From: T3B@psuvm.psu.edu (Tom Benson)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: SPEECH TEXT: HARRY S. TRUMAN ACCEPTANCE SPEECH, 1948
Date: 30 Aug 92 14:23:14 GMT
Organization: Penn State University


Here is a copy of Harry S. Truman's acceptance speech in
1948 (from which George Bush quoted in his 1992 acceptance
speech, dropping Truman's acknowledgment that the original
lines had been spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his own
1932 acceptance speech).

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|                               CRTNET                               |
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|                          August 30, 1992                           |
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|                            Number   623                            |
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|             COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND THEORY NETWORK              |
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|            Edited by Tom Benson, Penn State University             |
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CONTENTS --

    --  Harry S. Truman: Address in Philadelphia Upon
         Accepting the Nomination of the Democratic
         National Convention. July 15, 1948.

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   Harry S. Truman

   Address in Philadelphia Upon Accepting the Nomination
   of the Democratic National Convention

   July 15, 1948

I am sorry that the microphones are in the way, but I must
leave them the way they are because I have got to be able to
see what I am doing--as I am always able to see what I am
doing.

I can't tell you how very much I appreciate the honor which
you have just conferred upon me.  I shall continue to try to
deserve it.

I accept the nomination.

And I want to thank this convention for its unanimous
nomination of my good friend and colleague, Senator Barkley
of Kentucky.  He is a great man, and a great public servant.
Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these
Republicans like it--don't you forget that!

We will do that because they are wrong and we are right, and
I will prove it to you in just a few minutes.

This convention met to express the will and reaffirm the
beliefs of the Democratic Party.  There have been
differences of opinion, and that is the democratic way.
Those differences have been settled by a majority vote, as
they should be.

Now it is time for us to get together and beat the common
enemy.  And that is up to you.

We have been working together for victory in a great cause.
Victory has become a habit of our party.  It has been
elected four times in succession, and I am convinced it will
be elected a fifth time next November.

The reason is that the people know that the Democratic Party
is the people's party, and the Republican Party is the party
of special interest, and it always has been and always will
be.

The record of the Democratic Party is written in the
accomplishments of the last 16 years.  I don't need to
repeat them.  They have been very ably placed before this
convention by the keynote speaker, the candidate for Vice
President, and by the permanent chairman.

Confidence and security have been brought to the people by
the Democratic Party.  Farm income has increased from less
that $2 1/2 billion in 1932 to more than $18 billion in
1947.  Never in the world were the farmers of any republic
or any kingdom or any other country as prosperous as the
farmers of the United States; and if they don't do their
duty by the Democratic Party, they are the most ungrateful
people in the world!

Wages and salaries in this country have increased from 29
billion in 1933 to more than $128 billion in 1947.  That's
labor, and labor never had but one friend in politics, and
that is the Democratic Party and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And I say to labor what I have said to the farmers: they are
the most ungrateful people in the world if they pass the
Democratic Party by this year.

The total national income has increased from less than $40
billion in 1933 to $203 billion in 1947, the greatest in all
the history of the world.  These benefits have been spread
to all the people, because it is the business of the
Democratic Party to see that the people get a fair share of
these things.

This last, worst 80th Congress proved just the opposite for
the Republicans.

The record on foreign policy of the Democratic Party is that
the United States has been turned away permanently from
isolationism, and we have converted the greatest and best of
the Republicans to our viewpoint on that subject.

The United States has to accept its full responsibility for
leadership in international affairs.  We have been the
backers and the people who organized and started the United
Nations, first started under that great Democratic
President, Woodrow Wilson, as the League of Nations.  The
League was sabotaged by the Republicans in 1920.  And we
must see that the United Nations continues a strong and
growing body, so we can have everlasting peace in the world.

We removed trade barriers in the world, which is the best
asset we can have for peace.  Those trade barriers must not
be put back into operation again.

We have started the foreign aid program, which means the
recovery of Europe and China, and the Far East.  We
instituted the program for Greece and Turkey, and I will say
to you that all these things were done in a cooperative and
bipartisan manner.  The Foreign Relations Committees of the
Senate and House were taken into the full confidence of the
President in every one of these moves, and don't let anybody
tell you anything else.

