Monthly Archives: November 2018

Appointment King

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Governor Parson is making a new place in Missouri history for himself with each appointment of someone to an otherwise elective office at the top level of state government.   By the time he appoints a new state treasurer, he will have appointed three of the remaining top five state government officials and four of the top six jobs will be filled with people who were  not chosen by a public vote to fill those offices: governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer.

But this is not the first time most top state offices have been filled by people not elected to those positions. But the only other time involved war/

As Missouri was being sucked into the Civil War, pro-South Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called a convention of 99 men to decide if Missouri should join the confederacy.  He was shocked to find that not a single secessionist was elected.  When he fled the capitol in the face of advancing Union troops in June, 1861, twenty members of the convention went with him.

The executive committee of the Convention of 99 met in Jefferson City in late July and called for remaining members of the convention to reassemble.  On July 30 the remaining convention members declared all existing state offices vacant.  It then installed former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Hamilton Gamble as the provisional governor and appointed other Union loyalists to other state offices.  All seats in the legislature were declared vacant and the convention members became the acting government.  The constitutional propriety of all of these actions has been a matter of speculation from that time to this but as historian Duane Meyer, the author of the standard Missouri history book used for decades has noted, when the U. S. Army is present to make sure the actions of the governing group are carried out, the niceties of the law or the constitution are secondary. Meyer wrote that the state convention

obviously …had no authority to take such actions (as vacating offices), since Governor Jackson was the popularly-elected chief of state. However, in the time of war, legality is frequently supplanted by expediency, and in so acting, these Missouri politicians established an illegal provisional government to fill the breach left by the secessionist exiles…In retrospect, we must admit that the actions of the state convention were unprecedented, brash, and illegal. However, since federal troops in Missouri upheld the actions of the convention, no one could argue.

Former Congressman Willard P. Hall of St. Joseph was appointed Lt. Governor and succeeded Gamble when he died at the end of 1864.  The office, incidentally, remained vacant until Lt. Governor George Smith was elected in the election of 1865.  Former Congressman Mordecai Oliver of Richmond became Secretary of State until ‘65’s elections.  When Treasurer Alfred W. Morrison refused to take a loyalty oath after being caught by federal troops while he was fleeing with thousands of state dollars in his pockets, he was replaced by artist George Caleb Bingham.  When Attorney General J. Proctor Knott refused to take the loyalty oath he was replaced by Aikman Welch of Johnson County.

William S. Moseley of New Madrid County took the loyalty oath and remained as state auditor.

So during the Civil War when the remains of the Convention of 99 replaced the legislature, FIVE  of  our six state officers were not elected by the people to their positions.

We’re waiting for the Missouri Supreme Court to rule on whether Mike Kehoe can continue to occupy the Lt. Governor’s office and Eric Schmitt won’t be the new Attorney General until January.  But it appears Governor Parson will be remembered as the governor who appointed three top state leaders and this will be a time when four state leaders are serving in offices they were not elected to fill.

The nice thing about the current situation is that it hasn’t taken a war to create it.

A GODDESS COMES TO EARTH

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Ceres, a lady of myth and mystery who has extended blessings to state capitol visitors for ninety-four years, has been brought to earth by mortals who love her and care for her.
She’s in Chicago now and will be staying there about a year before she comes home to the capitol.
She’s a ten-feet four-inches tall, two-thousand pound bronze statue whose presence among flesh-and-blood humans was an emotional event for many of those who spoke quietly in loving terms as they walked around the flatbed trailer on which she’d been carefully laid after days and hours of preparation for her removal from the capitol dome.
She’s beautiful.
We’re going to spend some time in this entry telling her story, which is as ancient as the Greek and Roman empires, as recent as last week, and is beginning a new chapter. We’ll be drawing on the research we did for The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Stone, and Bronze and for the upcoming book about the history of the building.

