Evening Star Newspaper, September 11, 1936, Page 18

THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTO! C., FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1936. P . e P MR ra 666, R R R RRRRERBRRRERESSSEEBSDE=ESS Text of Roosevelt Address Better Conditions in Homes and Farms and Factories Leading Toward *‘Green Pastures,” He Tells Rally. By the Associated Press. CHARLOTTE, N. C., September 10. =—Following is the text of President Roosevelt's address at the Municipal Btadium yesterday. Green pastures—what a memory those words call forth. In all our schooling, in every part of the land, no matter to what church we hap- pen to belong, the 23d Psalm is in all probability better known to men, women and children than any other poem in the English language. And in this great lyric, what do we best remember? Two lines: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; “He leadeth me beside the still waters.” It does not greatlys matter whether that symbol of an ideal of human physical and spiritual hap- piness was written in its original 38,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 years ago. It might have been written as well in the twentieth century of the Chris- tian era. Happiness Described In Simple Terms. Have you ever stopped to think that happiness is most often de- scribed in terms of the simple ways of nature rather than in the com- plex ways of man's fabrications? Perhaps it is because peace is nec- essary to ultimate happiness. Per- haps, therefore, when we seek a symbol of happiness, we do not go to the rush of crowded city streets or to the hum of machinery to find the simile. The ancient psalmist did not use the parable of the merchants’ camel train or the royal palace or the crowded bazaar. He had, as we have, the problems of competing trade, of social crowding, and, I venture to suggest, that long before the Christian era the ancient civili- zations of the East were confronted with problems of social economics which, though small in point of human numbers and small in point of worldly goods, were still, by com- parison, as potent in their effect and as difficult in their solution as the extraordinarily similar problems of social economics that face us in this century. Be it remembered then, that the ancient kings and prophets revert- ed, just as we do today, to the good earth and the still waters when they idealized security of the body and mind. A recent writer has suggested that the present President of the United States, because of birth and training and natural proclivity, in- evitably reverts to terms of land and ‘water in his approach to any great public problem. I fear that I must plead gulilty to this charge—though I do so with the reservation that this is in spite of the fact that during the greater part of my life I have been in far closer contact with the more exciting and more highly competitive give and take of the profession of the law. The practice of business and the exac- tions of public service. Says Millions Hope For Green Pastures. Green pastures—millions of our fellow Americans, with whom I have been associating in the past fortnight, out on the great plains of America, live with prayers and hopes for the fulfillment of what those words imply. Still waters— millions of other Americans, with whom I also have associated, live with prayers and hopes either that ‘the floods may be stilled—floods that bring with them destructicn and disaster to flelds and flocks, to homesteads and cities—or else 1aok for the Heaven-sent rains that will fill their wells, their ponds and their peaceful streams. Many years ago I talked with 8 learned man about this conti- nent—what it was like when the white man came. I asked him, “Were the great plains, which ex- tend hundreds of miles upon hun- dreds of miles from the Rockies near to the Mississippi, always bare of trees, always the pasturage of great waves of bison and millions of antelope?” “Yes,” he replied, “for many hundreds of years be- fore the white man came, but it is my belief that trees could have grown and still could grow on those plains, but that they were nrevented from doing so by the constant suc- cession of prairie fires, some of them set by lightning and some of them by the red men.” . I asked him whether the streams of the Southland were always brown before our white ancestors moved in. He replied, “no, in those STANDARD FOR MANHATTANS .. Now America’s earlier days, during the greater part of the year, the Southern rivers were clear streams, except in the Springtime, when they had many freshets and floods, just as we do. When that occurred, soil was washed from the uplands and the mountains into the Atlantic Ocean, but because they were sea- sonal only in their effect, the natural accretion of new topsoil took the place of that which had run off to the sea.” Hopes This Be Called Era of Rebuilding. If history gives a name to the age in which we are living, I hope it will call this era of rebuilding— for it is my firm conviction that unless, in our generation, we start to rebuild, the Americans of a cen- tury hence will have lost the greater part of their natural and national heritage. It is because in these latter years T have spent so great & part of my life in this Southland, and because I have come to know its fine peo- ple, its brave history, its many