I bring greetings to the Democrats of Iowa from the Democrats of Massachusetts. Both groups are looking forward to sweeping victories in November 1958.
I do not wish to pose as an expert on Iowa politics. But I am bold enough to predict a Democratic victory in this state for two reasons: first, because we recognize in Washington that the surging Democratic Party in Iowa is producing candidates of unusual distinction. You have as your Governor a man who has already established himself as one of the ablest leaders and most likable vote-getters in the Party – Herschel Loveless. You have sent to Washington one of the most outstanding of the 1956 crop of new Congressmen, a man who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Iowa and its farmers – Merwin Coad. Now that Iowa has seen what one Democratic Congressman can do, I am certain that this fall you will send us eight.
There is a second reason why I predict a Democratic victory in Iowa – and that reason I base upon my talks in the past year with Democrats in every part of the country. Whatever may have happened in 1956, whatever coattails the Republicans hope to ride, I can tell you that our Party is strong – that our Party is united – and that our Party is going to win in 1958 and 1960.
Victory is in the air – the handwriting is on the wall – this is going to be the greatest Democratic year since 1936.
I do not say that victory will be easy. It will come to us only if we deserve it.
We have to offer more than the old slogans and policies of the past. We have to offer more than charges we cannot prove or promises we cannot fulfill.
We must prove our capacity for responsible leadership. We must demonstrate competence for tackling the difficult issues of our times.
And we will. For courageous, responsible leadership has been in the great moments of our history the trademark of the Democratic Party.
I was sharply reminded of this Democratic tradition seven weeks ago last night. I was in New York to see the opening of a play about Franklin Roosevelt called "Sunrise at Campobello."
It is not a play about politics. It is not about the Presidency or the Democratic Party. It is a play about the triumph of one man and his family over disaster – the disaster of physical illness.
But I thought, as I left the theater very deeply moved, that this play portrays more than this stirring personal triumph. It also brought to mind all the great qualities of leadership in times of crisis for which FDR was famous – not only the personal crisis of his paralysis, but the crisis of a country in economic chaos, the crisis of a world at war, and all the rest.
We urgently need those qualities in Washington today. For this nation now enters a period of crisis of greater proportions than any we have ever endured. We are confronted with a deepening crisis in world affairs, in our relations with our allies, in our prestige with the uncommitted nations. The Soviets have outshown us in scientific achievement. They have out-maneuvered us in trade and aid. They have outstripped us in the race for ultimate weapons and outer space. The Middle East, North Africa, Indonesia, Cyprus, Latin America – every part of the world is in flames or in ferment. The Republicans in 1956 may have cried "Peace, peace" – but there is no peace.
Here at home, where they promised prosperity to match their peace, the economic situation is also approaching the crisis stage. More than five million workers are unemployed. Millions of others are working only a few days a week. Millions more are being forced to leave the farm. In June, hundreds of thousands of college and high school graduates will be walking the streets looking for work.
We may still prevent a complete economic disaster – but only if we can obtain the kind of leadership demonstrated by Franklin Roosevelt. That kind of leadership is sorely lacking in this Administration.
We need something more in the way of leadership than those who talk blithely of a "breather" in the economy…or those who say everything will get better if we wait until the end of the year…or those who say reassuringly: "There is nothing wrong with the economy that a good dose of confidence won’t cure."
In this same address, a Republican gathering was told: "We are betting on prosperity to bring victory for the Republicans" in November. Let me say, my friends, that we in the Democratic Party will accept that bet.
For our part, we are not betting on a depression and we are not running against Herbert Hoover. We are betting on the American people preferring action at a time of economic crisis.
Because it will take more than "a good dose of confidence" to reverse the downward trends in employment, production, construction and agriculture. Once a recession is underway, it takes more than "a good dose of confidence" to cure it. Consumers, pinched by the all-time high cost of living, restrict their purchases. As a result, factories cut their production and lay off workers. As a result of that, our railroads are receiving fewer freight car loadings. And as a further result, more than 68,000 railroad employees have been recently laid off – 12% of all railroad workers are now jobless – and employment in the railroads has dropped below one million for the first time since the great depression of 1929. And so the snowball of recession – now poised on the brink – starts its awesome, ever faster plunge down the road of economic decline.
But this same Republican orator had, in an earlier address, outlined a four-point program which he said would do the job: new defense contracts, which actually represent a comparative decline; new post offices already authorized; new highways already underway; and new housing starts which were previously approved.
