Franklin D. Roosevelt

Remarks at Greenville, South Carolina.

August 11, 1938

Governor Johnston, my friends of Greenville:

It is a long way around to come from Washington to South Carolina by way of the Pacific, the Galapagos Islands, the Equator, the Panama Canal and Pensacola, Florida. But I got here.

As you people probably know, I have made two speeches today and there was not time nor opportunity to prepare a third speech. Some of you may have heard what I said down in Georgia, at Barnesville. Those of you who did not hear me, I hope will read in the newspapers what I said of some of the economic and social problems of the South and of the necessity of meeting those problems by a consolidation of the interests of all the southern states, and then by consolidating those interests with the interests of the whole Nation.

That, my friends, cannot be done without legislation. As President, I cannot do it alone. The Congress of the United States must pass the laws.

That is why, in any selection of candidates for members of the Senate or members of the House of Representatives—if you believe in the principles for which we are striving: a wider distribution of national income, better conservation of our natural resources, establishment of a floor under wages and the bringing of a larger buying power to the farmers of the Nation then I hope you will send representatives to the national legislature who will work toward those ends.

We need not just teamwork but more teamwork in the National Capital—and I believe we are going to get it.

Before I stop—and I believe the train is pulling out in a minute or two—I want to suggest two things to you.

The first is that a long time ago I promised Governor Johnston that I would come down some time this year to visit the capital of the State of South Carolina. I have never been there but I am coming.

The other thing is that I don't believe any family or man can live on fifty cents a day.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Remarks at Greenville, South Carolina. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209103

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