prob- lems, that I speak not as a stranger to you who are gathered here from the seven States. I have seen the denuding of your forests; I have seen the washing away of your topsoil; I have strug- gled through the red clay roads in the Springtime. I have taken part in your splendid efforts to save your forests, to terrace your lands, to harness your streams and to push hard-surfaced roads into every county in every State. I have even assumed the amazing role of a columnist for a Georgia newspaper that I might write powerful pieces against burning over the farm woodlots in favor of the cow, hog and hen program. May I add that it is because of practical experience on my own farm that many years before I was inaugurated President I came to the conclusion that cotton, as it stood then, was essentially a specu- lative crop and that the planter of cotton, because he had nothing to say about the price he would re- ceive, could never tell when he put the seed in the ground whether he would make a big profit by selling his crop for 25 cents a pound or go broke by selling his crop for 5 cents a pound. Objective for Cotton Is Told to Wallace. 1t is perhaps a bit of history hitherto unrecorded that in the month of March, 1933, I said this to Secretary of Agriculture Wallace: “In respect to cotton, I have & definite objective: The cotton farmer has been cursed for a generation by the fact of insecurity. The price for his crop has run up the scale and down the scale and up the scale and down the scale again. In recent years his total aggregate production has been so great that 13,000,000 bales over- hang the market. He will starve on 5-cent cotton—the South will starve on 5-cent cotton—and just as long as tkis appalling carry-over hangs over the market, he will never get a price that will even bring him out whole. My objective is to control and reduce that surplus: To get for him 10-cent cotton our first year in office and to get him 12-cent cotton or more for the pext three years. You and I must Keep that goal ever before our eyes.’ And, my friends, I ask you in simple fairness, have we attained that goal? You know the story of cotton. You know the story of tobacco, too. There again your National Government had a goal. I don't believe that the great tobacco-grow- ing States of the Nation would wish to go back- to the days of “every man for himself and let the devil take the hindmost.” Again, long before I went to ‘Washington, I was convinced that the long road that leads to green pastures and still waters had to begin with a reasonable prosperity. It seemed axiomatic to me that a cotton farmer who could get only 5 cents a pound for his crop could not be in a position properly to fertilize his land, or to terrace it, or to rotate his crops, or to keep a cow or a few head of cattle, or to plant a little orchard, or to cul- tivate a garden—in other words, to work out for himself and his family a well-rounded, reasonably secure life that would tide him over a lean year of drought. The same thing held true, I thought, in the case of the farmer whose principal crop was tobacco favorite cocktail MARTINI & ROSSI VERMOUTH A SVAY lmported by W, A. TAYLOR & CO., NEW YORK or whose principal crop was peaches or whose principal crop ‘WAaSs corn. Decent Farm Income Held Vital to Plan. In other words, we could not go ahead to the next step in the pre- vention of soil erosion through- out the South, to the trarsfer of thin pastures into forests and of submarginal plowed land into pastures and trees snd the use of meny modern methods to stop soil erosion and to prevent floods until and unless the farmers of the Southland were able to make a reasonably decent living out of their main crops. ‘Today, because of better prices for farm commodities, we are actually and actively engaged in taking these second steps. Not only have we aroused public understanding and approval of the need of ending soil erosion and water run-off, but we have en- abled the public, through a prac- tical prosperity, to begin to pay their debts, to paint their houses, to buy farm tools and automo- biles, to send more boys and girls through school and college, to put some money in the bank and inci- dentally to know for the first time that the money in the bank is safe. 80 much for the green pastures and the still waters in their more JSulius Lansburgh Furnitare Co. P31 OH literal physical jferms. Those ane clent words apply, however, with equal force to men and women and children. Your life and mine, though we work in the mill or in the office or in the store, can still be a life in green pastures and beside still waters. ¥ No man or womsan, nor family, can hope in any part of the coun- try, to attain security in a city of starvation wages any mcre than they can hope on a farm to attain security on starvation crop prices. I do not have to tell you, who live in any of these Southern States, which have factories in all of them, that a family that tries to subsist on » total wage income of $400 a year is just as much a drag on the prosperity of America the farm family that seeks to subsist on & yearly cash income of a hundred dollars. That is why most think- ing people believe that the na- tional recovery act, during its short term of life, accomplished as much for the restoration of prosperity through the establish- ment of the minimum