WHO IS CERES?
Ceres is a figure from Roman mythology whose Greek counterpart is Demeter. She’s the goddess of grain, of agriculture, of fertility, a representative of Mother Earth. We’ll use the Roman version of her story here. She was a sister of Jupiter who was impregnated by Jupiter (family relationships among gods and goddesses apparently were not frowned upon in the myth
The family weirdness continues with Pluto kidnapping Proserpina with plans to marry her and live in the underworld. Mama Ceres, as you might expect, was not favorably disposed to such an arrangement. As she searched for her daughter, she stopped the growth of crops and caused deserts, acts that alarmed Jupiter to send Mercury to the underworld to convince Pluto to let Proserpina return to the surface.
Pluto blackmailed Proserpina. He forced her to agree to return to the underworld for part of the year. When Proserpina showed up, Ceres was happy and as long as the two were together the earth was fertile and crops grew, trees had leaves, and the grass grew. But when Proserpina has to return to Pluto, Ceres becomes depressed and the earth begins to lose its productivity and the trees start to lose their leaves and the lawn finally stops growing.
So we have brought Ceres to earth at a time when she supposedly becomes depressed because she misses Proserpina—which might explain the chilly and snowy day of falling leaves and dying lawns when she came down. Although the capitol restoration workers say she’ll be put back up in a year, regardless of the weather, we think it would be more appropriate to put her back in place at a time when the wind blows warmer, the trees are budding, the days are growing longer, and so is the grass.
That’s the best we can figure out this complicated family relationship of gods and goddesses in ancient Rome and ancient Greece.
Regardless, let’s hope that Proserpina, unknown to her mother, already is living in Chicago (known for many years for its underworld history) and hears that Mom is going to be in town, and that they get together. We’re ready for a quick return of spring.

WHY CERES?

Simple. She’s the goddess of agriculture, among other things.  Although Missouri is becoming more urban, its number one industry remains agriculture. It was even moreso when she was commissioned, cast, and put into place.

THE MISSOURI CAPITOL WAS NOT HER INTENDED SITE
It not only was not the intended site, but the statue of Ceres appears to be less than an original design.
For example, the Smithsonian Learning Center has this statue titled “Maidehood,” a version of which also is in the Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina.
The hand is up, not down, and the gown is more revealing than the attire of Ceres. But the design similarities are unmistakable.
Then there is this work from the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, also by Sherry Fry:
She’s called “Peace” in this version.
Fry originally intended the statue to fulfill a commission for Grant’s Tomb in New York. But an undated newspaper clipping in the papers of Decoration Commission member Cora Painter says, “When he visited the Missouri Capitol, he was struck with the thought that there was the building to which his theme was fitted and he executed the model for Missouri instead of New York.”

SHE’S NOT THE ONLY CAPITOL CERES
We aren’t the only state capitol with a statue of Ceres. Vermont’s capitol in Montpelier has had a Ceres statue since 1858. As this is written, sculptor Chris Miller is carving—from Honduran Mahogany— the third Ceres statue to adorn the statehouse dome. The clay model he is working from was done by Jerry Williams, who usually works in granite. The first two wooden statues fell victims to rot after about eighty years each.
(The picture is from Sevendaysvt.com)

WHO DECIDED SHE SHOULD BE UP THERE?
The original decision was made by the State Capitol Commission Board, the predecessor of the Capitol Decoration Commission. And for a time, there was some consideration of making her out of something else.
The capitol architectural firm of Tracy and Swartwout (pronounced Swart-out) proposed a ten-foot statue of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture “fully robed and head erect.” They suggested, “In her right hand she carried the torch of education and in her left, which hangs by her side, are a few blades of wheat.” The Capitol Commission Board approved the idea in September, 1915 then wondered whether the statue should be made of sheet copper instead of bronze, what the thickness of copper should be if that was the material of choice, and what would be the cost difference.
By mid-1916 the board was waiting for the great bonze doors to arrive for the south front of the building and had started casting up sums to see what else it could buy. It thought there would be enough for a statue of Ceres on the dome, among other things. The W. F. Norman Sheet Metal Manufacturing Company of Nevada, the home town of commissioner Theodore Lacaff, sent the board a plaster model of a proposed twelve-foot ball statue that could be made of 48-ounce of sheet copper for $2,480.
But the board was hit with a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that almost drained its bank account, leaving it without funds for the statue or to hire sculptors to carve figures for the main pediment.

