Address in Pottsville, Pennsylvania

Mr. Chairman:

I am delighted at the cordial reception you folks have given me tonight. I don't think I ever saw as large a congregation as was down at the station tonight.

I hope you will support Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman on November the 4th. I hope you will elect Judge Bard to the United States Senate. And I hope you will elect Peter Krehel--who is typical of our fine new crop of young Democrats--to the House of Representatives.

I must confess I was a little disappointed 4 years ago that Pennsylvania did not join the majority of the States of the Union in endorsing the policies of the Democratic Party. This year you have an opportunity to rectify that mistake.

As a matter of fact, I'm sure the results in Pennsylvania in 1948 did not reflect the real feelings of the citizens of this State. I think the basic facts show up in an analysis of the voting. Then, as now, more Pennsylvanians believed in the great progressive programs of the New Deal and the Fair Deal than opposed them. But the other side got a higher proportion of its supporters to the polls.

So I say to you, it's all important what you do between now and November the 4th. Let's get the message out among our friends and neighbors that they've got to turn out for Adlai Stevenson and the rest of the Democratic ticket on election day. Let's get Pennsylvania back on the right track.

And in return, I know that Adlai Stevenson will give you some of the finest leadership that has ever come from any President of the United States. He has been a great Governor of a great State. He is a clear, straight thinker. He is a man of deep convictions, and loyalty to principles. He will bring a change in government, but it will be a change that will build on all the constructive measures we have taken in the last 20 years.

I have been concerned for some time about unemployment in the hard coal fields of Pennsylvania. This is one of the few areas of the country where unemployment has been relatively high even in the most prosperous times. You have a special problem here in the long-term decline of your basic anthracite industry.

One of the ways in which the Federal Government is trying to help this area is by conducting research on the conservation of our coal resources and the utilization of coal. This research is going on at the anthracite laboratory at Schuylkill Haven, just down the road from here. We had quite a fight getting any money for this laboratory from that "do-nothing" Republican 80th Congress. In fact, the Republican House killed the whole appropriation, but we managed to get it restored in the Senate, thanks to the hard work of your Senator, Frank Myers.

The only long-run solution to your employment problem is, of course, to get new industries to develop here along with coal mining. I am glad to see that Pottsville and the other communities of Schuylkill County have been making real progress in that direction. I am told that employment in all kinds of manufacturing in this county has gone up 75 percent since 1940. That is good, and I congratulate you on it.

The one thing that will help most to bring new industries to Pottsville, and keep full employment in the ones you have, is general prosperity in the country as a whole.

Now, the policies of the National Government have a great deal to do with whether we have full employment and an expanding economy, or whether we have a depression. We learned in 1929 that unwise policies can plunge the country into a depression. And we've learned over and over again since 1932 that wise policies can lead us out of depression and into a continuing prosperity.

What do the Republicans say about the problem of full employment? Their platform doesn't even mention it. What it says--and you wouldn't believe it if you didn't read it--is that initiative has been deadened, and that free enterprise has been wrecked.

Well, as I told one audience last week, if this country is a wreck, it is a mighty prosperous wreck.

For a long time I have been wondering how any intelligent people could talk such nonsense. What could they possibly mean?

Now I think I've found the answers. It's all in the study just completed by a fellow Pennsylvanian of yours, Prof. Simon Kuznets of the University of Pennsylvania, who has put together some of the most revealing statistics I have ever seen.

Professor Kuznets found that in the 20 years between 1929 and 1948 the incomes of the bottom 99 percent of the population have more than doubled.

Then Professor Kuznets found that the richest 1 percent of the population didn't do nearly so well--their incomes rose by only 8 percent.

But here's the real point. In 1929 there were 513 individuals with incomes of over a million dollars a year. In 1948 there were only 149 people who made more than a million dollars.

That's what the Republicans mean when they say a man can't get ahead in the world any more. The 99 percent of the population may have doubled their income, but we lost 364 millionaires. What's the use of working--a man can't even make a measly million dollars any more!

In 1929 the people in that richest 1 percent made 20 times as much as the average of the other 99 percent. Now they make only 10 times as much.

During the whole period of the Republican 1920's, the distribution of income in this country was getting more and more unequal. The upper 5 percent of the population increased its income rapidly, but the lower 95 percent of the population experienced an actual decline in per capita income.

A writer in the American Economic Review, commenting on this study, says "It is somewhat surprising to find that the mass of the population did not participate to a greater extent in the boom times of the twenties."

Well, it should not surprise anyone who was around then. The Government, and the whole country, was run in the interests of that top 5 percent--and particularly those 513 millionaires.

All through the Republican decade of the 1920's, that process of concentration of wealth and income went on. By 1929, inequality was as great as at any time in history. One percent of the 'people got nearly 14 percent of the country's income--after taxes. Income was concentrated in so few hands that it couldn't possibly be spent. When the man who had all the money couldn't spend it, the producer had no market, the worker had no job. And so we had a crash that shook the world.

The Democratic Party, under President Roosevelt, had to take a mighty heroic step to get income and wealth back in the hands of the people, so that there would be enough purchasing power to keep the production system going.

But we succeeded, and you see the results. It may be tough on the millionaires, but the income of the 99 percent of the population has gone up by 124 percent.

If you elect Republicans this year, that concentration process is going to start all over again. That's what they mean when they say they want to see free enterprise turned loose. We'll have more millionaires--and we'll build up to another crash.

If you elect Democrats, the Democratic Party will continue to worry about the 99 percent. The 1 percent will take care of themselves as usual. And we'll continue to have full employment and prosperity for the whole country.

