Address at the Stadium in Butte, Montana

Governor, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chairman:

You know what I think? I think it would be a fine thing if your band would play just one more piece before I have to speak. [The band played Sousa's "Stag and Stripes Forever."]

Thank you very much. I think that one half the reason for this great crowd being here tonight is just to see and hear this good band. I understand that they went out to Hollywood and stole the show. I wish you would come back to Missouri sometime and steal the show.

I can't tell you how overwhelmed I am at the welcome you gave me this afternoon on the streets. In Kansas City, which is a suburb of my old hometown, I have never had such a welcome. There are only two other places that I know of to compare with it; one was at Mexico City and at Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil.

I am indeed happy to be here tonight, to say a word or two to this great city in Montana, this city which made such a great contribution to the winning of two world wars. I have been here before on several occasions. On one occasion I was here as a candidate for Vice President of the United States. I had a wonderful reception. Of course it wasn't anything like this one because I was only a candidate for Vice President at that time. But I enjoyed the visit immensely, and it evidently did some good.

I am also happy to be here in the State of Senator Murray, and Congressman Mike Mansfield. Both these gentlemen are close personal friends of mine. They both ably and capably represent Montana in the Congress of the United States, and I have confidence in both of them.

I would like to discuss with you just for a little while some of the things with which this country is faced--domestically. We have a bipartisan foreign policy, and I hope that bipartisan foreign policy will always continue. We are now the world's leader and we must have a foreign policy that is continuing. That is the reason it is necessary for our political fights to stop at the water's edge..

But there are other things which I can discuss, and things in which you are vitally interested.

When the World War ceased, when Japan folded up, everyone was afraid that things would go into a tailspin--that there would be no jobs and there might be a depression. On September 6, 1945, I sent a policy message to the Congress of the United States and among other things I asked the Congress to make an extension of price control which would expire in 1946. And then again in January 1946, I made the same request of that Congress. And again along in May I made the same request of that Congress. The price control was not extended until June 30, 1946, on the day on which it expired, and they sent me a bill that I couldn't sign. I had to veto it. It took 30 days for them to write another bill, which was almost as bad, and I had to sign that or get nothing, and I signed it. It didn't work. Prices immediately began to climb, and I immediately began to warn the Congress and the country what would happen if we couldn't control prices. And along in November 1946 about 66 2/3 of the voters stayed at home, and you elected the present Congress. You elected the present Congress. I had a telegram just a little while ago from a group of laboringmen out on the west coast requesting me not to appoint a board to settle the dispute between them and their employers because under the present labor law it was not to be to their advantage. I sent them a reply to that and told them that I am the President of the United States, and I am sworn to enforce the laws that are on the books of the United States, and I shall follow the law. They should have thought of that situation in November 1946 when they weren't voting.

But I am extremely interested in the present situation with regard to prices. They are still going up. Now, three times since this Congress has been in power I have asked for a control of prices. In January 1947, again in 1947 when I called a special session of Congress, and again in 1948 in the Message on the State of the Union, I asked for the conditions to be met with which we are faced.

You know the results I got? I was told that the prices would control themselves. Well, they will. Now the prices are so arranged that the people who have a lot of money can get anything that they want, and people with very little money can't get what they want, and food prices are at the top of the ladder. They have one of these graphs where they run up prices, and the prices run up over the graph, it has gone so high, and it is the poorer man that is affected by that.

Now under Government control of prices the consumers' interest is looked after. Under this control we have now, it's the man who controls the food and the clothing and the other things, and he can take all the traffic can bear, and let the common everyday man go hang. If he can't get them he can do without.

In fact, one of our candidates for President said the best way to control prices was not to buy. I guess he would let you starve, I don't know. I am not in that class. I am out here to tell you people just exactly what you get when a situation such as price controls are released too quickly.

Production did not catch up with consumption. We have now more people at work than ever have been at work before in the history of the country, and the gloom artists said that we would have people out of work. Well now, when people are at work they have money to spend and they want goods and services, and when these goods and services are not available, and there is no ceiling to prevent them from going out of sight, then the poor man can't get what he needs to wear and to eat and to live.

