Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks in Peoria at the Convention of the Illinois State Federation of Labor

October 07, 1964

Mr. Soderstrom, Governor Kerner, Senator Douglas, Governor Shapiro, Attorney General Clark, State Auditor Howlett, Mr. Paul Powell, secretary of state, my friends:

You and I have a job to do on November 3d, and we are going to do that job, and we are going to take one thing at a time. But the first job is to get out of convention, get back home, quit our big talk and our bragging, and get down to work and get our friends and our uncles, and our cousins and our aunts to the polls, and elect Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey by the greatest landslide.

Then we are not going to repeal these laws that we have been passing ever since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We are going to keep them. I wish I had all night to talk to you about them, there are so many of them. But together we have come a long way in 30 years, and there is not a single man or woman in this room that would go back where we came from or would want their children to go back where we came from.

We have abolished child labor and the sweatshops, and we don't want to go back to it. We rejected the arguments of those who fought our social security program and said it ought to be voluntary, and we are not about to go back to it. We have made collective bargaining the law of the land and we are going to keep it that way. We have said that we believed a laborer was worthy of his hire, and we have passed minimum wage laws and maximum hours laws, and we are not about to turn our back on them.

Today we have 20 million people living in decency and dignity off their social security checks. And we are going to make the system sounder and more sensible, and improve it and extend it, and not destroy it. We are not going to sit idly by and let a few men defeat us in our attempt to give this Nation a sensible, sane, wise medical care plan under social security.

We believe that every boy and girl in this land ought to be entitled to all the education that he can profitably take, and it doesn't make any difference how long we have to work, or how many speeches we have to make, or how many States we have to cover--we are going to build those schoolhouses and put a teacher in every schoolroom until that job is done.

We believe in equal rights for all Americans and special privileges for none, and we are going to solve our problems just like you workingmen solve them around the council table when you have a difference. We are going to reason them out. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, we are going to come now and let us reason together. We are not going to allow anyone to tear this Nation to pieces.

We don't hate, we don't fear, we don't doubt. We have faith, and we love our country and love its people and each other.

For 56 years I have been listening to these voices of doom. I heard them first talk about Franklin D. Roosevelt being a dictator, and when that old dog wouldn't hunt any more, they talked about poor little Fala. I heard them abuse Harry S. Truman from every stump in the land, and I was one that saw that great big banner headline on that unreliable Chicago Tribune that said, "Dewey sweeps to victory."

I saw them when they tried to control a Republican President, President Eisenhower, and he wanted to do something to bring peace to the world, and some of them would go back on the back row and fight him. I looked up my record the other day on foreign policy matters, and I had voted with President Eisenhower three times as much as the Republican leader had voted with him.

Well, are we going to get the job done and are we going to do it up brown? Well, now, Dewey thought he was going to do it up brown. The polls had him ahead, too, you know. We have to go out here to the heartland of America and we have to carry the message to the people. They have to know that all these things that they believe in, all these things they have fought for, all these things that they treasure and that they want to pass on to their children so their little ones can have a better life than they have had--they have to know that they can all go down the drain on November 3d if you just sit in your rocking chair at home and don't vote.

I left Washington early this morning. I have been going all day long. I am going to continue to go until November 3d.

On election night I am going to be at my little ranch home on the banks of the Pedernales, down the road from where my mother, my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother are buried, and I am going to be waiting until we hear from the great State of Illinois. I think I know what I am going to hear, if you don't let me down.

I think that Senator Humphrey and I are going to be proud of what you do between now and November 3d, and we are going to be proud of what you do that day, but more important, I think you are going to be prouder yourself.

If you will give us the mandate, if you, by your vote, will give us your approval, we will go back to that Capital City on the Potomac and we will take the programs that were started by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and carried on by Harry S. Truman, and advanced by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and we will build a greater America.

During our 4 years it may not be possible for us to enact a program that will make every man a king, but it will be possible to preserve what we have, and to add to it, and to make this land a better place for all of us to live in.

So remember all the things that are at stake. Remember that you have much to preserve and much to protect.

Now, go and do your duty.

Note: The President spoke at 6:40 p.m. in the Armory in Peoria. His opening words referred to Reuben Soderstrom, president, Illinois State Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, Governor Otto Kerner, Senator Paul H. Douglas, and Lieutenant Governor Samuel Shapiro, all of Illinois, State Attorney General William G. Clark, State Auditor Michael J. Howlett, and Democratic candidate for Illinois secretary of state. Paul Powell.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks in Peoria at the Convention of the Illinois State Federation of Labor Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/242461

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