Henry A. Wallace, What America Can Have

Selected Works of Henry A. Wallace

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What America Can Have

Henry A. Wallace

Delivered at San Francisco on Monday, February 7 1944
From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944), edited by Russell Lord, p. 24.

At Los Angeles I sketched briefly what America wants. Here at San Francisco I propose to describe what we can get if we really want it badly enough to plan and work for it.
Let me first do what I can to kill the myth that the gigantic war debt will stand in our way. We can pay the interest an this debt and have a standard of living at least fifty percent higher than in the decade of the thirties. With seasonably full employment we can have a national yearly income of more than 130 billion dollars. We can produce 170 billion dollars of goods and services annually. This is no dream, for in 1943 we produced mare than 190 billion dollars of goods and services. With such an income we can carry the interest on our war debt and still have a whole lot more left over than we had at the top of the boom in 1929. The interest charge on all debts, private and government, in 1944 will represent only seven percent of our national income or no more than in the decade of the twenties.
But if we allow the thought of the national debt to scare us, it will hang as a millstone around our necks and we shall all be sunk in a sea of unimaginable difficulties. There is just one way to treat the war debt, and that is to remember that it can be carried easily if all of us are able to work hard and to use our natural resources and human skills to the maximum. The goods produced when we work hard and are fully employed will find a market if we raise our standard of living by forty percent. We can enjoy the things we have always wanted and thereby create such prosperity that we can carry the national debt easily; or we can pinch and save and bring an a depression, and let the national debt crush us. Farmers, workers and businessmen can all prosper, provided they are all willing to cooperate with each other and with government in furnishing the American people the things they ought to have, and then in buying and using the things that are offered for sale.
The important point now is to tell the American people about the things they can have two or three years after this war is over. We mustn't take "no" for an answer. The more we insist on getting the right kind of goods, the greater a market there will be for all of us. There is just one proviso. We can't afford to demand things that will hurt the welfare of the American consumers as a whole. Farmers, workers and businessmen can't afford to cut each other's throats.
Now let us talk about these things we can have, things over and above a new car and new radio, things that it is our duty to have if this American civilization is to grow and go forward. First, there is health. The people of. the United States would be at least thirty percent more efficient if they were in maximum good health. They would then be effective to a ripe old age, instead of often half effective only to middle life. Two generations ago in the United States every city dweller had to boil drinking water or run the risk of dysentery and typhoid. We cut down the death rate enormously when we made it possible for the people in the cities to get safe drinking water at a modest cost. At even less cost than for clean drinking water, we can see that liberal dosages of vitamins are added to flour and cornmeal, thus wiping out at one stroke the vitamin deficiencies which undermine the health and vigor of so many millions of our citizens, especially those who are past forty years of age. At a cost of two dollars per year per person, it would be possible to wipe out all vitamin deficiency diseases, extend the working life of the average individual ten years, and, of course, increase the vigor of at least half of our population. Any intelligent person operating the United States for profit would undoubtedly spend at least 250 million dollars a year for vitamins. By so doing he could get his money back in increased output ten times over the very first year.
Second to good and plentiful food, I would put good and plentiful hospitals. With more hospitals adequately equipped and staffed, combined with a commonsense public health program, we can stamp out tuberculosis, syphilis and possibly malaria. Everyone in the United States ought to have an annual physical checkup and have the privilege of going to a hospital if a competent doctor thinks it necessary. If it is wasteful to let a soldier go without proper medical service, it is just as wasteful to let any American be sick for lack of proper medical attention. We ought to be spending four times as much on hospitals and doctors, and nurses as we are now spending and we should be getting at least ten times as much good out of the medical profession as we now get.
After good health, and closely allied to it, I would put good housing. Most of the houses of the United States are out of date and seriously run down, especially on the farms. Governmental housing authorities, both in England and the United States, have learned a lot about cheap, good housing during the past five years. With money available at low rates and with various types of monopoly rackets eliminated, both government and private industry can build good houses at amazingly low cost. Prefabrication will play its part in bringing the cost down. As soon as we have settled down after the war, we should build at least a million houses a year until such time as we have completely modernized ourselves. Ten years from now we shall find that struggling along with an old house is like tinkering with an old car which every few weeks runs up an expensive garage bill. When the house of the future is perfected as it can be, it will be possible for the housewife to do her cooking, cleaning and marketing with one-third the labor which she now expends.