In the long run the only thing that's good for the country is to have everybody working, and working at decent wages. Then more things are produced, farmers have a market, and people can keep on buying to keep production going. There's more to go around, and more for everybody--except maybe those 513 millionaires who want more than any human being can possibly use.

The Democratic Party doesn't propose to let the country plunge into a depression to let 500 greedy people make a million dollars.

Now, I want to change the subject slightly and refer to the loose and irresponsible charges the Republican candidate for President has been making. He says the Democratic administration is responsible for everything that's wrong in the world.

He's been trying to make political capital out of anything he thinks anybody might be unhappy about--no matter how false and reckless his charges are.

I can't attempt to answer them all tonight. But I do have time to say a few words about one that is particularly getting under my skin.

That's the charge that the Democratic administration is responsible for high prices.

I've been sitting in the White House fighting high prices for 7 years. I haven't had an ounce of help from the Republican Party in the Congress. They've voted to sabotage everything we've tried to do to keep prices down. And now they have the gall to try to blame us for high prices. I am not going to let them get away with it. Let me tell you the facts.

During World War II people saved a lot of money, because they couldn't buy such things as automobiles and refrigerators and they were rationed on a lot of other things. So when the war ended, we had a huge volume of pent-up purchasing power. People had war bonds, and savings accounts, and they were making good money.

During the war we had kept the lid on inflation by using price and wage controls. After the war civilian production had a long way to go before it could catch up with the demand. So it was imperative to continue price controls.
That's when I had my first big battle on price control with the Republicans in Congress. And I lost it.

The price control law was due to expire on June 30, 1946. The special interests descended on the Congress like a swarm of locusts. The Republicans in the Congress lined up solidly with the special interest lobbies, as they always do, and the Congress gave me a bill so bad that it would have made price control an utter farce. I vetoed it, and asked for a better law.

But the Congress chose instead to let the price control law expire on June 30, 1946. For nearly a month, we had no price control. Finally, we got a bill, but it was a very weak bill and by that time the damage had been done. By late in the year, everyone knew that this inadequate law was unworkable, so there was nothing to do but end price controls.

A majority of the Democratic Party in the Congress was with me in that entire price control fight. But some Democrats joined with an almost solid lineup of the Republicans to scuttle price control, and that did it.

The six months after the end of OPA saw the fastest inflation in the history of the country. The cost of living rose 15 percent in 6 months.

And the Republicans, who drove the knife into the back of the consumer, now have the nerve to blame the Democratic administration for high prices! Now, if you can beat that, I'll pay for lying!

Then we went through the same story after Korea.

In June of 1950, as soon as the Communist hordes marched over the 38th parallel, people rushed out to buy. Nobody could have prevented that. People had money. They knew we were in a crisis. They remembered the shortages of World War II, so they just spent their money. And prices went up. It was the third month after Korea before a price control law could be written.

Then, if you remember, we had a lull in the Korean fighting. The North Koreans were whipped, and the war seemed about to end. People stopped buying, and the inflationary wave subsided.

But then the Chinese Communists swarmed into Korea, General MacArthur began his retreat from the Yalu, and people got scared again. We had a second wave of buying, and prices rose. That was the inflationary wave we stopped with a general freeze of prices in January 1951.

Since then I've had to go through two battles with the Republicans in the Congress even to get price control extended. Each time the law was extended, it was riddled with Republican amendments.

The worst of the amendments bears a prominent Republican name--that of Senator Capehart of Indiana. That terrible amendment is costing the consumers of this country about a billion dollars a year in higher ceiling prices.

Talk about responsibility for high prices! Republican Senators voted 36 to 5 last year to prevent rollbacks in prices. This year, they voted 22 to 14 to end all price and wage controls, and only a Democratic vote of 43 to 1 saved the price control law.

In the House of Representatives, after Korea, the Republican Members voted by a 4 to 1 majority to end all rent control. Just this year, also by a vote of 4 to 1, they voted to suspend price control on everything except the very few commodities that are rationed.

That's the Republican record. In one speech, the Republican candidate had the effrontery to say "the administration's controls over prices are nothing but a weak stop-gap." They're better than that--but with no credit to the Republicans.

Sometimes I think the Republican hatchet work on price control had a double motive. The first motive was to give the speculators and profiteers what they wanted. The second was to let prices go up and then blame those high prices on the Democratic administration.

Well, they can't get away with it. The record is there, for everybody to read. You can read it clear through, from 1946 to 1952, and you will not find many instances where the majority of the Republicans in Congress show the slightest concern for the housewives of America--or the pensioners and others living on fixed incomes--when price and rent control was being voted on.

To put the Republicans in charge of price control would be like putting a fox in charge of protecting your chickens.

You can count it a dead-sure cinch that if you elect Republicans on November the 4th they're going to scrap all price and rent control.

That's the story on the cost of living. You can draw your own conclusion about the Republican candidate. Either he's completely uninformed on economics and on his party's record in Congress, or he's indulging in the sheerest hypocrisy. I don't know which it is. On this and a great many other issues, I can't tell whether his campaign line in due to lack of understanding or deliberate misrepresentation. But either one is bad enough.

The Democratic candidate laid out in his speech in Baltimore last month a clear-cut program for inflation control, including the continuation of price and rent control, as long as inflation cannot be checked by any other means. He has given you a clear-cut and consistent program on every other issue that confronts the country. The difference between his program and the empty, hypocritical promises of his opponent on a score of issues, including this one, has by now become crystal clear.

The only reason I am going around the country talking to you is to get you to think a little, to get you to study the record, inform yourselves. Then make up your minds on what is best for the country, what is best for you, and what is best for the world. If you will do that, you will go to the polls on November the 4th and we will have a good government for the next 4 years--and the world and the country will be safe.