Harry S. Truman photo

Address at the State Capitol in Denver

September 20, 1948

Governor, Senator, distinguished politicians, and members of the Democratic Party of Colorado, ladies and gentlemen:

Every time I come out this way I feel again the tremendous vitality of the West. That feeling comes not only from magnificent .scenery and bracing air. It comes from talking to the vigorous, confident people who live out here.

This is a straight-from-the-shoulder country, and it has produced a great breed of fighting men. I am going to call upon your fighting qualities now. For you and I have a fight on our hands--a fight for the future of this country and for the welfare of the people of the United States.

The other day, a cartoonist for a Republican newspaper drew a cartoon of me that I enjoyed. He showed me dressed up as Patti Revere, riding through a colonial town yelling to the townspeople: "Look out! The Republicans are coming!"

It was a good cartoon. There's a lot of truth in it. But it's not quite accurate. What I am really telling you is not that the Republicans are coming, but they are here. They have been in Washington for the last 2 years in the form of the notorious Republican "do-nothing" 80th Congress.

Today I want to talk to you about what that Republican Congress has been doing to you, and to your families, and to your country.

Understand me, when I speak of what the Republicans have been doing, I'm not talking about the average Republican voter. Nobody knows better than I that man for man, individually, most Republicans are fine people. But there's a big distinction between the individual Republican voter and the policies of the Republican Party.

Something happens to Republican leaders when they get control of the Government or even of a part of the Government--something that shocks and dismays many of their own loyal supporters.

Republicans in Washington have a habit of becoming curiously deaf to the voice of the people. They have a hard time hearing what the ordinary people of the country are saying. But they have no trouble at all hearing what Wall Street is saying. They are able to catch the slightest whisper from big business and the special interests.

When I talk to you here today about Republicans, I am talking about the party that gets most of its campaign funds from the special interests in Wall Street. I am talking to you about the party that gave us the phony boom of the 1920's, and the Hoover depression which followed it. I am talking to you about the party that gave us that Republican 80th Congress.

The Republican Party today is controlled by silent and cunning men who have a dangerous lust for power and privilege. The Republican Party is fundamentally the party of privilege. These men are now reaching out for control of the country and its resources.

It is your votes which will decide whether or not they have their way. That is why I have come out here today.

I want you to know the facts.

I repeat: The most reactionary elements in the country today are backing the Republican Party in its effort to take over your Government on election day.

If they succeed, I predict that they will turn back the clock to the day when the West was an economic colony of Wall Street. That is terrible even to contemplate.

Election day this year, your choice will not be merely between political parties. You will be choosing a way of life for years to come. This is a fateful election. On it will depend your standard of living and the economic independence of your community.

You can choose to be governed by Republican puppets of big business--the same breed that gave you the worst depression in our history.

Or you can choose to be governed by the servants of the people, who are pledged to work for the welfare of all the people, the nominees of the Democratic Party.

Some of you may feel that I am attacking the leaders of the Republican Party rather sharply. I am. And I have good reasons for doing it--reasons like the obstacles placed in the way of conservation of our natural resources; reasons like the housing conditions in this country; reasons like the high cost of living; reasons close to your hearts, and to mine.

You people out here have been thinking about these problems. You have a right to know what your Government is going to do about them.

Let's go into them a little bit. Let's see where the Republicans stand on these vital issues, and where the Democratic Party stands.

We all know that the housing situation in this country is a national disgrace. It is almost unbelievable that we should have made so little progress in providing decent housing conditions for millions of American families.

From the first day of that Republican 80th Congress, there was a housing bill before it, which would meet the problem. That bill was a full-scale program to provide housing for all our people and not just for those who can pay high prices. But the Republicans refused to act.

The situation became more and more desperate. Veterans' groups, labor groups, mayors of cities, Governors of States, pleaded with the Republicans to pass the housing bill. Even that hypocritical Philadelphia convention made a plea for it. Can you beat that? They still did nothing.

The Republican stand on housing was clearly exposed last July, when I called the Congress into special session and demanded again that they enact housing legislation. The bill was ready. It had been studied and discussed, times without number. It was supposed to be nonpartisan.

But what happened? There was a certain real estate lobby which had its high-priced agents operating in Washington. These men, representing big real estate interests, were in close touch with the Republican leaders. The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives cracked the whip. And the Republican Senate killed the nonpartisan housing bill.

This was no accident. It was Republican policy. In 1947, Senator Taft joined with two Democratic Senators--Senator Wagner and Senator Ellender--in introducing the housing bill. But in 1948 he voted against the bill with his own name on it. What a whip they must have cracked over Taft.

Why did the Republicans kill the bill? The answer is plain. They wanted to leave housing under the control of the profiteers. There is a lot of money to be made out of providing houses for the 'people--if private interests are allowed to exact exorbitant profits from the people.

Have you felt the pinch of the housing shortage? Put the blame where it belongs.

And remember, if the Republicans were to come into power for the next 4 years, the future of American housing would be in the hands of the same men who killed that housing bill--the men who obey the lobbyists of selfish interests, the powerful real estate lobby, and half a dozen others which I am going to talk to you about later on in this campaign.

Now, about high prices. I know you are troubled by high prices. Well, put the blame where it belongs--on the leaders of the Republican Party. The Republican record in dealing with inflation is typical.

When I called the Republican Congress into special session this year and asked them for price control measures, they said that my request was made for political purposes. They used that as an excuse and did nothing about prices. They very conveniently forgot that I had called a special session of the same Congress in 1947, and asked for the same price control. And 1947 was not an election year.

