Economy in Government

"CONGRESS IS THE HOPE OF AMERICA TODAY"

By HARRY F. BYRD, Senator from Virginia

Delivered at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the New Jersey Taxpayers Association,Newark, N. J., January 26, 1944

Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. X, pp. 424-430.

I HOPE that I can make you realize what a great pleasure it is to me to leave that madhouse at Washington—and the Senate, incidentally, was in a very angry mood today—and come here to speak to this wonderfully fine audience.

I am here primarily to express my appreciation as an American citizen for that notable and magnificent work that has been done by the New Jersey Taxpayers Association.

I want to say that we have a battle at home to win, my friends, as well as a battle abroad, and we must have such organizations as you have in New Jersey in every State in this Union, so that the people may be informed as to these

vital issues, and so that forces may be mobilized throughout America, free of selfishness, free of pressure from those groups who would desire special privileges from our Government, as otherwise no man can foretell what may happen to this great republic of ours.

Senator Borah told me when I first came to the Senate that you made very few close friends in the Senate of the United States because of the great pressure of work under which the Senators are compelled to live. But it so happens that two of my very closest friends in the Senate, among those that I have made, have been two Senators from New Jersey, Senator Barbour was one of the best friends I ever had. He, just before his untimely death, called me on the phone in Virginia and asked me to come and make this address.

I have learned to love and admire Senator Hawkins, and I want to say and say it here, as a Democrat paying tribute to a great Republican, that Senator Hawkes, by reason of his sincerity, his high patriotism and his great ability, has made an impression and has an influence in the Senate of the United States such as I have seen no other Senators obtain in the short time that he has served there.

I want to say, too, that the new Senator from New Jersey, Senator Walsh, is making a splendid impression upon his colleagues, and is rendering a most valuable and splendid service.

I have been requested to speak to you tonight in regard to economy.

I was elected, ladies and gentlemen, on the same ticket with the present President of the United States, which was some time ago. I was elected on that platform adopted in Chicago, which I think is the greatest document that has ever been adopted by any political party in the history of this country. I stood on that platform. The President abandoned that platform six months from the time that he took office, and I have been advocating economy in Washington ever since.

Joint Economy Committee

Now, the committee of which I have the honor to be chairman is known by the rather long name of the Committee for the Reduction of Non-Essential Federal Expenditures, but we call it for brevity the Joint Economy Committee.

That committee was established by an amendment offered by me to one of the tax bills. It has among its membership the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Senate and of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the Senate, Senator Glass, and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the House, together with other members of those two committees, and then has the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Morgenthau, and the Director of the Budget, Mr. Smith. Therefore, it has among its membership those officials of the Government that present the recommendations for expenditures to the Congress, and it has on its membership those who spend and appropriate the money and those whose duty it is to raise and levy the taxes.

Setting the Example

Now this committee has been operating for two years, and it has expended—we thought we should be an example for economy—$10,000 each year, a total of $20,000 in the two years. It has made recommendations to the Congress which have resulted in a reduction of two billions of dollars annually in what we may term non-essential expenditures independent of the war. It has only been able to do this, ladies and gentlemen, because the people back home finally realized that unless this nation ceased to squander and waste public money as it did for so many years, that financial chaos and financial disaster, would soon overtake this country.

I will not take up your time to give you in detail these recommendations. We recommended, this committee, the abolishing of the NYA. Let me say this to you, that not one single Bureau in Washington has been abolished by the voluntary action of this Administration or by the voluntary action of any Bureaucrat connected with the Government.

We hear it said that the Japs never surrender. And let me say to you that a Bureaucrat in Washington never surrenders until he is forced to do so by public sentiment.

Case of the NYA

Now, we were told that these things that were being done after the depression were temporary only, that they would only last for the period of depression. Yet what happens to the NYA?

The NYA, when the war came and those down to 18 years of age were drafted, had no place whatever in the proper functions of our Government, Yet, we had one of the bitterest fights that we have ever had in the Congress to abolish the NYA, and the opposition to its abolition was led by Mrs. Roosevelt. And after spending three billions of dollars on the NYA, that was abolished.

The committee recommended the abolition of the Civilian Conservation Corps. I want to say that at the time that this was established I think the CCC, as it was commonly known, was one of the best things that was done by the Administration in the period of the depression. Yet when the war came and the boys were drafted down to 18 years of age, leaving practically no one in these CCC camps, the President himself sent a message to the Senate urging that it not be abolished, that the shell of the CCC remain so that he by executive order could revise it and continue it as he pleased. But by a majority of two votes we abolished the CCC. And on that activity there was expended three billion dollars of the taxpayers' money.

