RELEASE TO SUNDAY PAPERS, FEBRUARY 13th
RADIO SPEECH OF SENATOR WARREN R. AUSTIN (R), OF VERMONT,
Delivered Before Republicans of Central New York State at
Lincoln Day Dinner, Utica, New York, February 12, 1938,
and Broadcast Over Columbia Broadcasting System, (Station
WIBX), from 9:15 to 9:45 P.M.
"WHAT REPUBLICANS CAN DO ABOUT IT
This celebration of the birth of Abraham Lincoln in the 33rd Congressional
District of New York appropriately stresses the responsibilities of the Republican
Party, the origin and character of which embodied the conscience of a nation under
his leadership.
Here, in the District so well represented in Congress now by Dr. Fred J.
Douglas, lived some of Lincoln's great contemporaries: Francis Kernan, Congress¬
man from 1863 to 1865, a Democrat, whose course was so marked by a spirit of jus¬
tice and moderation that he was often consulted by President Lincoln regarding the
conduct of the war; Horatio Seymour, Civil War Governor of New York, who on one
occasion said: "Opposed to the election of Mr. Lincoln, we have loyally sustained
him. Differing from the administration as to the course and the conduct of the
war, we have cheerfully responded to every demand made upon us. Today we are put¬
ting forth our utmost efforts to reinforce our armies in the field ***." And
who, on another occasion, said: "I would count my life as nothing, if I could but
save the nation's life** *." And Roscoe Conkling, Civil War and Reconstruction
period statesman, brilliant Republican leader and exponent of State's rights. Here
also, were the homes of those two immortal supporters of constitutional liberty
and limitations: Elihu Root and Vice-President James S. Sherman.
Is it fancy, that these mighty shades, aroused by the turbulence of our times,
waken from their sleep and impress upon us the validity of the cause we espouse?
Republican Party the Implement.
The Republican Party is the one great political organization which can rally
to its standard and implement the forces needed to save the American form of
government.
The Democratic Party is powerless to do so because it is dominated by those
members who have sought, and still seek, legislation that would break the barriers
between State and Federal power, between the Executive and Judicial Departments,
and between the Executive and Legislative Departments; and, more significant still,
that would defeat the control by the people under their Constitution. These check.
on government are indispensable safeguards of the inhabitants from injustice and
oppression.
There are many Democrats, who, like Kernan and Seymour, are devoted to the
guarantees of civil and religious rights, but the New Deal is not under their wise
guidance.
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The cause is government by the people, through
their own basic laws and institutions.
The same cause was prosecuted to sublime victory by the Republican Party in
the past. It can, and shall be, triumphantly promoted now. Lincoln expressed it
in these straight-forward terms:
"You can have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the
Government, while I shall have the most solemn one, to pre¬
serve, protect and defend it."
The issue is created by the legislation and
practices of the New Deal.
All who hear me know of the abridgment of home rule, and aggrandizement of
Federal power, of the invasion of privacy, of the cancellation of contracts, and
repudiation of other obligations, of the penalizing of enterprise, the intimidation
of busines, the curtailing of rights, of the regimentation of production, and de¬
struction of wealth, of the attempt to straight-jacket labor, and increase the cost
of living, of the relentless aggression of government upon private efforts by direct
competition, and by regulation that amounts to management. All know of the injury
to the priceless right of the people to a Congress independent of the Executive,
and all know of the attempt made, and frustrated, to seize control of the Courts,
and deprive the citizen and minorities of a sanctuary to which they may flee when
oppressed by an aggressive State. These, and other evil transactions, occurred
under the guise of emergency.
BUT DO ALL KNOW THAT THERE ARE PENDING NOW PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION
TO MAKE THESE SEACKLES ON OUR LIBERTIES PERMANENT?
The President furnished the name for them when he said:
"They realize that in 34 months we have built up new
instruments of public power. In the hands of a people's
government this power is wholesome and proper. But in
the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy
such power would provide shackles for the liberties of
the people."
