Remarks and Address in St. Paul as Part of Minnesota's Truman Day Celebration.

[1.] AT THE RECEPTION (Hotel Lowry, 4:40 p.m.)

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

There are certain limitations to the things that we would like to do. I can't tell you how very much I appreciated the most cordial welcome which I received today in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

If I could possibly do it, I would be willing to stand here and greet everybody who wants to greet me, but I am here for a specific purpose. I am supposed to go to--I suppose I am going to be fed around 6 o'clock; at least I am laboring under that impression--and then I will have to go to a meeting and discuss in a nonpolitical way some of the issues that are before the country.

Therefore, it is just physically impossible for me to stand here and shake hands with a couple of thousand people and get around and do what you expect me to do.

You know, radio time doesn't wait. That is one of the great contributions that radio time has made to this great country, and that is promptness. That is one thing that I believe in. When a man makes an appointment and comes to it late, he is as discourteous as he can be to the person with whom he made the appointment. People who make an appointment with me are prompt, and so am I.

I want to say to you that I hope you will join with me on this handshake for the whole crowd here, and let me go and do what I have to do to finish off the evening for this grand day in Minnesota.

I am just as happy as I can be to be here at this 100th anniversary celebration. I have enjoyed every minute of it, and I expect to continue to enjoy every minute of it until I go out of the State tonight.

Thank you very much.

[2.] AT THE DINNER (Hotel Lowry, 8:05 p.m.)

Mr. Chairman, Governor Youngdahl, Mr. Mayor of St. Paul and Mr. Mayor of Minneapolis, Senator from Minnesota, and distinguished guests:

It is a very great pleasure to me indeed to be here, and to have such a cordial reception. I appreciated most highly that Kansas City steak prepared in St. Paul. Quite thoughtful of you, coming from Missouri.

I want to thank the orchestra for playing the Song of Missouri, which was adopted by the legislature as the State song of Missouri-the Missouri Waltz. They played it beautifully. I am glad I didn't attempt to stand up, though, because they played every note in it, and I wouldn't have gotten any dinner.

I want to say that I think your Governor is a wonderful sport to come to this bipartisan dinner. I have an idea that when we finally get through, we will eventually make a Democrat out of him.

I also want to say to you that your able and distinguished Senator and your able and distinguished Congressman here are great representatives of the great State of Minnesota. They are making every effort possible to carry out the provisions of the Democratic Platform of 1948. And that is my theory of government, and I appreciate the support of these two able gentlemen.

It has been a very pleasant day for me. I don't know when I have enjoyed myself more completely or more thoroughly. This has been a grand reception from beginning to end, and its bipartisan nature pleased me immensely. I shall try to continue that bipartisan approach, and try to make the day come off as I hope you want it to come off, as a successful one, for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the city of St. Paul, and the 100th year from the time that Minnesota became a territory of the United States.

I was reading an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in which it was stated that the assessed valuation of the great territory of Minnesota in 1849 was $840,000, or some such figure as that. I have a notion now that the assessed valuation of the great State of Minnesota is at least a hundred times that, or somewhere in that neighborhood. And yet there were people in that day that said the land west of the Mississippi River was not worth saving, that people should be barred from coming in here. I will tell you more about that tonight, and I will furnish you the verse and the chapter, if you want to read it. Most interesting--most interesting!

But I do hope that you will understand that this has been a most pleasant day for your President and your neighbor from Missouri. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end.

The only difficulty now, with which I am faced, is the fact that I will have to deliver an address of a bipartisan nature which will be entirely satisfactory to the Democrats in Minnesota.

Thank you very much.

[3.] ADDRESS (Auditorium, 9:30 p.m.)

Mr. Chairman, Governor Youngdahl, Senator Humphrey, Mayor Delaney, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

I hope I haven't left anybody out!

This has been one of the most magnificent days I have ever spent. I don't think I have ever had a more cordial welcome anywhere in the United States than I have in Minneapolis and St. Paul today. I am grateful for that cordial welcome.

I remember that I also received a cordial welcome the last time i was here. That was on October 13, 1948. That meant more to me then, and means more to me now, than I will ever be able to tell you. That was quite a time, you know, the 13th of last October. Didn't anybody think I would be back here addressing you within 1 year from that election day as President of the United States. But, here I

I understand that this has been designated as "Truman Day" in Minnesota. That is a very high compliment. I appreciate it very deeply. And I haven't forgotten that last November the people of Minnesota, in a somewhat different fashion, made another day "Truman Day." I also appreciate that very much.

This is one of the reasons--and just one of many--why I have a strong feeling of friendship for the people of Minnesota.

I am very happy that you have asked me to come and participate in this celebration of the 100th anniversary of the creation of Minnesota as a territory of the United States. This is an important anniversary. It is always good for us to remember the events that marked our early history as a Nation.

As you all know, Minnesota, for the most part, was carved out of the territory acquired by the United States through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In fact, 13 States were formed in whole or in part from the territory acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. My own State of Missouri is one of those States. The Louisiana Purchase opened up the whole area west of the Mississippi River for eventual settlement and incorporation into this great Republic of ours.