Then the WPA was abolished upon the recommendation of this committee, upon which there was wasted and squandered nearly eleven billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money, which was added to the public debt.

There were a number of other recommendations made in connection with rivers and harbors, work in connection with post offices that were deferred, and so forth. And then the committee recommended that this great bureaucracy at Washington, three million strong, be reduced by four hundred thousand, and so far we have only been able to secure a reduction of 134,395. But progress has been made.

Back Home Support

I will not go into further detail about the recommendations of this committee, but I wanted you to understand the plan upon which we operate. The committee makes factual reports to the Congress. These reports are sent throughout the country, and then it has happened in the past, and I hope will in the future, that those interested in economy, such as you are here today, communicate with your representatives, and by that machinery we have been able to accomplish this reduction that has so far been secured.

Of course, I know that that is simply a drop in the bucket. But I say that we must keep alive the thought that a solvent nation depends upon the economical and efficient administration of its affairs.

Now, as Al Smith used to say, let's take a look at the record. When the New Deal came into power we had a debt of twenty billions of dollars. Today-I got the figures just before I left—we have a debt of $171,599,674,284.

And there are unexpended balances of funds that have already been appropriated by Congress of $168,000,000,000. Of these unexpended balances 79 billion has not even been obligated by the different war agencies of government. Yet in the face of that fact, these great balances that lie, not in physical funds, it is true, but unexpended appropriations—in the face of that fact the President just the other day asked for 99 billion dollars additional.

Face $358,000,000,000 Debt

Now let's see what the debt would be when this fund is expended. I estimated today that after that is added to the present public debt, that after the balances that have already been appropriated and expended, that if the Congress grants the 99 billion dollars the President has asked for in the new budget, and then deduct two years' revenue of the Government from that, you will have a debt of 358 billions of dollars.

The first bill that I voted for when I came to the Senate, was a bill advocated by Mr. Roosevelt, the title of which was to preserve the credit of the United States Government. That was in the first six months of his first term, when he still stood upon his platform to preserve the credit of the United States Government—when the debt was 20 billions of dollars. And now nothing is said about the solvency and the credit of the United States Government, when we have immediately in sight and in front of us a debt of over 300 billion dollars.

I attempted to find out today before I came what was the intrinsic value of the property of America—the land, the buildings, the horses, the cattle, the great manufacturing plants, and other things. And I was told by the Department of Commerce that the intrinsic value of the property of America is estimated at from 350 billion to 400 billions of dollars. If you add to this public debt which is immediately in sight of us, the debts of the localities and the States, you have a figure then equivalent to or approximately the total intrinsic value of all the property m America—property that your grandfathers and mine, that those Americans before us spent several hundred years to accumulate by industry and thrift.

Yet within a space of the New Deal administration, going on eleven years, we have burdened this country by an indebtedness which is equivalent to the accumulation of the wealth of all the Americans that have gone before us.

The last World War cost us 40 billions of dollars, and if the budget is approved that has been submitted by the President, we will spend on this World War 428 billions of dollars, as compared to 40 billions of dollars in the last World War.

"Spend to Prosperity"

Many times I have been asked the question. Why is it that the cost of conducting our war effort has reached such astronomical figures? One answer to the question is that when the New Deal took charge of our Government eleven years ago it adopted as a settled policy the spending of public money on the assumption that money borrowed and spent is t means to promote prosperity.

For 10 years we indulged in the costly experiment of spending for spending's sake; of borrowing colossal sums without regard to the benefits or services received—all of this to increase the purchasing power of the public by spending borrowed money, to lift ourselves by our boot straps. It has failed, as every such program has failed since the beginning of time.

The result was that every department of the government, big and little, became inoculated with the germ of waste and extravagance. Those officials who could waste the most were rewarded by promotions and higher responsibilities, "hose who attempted to economize were frowned upon and discouraged. When the necessity came for preparing this country for war, these same wasteful policies were carried into the war effort in a new field of greatly enlarged expenditures. This is the chief reason, in my judgment, why this war is costing us very much more than it should.

Boondoggling Ahead?

After this war is over we will, be faced with a new program of vast spending. I know something about this program. It has already been set up. It has already been prepared to the slightest and smallest detail. It will revive the same character of boondoggling, the same extravagant expenditures that characterized the New Deal after they came into power. That is one of the reasons why those of you who are interested in preserving the solvency of this country must assert yourselves and at least try to prevent a duplication and a return to those conditions that existed in the years from '33, '34 and up to the time that the war started.