In simple words, nothing save the beneficence of the Mighty at Washington stands
between us and bondage!
But hear these proposed amendments of the fixed law to live by, and redouble
your efforts to defend your rights:
By Mr. Gray, Democrat, of Pennsylvania -
"The Congress of the United States shall have the
power and authority to regulate by law maximum hours,
minimum wages, and working conditions in industry,
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mining, manufacturing in the United States and the
several States."
By Mr. Amlie, Farmer-Laborite, of Wisconsin, a long amendment including:
"The Congress shall have power to enact laws providing
for the ownership, operation and management, through
instrumentalities of the Government of the United
States, of business, manufacturing, commerce, industry,
and banking, and shall have the power to purchase and
condemn by eminent domain such enterprises.
Then follow other sections that would give Congress power to create a government
monopoly of labor, to make capital levies without apportionment among the several
States, and without regard to any cnesus or enumeration, and to do away with all
limitations on legislative power to seize, condemn, and take over, all private
property and business mentioned.
Incredible?
Now, even without such a grant of power, the Administration sponsors a bill
in this Session of Congress to take over the ownership of land and water for flood
control and power purposes located in the New England States without the consent of
the States, and despite their vigorous protest and resistance! These States have
a compact, which has been approved by their several legislatures. But the ratifi¬
cation of this compact by Congress is blocked by the Administration because it
reserves to the States control of their own resources. This is only the beginning.
Mr. Kvale, Farmer-Laborite, of Minnesote, introduced a proposal to amend the Con-
stitution to enable Congress during the existence of an emergency (not defined),
to regulate the production and marketing of any and all commodities, and to pre¬
scribe minimum wages and maximum hours for labor. It would suspend the operation
of State laws to the extent necessary to give effect to the Federal Act.
Mr. Pierce, Democrat, of Oregon, would just reverse the relation of the States to
the Republic by an amendment surrendering all authority to Congress and having it
delegate only such authority to the States as it should choose.
Heretofore, the people have made the States and themselves the great reservoir
of power and delegated to Congress only limited power. By this means they have
prevented the establishment of empire.
Here is the wording of the proposal:
"Congress shall have the power to promote the economic
welfare of the United States by such laws as in its
judgment are appropriate, and to delegate such power
in whole or in part to the States."
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Mr. Gray, Democrat, of Indiana, proposes to simplify the concentration of control
of our lives in Washington by an amendment containing just twelve words:
"The Congress shall have power to regulate and control
agriculture and industry.
This proposal has the same quality of finality as does hanging to stop a pain in
the neck!
Mr. Bankhead, Democratic Senator from Alabama, makes a proposal to amend the Con¬
stitution to enable Congress to be the sole judge of what agricultural and indus¬
trial commodities affect interstate or foreign commerce, and to regulate the pro¬
duction, manufacture, transportation, and distribution thereof and the hours and
wages involved therein. This is ingenuous, is it not? As we recall the Bankhead
Cotton Control Act, now void, we cannot doubt that Congress would accommodate its
findings to New Deal experiments affecting any of the major necessities of man and
beast.
Four other amendments have been offered having objectives similar to the fore-
going. In general, they all contemplate the abandonment by the people of their
freedom, and making permanent these shackles which were applied in the paroxysms of
their distress.
The obvious outstanding duty of the Republican Party is to lead the hosts of
Americans who realize the trend toward authoritarian government, in an energetic
campaign against the legislation pending, and against its authors in coming elect¬
ions, and for the adaptation of government to our social and economic needs.
While we were in the happy days of pump priming, rolling up the public debt
and loading down private enterprise with taxes, the President was reported as
saying at Charleston, South Carolina:
"Yes, we are on the way back - not by mere chance -
not by a turn of the cycle. We are coming back more
soundly than ever before because we planned it that
way and don't let anybody tell you differently."
(I suppose the applause was commensurate with the modesty of that admission.)
