Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1944-09-23
" the Associated Press.

night:
During the past two weeks I have
travelled once again across this
great continent of ours, from AL
bany to Occur d'Alene, then down
the magnificent sweep of the
Pacific Coast from Seattle to your
great city of Los Angeles. 1 wish
it were possible for every Amer
lean to share this rich experience
Only to see the natural wealth and
beauty of own country to talk
with our people where they live
is a profound and moving ref
utation of the defeatist New Deal
doctrine that America has passed
its prime. Our country Is still
young, still vigorous, still capable
of growth. Once we get a ma
tional administration which be-
lieves in our economic system and
in the American people-there Is
no limit to America.
In the course of this trip, ]
have talked with thousands OF
people, individually and in groups
to labor leaders and to farm
ers, to cattlemen and ranch hands,
to politicians, to business and pro-
fessional people, to soldiers and
sailors, to housewives and news
papermen. 1 have done some talk
ing. but lot more listening.
Most Moving Thing.
The most moving thing about my
trip this year is that I find our
people, wherever they live, are in
a mood to work together. They
want national administration In
Washington that will help them
work together. They are thoroughly
fed up with Government policies
with divide the West from the East
and the Middle West from both. They
are fed up with policies which
divide the farmer, the business
man and the workingman into
rival and contending groups.
Men and women from all parts
of our country have been fighting
and working side by side in this
war. They want to work together
with the same unity when peace
comes. They want to meet the
problems of reconversion fairly and
Justly, without advantage to any
section over any other section of
the country. The great industrial
plants you have built here in the
West to produce for war must have
an equal opportunity to convert to
peacetime production with the in
dustrial plants of the East and the
Middle West. The workers in all our
war plants, wherever located, must
have an equal opportunity for
peacetime jobs.
Our people are thinking very
much alike upon the major queS-
tions of our day. Moreover, they
are approaching these questions in
similar mood. They are search
ing for constructive answers to
our problems. They are keenly
aware of the mistakes and plumbers
of the past. They want to put
those mistakes and plumbers behind
They are not thinking in terms of
the past. They are thinking in
terms of the future.
War Comes First.
| First in the minds of all of us is
| the winning of the war. Every one
is agreed that the war can
end only with the complete defeat
of Germany and Japan, right in
Germany and Japan. We want
nothing short of total, crushing VIC
tory. That comes before every
thing else. Then we want to get
the men and women in our armed
forces back home as promptly as
possible.
The next thing uppermost in
the minds of all our people is the
securing of a lasting peace. Among
the thousands Of people that !
talked with was an Indian mother In
Wyoming. She was leading her
little 2-year-old son by the hand
She had a gold star pinned on the
blanket she wore over her shoulders
She came up to me and pointed to
the little boy and said: His
father killed in France" Then she
said: You make sure we never
have another war"
That Indian mother spoke what
is in the heart of all Americans
today. They want America to join
with the other peace-loving ma
tons of the world in building a
permanent organization for peace
And they know that if this great
undertaking is to succeed, it must
not be the work of one party or of
one man. Representing the as
piration of all our people, it must
be bipartisan effort, having the
support of all people.
Wandering About Jobs.
Everywhere people knew and ap-
proved of the joint efforts of Secre-
tary Hull and myself to establish
bipartisan cooperation for a perma-
menent world organization to main
tain lasting peace.
A third important thing on
everybody's mind is the question of
jobs here at home after the war is
over. From one side of the country
to another, our people are de-
| termined that we are not going back
to the ten million unemployed We
had in 1910 They know that under
the New Deal we had to have a
world war to get jobs. You don t
have to tell people that They
haven't forgotten it. And they are
worried about it. They are worried
about it because they remember
that in all those long years from
1888 to 1910, this country failed for
the first time in its history to
achieve real economic recovery and
go ahead of previous decades.
The American people are thinking
about the problem of how we are
to obtain economic security with
out sacrificing our personal freedom
Last night in San Francisco I dis
cussed the philosophy of govern
ment which I believe we must estab-
lish if we are to achieve the goa.
we seek-freedom and opportunity
with the fullest measure of economic
security.
Tonight I am going to talk about