The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-10-16

Clms
 The purpose of this is to sum up-to tell why, after three and one-half years of observing his Presidency and after reading and listening to months of cam paigning, we are for Roosevelt.
 Speaking generally, we are for Roosevelt for the same reason that we think we would have been for Jefferson or Jackson or Lincoln had we lived in their day. We are convinced that fu- ture historians, as the years bring the complete perspective, will record Roosevelt along with those. We believe that in him the times providentially pro- duced the man; that we have lived through an era far more dangerous than any of us fully realized; that our very form of government might have per- ished had we not been blessed with a leadership equipped with those qualities of courage, vision, understanding, human sympa- thy and daring which must be present if 8 major crisis is to be survived. Further, we be- lieve that had we drawn in 1882 a Polk or Hoover, a Buchanan or 8 Harding, our highly intri- cate economic system might have been completely smashed.
 It is needed only to recall a few of the events-the banking paralysis, the food riots in the cities, the organized defiance of the courts in the agricultural regions, the use of the army against the veterans in the na- tion's capital, the hunger and the desperation-to picture what might have happened had the ship of state then been turned over to a muscle-bound, tradi- tion-minded and near-sighted pilot. Thank God we didn't get one, but instead one who could keep his head when all about were losing theirs, who could re- main calm eyed while the panic reigned, who could be different, who could experiment, who sense the full size of the peril and take such chances as were necessary to the rescue.
 Perhaps you think we are growing emotional. Maybe we are. We must admit that we are a bit fed up with the Hate Roosevelt" chorus that has been sung in recent months by the very supermen that Roosevelt saved.
 But it is not our intention to rest our case on our motions. Rather we want to put in words why we think it was possible only for a man of Roosevelt's vision to lead us out, and then why we believe it would be a stupendous blunder to defeat him for reelection in the mid dle of a recovery which he is so certainly accomplishing.
 Roosevelt,s tribute to the for gotten man, early in the days of the 1892 campaign, was more than friendly political gesture toward the less fortunate. It expressed a philosophy both of government and of economics. It represented a realization that our society had become lopsided that powerful and organized interests which had been able to have their way with the gov- ernment were actually en- dangering 1t.
 Some 40 millions of our popu- lation were farmers or depen- dent upon the farms. They had not been prosperous during the years in which we were preen- ing ourselves on being the most prosperous nation on earth, and millions of others in the cities were without the wherewithal to buy more than the bare ne- cessities of life. And this null titude, after all, was the poten- tial market on which real and permanent and countrywide prosperity could be based.
 Roosevelt had the vision to see that capacity to produce had outrun capacity to consume, and that the answer must be found in creating 8 balance.