Remarks at the State Fairgrounds, Springfield, Illinois

Ladies and gentlemen:

I carried Illinois by the overwhelming margin of 8,000 votes, and you're all here today, and I'm glad to see you! I hope that you're going to be available in 1964. We may need you all over again. Governor Kerner; my old colleague, Senator Douglas; ladies and gentlemen:

You're very brief with your candidates, and I'd like to have some of them stand up, particularly those who are running this year in the State, particularly those who're running for the Congress: your great Congressman, an old colleague and friend of mine, Peter Mack. I'd like to have him stand up. Now he is a great Congressman. I know everybody always refers to Congressmen as great Congressmen, but he is a great Congressman.

You have some others here. One of them is here with us today, Mel Price, who's been one of the leaders in the fight for a strong defense. And George Shipley, and Ken Gray. He's downstate, but he's with us in spirit anyway. And we have some candidates here: Bob Wilson, who's a candidate for the Congress; and Don Laughlin. Well, I'll wave for him.

And what does all that have to do with all of us, and also with me as President, and with you as citizens of the United States? Well, I think it has a good deal to do with all things that we're most interested in. All of us, I think, as Americans, recognize the great responsibility which history, fate, and our own courage has placed upon us around the world, and I think we know also that that great responsibility cannot be met unless the United States of America is itself a strong and vital country.

I think this year when we elect a complete House of Representatives, when we elect one-third of the Senate, when we elect State representatives and Governors, and State senators, we have an opportunity to make a judgment as citizens, not as Republicans or Democrats, but on November 6th as citizens, as to what kind of a party we want to place in responsibility. In short, what kind of a country we want. I don't believe that citizens should pay too much attention to what candidates say in the last 4 weeks of election. I believe the old Emersonian advice that what you are speaks far louder than what you say is the best possible advice in judging a political campaign.

Now, the Democrats in the earlier days used to have it very easy because they used to run against the record that the Republicans made in the thirties. I don't know whether you recall the bitterness that came up in the 1930's over the program which Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party helped write, but there isn't a citizen here, there isn't a citizen in the United States who is not the direct beneficiary of those fights, whether you are a farmer who finds his agriculture now supported; whether you buy a house under a Government guarantee; whether you buy stocks under the protection of the Securities and Exchange Commission; whether you put your money in the bank and find it guaranteed by the Government; whether you work and are paid a minimum wage; whether you go to a hospital which is built in part by Government funds; whether you have a child who is educated in part by vocational training supported by the Government; whether you're on assistance; whether you're blind; whether you're dependent; whether you have a child who's dependent; whether you are sick and depend upon your cure on new discoveries which come by the action of the National Government working together as a people--these are the things that the Democratic Party has stood for, for 30 years.

The Democrats used to talk about 90 percent of the Republicans in the thirties voting against a 25-cent minimum wage. But we don't have to talk about that. We know that in 1961, 89 percent of the Republicans voted against a minimum wage of $1.25 an hour, $50 a week. That's the record in 1961, not 1935. When a bill came up to enable us to assist the colleges and universities of this country to prepare for the 71/2 million of your sons and daughters who are going to college in 1970 as opposed to 3 million in 1960, that bill lost by 28 votes, and three-fourths of the Republicans voted against it. When we had a bill to assist southern Illinois, the area redevelopment bill, which for 6 years had been around the Congress, opposed in the Congress, vetoed by a President, when we finally passed it, 85 percent of the Republicans voted against it.

Can you tell me one single program that is identified in the last 30 years of benefit to the people that's identified with the Republican Party or its leaders? The Housing Act of 1961--everyone in this country benefits one way or another, whether it's because they work in housing, whether they live in houses, whether they're older and need assistance, whether they're in urban renewal. We have the most comprehensive Housing Act in 13 years. Eighty-two percent of the Republicans voted against it. That's the record. That's what the problem is in 1962, and they're joined by some Democrats, a fourth of them, perhaps, in the House and in the Senate, and the combination enables us to win by 3 or 4 votes, or to lose by 4 or 5 votes. We lost medical care for the aged, and if you're not aged it is even more important to you. If you have a mother or a father who's sick and you're in your forties and have children to educate and they're sick, and you have any money in the bank, can you guess how quickly that can run out in 2, 3, or 4 months? Medical care for the aged under social security, a change of 1 vote in the United States Senate would have passed it, and only one Senator from Illinois voted for it. So I come here and ask you to send Sid Yates to the United States Senate.

This is the best 8,000 votes I've ever seen collected here. I think you can do it. I think it's time to have a Senator in the United States Senate who you know where he stands, what he's for, what he's against, to speak up, to speak down, but to tell you what he's going to do and what the country ought to do, and that's what we're running for.

Now this State depends upon the farmer. And I read a survey the other day saying the farmers aren't too happy with the Democrats. Well, let me just say one word about that. I know that there're a good many solutions for the farm problems. I've heard some of them. Every farmer has a slightly different one, and I can understand. It's a complicated problem. But the farmer does not have 8 million choices. He has a choice between the Democratic solution and the Republican solution, two solutions. Now, let's see which one the farmers of Illinois and the country want.

In the last 21 months we have not, by any means, solved the farm problem. But we have achieved the best 2-year advance in farm income of any 2 years since the depression. Net farm income rose by $1 billion last year for an 8-year high, and this gain will be maintained in 1962. In fact, the average Illinois farmer had a net income 35 percent higher than he did under Ezra Taft Benson. At the same time, we reduced our wheat and feed grain surpluses by 700 million bushels. Now that is the record. There's no perfect solution, obviously. It costs us a good deal of money as a country, but we at least have a program which makes sense, which at least is raising the farmer's income, which is doing something about the surpluses; and the alternate course of action is to go back to Mr. Benson with his lower support prices and his ever-expanding surpluses and higher cost for the taxpayer. Those are the two choices. I ask the farmers of Illinois not to pursue some ideal plan, but to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats, which is the choice they're offered in November 1962, and come with us.

I've been trying to find out the farm program of the Republicans, and I've finally found out what it was. I don't know whether you recall recently a letter from Martin Sorkin, who was one of Ezra Taft Benson's assistants. He recently wrote a letter that was put in a hearing in the Congress: "The Republican National Committee Chairman, Congressman Miller, and Senator Goldwater, and the Chairman of the House Congressional Committee, Congressman Wilson, and I held a secret meeting. The objective of this meeting was to develop the basis for a continuing attack on the administration's efforts on the farm front. It was agreed," and I quote Mr. Sorkin, "that it was not the responsibility of the Republicans to propose solutions, but to criticize the administration wherever possible"--that's a great farm program. That will really make you plant corn and have a farm income. It is not "the responsibility of the Republicans to propose solutions, but to criticize the administration wherever possible." I hope every farmer in this State reads it. He makes a judgment of his last 8 years and this last year and this year. He makes a judgment between the record of the Democratic Party in agriculture for 30 years, and the record of the last 8 years from 1953 to 1960. And any farmer who looks at the true alternatives that stare him in the face in November 1962 must come with the Democratic Party, must come with the Democratic Party.

Ladies and gentlemen, I come here again to Illinois because in the last 20 months we won and lost so many fights which I think go to the very welfare of the people of this country, their employment, the education of their children, their security in old age, their strength as a nation, their vitality as a nation, their opportunity as a nation. We have won and lost so many fights by 3, 4, and 5 votes that I ask you as citizens of the State of Illinois this November 6th to give us Congressmen like the men you see here on this platform, Members of the House of Representatives who're spoken for their districts and speak for their country, and to send to the United States Senate a man to stand with Paul Douglas and move this country forward.

Thank you.