Architect Egerton Swartwout called the board’s suggested cost of the statue “absolutely inadequate” and noted the price of bronze had gone up so much since war broke out in Europe that the board could not afford the bronze for the statue much less pay for casting it. He warned of vendors who would “sell you a lot of junk which they too often put on court houses and other such buildings, like the Civil War Memorials that are scattered through the land, made out of stamped tin.”
Swartwout suggested the statue be made of hammered sheet copper, the material used in the Statue of Liberty. Norman said copper and bronze were scarce because the government was not allowing their use for anything but war work. Norman endorsed the idea of Ceres “since such stress is being laid upon the importance of cereals” at the time and the Missouri War Production Board was encouraging, and getting, great improvements in state agriculture production. Although Norman later got an option on some copper of the same weight used in the Statue of Liberty, the Ceres project wound up on the Capitol Commission Board’s scrap heap.
The Jefferson City Daily Capital News observed that the war had caused Ceres “to gracefully sidestep the honor of standing on top of the capitol dome and beaming down upon a peaceful world. Gallantly Ceres gives way for old glory who will proudly wave over the most beautiful state capitol in the Union.” But, forecast the newspaper, “When victory ends the war, Ceres will have her inning.” Sherry Fry’s bronze Ceres statue was hauled to the top of the dome in the fall of 1924, made of bronze. It would be more than six decades before the Norman Company got some of its products in the capitol, when it installed the tin ceiling in the office of Senator Harold Caskey.

THE SCULPTOR
The statue was designed by Sherry Edmundson Fry, an Iowa-born sculptor who began his career when he shaped a figure from clay scooped from a ditch near his Creston, Iowa home. His father refused to support his desire to study are in college so Fry picked potatoes to work his way through Grinnell College.
After graduation, Fry worked with sculptors Lorado Taft and Charles Milligan in Chicago before moving to New York to work for Karl Bitter, who created the original “Signing of the Treaty” panel that is on the river side of the capitol. He signed on as a crewman aboard a cattle boat bound for France so he could study at the leading art institutes in Paris. Fry continued his studies in Italy before returning to France where he met Des Moines businessman James Edmundson who hired him to create a sculpted image of his father. Fry so admired Edmundson that he took the man’s last name as his middle name. (The Archives of American Art in Washington, D. C., has the only photograph of Fry we have been able to track down.
)During World War I, Fry was part of the newly-formed Army Camouflage Corps, one of the leaders of which was Evarts Tracy, whose architectural firm designed the Missouri Capitol. Tracy appears to have been the connection that got Fry the Ceres commission. He was paid $15,000 for this work (about $215,000 today).

THE REAL WOMAN, PERHAPS
We have suggested that the inspiration for the figure on our capitol’s dome might have been Audrey Munson, considered the country’s first supermodel. We have only circumstantial evidence because the records of the Capitol Decoration Commission have disappeared (we maintain a hope somebody will find some dust-covered file boxes in their attic or in a long-forgotten closet corner that will contain those records) and we have not located any of Fry’s personal papers

 Audrey was the favorite model for New York sculptors—the New York American referred to her as the “queen of Artists’ Studios”—including those who decorated our capitol, for more than a decade. She was such a popular subject that the organizers of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco published a guide book of the exposition statues that featured her face and body. More than half of the statues at the exposition were of Audrey.
Audrey Munson went into movies and became the first woman to appear nude in an American mainline movie. Her family put her in a mental institution in 1931. She died there in 1996 at the age of 104, thirty years after Fry’s death.

SIZE

Some of those who saw Ceres on the trailer after she was brought down were surprised that she isn’t bigger. It’s a matter of proportion and the Capitol Decoration Commission that commissioned the statue wanted to make sure the statue did not overwhelm the building’s design nor would it be insignificantly small. When Sherry Fry submitted a design, a steeplejack made a two-dimensional wallboard silhouette that he hoisted into position atop the dome. Commission members and others on the ground walked around the dome to study the figure from all angles and found, as one chronicler put it, the statue “stood out, bold, distinct, and beautiful.”
By contrast, Thomas Crawford’s statue of “Freedom” on our nation’s capitol is nineteen feet-six inches high and weighs fifteen-thousand pounds. The statue was cast in Rome, where Crawford had his studio. It was shipped to this country in six crates and put together atop the capitol in 1863. Your loyal observer frankly thinks that she is too large for that dome but—to the surprise of some, perhaps—he was not around in 1863 to protest. Neither was Crawford, who died in 1857.