wage. the shortening of hours and the elimi- nation of child labor, as any law put on the statute books of the Federal Government in the past century. In the Summer of 1934, the head of one of the great mail order houses said to me, “Do you remem- ber me telling you, in 1933, that the purchasing power of the South has dropped to almost zero? Look at this report of our sales in all the Southern Sfates. All of our sales have increased, buf those in the South have come back faster than any, and the reason is that the South at last has secured purchasing power.” Finally you and I have come in this fourth year of definite upturn to, appreciate another significant and inevitable result: We live un- der three kinds of government— and to all three we, as citizens, pay taxes. Our local estate taxes, mainly on real estate, go to the support of local and State func- tions of government such as schools, city and county adminis- trations, water supply, sewer sys- tems, street lighting, peace officers and State institutions. Our Federal taxes, none of which are on real estate, come in the form of tobacco and similar excises, and income, in- heritance and corporation taxes and are spent in the running of the Federal Government for na- tional defense, pensions, forests, parks, highways, public works and relief for the unemployed. Four years ago all of us, in every part of the United States, found that without any change in the local or State tax schedules the 10-Piece Dining Room Suite 137 It features the Italian Renais- sance in solid oak and combines quiet dignity with massiveness. The ten pieces include a Refec- tory Table, China Cabinet, Buf- fet, Server, Armchair and five Side Chairs. Beautifully carved and _attractively _finished with popular dull rubbed effect. Open a “]. L.” Budget Aecount LAN URGH tax receipts had fallen off to an alarming degree. The result was that counties and municipalities and States were failing to balance their budgets or else were unable to carry out the ordinary and or- derly functions and obligations of State and local government. Schobls were being closed or curtailed; teachers were unpaid; roads lacked repairs; the borrowing of money for permanent improvements had ‘become impossible. With the Fed- eral Government, despite sdditional new forms of taxes, receipts of nvl;nm in 1932 had been cut in half. Value of Private Assets Fell to Low Figures. y ‘The value of those tangible pri- vate assets on which taxes were levied had fallen so low that even if the income had been there to pay taxes with the sums received would have put all forms of gov- ernment increasingly in the red. And even when some ®*remnant of value remained on which to levy a tax, the taxpayer did not have the wherewithal to make the pay- ment and was beginning to lose the very property which was taxed. ‘That is why I go back to the original thesis that any common sense, logical governmental policy had to begin with the building up of farm and other property values, and crop values, and the increase of workers’ wages if that now his- toric corner was ever to be turned. History. records that only a few years ago farmers were not making both ends meet; workers in factor- jes were not making both ends meet; the small business man was not making both ends meet and the corporation was not making both ends meet. As a logical result, lo- sal governments were not making both ends meet and neither were State governmenis and neither was the National Government. Incidentally, as another result, the individual who had to borrow, the corporation which had to bor- ° row and the government which had to borrow—all were compelled to pay unconscienable and ruinous interest charges. Says 1936 Marks Return Of Many Into “Black.” History will also record that by the year 1936 a very much larger number of individuals are back in the black. 8o are most of our small business men, so are most of our corporations and so are almost all of our municipal and eounty and Btate ‘governments. History will also record that in- dividual and corporations and gov- ermnments are paying today a far more reasonable rate of interest than at any previous time in the history of the American republic. In the process of attaining these successful ends, individual liberties have not been removed, and inher- ent rights of the sovereign States have not been invaded. It was obvious, of course, because of the economic unity of the entire country that no group of individ- uals and no individuel States could, Ly themselves, take the action necessary to restore the purchasing power of the Nalion. Only the Federal Government could accoms« plish that, I speak to you today as commone sense American men and women. You will agree that from the ma- terial aspect, this Nation’s consum= ing power has been rapidly rea stored. I trust that you will like~ Wwise agree that better conditions on the farms, in the factories and in the homes of America are lead- ing us to the spiritual figure of the psalmist—green pastures and still waters. —_— Russia Settling Gypsies. Nurseries, kindergartens and schools in Russia are filling with gypsy chil- dren whose parents are being settled on Soviet collective farms. — Cuba is considering a proposal to regulate all tobacco for export. WHERE SMART PEOPLE SHOP 4-Pc. 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