It seems strange that after this country has gone forward where it is today, has grown and advanced to the greatest nation in the world that it should be necessary to come back to the people of America and try to prove to them that there are a few simple truths which they must observe if this country is to go forward to still greater glories and if in fact our American way of life is to be preserved.

The Simple Truths

One of these simple truths is that the people must support the Government, and not the Government the people. It does not seem to intelligent people in America that wc should have to say that the people must support the Government and not the Government the people, because whenever the Government supports the people then we must go to State Socialism or even something worse.

Then there is another simple truth which it seems difficult for many to understand, that what you spend you must pay. Now the New Dealers say, "Why worry about this great debt, because it is a debt to ourselves."

Well, I think that the United States Government should be honest with the people of America, just as they should be honest with any of those outside of this country who loan money to America. What difference does it make whether this debt is owed to the people of America or whether it is owed to the people of some other country? It has either got to be paid or it must be repudiated. There is no middle course.

Now, there is another simple truth that we must understand, and such organizations as this should do what they can in the localities to make it understood, and that is that a grant from the Federal Government is not a gift.

I know in my own State of Virginia, which is a conservative, frugal State, that there are many expenditures that were made there by the Federal Government that were not seriously objected to. Yet if those same extravagances were undertaken by local authorities and paid for by local taxes the people would have had mass meetings of protest. Now that is unquestionably true. In some way many people have gotten the opinion that a grant from Uncle Sam at Washington will never have to be paid back. Of course, you and I know that that is an absurdity, because the Federal Government can only obtain its funds by taxing the 48 States; it comes from you in the form of taxation. Every dollar that the Federal Government borrows is a bond upon your property, upon your industry and upon your thrift. TheFederal Government as such has no income producing property. The property is in the 48 States, and under the free private enterprise system is owned by the 130,000,000 people of this country.

Now, those things we must carry back to the people, to have them understand. Let them understand this, too, that States' rights is not an academic theory of government; it is not out-moded. It may have to yield in this time of modern conditions from what Thomas Jefferson thought it should be, what George Washington thought it should be, but back of the theory of States' rights are real and practical reasons. One is that whenever the Federal Government undertakes co do something that the local government should do, then it requires the establishment of a new bureau.

That bureau is at Washington, and it is conducted wastefully and costly, as all bureaus there are, and only a fraction, a part—I will say in some instances not over two-thirds of these grants get back to the localities. They may be purely local things, but they are controlled not by you; they are controlled by the bureaus in Washington.

Therefore, what happens? You not only get the fund which is wasted and squandered in the transition from Washington to you, but you must pay all of the expenditure out of your taxes, and then you lose control of your purely local affairs.

So States' rights today, in my judgment, are just as important, if not more so, than at any previous period in the history of America.

Bureaucratic Hodge-Podge

At Washington we have the greatest bureaucracy of all times. From time to time I have been requested to tell how to check this gigantic bureaucracy, which is steadily and insidiously robbing the American people of the freedoms guaranteed to them under our Constitutional Democracy— freedoms which Americans have fought and died to preserve. The simplest answer would be to abolish the bureaucrats. This I have been trying to do at Washington for ten years, but nearly every day a new bureau blossoms forth by executive decree. I venture to say that not even the most expert and best-informed of the government officials can name a majority of the alphabetical agencies that now govern us.

If I had my way about it, it would not be such a difficult thing to abolish these bureaucrats. The first thing I would do is, sign an executive order dismissing 33 per cent—as a starter—of these 3,000,000 bureaucrats over this country.

This bureaucracy today has 3,063,379 paid employees. This number represents the civilian Civil Service employment of the United States Government. And let me emphasize that it does not include a single one of the WAVES, WACS, SPARS, and the thousands of Army and Navy men in uniform who are performing clerical work. It is nearly three and one-half times greater than the peak of the Federal employment in the last World War. The annual payroll of this civilian bureaucracy is over $8,000,000,000, This is about twice as much as the total cost of all operations of the government in the year 1932, including the Army and Navy.

One in Every 25

Today the Federal Government has one civilian employee to every two and a half soldiers. In the last World War it had one Federal employee to five soldiers. Today there is one Federal civilian employee to every 40 citizens. If we include county, municipal and state employees, and exclude the armed forces, we have today in our government service one person engaged in civilian government work to every 25 of our citizens.