Since then, we have lost the way.
The futility of the New Deal economic program is as ridiculous as an attempt
to baptize a tall negro in a little pool. When his head was immersed, his feet
came out; when his feet were immersed, his head came out. The parson couldn't save
him!
The New Deal program promoted scarcity by reducing production. This increased
prices and consumers were unable to buy so many units of production. The pay of
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workers was increased but the money in the pay envelope was reduced in purchasing
power, and the wage rise was outrun by the price rise. Advancing prices at the
expense of consumers checked buying and reduced demand. The scarcity program and
reduced demand finds adjustment now in increased unemployment.
The pump-priming schemes required vast amounts of capital. To serve this
necessity taxes were increased and penalties were imposed on investors. This com¬
pelled them to withdraw from the Nation's business its prudent surpluses. With-
drawal of surpluses, and payment, in other cases, of heavy penalties, crippled
factories and mills by reducing working capital and reserves. Securities based on
such business fell more precipitately than in 1929. If this sequence continues the
revenues of the Government will shrink, and further folly be resorted to in an
attempt to save our civilization.
A "recession," as they euphemistically call it, caught up with us, and we
naturally ask:
"Are we "on the way back?
"don't let anybody tell you differently" than that "we planned it that way!"
A traveler in Vermont asked a man at the roadside:
"Do you know the way to Rutland?
"No,sir, he replied.
"Do you know the way to Burlington?
"No, sir.
"Well, you don't know very much, do you?
And the Vermonter replied:
"No, sir, but I ain't lost."
An all time high degree of industrial turbulence and strikes has sprung up
in the uncertainty created by Government's attitude toward employers and employees,
and has been fostered by the Administration's fomentation of class hatred. In the
first ten months of 1937 there were more than 4000 strikes, causing a loss in
excess of 26,000,000 man-days of work.
Those who must plan (not as politicians plan) to run business, and open the
mills to employment, logically question the motives of the Administration in its
conflicting declarations regarding holding companies and monopolies. They pause
for acts that will restore confidence. This contributes to the present hiatus in
the Nation's business.
Our national debt has mounted to incomprehensible figures, with our apparent
economic gains therefrom wiped out. The number of unemployed approximates 11
millions, as sad a condition as existed when we began our profligate spending and
wasting.
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The conditions caused by the New Deal impel the suffering and apprehensive
citizens of this country to study government as earnestly as did the people in the
period of Abraham Lincoln.
BUT I WOULD INSPIRE PATRIOTISM, AND NOT FOSTER DISCOURAGEMENT; I WOULD INVOKE
SELF-SACRIFICE, AND RALLY VOLUNTEERS INDIVIDUALLY AND enmasse TO THE CAUSE OF
KEEPING OUR GOVERNMENT FREE, AND REVIVING PRODUCTION, MANUFACTURING AND COMMERCE
We should take courage from our glorious past, and tighten up our belts in
the confidence that we have adequate resources therefor, both material and spirit¬
ual.
This is not the first time that Americans have faced the question whether a
nation dedicated to freedom can endure. Our country has emerged from each crucial
test with richer attainments in common and individual rights and safeguards. On
the ruins left by the Civil War rose a grander edifice of unity, a more impregnable
fortress of constitutionalisi. State's rights survived in spite of the futility
of secession, to remain the peculiar agency of popular sovereignty. The reconcil¬
iation between democracy and empire made by the founders acquired a validity
expressed in a superb republic, in the self-restraint, tolerance, moderation, and
justice, of whose sway the United States became leader of all civilizations in
advancing science and industry, in production of wealth, in raising the standard
of living and culture, and in freedom of civil and religious activity.
To this achievement, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party gave the theory
and the motivating impulse. The American worker and farmer, American capital and
enterprise, were its flesh and blood.
Above all, God in his heaven ordained that the American people should be the
vehicle of his blessing of liberty and equal protection under the laws, to all men,
without regard to color, race,or creed.
