I get reelected, the debt of the United States is going to be liquidated by levying a tax on everybody's home and farm in the United States. That is a pretty good idea of what some people are reduced to. And yet, you know it is an interesting fact that there are still some people in this country who do not know that taxes on real estate are levied only for local and State purposes. In fact, in most States they are levied for local purposes only.

We have been learning a lot in the last four years about government. Just so long as we keep on taking an interest in government, I am not much worried about the future of the democratic form of government under our Constitution.

You hear a lot about debts. Well, a little farther up the road I put a question to a big crowd. 'We have borrowed eight billion dollars more than we owed four years ago and here is the question: Suppose somebody came to you and said: "If you will borrow eight hundred dollars, it will increase your income every year by more than twenty-two hundred dollars," would you do it or not?

Well, all you have to do to get a picture of American national finance is just to add a whole lot of zeros to those figures. In other words, we have gone into debt a little less than eight billion dollars net, but our annual income today is over twenty-two billion dollars more than it was in 1932. I call that a pretty good investment.

I am looking forward to coming out here again during the next four years. Things here are a lot better than they were in 1932 and things are going to be a lot better by 1940 than they are now.