If they had put into effect the controls I asked for, the prices on such things as meat, milk, steel, and automobiles would have been stabilized or reduced.

The Republicans could easily have taken this issue out of politics merely by doing something about it. But they chose to do nothing about it.

I have been talking about the conservation of our economic well-being. Now I come to a particular phase of that conservation that has special interest for you of the West. You live in a region whose whole future depends on its wise use of the rich resources that Nature has provided.

Early in this century, a unique Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt, fought for conservation, only to be repudiated by his party.

All through the Republican administrations from 1921 to 1933, the big business pressure groups prevented adequate conservation measures from being put into effect. They wanted quick profits, the easy way. And so western forests were logged off and left barren. Range lands were grazed off and ruined. Farmland was worked to the point where its fertility was gone. Precious water ran unused past barren land. There was no soil conservation program, no range conservation program.

The Nation lost tremendous quantities of its most valuable resources. The West continued to bow to Wall Street furnishing raw materials at low prices and buying back finished goods at high prices.

Then, in 1933, came the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Under his leadership, conservation was made a living reality. You know better than anyone how much it has meant to the West.

The Democratic administration won its fight for conservation and for western development against the bitter opposition of Wall Street and the special interests. You of the West see the results of our victory every day. You see those results in bigger and better crops; in new industries; in the growing national parks and forests and the tourists who visit them; in the rising standards of living of the people of the West; and in the stronger economy of the whole Nation.

But we still have a long way to go. We are still using our timber faster than we grow it. Thousands of acres of land are still being washed away every year. Disastrous floods are still frequent. Conservation in the West is of first importance to the whole country.

In the face of all this, what did the "donothing" Republican Congress do?

Remember, the record of that Congress is the actual test of the attitude of the Republican leadership toward the people.

The Republicans in Congress consistently tried to cut the ground from under our conservation program. Last year, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted to cut the agricultural conservation program in half in 1947, and to end it entirely by 1948.

The Democrats in the Senate led, and finally won, a fight to save the life of that program. They saved it, but they could not completely restore it. The program was seriously damaged by the Republican 80th Congress.

Here is a significant fact. Nineteen forty-seven was the first year in a decade and a half that the Republicans had control of Congress. And that was the first year in which the Congress took a step backward in the field of soil conservation since that program was begun.

The first time the Republicans had a chance they began to undermine conservation.

Now, let's look at another subject that is closely bound up with your future--the industrial development of the West.

I know that all of you recognize the importance of creating new industries in this region, using the resources of the West, so as to reduce your industrial dependence upon the East.

For my part, I am convinced that rapid and sound industrial development in the West will make a vital contribution to the living standards and the well-being, not only of the people of the West, but of the whole Nation.

The heart of the western industrial development program is hydroelectric power. Coupled with the irrigation projects and flood control, electric power is of fundamental importance to your future.

The Democratic Party, for the past 15 years, has been energetically developing the great dams, irrigation projects, and power systems which have contributed so much to the prosperity of the West.

But as soon as the Republican Party gained control of the Congress, it began to tear down the whole western development program. The Republicans slashed funds right and left. They cut back projects to bring water to the land and electric power to industry.

Right here in this State, the Colorado-Big Thompson project is under way. It is an inspiring project, involving the transfer of water from one side of the Continental Divide to the other. The Republican Congress sharply reduced the funds for that project. When I pointed out the danger of that action and requested them to restore those funds, they refused to do it.

Wherever you turn, no matter what field of activity, you find the same story. In the light of the evidence, I say flatly that the Republican leaders have been working against the interests of the people. I say they have been eager agents of the big business lobbies and the most reactionary elements in American economic life. They jump for these lobbyists, but they won't do anything for the people.

In the last 16 years, Democratic administrations have built a firm foundation for a new and greater West.

We restored grazing lands for the sustained production of livestock. Millions of cattle and sheep feed today where only prairie dogs and rattlesnakes existed before.

We restored forests for a sustained yield of timber. Trees stand for the future where exploiters would have wiped them out.

We established a sound conservation policy to prevent land erosion and restore the fertility of the soil.

We built the Federal system of hydroelectric and irrigation projects which are now providing water for more than 5 million irrigated acres in the West and for better living for millions of people.

We have been leading the fight for decent housing, effective reduction of the cost of living, and a rise in living standards--all for a better Nation of happier people.

That is the Democratic record--a record of which I am exceedingly proud.

There is more to do, much more. What we have done so far is only the beginning. This is no time to permit progress to be checked, when you can foresee great new developments of your agriculture, your industry, and your commerce, if you have the aid and support of the Federal Government.

Your need is to insure the election of an administration pledged to give you that aid and support--in other words, you need a Democratic administration.

There is a hard fight ahead. We shall have to fight the slick political propaganda of the special interests and the Republican leadership.

We shall have to fight the millions of dollars that Wall Street is pouring into the treasury of the Republican Party.

We shall have to fight the Republican undercover sabotage of the West.

But we of the Democratic Party are eager for that fight. In fact, I am taking it to them right now. We believe that we owe to future generations the bequest of a strong America, mighty in its resources and wise in its use of them.

We are firmly determined to leave after us a land that is better than we found it.

Note: The President spoke at 12 noon on the grounds of the State Capitol. In his opening words he referred to Governor William Lee Knous and Senator Edwin C. Johnson, both of Colorado. The address was carried on a nationwide radio broadcast.

Harry S Truman, Address at the State Capitol in Denver Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/232877

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