Tonight, I want to ask you to look ahead into our future as a nation. Join me in looking at what our country will face the day after victory over our enemies.
But first, let me give you right now two solemn assurances prompted by the speeches of my opponent last Friday and Saturday.
Your next President will never use his office to claim personal or political profit from the achievements of the American people or from the sacrifices of their sons and daughters.
Your next President will never make you a promise that he does not intend with all his heart and soul to keep.
And let me add that except for the pledges I have made publicly to the American people, your next President will take office next January 20 without a promise, expressed or implied, to a living soul.
There is no 1000 Club in my party. I have not offered the government of the United States for sale at $1,000 to any man and I never will to any one at any price.
Your next administration will take office honestly, without secret promises of special privilege to any class, group or section. We shall represent all the American people – we shall restore honesty and good faith to the government of the United States on January 20, 1945.
Now put your minds ahead with me, if you will, into these peacetime years which by the courage of our fighting men and with the help of Almighty God are being brought closer every day.
Eleven million men and women will be conning home from this war eager for more education. for jobs, for a chance to start a business and to get ahead. Twenty million war workers will want peacetime jobs and opportunity.
Last Saturday night, my opponent once again promised jobs for every American when peacetimes come. But his own peacetime record is that at the end of eight years, the New Deal had spent $58 billion; it enjoyed more power than all previous governments; and in March of 1940, there were still 10 million Americans unemployed.
On the record, his promise of jobs is worthless. It will still be worthless, even though it is repeated again and again and again.
Having discovered from my Philadelphia speech, delivered two months ago, the need for a million new homes a year, my opponent now promises that. The fact is that for years we should have been building a million homes a year just to get back up to the standards of 1930. But under Mr. Roosevelt, we got an average of only 380,000 homes a year.
On the record then, that promise, too, is no good, even though it is repeated again and again and again.
My opponent now promises to free the American working man from the strangling bureaucracy he himself has created. When a man promises, in trying to win an election, that he will reverse the course of everything he has done for 12 years – then that promise, too, on the record, is no good, even though it is repeated again and again and again.
My opponent promises the farmers good prices after the war. But the farmer knows that in all the peacetime years of the New Deal he never got decent prices. Under Mr. Roosevelt, it took a war to get prices just as it took a war to get jobs. On the record that promise, too, is bogus, even though it is repeated again and again and again.
My opponent promises to be mindful of the problems of small business. The small businessmen of America will know how much faith they can put in that and I should like to talk briefly about the future of small business. This is the field in which a large part of our white-collar workers earn their living. This is the field of the forgotten men and women under the New Deal.
Now, American businessmen know that the New Deal way of being mindful of their problems has been slowly to drown them with a rising flood of rules and regulations, questionnaires, reports and directives.
It’s been bad enough for large business, but the big corporation at least has its lawyers, its accountants, clerks and statisticians. When it comes to small businessmen, this New Deal burden of government paperwork has too often meant the difference between success or failure.
Take the case of Capt. J. F. Shields of Seattle, who is in the salt codfish business. For 33 years his boats have gone out – until last year, when the War Labor Board failed even to pass on his wage contracts. So last year, he couldn’t go fishing at all.
He reports that this year he finally got clearance, after going through 24 different government agencies in order to carry on his small business. In addition to the Navy Department, Interior Department, Commerce Department, Treasury Department, Immigration Service and the Maritime Commission, a partial list of the agencies he had to deal with includes, WLB, WMC, OPA, WSA, FCC, USES, WPB, ODT, SS, WFA and others.
Here is another sample of what our small businessmen have had to contend with. The world trembles in the greatest war of the ages and bureaucracy puts out the following rule:
Mashed potatoes offered a la carte for weekday lunches would be in the same class of food items as potatoes au gratin offered a la carte for weekday lunches, but would be in a different class than mashed potatoes offered a la carte for weekday dinners or Sunday suppers.
Well, that’s the New Deal way of being mindful of the problems of small business. It’s the same from restaurants to beauty parlors, from electrical shops to the insurance business. And that’s why it’s time for a change – before it’s too late.
Yes, the New Deal pretends at election time to be the friend of small business. But how has small business actually fared under the New Deal?
The record shows that in 1942 and 1943, the most prosperous years we have had under the New Deal – because of war – there was a net decline of 500,000 in the number of American small business concerns, a net figure of half a million small businesses closed their doors.
And yet my opponent has the temerity to go on the radio and say:
This administration has been mindful from its earliest days, and will continue to be mindful, of the problems of small business…
In the light of the record, that promise, too, is worthless and it will remain so, even though it is repeated again and again and again. My opponent has read our platform and is now saying, “Me, too.”
Even the New Deal knows it’s time for a change.
No, we cannot live on promises. We must have performance this time – before it’s too late. As we keep our minds on these peacetime years ahead, let us remember one thing: My opponent has offered no program for the peacetime years ahead except the same one which failed for eight straight years of peace from 1933 to 1940.
And let me add that the figures showing that failure have been correctly quoted by me from the beginning to the end of this campaign.
My opponent has insinuated that they were not correct but he has never dared to point to one he disagreed with. Instead, he says with a sneer that when he was Governor of New York he quoted figures correctly.
I do not recollect his quoting figures at all when he was Governor of New York and very rarely since then – for one very good reason. In every administration Mr. Roosevelt has headed, he ended up in the red. No country can long survive under any leader who only piles up a higher debt each year, not just in war, but in peace.