And speaking about places to live, there is a housing shortage all over the United States. A lot of houses were just washed away at the mouth of the Columbia River. Some 18,000 people, I am told, have been made homeless by the rampage of the Columbia River. Part of that rampage started here at Silver Bow Creek. If we could control the Silver Bow Creeks that go to make up the Columbia River, we can stop these floods. That is what I have been fighting for ever since I went to the Congress in 1935. But the housing condition is a condition and not a theory, as Mr. Cleveland once said. Way back when I was in the Senate more than 4 years ago, there was introduced into the Senate a bill called the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill. They turned it around the other way, now they call it the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. I am going to call it the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill. That is a housing bill in the interests of the whole country and not just in the interests of the real estate lobby. That bill passed the Senate three times. It even passed this Senate by the help of a lot of good men in there who knew what they were doing. It has been shelved in the House and it is still shelved, and the poor man is still going to be out of housing and the veteran is going to be out of housing because he can't afford to pay the prices that are on now, because the prices have gone out of sight, just as they have for food and clothing.

I asked for the proper controls and I have asked for the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill, but I don't think I am going to get it. I think that this Congress is going to adjourn, and I think some of this Congress is going to Philadelphia to try to fool the people into making them believe they have done something for them in this Congress. Let's wait and see. If this Congress goes away without passing an agricultural bill, without passing a housing bill, without doing something about prices, this Congress has not done anything for the country. They should stay there until they get those things done.

Now this Congress said in its platform-the Republicans said in their platform--of course that is the platform of the Congress now--they said that they were going to make a strong Labor Department. They were going to make something out of the Labor Department. Well, you know what they have done? They have almost completely abolished the Labor Department! They have almost completely abolished the Labor Department. They wouldn't pass an employment bill. Way back right after the war, along in 1946, Senator Murray introduced the Employment Act of 1946, and it was passed by the Congress at that time. Now this Congress has spent its time trying to tear the Employment Act of 1946 to pieces, and they succeeded admirably.

They were not satisfied with that. They have cut out the appropriation--or most of it--for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and you know what that Bureau does? That Bureau shows us what the economic situation in the country is. It shows us what prices are and what causes their condition. You see, they not only knocked out price control and refused to enact another one which would be a control and a brake on the situation, they have taken off the speedometer which tells you how fast you are going and how high those prices are going up-in the form of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They don't want to hold the brake on prices. They don't want us to know by the speedometer what the prices are and how they affect the country.

If that is helping the Labor Department, then I don't understand government.

I wish I could stand here all evening and enumerate the things that should be done that have not been done by this famous 80th Congress. I could stand here for I don't know how long and tell you how they tore up the budget, what they were going to do to the budget and how the budget really came out. They said last year they were going to cut billions off the budget.

Well, you know what they finally did? They came out with an expenditure of $200 million more than I asked for. And you know how they saved money on that budget? The Treasury every year has to make tax refunds to people who overpay their taxes, and there are a lot of people like that in this country. We return about $2,300 million every year to people who pay too much taxes. And they took out of the sum that was necessary to be returned to these people $800 million, and said they were saving money.

You know what they had to do? They had to put back over a billion dollars more to take the place of that $800 million which was drawing 6 percent interest all the time the Treasury did not have the money to return the taxes.

Now that is economy, if I know anything about it, in reverse.

As I say, I wish I could stand here all night and talk to you about these things, because you ought to know them. That is the reason I am out here, to tell you the truth, which you haven't been getting.

They have been telling you a lot of things about your President, that he doesn't know what goes on, that he can't handle the Government. It seems to me that it has run pretty well for the last 3 years. Everybody has got something to eat, and has got a little more money in his pocket--more than he ever had before. Business has been the best in the history of the country. There is more money on deposit in the banks, and the banks are not going to blow up in your face like they used to. That is one thing you can be proud of.

But I want to say to you that the welfare of this country is at stake. I want you to inform yourselves on the facts as they are. And sometime later when the lines are drawn, I am going to tell you just what you have to do to meet the situation.

It has certainly been a pleasure to me to come out here and discuss these things with you. I know you are interested. I know this is an intelligent audience, for I have been here before and talked to you, and you believed in me. I hope you will continue to do that.

Thank you very much.