Remarks at a Luncheon for State Chairmen of the Dollars for Democrats Drive

Mr. Foley, Chairman Bailey, Mrs. Price, Mr. Krim, and fellow Democrats:

Thank you, Ed, for this opportunity to come here and have a brief visit with you here today as you undertake an assignment which is extremely important to all the members of the Democratic Party and all of the Democratic candidates.

Someone has said that four words in English are more beautiful than all others. These four words are: Enclosed please find check.

This may be quite materialistic. I hope and expect that thanks to all of you that we Democrats are going to see those words many times between now and election day in November. So I am pleased that you would gather here today and that you would ask me to meet with you.

I am happy to see many of you who have come from faraway places. I assure you that the Democratic Party has no more important work to offer than the assignment that we have asked you to undertake.

It was 2 years ago that the American people gave us one of the biggest mandates in electoral history. Now we are asking them to renew and to continue that mandate in the congressional elections of 1966. Let them look at our record, then ask the people to decide whether we have carried out what we promised: our pledge to build a better, more prosperous America.

I have not the slightest doubt what the voters will decide, if we can give them the truth. And it is up to us, and no one else, to make certain that they have the truth.

The 89th Congress has passed more legislation to do more good for more people than any other Congress since the Republic was founded. That is a fact. And we want this Congress back here in January to continue these programs.

Now this is going to take work and it is going to cost money. Carrying our case to the people gets more expensive every year. To give you some idea, a single 5-minute television program on only one network costs us about $30,000 paid in advance. All the other costs are going up, too, from campaign buttons to barbecues and advertising posters.

So I repeat: You are doing essential work for your party. You are making a contribution that extends far beyond your party. I think you are making democracy work.

I started out in life expecting to be a teacher and I haven't strayed too far, because a national political campaign is still the largest educational event that can occur in a democratic country. A political campaign brings to focus all the problems facing a nation. It gives the people a chance to hear all the proposed solutions and then they cast their ballots for the candidates who are trying to lead our country in the direction that people want to go.

Democracy means free choice, but there is no free choice unless the voters hear all the alternatives. I believe that where this money comes from is also important to us. So I have asked the national committee time and time again to launch a program of this type, a dollars for Democrats program, because I believe that politics should not be merely a spectator sport.

I believe everyone should be as active in his party as is possible. I believe that--even for members of the opposition party. I would really like to see every Republican participate in his party's activities and participate in his party's treasury. I think it would be good for the party and for the Government.

I believe everyone who can should take a part in his party, work for his party, contribute to his party. But because Democratic prosperity seems to create a good many rich Republicans, we have to work a little harder to raise our funds. We Democrats are trying to represent all the people in this country.

We are trying to help the underprivileged, while at the same time respecting the rights of the prosperous. We should take the same attitude toward money. We appreciate a $1,000 contribution or any large contributor's desire to help. But those large contributions will not, can not, and should not support the Democratic Party.

The real strength of the Democratic Party has always been the small contributor. The 1964 campaign cost over $200 million. That is for all the parties. More than 70 million Americans voted in that election, but only 12 million gave to some party committee or any candidate, and that is only 17 percent of the total number that voted.

It isn't good enough. We need more contributors and we need many, many more of them. So it will be your job in the months ahead to bring in those small contributions. A dollar for Democrats may not go as far as a larger contribution, but you don't have to look so far to find the man who can afford a dollar.

When you get the dollar or the $10, you are getting a personal commitment to our party and to our party's program. In the long run, that commitment is as important as the money itself.

So my message to you today is this: You take the program of our party and the record of our Congress and you take it home with you. You try to talk to the voters about it and you try to get others to talk to the voters about it. Get them to help us broadcast the record of the last 2 years, broadcast it loud and understandable and clear.

Convince them that one way is to give the party the resources it needs to operate. We have a record, I think, to be proud of.

Two years ago our platform said that older Americans should have more decent health care. Today they have Medicare.

Two years ago the platform said that every American boy and girl was entitled to education in the richest nation in history. Today they have the Elementary, the Secondary, and the Higher Education Acts of 1965.

Two years ago the Democratic platform said the rights of all of our citizens should be protected. Today 20 million of our Negro fellow citizens have the power of the United States Government behind their right to vote in the first voters rights bills in history, and they are now voting in record numbers.

Two years ago the platform called for a decent home for Americans. Today rent supplements to the needy promise to take us closer to that goal than ever before.

The Senate just this week passed the demonstration cities bill by a vote of more than two to one. That is a measure that will inaugurate a program for the cities of America unlike any program we have ever dreamed of before.

Two years ago the Democratic platform called for restoration of those areas of America which had been bypassed by the march of progress. Today the greatest redevelopment program of all time is underway in Appalachia.

Two years ago the Democratic platform pledged to attack the filth in our rivers, the pollution in our streams, the pollution in our air. Today we have more water, more air pollution legislation than has ever been passed by all the other Congresses put together and we are going to clean up our water and we are going to clean up our air.

Two years ago the platform promised a fair deal for the men and women who grow our food. Today the 1965 food and agricultural act is putting more income into the farmers' pocket than ever before, is reducing farm surpluses to the lowest level in modern history, and we are saving $200 million in storage charges alone this year.

Two years ago the platform promised to erase the blot of the disgrace of the discrimination of our immigration laws. Today we have an immigration law that no longer asks a man, "Where do you come from?" but asks him, "What can you do?"

