During the past two weeks I have traveled once again across this great continent of ours, from Albany to Coeur D’Alene, then down the magnificent sweep of the Pacific Coast from Seattle to your great city of Los Angeles.
I wish it were possible for every American to share this rich experience. Only to see the natural wealth and beauty of our country – to talk with our people where they live – is a profound and moving refutation of the defeatist New Deal doctrine that America has passed its prime. Our country is still young, still vigorous, still capable of growth once we get a national administration which believes in our economic system and in the American people – there is no limit to America.
In the course of this trip, I have talked with thousands of people, individually and in groups – to labor leaders and farmers, to cattle men and ranch hands, to politicians, to business and professional people, to soldiers and sailors, to housewives and newspapermen. I have done some talking, but a lot more listening.
The most moving thing about my trip this year is that I find our people, wherever they live, are in a mood to work together. They want a national administration in Washington that will help them work together. They are thoroughly fed up with government policies which divide the West from the East and the Middle West from both. They are fed up with policies which divide the farmer, the businessman and the working man into rival and contending groups.
Men and women from all parts of our country have been fighting and working side by side in this war. They want to work together with the same unity when peace comes. They want to meet the problems of reconversion fairly and justly, without advantage to any section over any other section of the country.
The great industrial plants you have built here in the West to produce for war must have an equal opportunity to convert to peacetime production with the industrial plants of the East and the Middle West. The workers in all our war plants wherever located must have an equal opportunity for peacetime jobs.
Our people are thinking very much alike upon the major questions of our day. Moreover, they are approaching these questions in a similar mood. They are searching for constructive answers to our problems. They are keenly aware of the mistakes and blunders of the past. They want to put those mistakes and blunders behind. They are not thinking in terms of the past. They are thinking in terms of the future.
First in the minds of all of us is the winning of the war. Everyone is agreed that the war can end only with the complete defeat of Germany and Japan, right in Germany and Japan. We want nothing short of total crushing victory. That comes before everything else. Then we want to get the men and women in our Armed Forces back home as promptly as possible.
The next thing uppermost in the minds of all our people is the securing of a lasting peace. Among the thousands of people that I talked with was an Indian mother in Wyoming. She was leading her little two-year-old son by the hand. She had a Gold Star pinned on the blanket she wore over her shoulders. She came up to me and pointed to the little boy and said: “His father killed in France.” Then she said: “You make sure we never have another war.”
That Indian mother spoke what is in the hearts of all Americans today. They want America to join with the other peace-loving nations of the world in building a permanent organization for peace. And they know that if this great undertaking is to succeed, it must not be the work of one party or of one man. Representing the aspiration of all our people, it must be a bipartisan effort, having the support of all people.
Everywhere people knew and approved of the joint efforts of Secretary Hull and myself to establish bipartisan cooperation for a permanent world organization to maintain lasting peace.
A third important thing on everybody’s mind is the question of jobs here at home after the war is over. From one side of the country to another, our people are determined that we are not going back to the 10 million unemployed we had in 1940. They know that under the New Deal we had to have a World War to get jobs. You don’t have to tell people that. They haven’t forgotten it. And they are worried about it.
They are worried about it because they remember that in all those long years from 1933 to 1940, this country failed for the first time in its history to achieve real economic recovery and go ahead of previous decades.
The American people are thinking about the problem of how we are to obtain economic security without sacrificing our personal freedom. Last night in San Francisco, I discussed the philosophy of government which I believe we must establish if we are to achieve the goal we seek – freedom and opportunity with the fullest measure of economic security.
Tonight, I am going to talk about another aspect of this great question: How we are to obtain greater security for the men and women of this country in their personal lives and what the United States government should do about it?
It is nothing new for Americans to be concerned about social progress. Social progress in America did not begin in 1933. It began when the first settlers came to this continent. It was in the blood of those who came to these shores to found a new kind of nation. It has been and is insistent as the growth of our country. It is in our blood today.
Let us look at one of our important social laws today. Let us consider where we stand and where we go from here.
In 1935, our Social Security Act was passed by a nonpartisan vote of overwhelming proportions. Just once in the nine years since then has there been any attempt to improve and extend that social progress. That was in 1939 when a few changes were made. There have been many recommendations since but there have been no results.
