U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24371, 25 September 1944, Page 6

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Roosevelt’s First Address POST-WAR WAGE POLICY (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.45 p.m.) NEW YORK. Sept. 24. Opening his Presidential election campaign with an address to the, American Federation of Labour Teamsters’ Union. Mr Roosevelt said the object of Republican oratory these days was to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and 4 depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal. Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but he was afraid that in this case it was the most obvious common garden variety of fraud. “There were some in Congress and out who raised their voices against our preparations for defence before and after 1939 as hysterical warmongering, and who cried out against our help to the Allies as provocative and dangerous," said Mr Roosevelt. “There were some politicians who said the Lend-lease Bill would bring an end to free government in the United States, and who said that only hysteria entertained the idea that Germany, Italy, and Japan,would contemplate war upon us. “These,are the very men who are now asking the American people to entrust to them the conduct of our foreign and military policy. “There are Labour baiters among the Opposition who instead of calling attention to Labour's achievements in this war prefer to pick on occasional strikes which have occurred. At our peak American labour and management have turned out 109,000 aeroplanes a year, 57,000 tanks, 573 combat vessels, 31,000 landing vessels, 19.000,000 tons of cargo ships, 23,000,000.000 rounds of small arms ammunition. Since Pearl Harbour only one-tenth of 1 per cent, of man hours has been lost by strikes. • “We have been told that it was not a Republican but a Democratic depression from which this nation has been saved; that this Administration was responsible for the misery that the history books and the American people always thought had been brought about during the 12 ill-fated years when the Republican Party was in power.

“I lenow that the American people in business, labour and agriculture have the same will to do for peace what they have done for war. The keynote of all we propose to do in reconversion can be found in one word ‘jobs.’ “We shall follow a wage policy which will sustain the purchasing power of labour. The present policies of wages and prices were conceived to serve the needs of the great masses of the people. They stopped inflation and kept prices on a stable level. Through the demobilisation period these policies will be carried out with the same objective—to serve the needs of the great masses of the people. “The victory of the American people and their allies in this war will be far more than a victory against Fascism, reaction, dead hand of despotism, and of the past. It will be a victory for democracy constituting such an affirmation of strength, power, and vitality of government by the people as history never before has witnessed.”