Dr. Brooks asked Lincoln how much time he devoted to his relations to God, and
Lincoln replied:
"I spend more time on my relations to God than any other
thing. I would consider myself the veriest blockhead if
I thought I could get through with a single day's business
without relying on Him who doeth all things well."
Without ostentation, indeed, at times almost imperceptibly, but inexorably
the spirit of Christianity has ever been the underlying cause of our salvation
from the dangers through which we have come.
Never has the competency of the people to govern themselves been more evident
than during the period just passed. Within six months after voting the greatest
majority yet given to a Presidential candidate, the public came out positively
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opposed to his attempt to get control of the Judiciary Branch, and caused its de¬
feat. And their attitude toward four other great New Deal measures - to shackle
agriculture, to seize monopoly over labor, to sovietize industry, and to reorganize
the Government itself - was such that, by public protest, these measures were
stalled or bogged down. In this efficiency there is hope.
This aspect of self-government is the effective influence of public conscience,
intelligence, and diligence, on our legislative representatives. This indirect
action is not the most important responsibility of the citizen. The primary civic
duty is action of the individual at the polls. Individuals in sufficient number to
create the majority that wins elections must perceive the cost to them of the
artificial spurts of made work, of security dependent on promises of State, and of
Santa Claus-borne "abundant life."
In the past fiscal year, governmental net contribution to purchasing power
was reduced ahout $275 million a month. As the content of the well is lowered,
and pump priming ceases to make work, many individuals will understand from exper¬
ience what wisdom and virtue have been unable to impart.
Hate, implanted in sections, classes, and groups, and in opposing interests
and philosophies, obstructs reasonable action. All Americans regardless of labels,
assumed or pinned on them, who would save their country, belong together in one
irresistible effort. Good will, inherent in the Christian faith we hold, must
supplant it.
In our foreign relations, the United States is a proponent of peace, keeping
"ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture" as
George Washington recommended in his farewell address.
As a minority in Congress, Republicans have asked for justification of the
large appropriations for the Navy and the Army by a clarification of this Admin¬
istration's foreign policy.
This is a logical course in view of the conflicting attitudes of the Adminis¬
tration, and the failure to recognize events in the Orient as war and to put into
effect our unwise Neutrality Act. We ought to avoid threats followed by withdrawal
from the position we have taken.
However, we will support the Administration in efforts to maintain our tra-
ditional attitude of independence, though not isolation. We should avoid hasty
judgments regarding conditions which cannot be made public because their secrecy
may be vital to the "collective security" of nations desiring peace and abhorring
cruelty and oppression.
We need no compact with England. Our interests are mutual. Brothers in
democracy will cooperate in defense of each other. They did so on the Yang Tse,
in Manila Bay, and on Flanders Field, without long term alliances. But if
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emergency should require joint action, or independent non-action, let us maintain
a position which will enable us to give to the United States the authority that
arises from confidence and unity of the people.
In our domestic relations let us forthwith engage in direct action toward
sound recovery.
Fellow Republicans, I commend to you sacrifice. Give to the cause of free
government new energy by using its freedom now to put into effect in your business
and your service practices which will help to solve the social problems of your
individual communities: promotion of employer-employee harmony by understanding
and cooperation between management and employees; regularization of employment by
the establishment of reserves for that purpose, i.e., profits appropriated to
carrying on employment during depressions; adjustment of wages and hours by agree¬
ment.
Volunteers have already started the movement. Give it vogue, make it popular!
No politician or bureaucrat in Washington can be so competent os you are to adapt
the ideal to the practical in your business with its individual peculiarities. No
law having general application to employment relations of a whole continent can be
just or economically sound in widely different localities.
Moreover, you cannot prosper, and the nation's business must suffer, unless
you serve the people's interest.