BRINGING HER DOWN

No one is alive today to see her return to earth who saw Ceres, or at least the top part of her, hoisted to the dome in 1924. For most of a century we have had only photographs from airplanes or long lenses to show us her beauty.
Unless you went to Columbia.
Before Sherry Fry was allowed to cast a bronze statue, he had to submit a half-size preliminary sculpture to the Decoration Commission. Many of the preliminary drawings, paintings, window designs and sculptural models were taken to the University of Missouri School of Art and Archaeology by commission chairman John Pickard, the founder of the university’s art history department. Some preliminary painting are in the Ellis Library. The plaster models of the south front frieze line some of the hallways on the top floor of Jesse Hall, the main administration building. Unfortunately (as of our last visit there) there are no signs telling anyone what those encased things are.

For years, Fry’s preliminary model of Ceres was in Pickard Hall on the Francis Quadrangle but when that building was closed after it was found to be contaminated by radioactive elements left from research in the early 1900s the museum was moved to what’s known as Mizzou North, the former Ellis Fischel Cancer Hospital on the business loop. The statue is still there although it has lost a hand and some toes.

In 1995 some folks made their way to the top of the dome to check on Ceres’ condition. A few days before she was brought down, the Office of Administration had a photographer on the dome with her. Until workers started preparing to bring her down several days ago, nobody had gone face-to-face with the goddess since ‘95. Unless they’d been to Columbia.

It’s hard to compare the face of the plaster model with the face of the final bronze statue because of light and perspective. But it appears to us Fry made a slight alteration in the face of Ceres, perhaps slightly lengthening it, when he made the final version. (Compare with the statue’s face at the end.)

Two guys were essential to the safe return of Ceres to earth. One was Zack Franklin who ran the big crane that reached up and over to Ceres and gently lifted her from her perch and gently lowered her to the trailer below. Lt. Governor Mike Kehoe (who commemorated their roles) called Franklin “the most important man in Missouri during the five to seven minutes Ceres was in the air.”

The eyes for Franklin on the platform far above was James Stafford, talking by radio to the crane operator as the delicate task of attaching the hook to the carefully-wrapped harness around the statue. It was fitting that Stafford should be intimately involved in the process. His great-grandfather had been one of the workers who constructed the building that Ceres has presided over all this time.

 

So she came down, wrapped in a state flag that was a last-minute thought earlier that morning, turning to seemingly bless the building over which she presided or maybe to wave goodbye for a little while, and then for the first time in more than nine decades, she was allowed to lie down.

 

FACING THE WRONG WAY?
We don’t know where this got started, the idea that when Ceres was winched to the dome in 1924 that workers turned her the wrong way before anchoring her. We have never found any contemporary accounts saying that.
We’re not sure what the rationale is for that idea other than north Missouri is the state’s main corn, wheat, and beans producing region while the south (except for the Bootheel) is better at raising rocks.
One person has suggested she faces south to reflect Missouri’s Confederate heritage, in effect turning her back on the North. Again, we have never found any contemporary comment or account indicating that is the case. It is true that “Dixie” was part of the inauguration ceremonies for new governors in those days but we do not believe the Capitol Decoration Commission was in any way motivated to turn its goal of appropriately decorating the building into a political statement.

So why does she face south—and WILL face south when she returns from Chicago (as shown in Lloyd Grotjan’s photo from our Art book)? Because the south front of the Capitol is where the people come for admittance to the halls of their government. Her hand is extended in blessing to the people of Missouri who gather below her for inaugurations, rallies, concerts—-for some years in the hot summers the mainline Protestant churches held joint worship services on the lawn—or just to visit the state’s greatest symbol. It would be extremely poor manners if the patron goddess of Missouri turned her back on her people.
We wouldn’t be surprised if that was what the commission thought when Ceres ascended in 1924.