The story of the Louisiana Purchase is more than just a schoolbook history. It is a story that is filled with significance for all Americans today.

In 1803, Thomas Jefferson, who was then President, sent representatives to France who agreed to buy the Louisiana territory from Napoleon Bonaparte. They agreed that the United States would pay $15 million to France in return for an area of nearly a million square miles. Think of that!--$15 a square mile for the richest part of the whole globe.

It is hard for us to believe today, but there was a storm of protest over this transaction. Members of the opposition party were against it, and they dragged in all kinds of arguments in their attempts to stop it. They maintained that President Jefferson had no power to make such an agreement. They claimed that it was unconstitutional. They said that this new territory would bring in a lot of undesirable people. I wish they could look at us now! They said that there could never be anything in common between the men of the wilderness west of the Mississippi and the citizens of the Atlantic coast. Some of them back there still believe that! They said the United States would fall apart.

Jefferson's opponents contended that the Louisiana Purchase would ruin the country, that we would need a large standing army to protect the new area, and that our democratic institutions would be undermined and destroyed. They said that $15 million was too much money, that it would greatly increase the national debt, and that it would be years before it could be paid off.

Furthermore--and this is what really worried them--they protested that the Eastern States would lose their political power.

Now, all this was typical of the standpatters and the reactionaries who are always telling us that things can't be done. They scrape up every argument under the sun to try to stop anything new--any change in things as they are--anything they think might disturb their own vested interests.

But in spite of all this clamor, Jefferson went right ahead. He and the members of his party foresaw that the United States was an expanding country, that it was going to grow indefinitely, and that it needed the land west of the Mississippi River. They knew, too, that the sum of $15 million, although it looked big at the time--it would be small change now--would prove to be insignificant compared with the benefits of doubling the size of the Nation. They believed that the increase in the prosperity of the United States, the growth of its trade and industry, would enable the Government to pay off this additional debt without difficulty--and they were right.

Today, we can look back on the opposition to the Louisiana Purchase and laugh. We wonder how men could have been so blind as to oppose this great step forward.

Do you know what one of the reactionaries of that day said ? He stood up on the floor of the Congress and not only opposed the incorporation of the Louisiana territory into the Union, but he actually urged that citizens of the United States be prohibited from ever settling west of the Mississippi River.

Now, that is a most important statement from a United States Senator, and his name was Senator Samuel White of Delaware. And this is from the Congressional Record-this is what he said--this is most interesting--he said--and I quote:

"We have already territory enough, and when I contemplate the evils that may arise to these States from this intended incorporation of Louisiana into the Union, I would rather see it given to France, to Spain, or to any other nation on earth, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the United States should ever settle within its limits, than to see a territory sold for a hundred million dollars and we retain the sovereignty." He was a great reactionary of his day. He was a United States Senator from Delaware.

Why did the reactionaries of Jefferson's time raise these ridiculous objections to the Louisiana Purchase? I will try to tell you why.

In the first place, they had very little imagination and very little faith in the future of this country. They simply could not believe that the American people would ever be able to settle that whole area and create cities, industries, and farms there.

There were other reasons, too. Those actionaries were themselves comfortably situated. They were well-to-do men. They were prominent in the big business of those times. They were influential in politics. They were well satisfied with their own position in life, and they did not want anything done that might disturb their advantages. They thought more of the threat to their power, and of the inconvenience to themselves in having to pay taxes for the Louisiana Purchase, than they did of the benefit to millions of Americans in having new lands to settle. They thought more of their own selfish welfare than they did of the general welfare of the whole Nation.

Consequently, they raised all these objections, and even went so far as to say that our whole system of government was being undermined.

The reactionaries of Jefferson's time were exactly like the reactionaries of today. Whenever there is a new proposal to promote the general welfare, we always hear the same sort of arguments--from the same sort of people--for the same sort of reasons.

But the propaganda of the reactionaries did not prevail in the case of the Louisiana Purchase. If it had, this country would not be what it is today. If it had, the State of Minnesota--and Missouri, too--would not even exist.

That kind of propaganda did not prevail then, and it will not prevail today.

The people of the United States know the way to progress. If the people have the true facts--and eventually they always get the true facts--no one can hold them back for very long.

Today, of course, we are no longer concerned with expanding the territory of the United States. We are concerned with expanding our economy and the opportunities of our people. We are concerned with increasing our agricultural and industrial production, and our standards of living. Those are our great frontiers today. And the advances which we can make on those frontiers are just as important to the general welfare as the territorial advances we made in Jefferson's time.

We have, in fact, a whole new world before us, the world of increased opportunity and wider freedom that our new technology and increasing abundance make possible. We have set our faces toward the new world and we are going to make it a reality.

Our economic frontiers can be expanded only if we follow sound public policies. We must rely, as we have always relied, upon the spirit of initiative and free enterprise. But we know that it is necessary for the Government to follow policies that will make it possible for initiative and free enterprise to succeed. At the same time, there is wide disagreement on what specific measures the Government should adopt and for whose benefit.

