The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-06-22
HARDING |S READY TO CHANGE PLAN TO WIN SENATORS
Executive Denies He Is Try ing To Dictate To The
 American People

journey from Washington to our great territory of Alaska. our first stop halts us in your hospitable city, and aiErds an opportunity for re- newed Acquaintance and better under standing. I suppose it is a perfectly natural expectation that when the President travels he must stop and make report to the community he is seeking to serve. It has seemed to me that nearly every city and village from the Potomac to the Pacific has bestowed an invitation and a tender of hospitality. 1 like to say to you, because in saying 1t to you I am speaking to many others in this mar vicious age of communication, that I very genuinely regret the impossi- bilitX of accepting all of them. Quite apart from the personal satisfaction and renewed assurance in direct con- tact with our people, l think there is vast benefit in bringing the govern ment a little closer to the people and the people a little closer to the gov- ernment and closer to those tempo rarily charged with official respon' sibilities.
 "You view government from afar, and l am not surprised that you won der now and then, because you re- ceive occasional refleXes which are so erroneous that official Washington itself cannot understand them. And those of us who are in Washington live in an atmosphere of officialdom which often flinders our knowledge of the thoughts around the American iireside and the activities which daily make the essential life of the nation. These are conditions not easily to De avoided. Our government is the big gest business in the world, and like any other business it requires the management to be more or less dill- gently at work.
 Eight Years Of Congress.
 "Congress has been more or less continually in session for eight years and in our co-ordinated form of gov ernment tEe President must be more or less in session at the same tune. So I welcome this opportunity to see the great central valley, the noun tain west, the Pacific coast and our treasure land in Alaska. l am re- joiced to speak to you as your Ires- ident. reporting on the state or ar fairs to the stockholders of this re- public.
 If I do not come with partisan report, though I am politically par tisan and believe in the utter neces- sity of political parties. one only serves his party by first serving his country well, and good service to his country ought to be the asplra- tion Of every citizen of our land.
 .'The present national administra- tion came into responsibility at a very difficult time. Our country found itself in a bad way in the aftermath of world war. We had expended in heedlessness, we had inflated in madness, we had rushed into the abnormal and found ten thousand difficulties in resuming sfriI inevitable business slump. It fol- lows every war. It applies to busi- ness in every line-finance, industry, agriculture. And business refleXes are felt by every citizen, no matter how humble or how great. Ne found in the inevitable reflex of the wartime e threatened financial ability. aSricul- tural distress and vast unemploy- ment. A survey of unemployment re- xealcd four and half to five million of workers without jobs. l leave the appraisal of all relief efforts, leg islatlve, executive or administrative to your own judgment. The thing l want to say is that this distressing situation has been wholly reversed and today employment is calling for men. There is complaint about that, too, but since we cannot always pre- serve the actual balance, l prefer land which is seeking Workmen 10 a country where discouraged men arc hunting for jobs
 "I like to believe that the recovery is based mainly on confidence in the American policy and the fundamen- tai righteousness of our institutions. l like to believe we have recovered because we avoid the paths of de- structive experimentation, ignore mad theories and cling tenaciously to the foundations of business and ,,&I ch h c which have made ours the most rap idly and most safely developed rep resentative democracy in all the world.
 Financial Stability.
 We have done more than banish unemployment; we have made our way to financial stability, without which there is little permanent em- ployment. And we. halted the ex- tremists who caught their inspiration in European madness and proposed to destroy our social order because of temporary ills, rather than cure the ills.
 T believe America tonight is a fine example to the world, with conf- dencc in herself, of a people capable reconstruction problem and digging down to hard work to effect the needed restoration, rather than to fling aside all we had wrought in century of hopeful progress, and thereby subscribe to destruction in the name of social democracy. We gave business a chance to resume, and assured it that honest success is no crime in the United States. We assured it that the government wasn't going into pusIness, but that we meant to get out of it. Then to prove that we meant to nave more business in government, we struck at the extravaganza which grew Tn wars fevered activities, we pruned government expenditures and reduced the governments personnel not by thousands but by tens of thousands and went a long way in reducing gov ernment outlay.
 Measures were offered to tighten the taxation load and distribute the burdens more equitably. We sought to substitute for the exactions of war the convictions of peace. We inaugu- rated the budget system of govern ment financing, and thereby effected reductions in government outlay amounting to billions. Of course, this enormous reduction was made pos sible mainly because we suspended war activities and ended war com mitments, but we drove at the ordi- nary expenditures in the peacetime business of government. and topped off hundreds of millions at time, and we have proven to the world, in spite of gigantic debt and it's inter- est burdens. that here is govern ment resolved to live within its in come.
 0 o o
 Deficit Threatened.
 The fiscal year. now near it's close. threatened an $500. .0O0. 900 deficit when it's financial budget was in the mak- ing, but we cut and trimmed and in sisted upon reduced expenditures and it will close with q. s2O0. 100000 sur plus.
 These are rather dull facts, but they are interesting to the govern ment because they afford the proof that government itself joined in the