Let us, as a nation, relearn one, simple thing. Our peacetime economic system is like a high-powered motor. Every part of it must work or the engine will run badly. If one spark plug goes bad, the engine loses power. If the distributor is out of order or the fuel line gets stopped up or the carburetor goes bad, the whole tremendous power of the machine fails.
That’s what the New Deal doesn’t know and never could learn. It had to tinker first with one thing and then with another. It has changed the tax law 15 times in 12 years so no man could plan ahead. It fought first one part of our job-making machinery, then another. It was never willing in all its years to let all the parts of this machine function smoothly.
It is a shocking thing that my opponent, after 12 years as President, felt compelled to announce, as news last Saturday night, that he believes in the enterprise system.
Yet, in all his campaign speeches, my opponent has not indicated how he will achieve in post-war years what he so tragically failed to achieve in pre-war years.
Let me summarize, in brief, some essential parts of the program of action I have proposed these last two months for the peacetime years ahead.
Virtually every element of our program is something the New Deal has fought against or neglected, and cannot now, for election purposes, claim to favor.
Here is the program for these peacetime years ahead.
PROPOSAL NO. 1: Direct all government policies toward the goal of full employment through full production at a high level of wages for the worker with an incentive for the businessman to succeed. Your next administration will work out the problems affecting labor, agriculture and business in full consultation with all three and without discrimination against any class or section of our country or any race, creed or color.
PROPOSAL NO. 2: Adopt an entirely new tax structure which will do these things:
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Change the personal exemption so that a man who makes as little as $11 a week no longer has an income tax taken out of his standard living.
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Reduce personal income tax rates so that the tax law, after credit for dependents, will no longer take at least 23¢ out of every taxable dollar in the pay envelope.
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Change and lower the income tax on business so that it can be encouraged to expand and help create the millions of jobs we need.
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Overhaul the whole tax structure so that it is simple, so that everyone can understand it and then stick to it over a period of years so everybody knows he can go ahead and build, and create jobs.
PROPOSAL NO. 3: Make our Social Security System available to every American and not to a selected part of our people. For nine long years, the New Deal has kept 20 million Americans out of our old-age pension system. The right to old-age benefits has become a fundamental of our society. We can and must extend the system of old age benefits and social security to all our people and build a society strong enough to support it.
PROPOSAL NO. 4: Establish a definite and secure floor, under farm prices by the means outlined in my speech last Saturday, together with the other elements of that program and free the American farmer from dictation by Washington.
PROPOSAL NO. 5: Restore freer collective bargaining in America. Sprawling government agencies have now established an iron rule over the wages, hours and chance to get a job of every American worker. We shall establish the Fair Employment Practices Committee as a permanent agency with full legal authority. We will merge the balance of these agencies in a strong and competent Department of Labor under the leadership of a man from the ranks of labor.
PROPOSAL NO. 6: Survey forthwith the millions of reports required of big and little business every year by government and immediately abolish the greater part of them. We have done it in New York and we can do it in the nation.
PROPOSAL NO. 7: Bring a competent staff of prosecutors into the Department of Justice so that we can bring an end to business monopoly in this country instead of just talking about it.
PROPOSAL NO. 8: Establish an entirely new basis between the President and the Congress so that once again each shall have respect for the other and be willing to work together again.
My opponent has continually criticized and attempted to purge the members of the House of Congress elected by the people. He has so abused and insulted the Congress that his own Senate leader rebelled just this year and denounced the words of a veto message by my opponent as “more clever than honest” and as “a calculated and deliberate assault on the legislative integrity of every member of Congress.”
That declaration was cheered to the rafters by the Senators and the members of the House swarmed into the Senate to congratulate the speaker.
That is what three terms of unlimited power does to a man. That is why four terms, or 16 years, is the most dangerous threat to our freedom ever proposed. That is one reason why I believe that two terms must be established as the limit by constitutional amendment.
We have seen that a New Deal Congress no longer trusts or accepts leadership from my opponent. It is generally agreed that the House and probably the Senate will be Republican next year. So, already Mr. Roosevelt has undertaken to insult the new leadership.
In his speech of last Friday night, he accused the men who will be the new leaders of placing political advantage above devotion to country, just because they publicly pledged themselves to a program for lasting peace. We must not have – we cannot have four years more of stalemate and hostility between the President and the Congress.
We must restore to the White House a willingness to work out problems with the Congress as equals, in the American fashion, over the conference table. We must bring an end to government by abuse and smear.
Lastly, I propose that, with an end to name calling and with unselfish devotion, we unite as a people behind the cause of a just and a lasting peace through an international organization, with the strength to prevent future wars.
By these specific means and with a government made up of the ablest men and women in this country, we can restore honesty to our government and we can once again unite to secure the future which is our birthright.
Let us again make “getting ahead” a vital part of our American speech and thought. For years the New Dealers have sneered at the old American idea of “getting ahead.” Let us make sure that our children can again believe that there is room for everyone to get ahead. Let us nail that principle to our masthead as we set out on a sure course for the future.
Let us determine that the end of this war will bring our young men and women home to the kind of America they have earned. With high purpose, with integrity and relying upon the guidance of the God of all of us, we can save freedom in America and go forward once again.
