Harry S. Truman photo

Rear Platform Remarks in Pennsylvania and Maryland

June 18, 1948

[1.] ALTOONA, PENNSYLVANIA (6:10 a.m.)

Good morning! It certainly is a pleasure to see you this early in the morning. Some of you must have gotten up just as early as I did! We have had a wonderful trip across the country, through the Midwest and the Far West. Now we are going back to Washington before the Congress adjourns, so we can investigate further bills for consideration by the President. I hope that we can get some of the much needed legislation which is now pending in the Congress.

I am particularly interested in the housing bill which is pending there. They have certainly fixed that housing bill so that it will not do the general run of people any good.

It passed the Senate more than 4 years ago, while I was in the Senate, and it was known as the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill. I sent a message to the Congress on the subject last February and they passed the same bill, practically, as the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. Now that bill has been pending in the House ever since the Senate passed it, and the people have been clamoring for low-cost rental housing ever since the war, and the only way, under present circumstances, that we can possibly get low-cost rental housing has been through some such legislation as the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. That bill lay in the Banking and Currency Committee of the House for quite a while, and eventually 11 Democrats and 3 forward-looking Republicans reported that bill out. The Rules Committee of the House chose to table it.

Now they have pending before the House the real estate lobby's bill. If that bill passes, it will merely mean a cut in taxes for investors in real estate construction, and that construction will be so expensive that nobody on earth can afford it, or afford to live in the buildings that will be constructed for rental purposes.

Under present conditions it is certainly an outrage that we can't get action on that bill. At least, the Rules Committee should let the House vote on the original bill as it came from the Banking and Currency Committee of the House just a few days ago. I am sincerely sorry this is the case, and I sincerely hope also that maybe they will have a change of heart when we get back to Washington.

I have been doing my best to call their attention to things that should be done, which is the business of the President. He has a right to go out and discuss with the people the things in which he thinks they are most interested.

It has been my honest opinion, and I have expressed it everywhere, that the special interests have control of this Congress. That was brought about, of course, because most of you stayed at home in 1946 when this Congress was elected. The majority of this Congress was elected by one-third of the voters, and the other two-thirds of you went fishing or somewhere on election day if it wasn't too cold.

You get just what you deserve, when you do things like that, and you will probably get just what you deserve this time, if you don't come out and make an effort to set up a government that is for the people and not for special privilege.

I am certainly appreciative of the welcome from the postmasters here. I hope they are having a nice convention. I suppose as conventions usually run, most of them didn't have to get up this morning, they had been up all night, anyway.

I wonder how many of you are still being held up by the Senate without confirmation. A great many, I judge, because they have held up more postmasters this time than ever before in the history of the Congress.

You know, the postmasters are selected on a civil service basis, and the vast majority of them are selected with veterans' preference. Yet this Congress has seen fit to hold up confirmation, hoping that something will happen so they can overturn the civil service program as it affects postmasters.

I hope you will have a successful convention, and I hope maybe this Senate will soften its heart and confirm those of you who haven't been confirmed.

Thank you very much for getting up so early.

[2.] HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA (8:25 a.m.)

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of Harrisburg and Pennsylvania:

It certainly is a pleasure to me to have the privilege of meeting all of you good people this morning. I didn't expect to see all the people of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg this morning, but it looks as if you are all here.

I have had a most pleasant time meeting the people of the United States. I have seen, I imagine, over two and a half million people on this trip, and they have all had a chance to look at me, to find out for themselves just what their President looks like. I have talked to all these people, and a great many people have talked to me, and I think I have a pretty good cross-section of what the people are thinking about.

Most of the people are worried about prices, they are worried about housing, they are worried about the future of this country. They are wondering whether special privilege is going to rule this country, or whether the people are going to rule it. That is something for you to think about.

This situation in Washington will develop for the next few days, then the majority of the Congress will adjourn to Philadelphia, and then they will proceed to tell you what they have done for the people. But I have been trying to tell you what they have done to the people, and I think I have successfully done that.

The Labor Department in Washington was set up many years ago as the Cabinet office which was to be for the benefit of labor in the United States. This Congress has completely demolished the Labor Department. They have been wondering who will be the next Secretary of Labor. In my opinion, the next Secretary of Labor, until the Labor Department is restored to what it ought to be, will have very little to do.

