United We Stand

NDN | Photo Gallery | Documents | Classroom | Search

United We Stand

James A. Farley
Postmaster-General; Chairman Democratic National Committee
Before Young Democrats, Indianapolis, Ind., August 20, 1937 [Condensed]

Publishing Information

IT is no mere coincidence that today finds all the mouthpieces of conservatism massed against the aims and processes of the New Deal. It is no accident that the Liberty League, pretending to be inactive, is doing a lot of subterranean work to balk the measures that our President has advocated and is advocating. It is no unpremeditated development that every newspaper that is tied in with the privilege interests is seeking to undermine the people's faith in the administration, which has lifted this country of ours out of the pit of depression to the highway of hope and renewed prosperity.
It did not happen without planning that the solid Republican Old Guard in the Senate and House of Representatives is lined up to obstruct the passage of the laws that are absolutely necessary if the course of recovery is to continue. Really, it seems to me, that the Republicans are the only members of the opposition group that have even a half-way decent excuse for their attitude. They are politicians. Naturally, they are seeking a return to the power from which they were expelled by the votes of 27,000,000 American citizens. They know that in the present temper of the country they have no chance and the only possible way in which they can advance their cause is to make the people believe that Franklin D. Roosevelt is on the wrong track. That behind his stupendous efforts which have been so successful for the betterment of conditions lies some sinister motive.
They cannot dispute that business which was prostrate when he came to the White House is now back on a plane where a dividend is not a strange phenomenon and where people again have adequate income. They cannot contradict industrial statistics that tell of millions of workers reemployed, of banks solvent and busy, of mills and factories, cold and silent a few years back, that are now pouring out their products to a population which is once more able to buy and to pay for what it buys. As a consequence, they are driven to vague prophecies of disaster and absurd charges that the President who has kept his head through the worst industrial crisis this nation has ever known, is now capable of monumental blunders that threaten the security of our American institutions. They are undertaking to convert our people to a belief that whatever the Administration does is wrong.
No small part of their campaign is to convey the impression that the President no longer enjoys the confidence of the country despite the circumstance that every by-election or other test of public sentiment shows that the President is as strong in the affections of his countrymen as he was when forty-six out of the forty-eight States voted for him and by that vote, told him that they were with him and to go ahead with his program.
It is from these hostile sources that proceeds the talk of a rift in the Democratic Party, of a rebellion in our ranks and disloyalty in our councils. Every time a member of a National legislature differs from the President on some detail, it is hailed as new evidence of the disintegration of our party. It is pure politics and nothing but politics, and to my mind, and I believe to your mind, it is stupid politics. We had a lot of it, of course, in the last campaign. Perhaps you all remember the straw votes hailed by the opposition and foretelling the election of Governor Landon to the Presidency. Doubtless you have not forgotten how the names of the few Democrats who deserted their party were paraded across the political stage of every Republican rally. Think back on the innumerable editorials in the G.O.P. newspapers. It was pointed out how vast sections of the Democratic army were following these leaders out of the fold. And then recall to your minds how flat and silly all these things appeared on election day. The opposition clamor of industrial collapse and Democratic demoralization are no more valid today than they were in the '36 campaign. There is no more substance to the scarecrows and to the phantoms that are being invoked by our political foes in 1937 than there was in 1936. Our country is well along on the upgrade. There are no threatening clouds industrially or politically, in sight. We are doing pretty well. Our national income as unfailingly told by our income tax reports is almost back to normal, unemployment is decreasing steadily, new enterprises are being undertaken everywhere. The record of investments shows that the American spirit of enterprise, which was dormant through the depression years, is again active.
There is this difference between our prosperity now and the hectic period of the big stock boom. Then the group that had piled up big fortunes were making huge profits, but the rest of us had a small share in the money-making. Today prosperity is general. My attention was called the other day to the circumstance that the average worker was finding in his pay envelope a third more than he had five years ago. In other words, the man who was making about eight hundred dollars a year in 1933, is now making twelve hundred dollars a year. When you multiply this gain by the additional millions of operatives who have been put to work since the present administration came to Washington, you get a staggering total of increased purchasing power among the masses. Really, the difference between a prosperous and a poverty-stricken time, is merely a question of this purchasing power. If the people have money to buy, the industrial establishments are able to sell, and this means more people at work more money for merchants, more clerks in the stores, and so on, all through the whole great commercial circle. The farmers of our country today are receiving for their products four billion dollars more than they received in the bad years. That of course means more farm machinery bought, more new automobiles and tractors, better clothes for the farmer and his wife, more of their children in schools and colleges. Better income of the farmers is reflected in the bigger sales in every branch of industry.
But, say these assailants of the Democratic administration, the budget isn't balanced. Now, nobody that I know, questions the advisability and the necessity of getting the expenses of Government within the range of the income of the Government and that will come about in a very much shorter time than most people think. But there is another side to this question. Who is there among you or among your friends, who has suffered the least inconvenience, to say nothing of damage, because the budget has not been balanced? How has it interfered with returning prosperity? Do you know anybody whose wages are less because of the budget situation? Do you know any business that has suffered because of the Treasury figures? They say that our children and our children's children will have to pay for it. We can only judge the future by the past. At various times in our national history, we have had to increase the national debt enormously and yet, within a relatively few years, the Government's income caught up with the Government's outgo, and that particular worry vanished without anybody being hurt. So it will be within the next few years.
Are the men and women of today paying for the huge war debt that was piled up twenty years ago? Are any of us conscious of despair or distress because the Government of that period was obliged to borrow an appalling amount of money? The boys and girls of the Young Democrats organization need have no dread that they will be crushed by taxes because of the money spent in public works or in direct relief. Those expenditures represent an investment on which our renewed prosperity are the dividends. That money saved us from industrial chaos and perhaps from political collapse. Because of those huge funds distributed in a thousand ways we escaped the riots and perhaps the revolutions that afflicted other countries. We came through the panic without social disturbance. Other nations were plunged into Communism or dictatorship. It seems to me that the circumstance that the United States alone among the great-nations of the world is not trembling at the imminence of war, is the best evidence that the Roosevelt Administration has done its work wisely, sanely and successfully.
In the time to come, the criticisms that have been heaped on this democratic administration will assume their true proportions. The critics will be revealed in all their cheapness and sordid partisanship. Of course, the tremendous task that President Roosevelt faced on his advent to the White House was not accomplished without errors and mistakes. What do they amount to in the face of the tremendous total of the happiness and contentment of our people?
Every great President at every crisis of our nation's affairs was subjected to just such a barrage of abuse; such a misrepresentation of motives as has characterized the assaults on today's incumbent in the White House. Yet who remembers the strictures and libels on Washington, Jefferson, Jackson or Lincoln? So will history deal with the present administration when enough time has elapsed to give a true perspective of its deeds and actions.
In Franklin D. Roosevelt America found a real leader. A chief who was not to be turned from his mission of civic and economic betterment by any influence. He has been guided by his splendid sense of justice; by his accurate perception of what was best for the whole people. He had the skill to plan a program as effective as it was unprecedented; the courage to venture on untrodden paths and the fortitude to keep at it, in the face of every hurdle entrenched privilege could put in his way. He is doing a marvelous work, and all of us may be proud that we have been with him in as fine an example of statesmanship and patriotism as any President ever undertook and carried out.