Harry S. Truman photo

Remarks to a Group From the Ohio Farm Bureau.

May 24, 1950

IT IS a pleasure to have you here this morning. I am most appreciative of the cooperation and the open minds with which you farmers of Ohio have approached the farm problem. It is your problem, as well as a national problem. This organization in Ohio has honestly gone to the merits of the whole situation, from the standpoint of the consumer and the standpoint of the middleman who has to eventually handle farm products, and from the standpoint of the farmers themselves.

It takes a balanced program that is good for the whole country to last and be good for any section of the population. I wish all the organizations in the various States such as yours would take the same approach to the things that we are endeavoring to work out for the welfare of the whole country as you have taken. I think then that we could come to a conclusion that would be entirely satisfactory to all concerned.

It is necessary, as you know, for the businessmen, for labor, and for farmers all to be prosperous on an equal basis. If one is prosperous at the expense of one or two of the others, then we are headed for trouble.

That is what we are trying to do--that is what we are trying to do now--trying to get the right answers to a program that will not only be good for the farmer but that will be good for the whole country, because if it is not good for the farmer it is not good for the whole country, and if it is not good for the whole country it is not good for the farmer. That is the answer, as I see it, and we are going to keep on working at it until we do find the answer.

I think I have got a Secretary of Agriculture who is as much interested in this as I am, who has an open mind and who is honestly working to find a solution of the situation with which we are faced.

I hope you will continue to give us your cooperation so that we can find a solution.

I appreciate your being here this morning. It is a pleasure for me to see you. I always give my occupation as "farmer." I spent the best 10 years of my life trying to run a 600 acre farm successfully, and I know what the problems are. I have two nephews now on that same old place, operating it and operating it successfully. They are my brother's boys. My boy's a girl. Of course, I wouldn't trade her for any two boys, but I wish I had some. These boys are good farmers, and they have that son of reputation. The only handicap they have is the fact that their uncle is President of the United States. You know what a terrible handicap that is to a family. Those boys have to live that down all the time!

Note: The President spoke at 12:20 p.m. in his office at the White House.

Harry S Truman, Remarks to a Group From the Ohio Farm Bureau. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230684

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