Not one of these projects could be considered a real anti-recession weapon.
Not one is going to put money in the pockets of those who need the purchasing power.
Not one is going to make enough jobs for the right people in the right places at the right time. That four-point program – if you can call it a program – can be summed up in four words: too little, too late.
Our Republican friend made no mention of raising unemployment benefits to our millions of jobless workers – even though these unemployed men and women now receive an average benefit equal to only one third of their previous earnings.
He made no mention of helping our distressed areas of substantial labor surplus – even though such areas now include one third of the nation’s major industrial centers.
He made no mention of extending minimum wage protection – even though 35 million workers now lack that basic floor under our purchasing power.
He said nothing about farmers forced from their land, miners out of a job, businessmen without customers or contracts.
No, he did not mention any of these programs that would put money in the pockets of those who need it most. On the contrary, he said, the Republicans – unlike the Democrats – believe in "spending for things you need."
But I ask you, my friends, which do we need most – $2 billion in new post offices, which produce no new wealth – or 200,000 new public school classrooms – 838,000 hospital beds – new reclamation and water power projects – or new homes for the 17 million Americans whom Fortune Magazine says "live in dwellings that are beyond rehabilitation – decayed, dirty, rat infested, without decent heat or light or plumbing"? That’s what we need more than post-offices. Our Republican friend said, "It’s time to quit running America down." I say it’s time to start building America up.
Exactly twenty-five years ago this month this nation waited for the kind of leadership I have described. Exactly twenty-five years ago this month President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt boarded the train for Washington. He was figuratively watched, with hope and fear, by millions of unemployed workers – dispossessed farmers – panicky bankers – and pessimistic businessmen. The nation was in a state of collapse. His predecessor insisted that everything that could be done had been done – that "the major difficulty is in the state of public mind" – that the primary need was for "confidence" – and that the new President-elect could best secure this through balancing the budget and abandoning his schemes for public works and mortgage guarantees.
Twenty-five years ago this month Franklin Roosevelt faced a crisis of paralyzing proportions. Twenty-five years ago this month he boarded that B&O train with the weight of an anxious nation on his shoulders. As President, he traveled alone. The responsibility, the decisions, the opportunity were his alone.
But Franklin Roosevelt brought down to Washington with him something more than confidence. He brought imagination and ideas. He brought determination and action. He brought leadership – articulate, thoughtful, visionary, resourceful leadership.
And as the Republicans packed to move out, Robert E. Sherwood contrasted the old and the new administrations in a brief sardonic poem:
"Plodding feet
Tramp – tramp
The Grand Old Party's
Breaking Camp.
Blare of bugles
Din – din
The New Deal is moving in."
"The Presidency," FDR had told a reporter the previous year, "is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. Without leadership, alert and sensitive to change, we are bogged up or lose our way, as we have lost it in the past decade."
What we need in America today is not so much confidence in the economy, but confidence in our leadership. We want "leadership alert and sensitive," in Roosevelt’s words, to the harsh changes occurring in the economy. That is necessarily the role of the Chief Executive in modern America. That is the role fulfilled by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. That role is not being fulfilled today.
We are told instead to wait for the upturn in March. We have waited – March has arrived – and our confidence is diminished further. We see no new ideas, no bold action, no blare of bugles." We see only "plodding feet…tramp, tramp" – and "the Grand Old Party's…breaking camp.
When an Administration lets fall the reins of leadership, they must be firmly held by the Congress – today a Democratic Congress. We must exercise that leadership.
We must pass measures assisting our unemployed workers and our labor surplus areas.
We must restore the vitality of our anti-recession weapons, now rusting from neglect and depreciation – minimum wages, social security, jobless insurance.
We must restore the purchasing power of our hard-pressed small farmers and small businessmen.
We must build the public works our nation needs – schools, homes, hospitals, reclamation projects, power dams, urban renewal.
We must give help where help is needed – in our allocations of defense contracts, in our tax and fiscal policies, in our programs of aid to agriculture and business.
We must raise the nation’s standard of living instead of the cost of living – for the aged and the handicapped, for the migrant farm worker, for the unorganized and the underpaid and the underprivileged – and we must give them their full and equal opportunity regardless of race, color, creed or national origin.