The reactionaries hold that government policies should be designed for the special benefit of small groups of people who occupy positions of wealth and influence. Their theory seems to be that if these groups are prosperous, they will pass along some of their prosperity to the rest of us. This can be described as the "trickle down theory."

The vast majority of us reject that theory as totally wrong.

We know that there will be more prosperity for all if all groups have a fair share of the wealth of the country. We know that the country will achieve economic stability and progress only if the benefits of our production are widely distributed among all its citizens.

We believe that it is the Federal Government's obligation, under the Constitution, to promote the general welfare of all our people--and not just a privileged few.

The policies we advocate are based on these convictions.

We maintain that farmers, like businessmen, should receive a fair price for the products they sell.

We maintain that workers are entitled to good wages and to equality of bargaining power with their employers.

We believe that cooperatives and small business should have a fair opportunity to achieve success, and should not be smothered by monopolies.

We hold that our great natural resources should be protected and developed for the benefit of all our people, and not exploited for private greed.

We believe that old people and the disabled should have an assured income to keep them from being dependent on charity.

We believe that families should have protection against loss of income resulting from accident, illness, or unemployment.

We hold that our citizens should have decent housing at prices they can afford to pay.

We believe in assuring educational opportunities for all our young people in order that we may have an enlightened citizenry.

We believe in better health and medical care for everyone--not for just a few.

We hold that all Americans are entitled to equal rights and equal opportunities under the law, and to equal participation in our national life, free from fear and discrimination.

Now, my friends, these are the policies that spell the progress for all our people. They are the best assurance of prosperity for everyone--including the very people who attack them most bitterly. These policies mean more democracy in this country, and not less. They mean more personal freedom for all Americans, and not less. They are our stanch shield against communism and against every other form of totalitarianism. They are the means by which we will achieve the better world we all seek.

Nevertheless, there are people who oppose these policies. There are people who are afraid of more democracy and greater freedom for all our citizens today, just as there were in Jefferson's time. There are people who contend that these programs for the general welfare will cost too much, just as the reactionaries in Jefferson's day contended that $15 million was too much to pay for a million square miles of new territory. They were wrong in Jefferson's time, and they are just as wrong today.

The expenditures which we make today for the education, health, and security of our citizens are investments in the future of our country, just as surely as the Louisiana Purchase was an investment in the future.

Expenditures which we make to develop our natural resources, to conserve our soil and our forests, and to make cheap electric power available to farms, homes, and factories, are equally good investments in the future of this great country.

The process of growth continues for us just as it did in Jefferson's day. If you think back over the last 20 years as they have affected your own community, you can see that this is true. You will think of the increase in population, of the new businesses that have been started, of the higher standards of living which you and your neighbors enjoy.

To keep pace with the growth of this country we need to make new investments in our own future--we need government policies that will contribute to the growth and progress of this great Nation--just as we needed new territory in the early days of our Republic.

I am not too much worried by those who oppose these policies. Between the reactionaries of the extreme left with their talk about revolution and class warfare, and the reactionaries of the extreme right with their hysterical cries of bankruptcy and despair, lies the way of progress. Between these two extremes, the main stream of American life rolls steadily onward toward a better world.

As we advance, we must expect constant efforts by the reactionaries to delay and obstruct our progress. Occasionally, they may be able to set us back--as they did in the Both Congress.

The calamity of the 80th Congress fell upon us because too many people failed to vote in the congressional elections of 1946. But when the purposes and objectives of the 80th Congress became clear, the people turned it out. And I made a contribution to that. In November 1948 they elected a new Congress which has reversed the backward trend and has made substantial progress in many fields. Moreover, I am confident that the 81st Congress will accomplish a good deal more next year in its second session.

This is a direct result of the expression of the will of the people last November. I am certain that in 1950 the people will express themselves again, even more clearly, in favor of progress and against reaction.

I am sure of this because I know the people hold, in their hearts, a firm belief in the future growth and development of the United States. I know that the people understand the issues of today far better than most columnists or commentators, or the selfish interests with all their means of propaganda.

The people showed last fall where they stood on these issues. The policies which I now advocate--and which are being so bitterly attacked by reactionary elements--are the very same policies on which I campaigned last year from one end of this country to the other. I did my level best then to explain to the American people the policies which I support. No man--no matter how reactionary his views, or how much he may disagree with me--can honestly deny that the American people knew where I stood before the last election. And they know where I stand right now!

But, my friends, the reactionaries don't believe in election returns. When we undertake to go forward with the measures to achieve real security and real opportunity for all our citizens, the reactionaries are stirred to harsh and bitter criticism. And I thrive on it. They do not understand and they do not believe that these things can be done. They have too little imagination and too little faith in the future of their country and the powers of its people.

But the people know that these things can be done. They have seen similar progress made in their own lifetime. They have seen this Nation rescued from the brink of collapse and set on the road to greater security and greater prosperity. They know that the policy of working for the general welfare produces the best results.

The people will not go back to the day when their destinies were controlled by tight little groups of selfish men who made their policies in secret and exercised economic control over millions of people. They understand that a growing country like ours can provide increased prosperity and greater freedom for its citizens. They propose to see that that is done.

And with God's help it will be done.