As I have said time and time again, foreign policy should be
the policy of the whole Nation and not the policy of one
party or the other.  Partisanship should stop at the water's
edge; and I shall continue to preach that through this whole
campaign.

I would like to say a word or two now on what I think the
Republican philosophy is; and I will speak from actions and
from history and from experience.

The situation in 1932 was due to the policies of the
Republican Party control of the Government of the United
States.  The Republican Party, as I said a while ago, favors
the privileged few and not the common everyday man.  Ever
since its inception, that party has been under the control
of special privilege; and they have completely proved it in
the 80th Congress.  They proved it by the things they did
_to_ the people, and not _for_ them.  They proved it by the
things they failed to do.

Now, let's look at some of them--just a few.

Time and again, I recommended extension of price control
before it expired June 30, 1946.  I asked for that extension
in September 1945, in November 1945, in a Message on the
State of the Union in 1946; and the price control
legislation did not come to my desk until June 30, 1946, on
the day on which it was supposed to expire.  And it was such
a rotten bill that I couldn't sign it.  And 30 days after
that, they sent me one just as bad.  I had to sign it,
because they quit and went home.

They said, when OPA died, that prices would adjust
themselves for the benefit of the country.  They have been
adjusting themselves all right!  They have gone all the way
off the chart in adjusting themselves, at the expense of the
consumer and for the benefit of the people that hold the
goods.

I called a special session of the Congress in November
1947--November 17, 1947--and I set out a 10-point program
for the welfare and benefit of this country, among other
things standby controls.  I got nothing.  Congress has still
done nothing.

Way back 4 1/2 years ago, while I was in the Senate, we
passed a housing bill in the Senate known as the Wagner-
Ellender-Taft bill.  It was a bill to clear the slums in the
big cities and to help to erect low-rent housing.  That
bill, as I said, passed the Senate 4 years ago.  It died in
the House.  That bill was reintroduced in the 80th Congress
as the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill.  The name was slightly
changed, but it is practically the same bill.  And it passed
the Senate, but it was allowed to die in the House of
Representatives; and they sat on that bill, and finally
forced it out of the Banking and Currency Committee, and the
Rules Committee took charge, and it still is in the Rules
Committee.

But desperate pleas from Philadelphia in that convention
that met here 3 weeks ago couldn't get that housing bill
passed.  They passed a bill they called a housing bill,
which isn't worth the paper it's written on.

In the field of labor we needed moderate legislation to
promote labor-management harmony, but Congress passed
instead that so-called Taft-Hartley Act, which has disrupted
labor-management relations and will cause strife and
bitterness for years to come if it is not repealed, as the
Democratic platform says it ought to be repealed.

On the Labor Department, the Republican platform of 1944
said, if they were in power, that they would build up a
strong Labor Department.  They have simply torn it up.  Only
one bureau is left that is functioning, and they cut the
appropriation of that so it can hardly function.

I recommended an increase in the minimum wage.  What did I
get?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

I suggested that the schools in this country are crowded,
teachers underpaid, and that there is a shortage of
teachers.  One of our greatest national needs is more and
better schools.  I urged the Congress to provide $300
million to aid the States in the present educational crisis.
Congress did nothing about it.  Time and again I have
recommended improvements in the social security law,
including extending protection to those not now covered, and
increasing the amount of benefits, to reduce the eligibility
age of women from 65 to 60 years.  Congress studied the
matter for 2 years, but couldn't find the time to extend or
increase the benefits.  But they did find time to take
social security benefits away from 750,000 people, and they
passed that over my veto.

I have repeatedly asked the Congress to pass a health
program.  The Nation suffers from lack of medical care.
That situation can be remedied any time the Congress wants
to act upon it.

Everybody knows that I recommended to the Congress the civil
rights program.  I did that because I believed it to be my
duty under the Constitution.  Some of the members of my own
party disagree with me violently on this matter.  But they
stand up and do it openly!  People can tell where they
stand.  But the Republicans all professed to be for these
measures.  But Congress failed to act.  They had enough men
to do it, they could have had cloture, they didn't have to
have a filibuster.  They had enough people in that Congress
that would vote for cloture.

Now everybody likes to have low taxes, but we must reduce
the national debt in times of prosperity.  And when tax
relief can be given, it ought to go to those who need it
most, and not to those who need it least, as this Republican
rich man's tax bill did when they passed it over my veto on
the third try.