And above all, in the words of Justice Holmes, whether we sail with the wind or against the wind, let us set sail – and not drift or lie at anchor.
Permit me to mention in more detail one issue of particular importance to your state – and that is the question of our Federal farm policy. Despite the recession – despite the number of families driven from the farm to seek work in the cities that have no work – despite the need to bolster the sagging props beneath every aspect of our nation’s economy – Secretary Benson has but one solution: drive prices further down. But the Senate last week revolted against this empty policy – and I am confident the House will follow suit. We passed a measure prohibiting any further lowering of farm price supports on dairy products, wheat, corn and other basic commodities until such time as Congress can enact a more effective, long-range farm bill. I am frank to say that the farmers and voters of my area did not favor that resolution. Price supports have, as you know, never been particularly popular or beneficial to them. But I am also proud to say I voted for that resolution – and I will defend that vote against any constituent who disagrees with it.
I supported that resolution for the same reason I supported Hubert Humphrey’s substitute bill in 1956 providing 90% of parity to the small family farms that needed it most. I supported this and other Democratic measures because I think farm prosperity is not just a local need – it is a national need.
I want the people in Massachusetts and New England to realize that we can sell tools and fish and textiles to Iowa only when you have the farm income to pay for them. We can share in an expanding national economy only when it is not held back by declining income in your region. And we can get an administration in Washington sympathetic to our hard-hit areas of labor surplus only when you get one concerned about your problems of farm surplus.
Just as no town in this State can go on indefinitely without the farmer being prosperous; neither can any state in the United States go on indefinitely without our farm states being prosperous. Massachusetts and Oklahoma may from time to time have different needs and different interest – but when a man’s livelihood and way of life are at stake, these differences must be set aside.
Perhaps we in New England who have been less closely acquainted with the problems of farm distress were a little slow to catch on to the hypocritical promises, the false facts and the fallacious reasoning that have characterized the Republican farm program and Mr. Benson’s administration. Perhaps we were too easily misled down the garden path by his announced hopes and pledges. But the record of the past five years has torn away any illusions we might have had about Mr. Benson and his efforts. It is a record of failing programs, falling prices and broken promises – and I have no hesitancy in saying that it is a record no friend of the farmer, from any part of the country, can ever excuse or defend.
Let us examine for a moment the promises with which Messrs. Benson and Eisenhower misled those of us who live in the East.
First, they promised us that the surpluses would be drastically reduced – but instead they were drastically increased. We are now paying out nearly 1½ billion dollars to farmers under the so-called Acreage Reserve Program as inducements for them to plow under or not produce enough wheat to feed this country for nearly 10 months, enough corn and cotton to meet our needs for 2 or 3 months, and additional acres of rice, tobacco and peanuts. We sold in 1954 more than a half billion pounds of dried skim milk, of high grade, human food quality, for hog feed at about ⅕ of its market value. We have subsidized the sale of surplus crops abroad at a cost of some $4 billion. We have imposed new controls on production, and reduced price supports so as to drive farm prices down to a level of some 14% below the 1952 average.
And yet, despite all of these efforts, and a drought as well, we have an investment in surpluses of some $8 billion, at least five times as great as the 1952 level; and production continues to spiral upward, breaking all records in 1956 and coming close to, if not surpassing, that mark this year.
Secondly, they promised us that Government expenditures on this program would be sharply cut, largely through Mr. Benson’s arbitrary cuts in price supports. The truth of the matter is that Mr. Benson has instead spent many times more money than any Secretary of Agriculture in the history of this country. This Administration’s losses on farm price support operations have been more than three times as great as all the losses of the previous twenty Democratic years combined. And Mr. Benson even added extra thousands of Agricultural Department employees to send these costs higher.
Third, they promised us a lower cost-of-living by driving farm prices down. But instead the cost-of-living continues to go up and up, despite the fall in farm prices, and despite the fact that the farmer today gets an even smaller proportion of the housewife’s food dollar than he did five years ago. Only the big food processors and chain stores have come out ahead.