Employees, management and stockholders join and share in the readjustments
in costs and prices dictated by changing degrees of prosperity and depression. In
the long run the sacrifices involved will be rewarded by a leveling of the valleys
and peaks of maladjustment, and by an enrichment of the lives of yourselves and
your coworkers.
But, you say, this good will program is made difficult by our Government!
Very well, then, exercise your right at the polls to turn out the administration
that penalizes theprovident accumulation of surpluses and dissipates them. Refuse,
this year, to reelect Congressmen who have advocated Constitutional amendments and
statutes which would coerce you and freeze costs, wages, hours, and quantity of
production. Refuse to support men who would put the Government into competition
with you, or enact legislation that gives the State the power of life and death
over industry and agriculture.
Reelect Republican Congressmen! In this District I am confident of your
determination to reelect that staunch advocate of an economic system that is flex¬
ible, and free to conform to the changing scene,- Dr. Fred J. Douglas. This is
your first political step toward the establishment of a government that is
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entitled to the confidence of private enterprise. Without opening the gates of
factories, old and new, the depression will not be alleviated and unemployment be
remedied. Elect men who will work for laws that furnish an incentive to invest
funds, assume responsibility, undertake risk, expend energy and create new wants,
new uses, and new jobs.
Prosperity is the fruitage of work. But the work must be in the cooperation
of land, capital, and men, pulling together under sound government policies. We
should not impoverish one class of consumers or producers by special privileges to
one in disregard of the effect upon others.
Take to the polls your demand that government protect the rights of men and
of property from coercion and violence. Insist that Governors enforce law and
order, and equal protection of the law for all.
Vote for candidates to Congress who will bring real relief from the destruct¬
ive excess surplus tax and the tax on capital gains. Support such tax bills as
raise revenue for financing of Government, and are not designed for limitation of
profits, confiscation of savings, or effecting political changes.
As a political party striving to help according to its moral responsibility,
let us freely and frankly abandon policies which are outmoded by conditions in
world economy, preserve the best in our experience, and propagate more unselfish
and broadly constructive policies.
State governments ought to sanction and aid economic and social progress in
intrastate affairs. Federal Government ought to supplement State statutes by
giving effect to State policy in interstate commerce.
Thirty thousand young men and women graduates of our schools will mingle with
the breadwinners of the United States this year. They have a contribution to make
to the general welfare, and they will eagerly undertake it if Government stops
talking security and more abundant life, and at the same time, creating insecurity
and apprehension, and enters upon an era of good will toward production.
Let us encourage the flow of funds into investment by assisting in the broad¬
ening of credit at low rates.
The Federal Home Loan Bank Act (initiated during a Republican Administration)
should be broadened, and a home-financing policy inaugurated that would enable
young people to build or acquire their own homes by making available to them, on a
liberal but sound basis, loans at low rates of interest. Federal credit or Federal
funds should be employed for this purpose as a preventive of ill housing. This
would be a wiser use of public funds than withholding for enforced relief purposes.
It would stimulate the building industry and employment. Moreover, it would
serve the even higher purpose of promoting self-reliance and self-respect.
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Let us favor construction profits. Inevitably this incentive will start a
sequence of investment, employment, production of plenty, and revenue with which
to pay our national debt, and balance our budget. Pending recovery, we will care
for the needy with the practical and non-political service and cooperation of local
self-government.
Let us press our undeniable claim that the American form of government has been
and will continue to be the best yet devised to insure the liberty, dignity, and
spirituality of man.
Moreover, in its liberal principles the competitive system, without compul¬
sion,
... has produced three times as much wealth as the whole world produced
before 1776.
... has distributed wealth so widely that even in the midst of the de¬
pression there were more than 44,000,000 savings accounts with aggre¬
gate deposits exceeding $24,000,000,000.
Approximately 10,000,000 members of building and loan associations, with
assets approaching $8,000,000,000..
... approximately 121,000,000 life insurance policies in force for a
108,
facevalue
eindstrial worker's money wages. In 1929 they were
has increse
three times as high as in 1890.