The efficient utilization of all our manpower resources is a paramount duty of the government during this desperate war. This the Government has failed signally to do in its own civilian personnel. In fact, the United States Government is the chief hoarder and waster of manpower in America today. The Government should be an example to its citizens. It should not require of others sacrifices which it is unwilling to undergo itself.

This bureaucracy has overflowed from Washington and is entrenched in every nook and corner of America. Even small communities have a number of branch and district offices of these various bureaus, often doing the same work side by side. Go to your county seat, to your nearest town or city, to your State Capitol, and you will be astonished to find the number of Federal bureaus engaged in regimenting your ordinary activities of life.

The Farm Security Administration, a relatively small bureau, but I may say one of the most inefficient and extravagant, has alone, 2,700 separate local offices. The Office of Price Administration has been employing 2,700 lawyers, 500 of them in Washington to devise the regulations and 2,200 scattered through the country to regulate. The British also have a rationing and price administration. It has worked for several years with astonishing success, much better than ours. Its legal staff totals 10.

I am not a lawyer, so I can say that at times it doesn't do to get too many lawyers in our governmental operation.

In the present fiscal year your Government will spend an estimated $100,000,000 for the bureaucrats to travel and to communicate with their various branch offices. These are all official figures that I am giving you. This, mark you, does not include one single dollar of travel and communication expense of the Army and Navy or any military agency.

But I must not take up your time merely in explaining the growth of this bureaucracy. This you well know, but I do want to tell you of some of its sinister implications as affecting the American way of life and our form of Government.

All power over the ordinary affairs of our citizens cannot be centralized in Washington. No man has ever been endowed with the ability to sit in a swivel chair in Washington and control the activities and destinies of 130,000,000 Americans.

During the crisis of the war, proper regulation of business is necessary, yet a governmental strait-jacket, dictatorially controlled, means the death of the free, private enterprise system. Continued after the war, it will destroy our liberties and bankrupt our nation. But it is not of the regulations necessary to win the war that I and other Americans complain.

Dictatorship

Tonight I am going to talk frankly to you, because I think the time has come for frank talk. No man in America has a higher respect for the office of the Presidency of the United States than I have. I have supported President Roosevelt in all measures necessary to win the war. From the beginning of the European conflict, months before Pearl Harbor, I urged adequate preparedness. I intend to give him my support in all measures necessary to bring the war to a victorious conclusion as early as possible.

With equal emphasis I want to say I shall oppose all of those unsound and bureaucratic policies which do not contribute to the war effort and tend to undermine our form of government by autocracy and waste.

The people of the United States must realize that this dictatorship is not a thing born of war. It was conceived 10 years ago when the New Dealers came into office andtiptoed toward the abandonment of government of the people, by the people, for the people. The depression gave them their first emergency and the war then gave them the opportunity finally to achieve their purpose; to substitute government by a group of theorists who think the people do not know what is best for them, and that these theorists are the only people fit to rule the nation. Under war powers they have the authority to do what they always dreamed of —to take complete control of the fortunes and conduct of every citizen in the United States; to use them like bricks and mortar to build a new system of government.

"Palace Inner-Circle"

Please understand me—there are many able and patriotic men and women connected with our government, but there are others—the palace inner-circle—who have more power in the administration and who want to change some of our fundamental principles. They do not hesitate to use the present emergency to work to that end.

It is true that we have had bureaucracy in America since the formation of our Republic, but there has been no bureaucracy in our history which has operated so consistently with the objective of changing our American way of life, not by authoritative and direct action of Congress, but by a complete regimentation of the American people, and to set up a government by executive directives instead of a government controlled by Congress. In other words, a government ruled by men rather than by law.

I have no quarrel with the American citizen who seeks to make changes in our form of government by the orderly methods established under our Constitution. Our government was established by the people and it can be changed by the people, but I do have a quarrel with those who would undermine our institutions of government, working like termites from within.

