Address by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey
October 28, 1944, 12:30 p.m. EWT
Broadcast from Syracuse, New York
These war years nave produced trying days on the farms all over our country. Millions of sons from our farms are fighting on battlefronts all over the world. Fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers have taken over the extra work, without regard to age or physical handicaps. Shortage of help and shortage of equipment have increased the burdens. And to cap it all, have been the inexcusable attempts at increased regimentation by New Deal theorists in Washington.
As one who has worked with our own farm leaders day and night to achieve the success of our Farm-Manpower Service, our Emergency Food Commission and the Farm Machinery Repair Program, I have come to feel that of all the heroes of this war, our farmers have received the least credit for the tremendous job they have done.
Now the war is drawing ever closer to its conclusion. With mighty triumphs in Europe and the Pacific, our fighting men are bringing victory nearer every day. As you know, a change of administration next January 20 will not involve any change in our military command. But it will bring an end to the bickering, chaos and the confusion in Washington. It will bring a stronger, more united nation backing up our fighting men without division and warring at home.
It will be a signal to all the world that free government is strong and able to strengthen itself in total war. It will mean quicker victory. And it will mean an administration which does not fear the peace – one which will bring our fighting men home promptly when victory is achieved.
What will peace mean to our farmers? Will it mean just continued efforts to control their lives from Washington? Will it mean the same collapse of prices which occurred under a Democratic administration after the last war? Will it mean a return to the substandard prices our farmers were still receiving after eight peacetime years of the New Deal in 1940? It must not mean these things. We can and must do better if we are to have a free and progressive America.
Few people seem to realize that the American farmer is the largest purchaser of the products of our mills and factories. Every American, regardless of his business or employment, has a direct interest in the prosperity and stability of agriculture.
Unlike other producers, the farmer deals with elements wholly beyond his control. He may plant wisely and well and then the weather can destroy his crops. He may produce to the maximum and find that a national surplus has broken his prices to the point where he has a loss for an entire year’s work.
We cannot control the weather. But for the sake of the nation, we can and we must avoid these extreme price fluctuations. As a nation, we are committed to the proposition that the prices of major farm products must be supported against the substandard levels we saw for so many years before the war.
We have learned that depression on the farm leads inevitably to depression in the nation just as unemployment and misery in the city lead to misery on the farm. If we are to have a strong, vigorous and happy country, we must have full employment in the factories and fair prices on the farms.
Is there any hope of achieving this result under the New Deal? Well, the simple answer is that after it had been in office nearly eight years in 1940, the New Deal had still failed to achieve anything like fair prices for farm products. And one of the main reasons for that was that there were still 10 million Americans unemployed.
Now, my opponent seeks a vote of confidence on that record. He asks for 16 straight years in the White House. And what does he offer for the future? Nothing different from or better than the program which failed. It took a war to get a decent farm price just as it took a war to get jobs.
From the very beginning of the New Deal, farm programs put forward by the farmers have been set up, only to be exploited for political profit and to gain control over the operation of our farms.
For example, one of our most important needs is to preserve, restore and build up our soil resources. The Soil Conservation Service has done a good job in some parts of the country. But this program will fail if it is used as an excuse for regimentation and wasteful bureaucracy.
Let’s be specific. Take, for example, a farmer not far from here who signed up with the Soil Conservation Program, Within a period of four months, 14 different government agents traveled to this one little farm of 45 acres to tell how his job should be done. Several came many times. When he got all through, the farmer paid for the actual work. and he also paid in taxes for the 13 unnecessary government agents.
That sort of thing would not have happened if local people had anything to say about it, if state and county, with federal aid, were permitted to share in the job of seeing that federal programs were adapted to local needs. This has been so well demonstrated by the successful work of the land grant colleges and the extension service, that even the new deal should have found it out by now.
Government assistance in farm credit is also of the utmost importance but if the farmer needs to borrow some money, he may go to a National Farm Loan Association, the Production Credit Association, the Farm Security Administration, the Office of the Emergency Crop and Seed Loan, or to the Regional Agricultural Credit Corporation. If he wants a seal-up loan on his wheat or corn, he has to go to the AAA in still another office.
He goes to the ODT for a truck permit, to the OPA for a rubber boot permit, to the AAA for his lime and phosphate, to the Post Office for his auto use stamp, to the Selective Service board about his hired men, and until this election was drawing near, he went to the County War Board to get permission to buy machinery. He may have other assorted errands in town at the OCD, the USES, the WPA, the DSC or the SCS.
The other night in St. Louis, I told about an executive order in which my opponent, on April 19, 1943, dealt with the powers of his new War Food Administrator, whom he had appointed to take over the job of the Secretary of Agriculture in handling our critical food situation. Referring to both of them, he declared, they “shall each have authority to exercise any and all of the powers vested in the other by statute or otherwise.”
There it is in his own words – two men in one job.
Now, my opponent has complained that I did not tell the whole story about that executive order. I am happy to accept the invitation. Here’s the rest of it.
That executive order created the usual conflicts. Within two months that War Food Administrator, Chester Davis, resigned, he was drafted to do a big job and then prevented from doing it. Here is what he said:
I find that I have assumed a public responsibility while the authority, not only over broad food policy, but day-to-day actions, is being exercised elsewhere.