The first one of these was so rotten that they couldn't even
stomach it themselves.  They finally did send one that was
somewhat improved, but it still helps the rich and sticks a
knife into the back of the poor.

Now the Republicans came here a few weeks ago, and they
wrote a platform.  I hope you have all read that platform.
They adopted the platform, and that platform had a lot of
promises and statements of what the Republican Party is for,
and what they would do if they were in power.  They promised
to do in that platform a lot of things I have been asking
them to do that they have refused to do when they had the
power.

The Republican platform cries about cruelly high prices.  I
have been trying to get them to do something about high
prices ever since they met the first time.

Now listen!  This is equally as bad, and as cynical.  The
Republican platform comes out for slum clearance and low-
rental housing.  I have been trying to get them to pass that
housing bill ever since they met the first time, and it is
still resting in the Rules Committee, that bill.

The Republican platform favors educational opportunity and
promotion of education.  I have been trying to get Congress
to do something about that ever since they came there, and
that bill is at rest in the House of Representatives.

The Republican platform is for extending and increasing
social security benefits.  Think of that!  Increasing social
security benefits!  Yet when they had the opportunity, they
took 750,000 off the social security rolls!

I wonder if they think they can fool the people of the
United States with such poppycock as that!

There is a long list of these promises in that Republican
platform.  If it weren't so late, I would tell you all about
them.  I have discussed a number of these failures of the
Republican 80th Congress.  Every one of them is important.
Two of them are of major concern to nearly every American
family.  They failed to do anything about high prices, they
failed to do anything about housing.

My duty as President requires that I use every means within
my power to get the laws the people need on matters of such
importance and urgency.

I am therefore calling this Congress back into session July
26th.

On the 26th day of July, which out in Missouri we call
"Turnip Day," I am going to call Congress back and ask them
to pass laws to halt rising prices, to meet the housing
crisis--which they are saying they are for in their
platform.

At the same time I shall ask them to act upon other vitally
needed measures such as aid to education, which they say
they are for; a national health program; civil rights
legislation, which they say they are for; an increase in the
minimum wage, which I doubt very much they are for;
extension of the social security coverage and increased
benefits, which they say they are for; funds for projects
needed in our program to provide public power and cheap
electricity.  By indirection, this 80th Congress has tried
to sabotage the power policies the United States has pursued
for 14 years.  That power lobby is as bad as the real estate
lobby, which is sitting on the housing bill.

I shall ask for adequate and decent laws for displaced
persons in place of this anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic law
which this 80th Congress passed.

Now, my friends, if there is any reality behind that
Republican platform, we ought to get some action from a
short session of the 80th Congress.  They can do this job in
15 days, if they want to do it.  They will still have time
to go out and run for office.

They are going to try to dodge their responsibility.  They
are going to drag all the red herrings they can across this
campaign, but I am here to say that Senator Barkley and I
are not going to let them get away with it.

Now, what that worst 80th Congress does in this special
session will be the test.  The American people will not
decide by listening to mere words, or by reading a mere
platform.  They will decide on the record, the record as it
has been written.  And in the record is the stark truth,
that the battle lines of 1948 are the same as they were in
1932, when the Nation lay prostrate and helpless as a result
of Republican misrule and inaction.

In 1932 we were attacking the citadel of special privilege
and greed.  We were fighting to drive the money changers
from the temple.  Today, in 1948, we are now the defenders
of the stronghold of democracy and of equal opportunity, the
haven of the ordinary people of this land and not of the
favored classes or the powerful few.  The battle cry is just
the same now as it was in 1932, and I paraphrase the words
of Franklin D. Roosevelt as he issued the challenge, in
accepting nomination in Chicago: "This is more than a
political call to arms.  Give me your help, not to win votes
alone, but to win in this new crusade to keep American
secure and safe for its own people."

Now my friends, with the help of God and the wholehearted
push which you can put behind this campaign, we can save
this country from a continuation of the 80th Congress, and
from misrule from now on.

I must have your help.  You must get in and push, and win
this election.  The country can't afford another Republican
Congress.

----------

NOTE: The President spoke at 2 a.m. in Convention Hall in
Philadelphia.  The address was carried on a nationwide radio
broadcast.

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