The founders established Under the Constitution three branches of government, each independent of the other—the Executive, the Judicial, the Legislative. President Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court of the United States. He failed in this effort to increase the membership of the Supreme Court by new appointments. He was within his rights in recommending to Congress an increase in the Supreme Court, but Congress, in rejecting this demand, acted with greater wisdom. If one President could pack the Supreme Court to change its decisions, then succeeding Presidents could do likewise. The independence of the judiciary then would become a whim at the pleasure of every President

President Roosevelt attempted to purge certain Senators by defeating them for re-election, not because these Senators were not able, patriotic and high-minded statesmen, governed by their conscientious convictions, but because they did not see eye to eye with him on matters of legislative policy. As President of the United States, using the prestige of his great office, he invaded the sovereign States of Georgia and of Maryland and spoke against those great and able patriots, Senators George and Tydings. He took a position against other Senators, acknowledging the valuable services performed by them, but asserting that they did not agree wholly with his policies of government and, therefore, should be defeated. He wanted only Yes, Yes Senators. He was not satisfied with a Yes But, Senator, who would agree with him when he was right and disagree with him when he was wrong.

I imagine that by this time you have reached the conclusion that I am not a New Dealer.

I want to say, my friends, that I am still a Constitutional Jefferson Democrat, and I expect to remain one.

Congress By-passed

The real power of Congress over the executive departments of the government is the power of the purse—the power to give or deny appropriations to be expended in the public service. Yet the New Deal, in important controversial appropriations, has deliberately evaded the necessity of coming to Congress. This has been done by a new expediency established under the New Deal by creating government corporations. There are 57 of such corporations. A blanket authorization is secured, enabling these corporations to issue bonds for certain general purposes. After the authorization obtained, then these 50 odd corporations make disbursements of public funds as the executives, not Congress, see fit. Congress has no control over them. In fact, many of these corporations, which have authorization to expend more than 30 billions of dollars, are not even audited by the Comptroller General, the auditing officer of the government.

The purpose of these corporations was to make loans, which would be recoverable, yet this purpose has been perverted for other uses. For example, in the payment of subsidies, against which Congress has repeatedly declared itself, at the direction of the President, without legal authority, these subsidies are now being paid, not by appropriations approved by Congress, but out of funds of these various corporations, originally authorized to make recoverable loans.

I predict that billions of dollars will be expended in these subsidy payments, unauthorized by Congress, which later must be paid by general taxation. This is a clear and deliberate effort to by-pass the constitutional power of Congress.

The President of the United States has declared for four freedoms. I am for all freedoms provided these freedoms come up from the people themselves. The Vice-President of the United States, not satisfied with only four freedoms, has added seven more freedoms to apply to the inhabitants of all the world. Mrs. Roosevelt, not satisfied with eleven, has added four more of her own. It is significant to me that missing from all these fifteen freedoms are two freedoms vital to America notably absent—one is the freedom from bureaucracy and the other is the freedom of private enterprise.

The security of America lies first in our capacity to protect ourselves, and in the character, industry and thrift of our citizens. It does not lie in governmental hand-outs, but in hard work and patriotic impulses.

Let our slogan be: "This country must preserve for every one of its citizens the most priceless heritage of theirs—the freedom of individual opportunity."

Post-War Challenge

This will present, after the war is over, the greatest challenge to the citizens at home since the formation of our Republic. The reward will be great—the saving of those things at home which our sons are fighting abroad to preserve. Without free enterprise, we can have only a government by State Socialism. There is no alternative.

This system can be menaced or destroyed in one of three ways: First, by excessive and exorbitant taxation; second, by senseless and unnecessary regimentation; third, by government competition with private business. With a strong and vigorous private enterprise system we can stand a heavy burden of taxation. We can stand intelligent and reasonable regulation, but we cannot stand government competition. This will quickly destroy the free enterprise system.

Another instance of bureaucratic directives: Take this mania of senseless questionnaires that have created such an obstacle to the war effort and have placed such unreasonable

burdens upon the citizens of the country. This was not done by legislative enactment. It was never intended by Congress. It was done by the various bureaus of the government, and in the effort to curb the bureaucrats, Congress has now passed a law requiring that no questionnaire can be sent out by any agency of the government without first obtaining the approval of the Bureau of the Budget.

Another instance: By coercion, dictatorship and threats, the administration and its agencies have forced many businessmen to execute binding contracts with unions providing for the closed shop. That is to say, no one can be employed without the approval or consent of the union. This was not done by the Congress. It was done by the bureaus of the government which set into practice a policy with which I am certain Congress disapproves.

Is it fair treatment to the survivors of our armed forces, your boys and mine, when they come home after conquering the most ruthless and cruel people the world has ever known, in long and bloody battles, to find that the door of opportunity for work has been closed to them by their own government; unless, forsooth, the head of a labor union is willing to permit them to work, and only then if vacancies should exist? I say I favor collective bargaining through unions, but a closed shop is undemocratic in a democratic country.