... has increased the purchasing power of wages - money wages related
to living costs - by 48% during the same period.
... has decreased the average hours of labor from 60 hours per week
in 1890 to 48 hours.
A gift which Robert Burns would have invoked from the gods (seeing ourselves
as others see us) comes to us in an article which recently appeared in The
London Sphere, entitled "JUST FOOLISHNESS." I quote:
The United States contains 6 percent of the world's
area and 7 percent of its population. It normally
consumes 48 percent of the world's coffee, 53 percent
of its tin, 56 percent of its rubber, 21 percent of
its sugar, 72 percent of its silk, 36 percent of its
coal, 42 percent of its pig iron, 47 percent of its
copper and 69 percent of its crude petroleum.
The United States operates 60 percent of the world's
telephone and telegraph facilities, owns 80 percent
of the motor cars in use, operates 33 percent of the
railroads. It produces 70 percent of the oil, 60
percent of the wheat and cotton, 50 percent of the
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copper and pig iron, and 40 percent of the lead and
coal output of the globe.
The United States possesses almost $11,000,000,000 in
gold, or nearly half of the world's monetary metal.
It has two-thirds of civilization's banking resources.
The purchasing power of the population is greater than
of the 500,000,000 people in Europe and much larger than
that of the more than a billion Asiatics.
Responsible lendership which cannot translate such a
bulging economy into assured prosperity is destitute of
capacity. But pompous statesmen, looking over the estate,
solemnly declare that the methods by which it was created
are all wrong, ought to be abandoned, must be discarded;
that the time has come to substitute political management
for individual initiative and supervision.
There is only one way to characterize that proposal - it
is just plain foolishness.
(End of Quotation)
Through individual self-reliance and service only can abundance, security and
progress be attained, and our economic plan must be such as to stimulate ambition,
afford opportunity, and excite in each boy and girl a sense of responsibility to
produce to his capacity. This can be done by the voluntary sacrifices that are
obvious to producer and consumer, employer and employee, lender and borrower, in a
new atmosphere of confidence, for which the political party in power will be
entirely responsible.
Fellow Republicans, ours has been the most successful experiment in government
in history. It has been, and will continue to be, enduringly successful only to
the degree to which it is free from the tyranny and unprincipled practices which
have brought about the downfall of governments since the beginning of history. If
we will constantly bear in mind that perfection alone is invulnerable, it will
clarify for us the perplexing phases of the changing scene. It will enable us, as
we "prove all things" to see more clearly how to "hold fast that which is good."
The Republican Party intends to preserve this system. It will earnestly serve
in the transition to still better things.
The Republican Party can defeat the spirit of encroachment of the Federal
Government on the several states, and of one department upon another;
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It can stop the consolidation of all the powers of the various independent
offices in the Chief Executive;
It can retain current control of expenditures of public moneys by maintaining
the independence of the Comptroller General whose fifteen year tenure of office
and answerability to Congress has heretofore made him fearless of departmental
power;
It can maintain the dignity and moral authority of the Supreme Court of the
United States, and the independence of the Federal Judiciary as a sanctuary of
the people from oppression. (It is as necessary to preserve reciprocal checks in
the exercise of political power as it was necessary to institute them.);
It can save the most fundamental characteristic of the American system of
Government from gradual enervation by insisting that changes in the distribution
or modification of the Constitutional powers shall be made only by amendment in
the way the Constitution designates, namely; by submission to the people themselves;
It can lead in the development and improvement of the American social and
economic system within the limitations of the fundamental law.
In the struggle toward these high objectives we shall carry forward in our
generation the great spirit of emancipation, of which Abraham Lincoln, the
founder of our party, was the incarnation.
I leave with you the beautiful concept of the spirit of Lincoln, expressed
by Representative John M. Robsion, of Kentucky, in 1925:
"It seems he took hold of the strong arm of God
with one hand and took the hands of the people in
the other.
—00000