Two years ago the Democratic platform called for more Government participation and assistance in health and medical research. Today we are in the midst of a Government-sponsored, nationwide research program to conquer once and for all the Nation's three leading destroyers of life: heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

So you take that message home with you. Find us the money to tell that story, to tell it to all Americans, and I don't think that then we will have to worry about what the voters will do in November.

I said to the ladies and gentlemen of the press a few moments ago, when they were talking to us about all of our concern with developments in our economy (and that is something that every American must be concerned with every day of the year), I have been here 35 years and our economy-our bread, our meat, what we eat, what we earn--is a thing that is always uppermost in our minds.

When I came here, the average take-home pay of the average factory worker was $18 a week. In terms of present-day dollars, it was about $30 a week. Today it is $112 a week.

When I came here, the average per capita farm income was about $300 a year. In present-day dollars that is about $800 a year. This year it is $5,400.

Now when farmers' income goes up, when our workers'--who make our products and who process our commodities--income goes up, and when our profits go up, our prices go up. We would like for things to remain stable, the same year after year, if we can, in relation to each other. But that is a difficult thing to do in a competitive system where every man has a free choice.

He can work or not work. He can add a 10-percent profit or a 5-percent profit. He can charge 10 percent interest or 6 percent interest. So we have to try, as best we can, to call on people to exercise restraint, self-discipline, and keep these things reasonably well in line.

Since 1960, 6 years ago, our prices have gone up 10 percent. Now you have to pay 10 percent more for what you buy. Our wages have gone up 17 percent. You have that 17 percent to pay the 10 percent with. Our profits have gone up 83 percent during that same period of time.

The average price index increase in America, since World War II, per year, has been 2.6 percent. It has been much more than that in most all of the other countries in the world. But we had a 4-percent increase in the late fifties, almost 4 percent. And we have had only 1 percent in the early sixties.

But our average from World War II every year down to now has been 2.6 percent. Our increase the last 12 months has been 2.5 percent. But this month we had a rather heavy increase.

We have an increase in transportation costs. Not in the airlines. We will have reductions probably there. But we have an increase in bus fares and in transportation costs. We have another substantial one in physicians' fees, doctors' fees, and hospital costs.

So when you put transportation and medical costs together, it gives us a rather substantial increase this month. But when you take even this month and put it with the others, our Consumer Price Index increase is about the average for each year since World War II.

Now we wish it didn't increase any. But the worker wants an increase and insists on it and gets it, sometimes. It is not always the increase I want him to get and I just can't point to him and say, "This is it." Some people think you can, but you can't.

The profit man sometimes gets more profits than I would allocate to him, if I had that power. But in our free enterprise system, one man may take a profit of 5 percent and another one may take a profit of 10. But the profits have gone up 83 percent in that period of time.

We have more take-home pay, though. Today our dollar will buy about twice as much food. The fellow who works an hour today can buy about twice as much food with that hour's pay as he could 20 years ago.

Our food bill is about 18 cents out of every dollar today. Twenty years ago it was 26 percent of every dollar.

So while we have had problems and we will continue to have them, prices will continue to go up, commodities will cost more in this world in which we live.

I remember the day when Henry Ford paid a worker $5 a day and our people were leaving home in goodly numbers to go to Detroit to get that job. Wages will go up. Prices will go up. Profits will go up. And I trust that there will be a reasonable balance between them.

If a man has to pay 10 percent more for his cost of living, I hope he can earn at least that much more and have something left over to take care of it.

Now the Democratic Party has always, I think, been regarded as the party that believes in better wages, that believes in a better break for the average fellow, and has pretty well been identified with the progress of the average man.

I hope I am not being too partisan when I ask you to look back over the last 35 years and see what is on the statute books that you are proud of and that you think is helpful and that you think means something to people and see who is identified with that legislation.

We are not exclusively identified with it. A lot of Republicans have sponsored good legislation and a lot of it has been signed by them.

I went up to New England this week, at the invitation of Senator Aiken, to dedicate a project, the first rural farm project under the Rural Water Act, that Senator Aiken authored. He is a Republican Senator. Congressman Poage from my State sponsored it in the House.

It is a bill that will be almost as famous and effective and popular as the Rural Electrification Act. We had both parties represented there.

One thing I am proud of is that a good many people in the other party have supported these measures that I have talked to you about. But I think if you will take a measuring stick and look at the last 35 years you will see most of the legislation in behalf of the people has been sponsored and sup, ported by the Democratic Party.

Therefore, I hope that you can ask the people who recognize this to reciprocate and support us. They can support us to the extent of their ability. We don't want intimidation, threats, or improprieties. We don't want to do anything wrong, but we do want them to exercise their right as American citizens to support their party and support their leader and support their Government.

If you are effective with your message, I think we can do that. And if we are effective in the end with the results, I have not the slightest doubt but that we will have a resounding Democratic victory in the congressional campaign this year.

That is very, very important to us, because there are some people who are just against moving ahead in anything. Unless we have a margin of difference, you can have an executive branch of the Government that is controlled by one party, another branch of the Government that is divided, and all you get is a deadlock. That is when the people suffer.

So we are going to depend on you to do your job well so that we can have a Congress that will do their job well. If the Congress does its job well, we will do the best we can to carry out what they want done.

Thank you.