Next after housing I would list rural electrification. We can furnish electricity to every house in the United States except in those exceptional areas where the population is thin and the distances between farms are too great. With electricity practically everywhere, three-fourths of the housewives should have not merely electric refrigerators but also quick-freeze or deep-freeze machines to carry garden stuff and meat over from the time of seasonal plenty to the time of scarcity. Electricity widely spread, combined with good roads, cheap automobiles and special types of machines for small farms, will result during the next ten or twenty years in millions of families relocating on small acreages within driving distance of the factory or business where the man of the house works. Fifty years ago the slogan "Ten acres and liberty" was a trap which made fools out of most of those who fell for it. But today, with all the conveniences which rural electrification and good roads make possible, five or ten acres can furnish an enjoyable and profitable outlet for the energies of a growing family. Sunshine and fresh air, combined with good milk and eggs and the vegetables and fruits which can be preserved the year around, will make the small farm a joy forever to all of those who have any instinct for the soil and the living plants and animals which grow upon it. Rural electrification, and the inventions which naturally go with it, will hasten the march of the common man back to the country and nature. It will restore to the family much of the significance which it had a hundred years ago. A small farmer who works most of the time in town can, with the help of his family, produce more than half of the food which he eats. He can also have a little in the way of vegetables, eggs and milk to sell. Small, part-time farming near a city can become so important by the year 1975 as to be one of the significant balance wheels of the nation.
So far as farmers generally are concerned, there are great things ahead, provided we can avoid a serious slump by having full employment in the nation at large. The future farm economy can easily feed the fifty million undernourished people better, provided they are well employed. Heretofore these people, except during a time of war, have never had enough to eat for the simple reason that they couldn't earn enough to pay for it. The biggest single marketing problem in American agriculture is to make sure that these people earn enough so that they can afford to buy the right kind of food. When the unusual European demand stops, as it probably will within a few years after the war comes to an end, it is important that these undernourished people come into the market with greater demands and more money to pay for what they want.
Technologically, the farmers will benefit from many new devices. In the West there must be more and more land brought under irrigation until all of the surplus water is utilized. Maximum water storage, both for irrigation and for power, will be needed if the Far West is to support the vast population which her manifest destiny so clearly foretells. Nothing must stand in the way of this destiny because it is the destiny of the United States itself to look as much toward the Far East as it now looks toward Europe. I well remember in 1909 sitting in Sacramento with W. A. Beard, the California member of Theodore Roosevelt's Country Life Commission, speculating as to what would have happened if the Pilgrim Fathers had landed at Golden Gate instead of at Plymouth. A New Zealander was saying to me the other day that some day San Francisco will contain as many people as New York City. I can hear the tramp of the coming millions as they move in to fulfill the destiny of the West.
Perfected types of tractors and ground-tillers are certain to come into use after this war. New fertilizers, new varieties of crops, new methods of feeding and better methods of soil conservation will be perfected. The revolution in agriculture which started with improved farm machinery three or four generations ago and with the discoveries of the Experiment Stations will proceed with accelerated pace. The ability of one farm family in the United States to feed itself and four families in town is the strength of our great nation both in war and in peace. This efficiency must and will be further improved. The only thing which can stand in the way of it is unemployment long continued in the cities, for the two indispensable halves of prosperity are growing efficiency matched by growing markets.
Next after improved health, universal electrification and improved agriculture, I would list as a sound business proposition better schools, especially in rural America. Our children can grow up to improve and enrich this nation only if they have good food, good schools and good direction. We need more and better schools, more and better teachers. We need and can have federal aid for those sections of the country where because of poverty the school system is lagging. The poor, agricultural regions are rich in children whereas the rich, city wards are poor in children. Therefore the children and the grandchildren of the poor have a significance far greater even than their own ancestors would have dared hope. The prevention of youth erosion is more important than the prevention of soil erosion. It is even better business to stop youth waste than to stop soil waste. Educational opportunities for young people must come first; but as the Scandinavians discovered, improved adult education is a tremendous additional asset for any nation.
