Rear-Platform Remarks at Joliet, Ill

My friends, I am glad to be here and I am glad also to be going through the State with Governor Horner.

As I have traveled through a great many States I have been thinking of a simile. Four years ago or, to be more accurate, on the fourth of March, 1933, the Government and the people of the United States, so far as their prosperity went, were a good deal like a freight train that had a broken axle and had gone off the track. Well, the first job was to put the freight train back on the track and we did it. The next job was to get it moving again and we did it. Today, all over the United States, people have got more buying power and people are living better than they were four years ago. And I believe that that is going to continue for the next four years.

We are coming to understand that the prosperity of the country is not just dependent on factories running, because factories cannot run unless people buy the things that are made in them. We need prosperity among the farmers as well; and if the farmers are prosperous, the industrial workers of the Nation will be prosperous. Then, too, we have tried to provide more security for the average family. We have tried to make your bank deposits safe. It is only about a week ago that we established a record for the first time in fifty-five years when we went through one full year without the failure of a single national bank in any part of the United States.

I am having a mighty interesting trip; and, so far as I am concerned, I am having such a good time that I wish this campaign could go on until December 3d instead of November 3d. But, my friends, two weeks from next Tuesday when I get reports from the State of Illinois, I feel confident that the State of Illinois is going to help to keep the present Government going for another four years.

Mrs. Roosevelt wants me to thank you very much for this very beautiful bunch of roses.