AND A FINAL NOTE—
Some of us think the beauty of Ceres should not be so far away that Missourians cannot be touched by it for another century or so. Perhaps those restoring the Capitol would consider doing what has been done with “Freedom” in the National Capitol.
The full-size plaster model for that statue that was used to cast the bronze statue on top of the building was stored in pieces for more than 130 years before it was restored by the Architect of the Capitol in 1929. It stands today in Emancipation Hall of the U. S. Capitol’s Visitor Center.
The United States Capitol Historical Society sells a nine-inch tall version of the statue made of crushed marble removed during the renovation of the east front of the building and mixed with resin. It sells for forty-six dollars. An much smaller replica is available as a Christmas ornament.
Oklahoma, which finally put a dome on its Capitol is topped by a twenty-two foot tall statue, a nine-foot replica of which is in the rotunda.
Today’s laser scanning and 3-D printing technology could produce an accurate reproduction of Ceres that would make a striking attraction in the Capitol Museum or to the Capitol visitor’s center that is talked about from time to time. And a small but well-detailed version made of the dust from the stones removed during the present restoration and repair project could be a solid seller at the tour desk.

Beauty should not be hidden, even if it is in plain sight, 250 feet above those who would admire it.

 

“Two roads diverged—”

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“In a yellow wood,” wrote Robert Frost

“And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.”

Two years ago, Missourians elected a charismatic young man who promised to make his state office something special, something different, something clean.

Two years ago, Missourians elected another charismatic young man who promised to make his state office something special, something different, something clean.

One of those young men took a road that has led him downhill into the darkness of the undergrowth, out of sight, and probably away from his dream of much bigger things—although there have been reports of some sounds coming out of that darkness that he’d like to come back for another trip.

The second young man last Tuesday took a road that is leading him up, to a sunny future, and perhaps an opportunity to reach the destination the first man thought he was going toward.

Poetry can take some interesting political turns.

—

Two roads.  One paved, one gravel.  One that would have been important to maintaining and bringing jobs.  One that is paved now but facing reduction to gravel in the future. Missourians have chosen the gravel road into uncertainty’s undergrowth with their rejection of the latest gas tax increase.  Our state legislators and other state leaders who have made economic development a constant theme of their work have failed to convince voters that a tax increase would result in the good roads necessary to encourage economic growth.

They have sewn the wind by preaching the evils of taxes and the blessings of tax cuts and tax breaks, particularly for businesses that presumably will create more jobs.  But industry wants good roads to ship in manufacturing materials and equipment and good roads to ship products out.

“The people know better how to spend their money than government does,” we have heard them say repeatedly.  Again, the people have decided to keep their money and spend it for things better than building roads and bridges and interchanges to companies that might have provided jobs to those same people and their relatives and friends.

The people have decided they want a higher minimum wage, meaning many of those who might benefit from better roads and the better jobs they could help create will have more money for themselves.

Two roads.  Two men.  Two political philosophies.  But we travel with them and we are the ones who often decide which road they, and we, take—a road rising to the future or a gravel road descending into the dark undergrowth.

“And that has made all the difference.”

—or will, perhaps.

The loyal opposition

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The makeup of our congressional and legislative representation was defined yesterday.  Come January, a new political chemistry will be brewed in Washington and in Jefferson City because of the decisions made in thousands of ballot boxes.

Your respectful observer wants to talk about a loser today and what that loser said many years ago about the role of the losing side.

Lynne Olson’s book, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 triggered this interest that was increased by a Kansas City Star editorial found while researching the 1940 election in Missouri.

The loser was Wendell Willkie, a name that rings only faint bells is the minds of most political observers today other than those who know he lost the presidency to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won his third term.

A week after the election, Willke went on the radio for a nationwide address. In his speech he borrowed from a phrase created in Britain in 1826—the loyal opposition—and defined it for Americans.

That speech is worth considering in these times because of what opposition has become.

Willkie’s grandson, Wendell Willkie II, wrote of his grandfather in The Atlantic earlier this year that some people have compared his grandfather’s Republican nomination for president to Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016. Both had been Democrats. Both were/are prominent business executives. Neither had held public office. “Each substantially challenged and redefined then-prevailing Republican Party doctrine,” he wrote.  But after that, the two men have profoundly different worldviews:

Willkie is remembered for his optimistic, inspiring vision of America. A thoughtful student of history and economics, he powerfully articulated classically liberal ideals of political and economic freedom.  For all of our nation’s faults, he passionately believed in American exceptionalism. He took on unpopular causes, and battled discrimination and intolerance. But he also believed the world would be a far more dangerous place without American leadership.