That is not the intention of the establishment of the Labor Department, for the Republican platform in 1944 set out that they expected to build up a strong Labor Department. Ever since this Congress took over on the 3d of January 1947, they have been tearing up the Labor Department. They have done a very successful job of it. They have taken the appropriation away from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the bureau which tells us what the cost of living is, and how it works. They weren't satisfied with taking the speedometer off the car, they took it out and threw it away, so we can't tell exactly what is happening to this price situation.

Prices and the cost of living are affected by a minimum wage. I have been asking the Congress, ever since I have been President, to increase the minimum wage to 75 cents an hour. No action--no action.

And I don't know exactly what to expect for the next 3 days from this Congress. All you can do is to read the papers and see what they are doing. They have cut out housing. They have fixed housing so that the real estate lobby is going to get exactly what it wants.

That is too bad, for there never was a time when we needed low-cost rental housing as badly as we do now. They made no effort to meet that situation. That bill was passed more than 4 years ago, while I was in the Senate, it was called the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill. Never did pass the House. Last February I sent a special message to the Congress on housing, and the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill, in practically the same form that it passed the Senate the first time, passed again. It has been lying in the House ever since, and now it has been emasculated by the House.

We are not going to get a housing bill that will work, I can tell you that. And that is too bad.

I hope you people will give close and careful attention to the issues with which this country is faced. As I said before, it is special privilege against the people. I think this Congress will go down in history as the special privilege Congress, one of the greatest special privilege Congresses this country has ever had.

If you will analyze the situation, and make up your own minds, then perhaps more than a third of you will vote the next time you have the opportunity. Only one--third of you elected this Congress. You got just exactly what you deserved. If you want to make a repeat on that, then you can stew in your own juice.

All of you should make it a point to find out just exactly what the issues are facing this country, and then a hundred percent of you ought to go out and express your opinion at the polls.

If you do that, and you decide to kick me out, I will be satisfied with it, but if you stay at home, then you have no complaint.

I certainly appreciate this privilege of saying a few words to you this morning, and let you see just exactly what I look like.

If you will study what I have been saying over the country, I think you can come more nearly making up your minds in the interests of the greatest Nation on earth.

Thank you very much.

[3.] YORK, PENNSYLVANIA (9:20 a.m.)

This certainly, certainly makes me happy to see all these smiling faces here this morning. And I was particularly pleased to be able to meet former Mayor Shissler of Lancaster, Pa. He has been in this world 92 years, and tells me he has shaken hands with every President of the United States since Lincoln, except Andrew Johnson.

1856--that is the year of his birth--James Buchanan was elected President of the United States from Pennsylvania, and Mr. Shissler tells me that he began by shaking hands with James Buchanan. Now he must have been a pretty young gentleman then. He was 12 years old when he died. Mr. Buchanan died a long time after that.

Just think, in 1856, the country at that time was faced with its greatest crisis, in fact, the country at that time was on the verge of one of the most unnecessary wars that we ever fought, the War Between the States. And Mr. Shissler was 4 years old when that war started, and when Lincoln was inaugurated as President of the United States.

Just think what we have gone through since the birth of this grand old man. It is a pleasure and a privilege to me to get a chance to talk to him and to meet him; and I never saw anybody as lively or so well informed on current events as Mr. Shissler is. He has been talking to me about what I ought to do to make this thing work. and his advice is good, because he is speaking from experience. I am delighted, and I can't tell you how highly pleased I am to have this privilege. A man of experience can always tell a younger man what to do, and how to do it. If you just listen, sometimes you can get ideas that will work.

I have had a most pleasant trip across the United States and back. In every city people have turned out, just as you have here, in order to see the President and to hear the President, and understand his viewpoint. That is my errand across the Nation. And if it is getting results, I am extremely happy. And I think it is getting results. I should be back in Washington this morning about 12:30, and then I shall have to go to work as usual.

You know, the routine of the President is a steady one. I am an early riser. I usually get up about 5:30 in the morning and go to work about 6--sitting at my desk in the study, they call it, until 8 o'clock, when I have breakfast. In the meantime, sometimes I take a half-hour's walk. These photographers and newspapermen decided one morning that they would take a walk with me. They haven't been back since!