Men and women everywhere are eager for concrete definite proposals. They want to know what we can do to bring about the better life that we are seeking. Accordingly, I propose that our program for social progress be broadened and strengthened, and that we move forthwith to do these things:
First, the Social Security Act should be amended to provide old-age and survivors’ insurance for those who most desperately need protection and are not now covered by Social Security or some other pension or retirement system.
Twenty million of us – farmers and farm workers, domestic workers. employees of non-profit enterprises, many government employees, and those who work for themselves – are left without this protection as the law now stands. What kind of security is it which leaves all these people unprotected yet puts the high-salaried officials of large corporations in the system, whether they need it or want it or not?
Why should farm families be denied the benefit of this system of old-age security? Why should farm workers be denied security? Why should domestic servants be excluded? Why should those who work for themselves be denied this security? Why should large numbers of white-collar workers be excluded? Because there are difficulties of administration? That is not a good enough answer.
In bringing about the necessary broadening of old-age and survivors’ insurance, we will, of course, meet with many problems. We will have to adopt different methods of collecting the Social Security tax in order to avoid a bookkeeping burden upon small employers, family-type farmers or others we seek to protect. If we make up our minds that protection against old age is something to which every American is entitled, we shall find a way to reach that objective.
A serious omission in the list of those covered at the present time consists of the men and women now in military service. Those who once worked in jobs covered by old-age insurance and who stepped out of those jobs to enter the service of their country, suffer a gap in their old-age benefit credits. Unless the law is charged, their reward for serving their country may be a net reduction and loss in their old-age or survivors’ benefit. The law must be changed promptly to correct this injustice.
Second, we must widen the provisions of unemployment insurance to include the groups which are now unprotected.
Here again there will be problems, but they can and will be solved.
Third, the employment service, originally handled by the states and taken over by the federal government during the war, should be returned to the states as soon as practicable. After all, jobs are in the states, not in Washington – we hope. The employment service must be where employment is and in the hands of people who know local conditions.
Employment service and unemployment insurance are clearly parts of one and the same job. They ought to be handled in the same office by the same administrator. To provide benefits without providing employment service is to do less than half the job. After all, it is another job a man wants – and as soon as possible.
Fourth, we must help to develop means for assurance of medical service to those of our citizens who need it, and who cannot otherwise obtain it. This is a task that must be carried out in cooperation with our medical men. There can be no group better able to advise on medical care than the medical profession. Yet, unhappily, this is the very group which the New Deal has managed to alienate.
Our free and independent medical profession has advanced medical science in America ahead of every other nation in the world. Its freedom has made it great. It should be encouraged, not discouraged. Let us enlist the leadership and aid of the doctors of America in organizing our private and public hospitals as well as our other services into a fully effective system to protect the health of all our people.
Fifth, the states and the local communities must be encouraged to establish the fullest information service for veterans.
When the veteran comes back to his hometown, he should be able to get prompt and expert counsel as to his rights and opportunities. The G.I. Bills of Rights is a nonpartisan law. It rightly recognizes service to veterans as a part of the cost of the war and as a national responsibility.
But that is not all that needs to be done. Every veteran should be able to talk over his plans with someone at home. There should be someone who can tell him where to look for the best possible job, how to go after the job, how to continue his education if he wants to. There should be someone to tell him where to find the local, state or federal agency that can best help him meet his problems. The state and the home community can do this best because they alone have an intimate understanding of the personal problems involved.
This is already being demonstrated in my own State of New York. We are proud of the effective work being done by our Veterans Commission, headed by Lt. Gen. Hugh Drumm. It takes our state service to the place where the veteran lives, where he is known, and where he expects to work. Other states and communities are doing a similar job, I am sure all others will.
Here is a program to pick up and carry forward an American system of social progress. The years 1945-1949, for which we are selecting a new administration will be largely peacetime years. But the pattern that will shape them is a pattern that has been slowly forming through the agonizing years of war.
Out of the suffering of war, there has emerged a high resolve in the minds of the American people that the world we live in must become a better world.
To that end we must work together to increase the security of the individual against the hazards of old age, of unemployment, of ill health. We must work together to increase the security of our society against the hazards of mass unemployment, falling prices and periodic depression. But we must never forget that security alone is only half of our goal. The other half is freedom and opportunity. Without these, there can be no real security.
America became great because of the courage and resourcefulness of her men and women. America became great because in this country there was unlimited opportunity. It is for us who have inherited America to keep her great by making sure that in this country there is always opportunity.