Willke was a Republican who fought the New Deal while favoring America’s active support of Britain against Germany—at a time when American isolationism, with Charles Lindbergh as its most prominent advocate and presidential contenders Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft speaking for it, was powerful.

His position in the Republican Party rose when Germany invaded France and other countries and isolationism began to lose public favor. He was nominated on the sixth ballot of the GOP convention.

Republicans were split on intervention in Europe with the America First movement strongly involved with the party.  As Willkie’s grandson put it, “Today, many politicians insist they put country over party, but do little to prove their ultimate loyalties. Willkie was different.”

Britain was in desperate condition and Roosevelt faced stern public opposition to sending military aid to the island and laws forbidding sending military vessels built for Britain’s defense. But this country had some old destroyers not built for that reason that could be transferred.

The plan gained public support but Roosevelt knew it could become a problem for him in the campaign. So he asked Willkie to do something extraordinary.

Olson recounts that Roosevelt sent emissaries to ask Willkie to forego making the destroyer deal a part of his campaign. Willke said he could not make a public statement of support that would deepen splits within his own party but he promised he would not attack the deal after Roosevelt announced it.  “It was astonishing thing to ask of an opponent—to turn his back on a controversial issue that almost certainly would help him politically,” says Olson.

But that’s not all.  The nation was divided despite the obviously growing threat of war on whether the draft should be re-instituted. If Willkie opposed it, isolationist Democrats would join Republicans to block it.   But in August, 1940, Willke announced support for “some form of selective service.”   He later said he would continue to support the draft even if it cost him the election.

Roosevelt won with 27.3 million votes. Willkie had 22.3 million. The Electoral College numbers made the race look like a runaway.  Sam Pryor, Willkie’s Eastern campaign manager, told him afterward, “You could have been president if you had worked with the party organization.”

The Kansas City Star said a day after his Armistice Day radio address a week after the election that it  contained “no bitterness…no narrow partisanship…The main principle that Mr. Willkie desired to impress upon his audience was the high function of a loyal opposition in the American system…It showed…the quality of constructive criticism that the President, as a patriotic American, would do well to take into account in meeting the difficult problems that confront the nation.”

The Star characterized the speech as “an appeal to reason, not to emotion.” We offer his speech to you in these much different times with little hope that recalling it will change the daily rhetorical tragedies that now befall our system, but with some hope that it might mean something useful to somebody, a sad observation of how far our leaders have sunk.

Cooperation but Loyal Opposition

DISCORD AND DISUNITY WILL ARISE IF OPPOSITION IS SUPPRESSED

By WENDELL L. WILLKIE, Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1940

Delivered over the radio, November 11, 1940

Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol VII, pp. 103-106

PEOPLE of America: Twenty-two years ago today a great conflict raging on the battlefields of Europe came to an end. The guns were silent. A new era of peace began and for that era the people of our Western World—our democratic world—held the highest hopes.

Those hopes have not been fulfilled. The democratic way of life did not become stronger—it became weaker. The spirit of constitutional government flickered like a dying lamp. And within the last year or so the light from that lamp has disappeared entirely upon the Continent of Europe.

We in America watched darkness fall upon Europe. And as we watched there approached an important time for us—the national election of 1940.

In that election, and in our attitudes after that election, the rest of the world would see an example of democracy in action, an example of a great people faithful to their Constitution and to their elected representatives.

The campaign preceding this election stirred us deeply. Millions upon millions of us who had never been active in politics took part in it. The people flocked to the polling places in greater numbers than ever before in history.

Nearly fifty million people exercised on November 5 the right of the franchise—the precious right which we inherited from our forefathers, and which we must cherish and pass on to future generations.

Thus it came about that although constitutional government had been blotted out elsewhere, here in America men and women kept it triumphantly alive.

No matter which side you were on, on that day, remember that this great, free expression of our faith in the free system of government must have given hope to millions upon millions of others—on the heroic island of Britain—in the ruined cities of France and Belgium—yes, perhaps even to people in Germany and Italy. It has given hope wherever man hopes to be free.

In the campaign preceding this election serious issues were at stake. People became bitter. Many things were said which, in calmer moments, might have been left unsaid or might have been worded more thoughtfully.