Then I go to the office after breakfast, and stay there until 1 o'clock, go back to the office at 3 o'clock and stay there until the day's work is done, then go back over to the study and stay there until 11 o'clock; then go to bed and get up and do it all over again.

It has certainly been a relief to me, and an education to me, to get out and see the people and to hear what the people have to say. I have addressed immense audiences on this trip, and more people have seen me than have seen any other President in history on any one trip. And I have had a chance to talk to people, and they have had a chance to talk to me, and we understand each other much better. They understand that the President is elected by all the people. He is the only public official who is elected by all the people, and if he doesn't look after the interests of all the people, nobody is going to do it.

I am trying to do just that, for you. And if I have been successful in bringing the issues a little more clearly out into the open, the trip has been worth it just for that.

As I said, I am going back to Washington and go to work, and do the level best I can to keep looking after the interests of the people.

This is a case of special interests against the people. We have never had a special interest Congress equal to this one, as the record will show, if you will only study it.

That was brought about, of course, ben cause only one-third of you voted in 1946. Two-thirds of you stayed at home, and you got just exactly what you deserved, when you got this Congress.

Well now, you are going to have another opportunity. This is 1948! You can tell it is 1948 if you read the Congressional Record. And you are going to have the same privilege again, only this time you are going to elect one-third of the Senate, all the House of Representatives, most of your local officials, and you are going to elect the President and Vice President of the United States.

And if you don't turn out a hundred percent and do your duty on election day, you will still be entitled to what you get, ben cause the people of this country are the Government, and when they make up their minds what they want, they usually get it.

I just went around over the country to let you know what I think, and what I stand for, and if that is what you believe in, that will be all right. If it isn't, it will be all right, too. It will have to be.

But I know that you are most interested in the welfare of this Nation. This is the greatest Nation in the history of the world. We have attained leadership in the world, attained by no other nation in the history of the world. We must maintain that leadership. We must have the spiritual values that will give us the ability to maintain that leadership, in a manner that will bring peace to the world.

Everybody--everybody without exception wants peace in the world. That is what we have been striving for ever since the Germans and the Japs folded up. We have been working for peace. We have had some obstructions to attaining that peace, but there is one thing certain: we are unanimously for the foreign policy of the United States. This is one issue which is bipartisan, and that partisanship should stop at the water's edge; and it has stopped just there.

We are trying manfully to maintain that situation in the world which will make the United Nations the means of attaining peace and of settling differences between nations without going to war.

That is my one ambition. That is what I have been working for ever since I have been President. I went to San Francisco when the United Nations Charter was finished, and witnessed the signing of it. I went to San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., right across the bay from San Francisco, just the other day, and restated the foreign policy of the United States. And that foreign policy must be maintained by all the people. And I am sure that is exactly what you want to do, because that means peace in the world.

Again, I want to thank you for this cordial welcome, and for the privilege of meeting this grand old man, and having him give me advice and his experience from Buchanan to the present day.

Thank you very much.

[4.] BALTIMORE, MARYLAND (11 a.m.)

Mr. Mayor, and my friends in Baltimore: It certainly is a fine thing to me to receive a welcome like this in Maryland's first city, and particularly from your great Mayor whom I have known for many years in the Congress.

I have had a grand trip, and this is a wonderful windup to that trip. Every city in which I have been has been just as cordial and as enthusiastic as it could be. I have never seen so many smiling faces in my life. I have never had such a welcome from one end of the country to the other as I have had on this tour.

I think it has been constructive. I think it has been necessary for the welfare of the country that I should go and talk to the people and let the people talk to me. I think I have seen more people on this trip than any other President ever saw on any one trip.

I have talked to more people, and more people have talked to me. It has given me a cross-section of what people are thinking. It has given me an opportunity to go back to Washington and do a better and more constructive job.

I can't tell you how very much I appreciate this cordial welcome you have given me, and how highly pleased I am with it. It is certainly kind of the city of Baltimore, and Baltimore's Mayor to turn out this way.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Note: In the course of his remarks on June 18 the President referred to Simon Shissler, former Mayor of Lancaster, and Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., Mayor of Baltimore.

Harry S Truman, Rear Platform Remarks in Pennsylvania and Maryland Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/232579

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