So, we lost a first-class man… another man was put in the job and the chaos rolled on. But there is still more to this story of two or more men in one job. The White House cabal had been trying to get rid of Harry Slattery, Rural Electrification Administrator, finally they offered to create a new job for him, at the same salary and at the taxpayers’ expense. He was asked to undertake a special study of rural electrification not in China, this time, put in war-torn Europe in 1943.
But Mr. Slattery stuck to his job. So, the Secretary of Agriculture appointed a deputy administrator and Rave orders to the entire REA staff that henceforth they should all report to the administrator through his deputy. The deputy moved in and took charge, firing people right and left. And just at the time when the REA should be getting ready to do a big post-war job providing electricity to farmers, it has been torn apart by conflict and confusion between the usual two men in one job.
The White House spreads confusion from the cabinet level up. And the Secretary of Agriculture spreads confusion from the cabinet level down. That’s why we need a responsible cabinet in this country. That’s why it’s time for a change.
I am resisting the temptation to talk at length about these things. Time does not permit discussion of what happened to support prices in the hog market and the egg market during the past year. But one thing is very clear: when the government makes a pledge to support hog prices, for example, the farmer ought to know who is responsible – whether it is the OPA or the War Food Administration or the Director of Economic Stabilization or the Secretary of Agriculture or who.
The hog market scandal is but another example of the fact that for twelve years in this country we have had an unmanageable surplus of promises – promises lightly made, sketchily kept, or openly violated.
That is why it is so important to restore efficiency as well as integrity to our government, so that its spoken word may be trusted once again.
To that end my party in its national convention adopted a platform to which I am pledged. The unqualified pledges of that platform read, in part, as follows:
A Department of Agriculture under practical and experienced administration free from regimentation and confusion government manipulation and control of farm programs.
An American market price to the American farmer and the protection of such price by means of support prices, commodity loans, or a combination thereof, together with such other economic means as will assure an income to agriculture that is fair and equitable in comparison with labor, business and industry…
Disposition of surplus war commodities… without destroying markets or continued production and without benefit to speculative profiteers.
The control and disposition of further surpluses by means of new uses developed through constant research, vigorous development of foreign markets… adjustments in production of any given basic crop only if domestic surpluses should become abnormal and exceed manageable proportions.
Intensified research to discover new crops, and new and profitable uses for existing crops.
Support of the principle of bona fide farmer-owned and farmer-operated cooperatives.
Consolidation of all government farm credit under a nonpartisan board.
To make life more attractive on the family-type farm through development of rural road, sound extension of rural electrification service to the farm and elimination of basic evils of tenancy…
Serious study of and search for a sound program of crop insurance with emphasis upon establishing a self-supporting program.
A comprehensive program of soil, forest, water and wild life conservation and development, and sound irrigation projects, administered as far as possible at state and regional levels.
To these pledges we stand committed and while this program is comprehensive, we may be sure that the farmers of our country can be relied upon to propose sound measures to meet any new kind of emergency which may arise, As the farmers of my own state, here today, know so well, your next administration may be counted on to welcome such programs.
Here we have a broad, forward-looking policy for the specific welfare of agriculture. But unless we have a market which can pay a fair price the farmer will continue to have an inadequate income. He must not again find it necessary to live on his depreciation, on the paint he cannot afford to put on the barn.
The farm and food problems of the United States are inseparable. Neither will be solved until all our people are well fed, and our agriculture is stabilized on a par with industry and labor.
We can have fully employed agriculture with fair prices and a real market if we have three square meals a day for all our people. That can be obtained through a fully employed, expanding industry with real money for real jobs.
By heroic efforts and against every obstacle, our farmers have increased food production by one-third. It will not be easy to maintain balance during the changeover from war to peace. It is going to take ingenuity, teamwork and the unhesitating will of government to maintain prices and wages and income without undue inflation or shrinkage from the present scale.
We in America have had the American standard of living – we have had to consume more than any other nation, because we produced more. We must again have the courage to push forward as our forefathers pushed beyond the frontiers of their day.
Despite our war prosperity, millions of families in America still do not get enough of the right things to eat. We have still further to go. We must never go back to the scarcity theories and shrinking economy of the New Deal years. We must go forward and develop the great American market for our farm products through improved diet for the American people. If we can keep set on this objective, we shall need, not a reduction, but an increase in food production. We must not go back to those dismal days in the middle age of the New Deal when two families out of five in America were living at the undernourished level of less than $20 a week.
Let us have an end of generalities about the abundant life from a government which for eight long years promoted a chattering fear of production.
For this we need a government in Washington whose primary interest is not in fighting within itself, not in teaching people to feed a family of five on a relief income of $700 a year.
Before us lies the immediate practical prospect and reality of jobs – the business of making things and doing things – real jobs for real money, real prices in a real market.
This must be the fundamental which provides three square meals a day for our people, as well as cars, washing machines, radios, tractors, high-line power, running water, education and all the undeveloped realities which lies within our reach.
To these fundamental – a productive and a prosperous agriculture is essential to the future of America. That future we can and will achieve by the constructive program I have outlined since the beginning of this campaign. And in doing so, we must again restore the freedom of the individual farmer from dictation and control by his own government. that farmers of our country have brow new frontiers in their productive power. It is our solemn duty to equal their contribution by going forward with a productive, growing and secure America.