Fourth, they promised us that net farm income for those remaining on the farm would rise, once Mr. Benson’s policies and lower prices had driven the so-called marginal farmers away. But instead net farm income last year was a disastrous 3.5 billion below the 1952 level, as farm prices were down 18%; and the per capita income for those still holding on to their land was also down. To be sure, the Republicans had succeeded in driving hundreds of thousands of farmers off their land, adding to the disappearance of the family farm in the country and to the unemployment rolls in the city. By increasing farm debt by nearly three billion dollars, by increasing the interest rates farmers had to pay on that debt, by cutting back crop insurance and drought relief and FHA loans, and by holding out hope for only lower and lower prices in the future, they succeeded in this comparatively brief period of time in doubling the rate of farm foreclosures, and causing the astounding loss of several hundred farms every day, with a drop of over two million in our farm population. It is these disturbing, discouraging figures that represent, in my opinion, the real Republican record on agriculture.
I could go on and on with this story of broken promises – the Republican record on REA, Soil Conservation, flood prevention, school milk, disaster relief, grain storage facilities, farm wife bulletins, and all the rest. They promised fewer controls and they imposed more controls. They promised more research and they promptly cut research. They promised our New England dairy farmers lower feed prices as the result of cutting grain supports in the Mid-West – but instead those feed prices have risen by more than 10%. They castigated farmers in the city and they castigated workers in the country. But whatever they claim, when they come back to this New England Democrat looking for support, the record is clear – they did not help the taxpayers, they did not help the consumers, and above all they did not help the farmers, North, South, East or West.
Perhaps we should not be too harsh with Mr. Benson – after all, he has made more good Democrats for us in five years than most of us could convert in a lifetime. But I cannot believe he represents American agriculture – and neither do his top appointees, who call themselves "farmers" if they happen to own one cow and ten banks.
I was one of those whom, in the past, Mr. Benson led down the primrose path – but never again.
I do not pretend to be an expert on all the problems of agriculture – I am a city boy who has never plowed a furrow. I do not pretend to know what the best long-range answer is to these problems. I am hopeful that the Democratic Party – the Party with a more humane, a more far-sighted, a more imaginative approach – will work out such solutions in the coming years – solutions which will strengthen our economy from the bottom as well as the top – solutions which will not discriminate against farmers in favor of other segments of the economy – solutions which will preserve the backbone of our economy and our way of life, the family farm.
To develop such solutions – to adopt a consistent long-range position regardless of pressure groups and popular prejudices – will require determination and courage on our part. I need not talk of courage in the State of Iowa. For this is the state which to me and countless others will always stand for courage – the courage of a great United States Senator – a Republican who was driven from that Party by the jeers of his colleagues – a real profile in courage, James W. Grimes.
Just 90 years ago today, the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson was in progress. The radical Republicans needed only one more vote or one abstention to drive the President out of office and take over the country. The one man they needed was Senator Grimes of Iowa. Grimes disliked Johnson – but he was convinced that the trial was a fraud and that the President’s conviction would be a disaster.
Unfortunately, subjected to abuse and threats, he suffered a stroke of paralysis only two days before the vote was to be taken. He was confined to his bed – and the Republicans refused to postpone the vote.
Just before the balloting began, four men carried the pale and withered Senator from Iowa into his seat. When his name was called, the Chief Justice said he could remain seated while voting – but Senator Grimes struggled to his feet and called out the words that saved the nation – "Not Guilty."
The New York Tribune compared him with Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis. His Party and friends repudiated him. But before he died, Grimes declared to a friend:
"I shall ever thank God that in that troubled hour of trial, when many privately confessed that they had sacrificed their judgment and their conscience at the behests of party newspapers and party hate, I had the courage to be true to my oath and my conscience…Perhaps I did wrong not to commit perjury by order of a party; but I cannot see it that way…I became a judge acting on my own responsibility and accountable only to my own conscience and my Maker; and no power could force me to decide on such a case contrary to my convictions, whether that party was composed of my friends or my enemies."
I believe it is the Democratic Party which has that courage and conviction today.
I do not pretend to say that the future will always be rosy, even under a Democratic Administration. There will be crises, there will be problems. But only the Democratic Party has the enthusiasm and the determination and the new ideas necessary to meet those problems.
We can build the schools and the hospitals and the homes and the dams that our nation needs.
We can wage unrelenting war against drought and poverty and illiteracy and illness and economic insecurity.
We can build, through strength and justice and realistic leadership, a lasting peace.
And we can go forward to a new and better America, never satisfied with things as they are, daring always to try the new, daring nobly and doing greatly. It is in this spirit that we meet here tonight. It is in this spirit that we will sweep the nation in 1958 and 1960.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 900, "Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, Des Moines, Iowa, 22 March 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.