The ten million families at the bottom of the pile in the United States have demonstrated during the past two years that they can do good work, provided they have enough to eat and the opportunity to get good training. The salvation or damnation of the United States depends in considerable measure on how efficiently we can keep these people at work. If they are kept at work at good wages, they can furnish an annual market for at least fifteen billion dollars' worth of goods and services. If these people are at work they will buy something like a million cars a year from the automobile market. The women of these families, if they have the money, will buy nearly two billion dollars' worth of clothing and household furnishings. If they can be assured of steady jobs, these ten million poorest families will furnish a market for at least a hundred thousand new homes every year. Also we shall have, instead of human waste and misery and burdensome charity, ten million busy, hopeful families.
People talk about acres of diamonds or gold mines in the backyard. The real gold mine in our national backyard is the ten million poorest families who before the war bought only about five billion dollars worth of stuff a year, but who can easily furnish a market for fifteen billion if they are given opportunities in the postwar period.
When I talk at Seattle the day after tomorrow, I shall have something to say about how these people can be put to work. Tonight I am only saying that they can and must be given jobs. Their productivity, the size of the market which they can contribute to our businessmen and the health and education of their children mean too much to the rest of us to be neglected.
We can and must give our poorer people a chance to work productively if we are as serious about total peace as we have been about total war.
Most of the new goods and services we want after the war can be supplied by private enterprise. But some of the services and some of the employment will have to come from public works, which too are a source of employment.
Every township, every county and every city in the United States should list both the private enterprise and the public works projects which it would like some day to have. Provided these schemes have fundamental merit, we can have eventually all the thing's that make for a high standard of living—good roads, airfields, flood control, parks, recreational projects, conservation and planting of forests, conservation of wildlife, conservation of soil, regional T.V.A.s and all that vast multitude of things which the government can do and which no individual can. All of these activities are self-liquidating from a long-run national point of view. They should be carried on in all years except when there is danger of inflation or shortage of labor.
The greatest economic sin is waste of human labor. In the decade of the thirties waste of human labor deprived this country of 200 billion dollars of goods we might have had, or more than the war has cost us to date.
The greatest threat to a balanced budget is unemployment. Unemployment is the one thing that can break all of us. A would-be statesman who in the name of budget-balancing costs a million people their jobs will cost the national income two billion dollars a year. That is a lot to pay for a few wrong ideas. The problem of budget-balancing is first of all one of keeping people fully employed producing efficiently the things we want. We have the people and the resources and the technical "know-how" to produce more than we ever dreamed we could. But we must have also the management "know-how" at the statesmen's level to keep these sources of wealth fully employed. Without that "know-how," our economy will be as helpless as the Army and Navy would be without a General Staff. Then the budget can be balanced and the national debt can be kept under control. No such results can be hoped for if we drift into a kind of unemployment by default. You can't beat something with nothing; we can't beat unemployment with anything but positive programs aimed at full employment.
There will be one great test of statesmanship after the war, and that is our ability to maintain the maximum useful employment over a long period of years and at the same time preserve our democratic liberties. I say to the people of America that we will win the peace only if we keep the people of our country at work—in freedom, in the increased production of goods that promote the public welfare and give us an opportunity to enjoy life and educate our children. We have proved that in war, when our will is roused to a great purpose, we can put forth efforts and rise to levels of national prosperity beyond anything in our history. We have found the leaders in government, in business, in agriculture and labor who, together with the millions in every walk of life, have revealed our great productive power. In peace, when we are free of the terrific waste of warfare, we can devote our will and our efforts to improving our country and we can attain results beyond anything we ever had previously hoped.
We can, if we will all co-operate, produce more peacetime goods in 1954 than we did of total goods in the war peak year of 1944. The Nazis say that only war can call forth a supreme effort. I say that the challenge of peace is even greater than that of war and that we can and must measure up to it in terms of increased productivity and vital living.

Introduction | Essay | Documents | Resources

Selected Works of Henry A. Wallace

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