Your Son

I want to speak of an American boy—he may be your son and he may be my son—as a symbol of those ten million American boys who are writing a new page of glorious history for America of bravery and heroism such as the world has never known. This boy will have fought in the swamps of Guadalcanal under General Vandegriff—whom I am to introduce in Richmond tomorrow. He will have fought in the malaria infested isles of the Pacific, in the recapture of Singapore, along the Burma Road, in India and China, and he will have carried and restored once again the American flag in the Philippines, taken down for the first time in American history by enemy hands, and he will have fought in Japan itself. Because, let us not deceive ourselves, this war with Japan is not going to be ended until the Japanese are crushed.

This boy will have fought in Africa, he will have fought in Italy, he will have fought through the Dardanelles. He will have fought in the Balkan States, and he will probably have got in that invasion of the European Continent which, if it is undertaken without the weakening of Germany, may be the bloodiest military conflict that the world has ever known.

He will come back to a grateful people, to a people who take pride in what these boys have done, your boys and my boys. He will want a job. He will not want to be an object of charity. He will come to Henry Ford and ask for permission to work for his country, just as he fought for his country. And Mr. Ford will say, "I am sorry, you will have to go to the head of the union because my government has forced me to have a closed shop."

He will go to the coal mines, perhaps of Virginia, and be told there that he will have to ask the permission of John Lewis to work for his country, after he has saved his country—John Lewis who was willing to close the coal mines in America to stop all the manufacture of war equipment to sustain our boys at the front unless his demands were agreed to.

The first duty of democratic government everywhere is to preserve and expand the freedoms of the people. If the fight for freedom is ever relaxed, the citizen will become first a subject—then a slave. The best of all governments is that which teaches us to govern ourselves. All over America men and women fear that in the crisis of war we may lose the things we are fighting for. They know that in the 17th and 18th centuries bureaucracy all but destroyed liberty.

This bureaucracy that we must fight today began, in the main, in 1933, when a constantly expanding number of alphabetical agencies, boards and commissions were created and, like a sleeping paralysis, are sapping the rights and powers of the citizen over his daily, ordinary affairs. The appointed agents daily become more arrogant and arbitrary as well as more inefficient.

Return to the People

Bureaucratic control must not be permitted to kill individual initiative, the creative power and the industry of our citizens. The task before us is to return the government to the people; preserve the free private enterprise system, which is the foundation stone of our freedoms and our progress; set the capacities of our people free; to build a better America—the kind of a country your boys and mine wish to find here when they return home.

What can be done about this growing menace to our free institutions? What can you and I do about it? Just as you and I are desperately anxious to win the war abroad, we are equally anxious to win the battles at home to preserve those things that have made America great. Only a great national crusade can succeed. Only an enlightened and determined public can restore our government to the people. We must, with determination and continued interest, fight all along the line. In the fateful months ahead of us momentous decisions must be made by America, decisions not only affecting the people of the world, but the future of our country. We must demand that these vital decisions not be made by one man or any group of men but made by the people through the democratic processes of government.

Even now plans have already been made for colossal new expenditures, both in America and abroad, all requiring new bureaus and more bureaucrats.

Our vast public debt must not be repudiated. Americans are honest people. It must not be paid by the printing press. The disasters of such inflation would destroy our economic system. It is imperative that as soon as possible when peace comes the government be gotten out of business. The mines and industries that have been seized by the government must be turned back promptly to private management. What remains after the war of the 60 billions of dollars of government property now existing in many forms and descriptions must gradually be liquidated. The most determined resistance must be made to the continued operation of these private enterprises by government control, which can result in the end only in the nationalization of business.

Never before in our history has it been as important as now for every American citizen to study public affairs as he does his own private affairs, because what is being done at Washington has a vital effect on your private lives and business.

America's Strength in Congress

I have said enough tonight, I think, to show the sinister efforts that have been made and are being made to destroy our democracy. Only a great upsurge of national indignation against this Frankenstein of Federal bureaucracy and a national demand to return to representative, responsible government can save it. Congress is the hope of America today. If Congress displeases you, you can change its members, but

you have no vote on the bureaucrats. Support your members of Congress when they are right and defeat them when they are wrong. Congress, being human, makes mistakes, as do the people who elect the Congress, but I want to make this confident prediction now, that when this war is over, the people will thank God for the Congress of the United States, as this Congress, elected by the people, is the only thing that can stand between government by representative democracy on the one hand and government by bureaucracy and dictatorship on the other.