Remarks at the National Food Conference.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, My friends:

It is a very great personal privilege to extend on behalf of the Administration a welcome to members of the food industry of the United States. All of us hope that you have a meeting that you consider instructive, interesting and enjoyable.

Of course, we know that your purpose is very serious and we, I think rightfully, hope for new ideas and new help to all of us in government as we go about performing our duties and scratching our heads to find ways to be more helpful to the food industry of the country.

Now I think it would be profitless for me this morning to talk to you about the technical phases of any part of the industry in which you are collectively engaged.

We know that farmers, the processors and retailers of food, and even the users of food, do not have any exclusive interest. They are citizens of America.

I should like to talk briefly this morning about two or three problems that to my mind involve us all, where each of us must concern himself, to draw the conclusions, to form the convictions that will allow him to operate intelligently as he goes about the business of making his living for himself, for his family and for becoming a useful citizen in our entire society.

One of these problems is the overwhelming, the all-embracing problem of our foreign situation. We are faced by those who seek an end to our form of government, who would take away from us our Godgiven rights--human rights--which we have been endowed with by our Creator, by those who would make of us pawns of the state. We must consider what it is now that we must do, if we are not to be overcome by that threat, and not either to do unwise things because of hysterical thinking, or to become prey to that threat because of indifference or apathy or hopelessness.

America is the strongest temporal power on the earth.

We have nothing to fear, nothing to fear from ourselves or from others. We need only to do our duty intelligently--to do those things which are calculated to maintain our security and to work for a just and reasonable peace. We have no reason for failing to go about our daily lives, doing our work as citizens, and by that much--by the individual efforts of each of us--to make this country still more strong, still more secure.

Our security does not lie, of course, in armaments alone. Indeed, armaments are nothing but a shield behind which we may work for those things that bring about permanent security, which means permanent peace. And as much as those military armaments are needed, we must not shirk one instant.

But with all the cost we must be sure there is not one unnecessary dollar. We must be concerned with. what we are doing to our economy when such useless expenditures come about.

It is a very difficult problem, but nevertheless it is one which thoughtful Americans can solve, if they put their minds to it. And, I might add, when they are supported in official positions and by people who are so minded.

Another part of this security problem touches on you people a little bit more directly. It is the things which we must do to strengthen our alliances--to make certain that neither by the threat of force, nor by propaganda or by subversion or economic penetration, that those areas now uncommitted or those areas that are more exposed to threat are not overwhelmed by communism, and by that extent we become more nearly isolated.

To keep those countries strong, to keep them of a benefit to ourselves, we do many things. We help them preserve military forces in accordance with pre-arranged plans. I am now speaking of our Allies--people allied with us by multilateral treaties or bilateral treaties. We help them to support those forces necessary to our own security. We help them to improve their own standards of life so that they do not become prey physically and mentally to the insidious doctrine of communism.

One part of the help that is given is in the form of exports of food. I am not talking of the commercial exports that are paid for through private industry and through private means by dollars, which I believe is about sixty percent of our entire export of some $4.7 billion last year. What I am talking about is where the government comes into it, and frequently sells these foods for soft currency or for lower prices. By doing that, we are helping these countries to exist and to strengthen themselves.

I think it would be well for many of us, as we sit here in the comfort of a Washington hotel, to remind ourselves that there are hundreds of millions of people today--looking to us--who have an annual income on the average of seventy-five dollars a year. This is about twenty cents a day for their livelihood. That income has a long history behind it, it has not come about suddenly. But this has come about suddenly: many of these nations have recently become independent. By becoming independent they have renewed their aspirations for a better life, by finding that kind of political philosophy and political conviction that will make it possible for them to stand by the side of countries like our own that believe in freedom, to be allowed to do as they choose in the matters of worshipping, thinking, speaking and working. That is the kind of thing that we must help to do.

If we don't, it is my earnest, my most profound, conviction that America cannot fail to be gradually pushed back from the frontiers where we now find ourselves--sometimes stationed with our own troops but always in political alliances with many countries throughout the world. We will be pushed back and we will find freedom more and more beleaguered by communism.

If that ever happens, I remind you there is only one thing we can do. It will be a garrison state that will be imposed upon us by our own actions because of the extraordinarily multiplied defense costs that we will have to shoulder. And if we become a garrison state, we will have lost the very values that all of us so cherish, the values that have come about by our rights to worship and think, to differ with one another, and to earn our livings as we see fit. That must never happen.

So I beg of you, when you help, either in the indirect method of exporting food to some of these nations, or when you help in assisting us to give some military support to these nations that need it, that you do not think of this as "give-away," as "boondoggling," as "raking leaves." This is a thing you are doing for your own welfare and every individual of understanding owes it to himself to his duty as a good citizen--to help others understand that the money we spend in this field--something less than four billion dollars a year--is some of the finest investments that we are making.

I believe with my whole heart that as much of the work as is possible must be done on the basis of investment lending, not on grants. But I say: this problem must be done if we are going to take a world look at the menace that faces us consistently, balefully, never relenting in its purpose of destroying our free forms of government.

The other problem I would like to mention briefly is that of our own country.

As I remarked before, America is strong, America is healthy. Like all healthy individuals, we have our ups and downs. I have been suffering from a cold. We know that America is not always at the very tip-top of its form, and it is not now. But I want to tell you this: the economy of this country is a lot stronger than the spirit of those people that I see wailing about it and saying that it is not good.

I am not going to recite this morning all of those directions and places in which government could be doing something to help reduce the slack employment which we now suffer--something on the order of four million, five hundred thousand now unemployed. We must do something. And we are doing something. We have done it, and we will do it.

But I beg of you, let's don't be trapped into expenditures that have no useful purpose except to hand out something--that have no useful purpose except that of helping a man exist for the moment.

Let's do it by the means of doing things that need to be done in our country.

Naturally, we have to provide for our own security, but we have today on the shelves of government all sorts of worthy projects, some of which have been already approved by the Congress--or indeed where annual or partial appropriations have been made. If those things are useful--and we know that they are because they have been approved both by the Congress and by the Executive studies--then let's use this time of slack employment to push these projects. When we have full employment, that is no time, as I see it, to be pushing federal projects to compete with private industry. It would be far better to push these projects when there is the time of slack employment. I think it's just ordinary horse sense. I think all of us agree. So let's do that.

The federal Reserve Board has concerned itself with our credit situation--making it better. There are all sorts of things in the way of housing development and building going on.

But basically, here is the problem: are we going around with our chins up? Or are we looking at the ground thinking of our own dismal troubles rather than putting our eyes straight forward and pushing in that direction?

Confidence is what this country needs. And it is going to get confidence--not so much about the numbers of men that the federal Government can put back to work through useful projects that can develop. It is going to be brought confidence because of the example of the federal Government--as well as by each person in this room and by all like you in the United States that are working still for a better and stronger America. You are working for an America that is strong and sound economically at home, that is spiritually strong in its faith in the values that have been handed down to us by our forefathers--an America that will respond to the convictions, the beliefs, of those people who say America has survived every crisis that it has ever faced--even the bitter ones of war.

This is no time to listen to the people who are men of little faith and of little spirit. Now is the time when courage, common sense and soundness will prevent a slackness in employment and a dip in the economy from becoming serious.

Those are the two subjects of which I wanted to speak to you briefly this morning.

My final word is to say Thank You for your attention, for being here, and my best wishes to each of you. God bless you.