Rear-Platform Remarks at Galion, Ohio

My friends, I am glad to come back through Galion. I have been here many times before. I am particularly glad to see, by the expression on your faces, that you are much more cheerful than you were in 1932.

You know, while I am theoretically a lawyer, I am also a bit of a farmer. I farm in two places, one on the Hudson River and the other down in Georgia. That is why I know something about farm prices. One reason why I think you here are more cheerful is because corn is selling at better than ten or fifteen cents a bushel and because hogs and cattle are selling at better than three or four cents a pound.

Of course, improvement in agricultural prices was one of the vital parts of the program that we started three years ago. And I am not going through the country making one kind of speech to farm people and another to city people. Nor am I making one kind of speech in the West and another kind in the East.

I believe that in the past few years the people of this country have begun to think in national terms. You, I know, understand that unless farm prices are good, the great farming population of this country cannot buy the things that are made in the cities. That means that the railroads do not make money because there are no goods to be hauled; and, in the same way, the people in the cities, unless they have work, cannot buy the produce of the farms in the country. In other words, we are all in the same boat, no matter what our occupation, no matter whether we live on the farm or in the city, no matter whether we live in the North or the South.

I know from personal experience that people in the cotton belt in this country cannot buy the foodstuffs produced in the North if they have to sell their cotton for four or five cents a pound. In the same way, you people cannot buy overalls made of southern cotton when you get only ten or fifteen cents a bushel for your corn.

I have always been particularly interested in the fact that this part of Ohio has gone in for diversification in farming. The more that we can diversify our farming all through the country and not have to depend entirely on one crop, the better it will be for the Nation as a whole. In that respect, you are setting a perfectly fine example for the farmers in the State of New York and for the farmers out West and for the farmers down South.

I am mighty glad to see you and I want to thank you on behalf of Mrs. Roosevelt for the flowers. They are perfectly beautiful, and there has not been a sunflower aboard the train yet. (The sunflower was the campaign flower of the Republican candidate for President, Gov. Alfred M. Landon.)

My friends, on the third of November I am expecting a telegram from the State of Ohio saying that all is well.