But we Americans know that the bitterness is a distortion, not a true reflection, of what is in our hearts. I can truthfully say that there is no bitterness in mine. I hope there is none in yours.

We have elected Franklin Roosevelt President. He is your President. He is my President. We all of us owe him the respect due to his high office. We give him that respect. We will support him with our best efforts for our country. And we pray that God may guide his hand during the next four years in the supreme task of administering the affairs of the people.

It is a fundamental principle of the democratic system that the majority rules. The function of the minority, however, is equally fundamental. It is about the function of that minority—22,000,000 people, nearly half of our electorate— that I wish to talk to you tonight.

A vital element in the balanced operation of democracy is a strong, alert and watchful opposition. That is our task for the next four years. We must constitute ourselves a vigorous, loyal and public-spirited opposition party.

It has been suggested that in order to present a united front to a threatening world the minority should now surrender its convictions and join the majority. This would mean that in the United States of America there would be only one dominant party—only one economic philosophy—only one political philosophy of life. This is a totalitarian idea—it is a slave idea—it must be rejected utterly.

The British people are unified with a unity almost unexampled in history for its endurance and its valor. Yet that unity coexists with an unimpaired freedom of criticism and of suggestion.

In the continual debates of the House of Commons and the House of Lords all of the government’s policies, its taxation, its expenditures, its military and naval policies, its basic economic policies are brought under steady, friendly, loyal critical review. Britain survives free. Let us Americans choose no lesser freedom.

In Britain some opposition party leaders are members of the government and some say that a similar device should be adopted here. That is a false conception of our government. When a leader of the British Liberal party or a member of the British Labor party becomes a member of the Churchill Cabinet he becomes—from the British parliamentary point of view—an equal of Mr. Churchill’s.

This is because the British Cabinet is a committee of the House of Parliament. It is a committee of equals, wherein the Prime Minister is chairman, a lofty chairman indeed and yet but a chairman. The other members are his colleagues.

With us the situation, as you well know, is different. Our executive branch is not a committee of our legislative branch. Our President is independent of our Congress. The members of his Cabinet are not his colleagues. They are his administrative subordinates. They are subject to his orders.

An American President could fill his whole Cabinet with leaders of the opposition party and still our administration would not be a two-party administration. It would be an administration of a majority President giving orders to minority representatives of his own choosing. These representatives must concur in the President’s convictions. If they do not they have no alternative except to resign.

Clearly no such device as this can give us in this country any self-respecting agreement between majority and minority for concerted effort toward the national welfare. Such a plan for us would be but the shadow—not the substance—of unity.

Our American unity cannot be made with words or with gestures. It must be forged between the ideas of the opposition and the practices and policies of the Administration. Ours is a government of principles, and not one merely of men. Any member of the minority party, though willing to die for his country, still retains the right to criticize the policies of the government. This right is imbedded in our constitutional system.

We, who stand ready to serve our country behind our Commander-in-Chief, nevertheless retain the right, and I will say the duty, to debate the course of our government. Ours is a two-party system. Should we ever permit one party to dominate our lives entirely, democracy would collapse and we would have dictatorship.

Therefore, to you who have so sincerely given yourselves to this cause, which you chose me to lead, I say: “Your function during the next four years is that of the loyal opposition.” You believe deeply in the principles that we stood for in the recent election. And principles are not like foot-ball suits to be put on in order to play a game and then taken off when the game is over.

It is your Constitutional duty to debate the policies of this or any other administration and to express yourselves freely and openly to those who represent you in your State and national government.

Let me raise a single warning. Ours is a very powerful opposition. On November 5 we were a minority by only a few million votes. Let us not, therefore, fall into the partisan error of opposing things just for the sake of opposition. Ours must not be an opposition against—it must be an opposition for—an opposition for a strong America, a productive America. For only the productive can be strong and only the strong can be free.

Now let me however remind you of some of the principles for which we fought and which we hold as sincerely today as we did yesterday.

We do not believe in unlimited spending of borrowed money by the Federal government—the piling up of bureaucracy—the control of our electorate by political machines, however successful—the usurpation of powers reserved to Congress—the subjugation of the courts—the concentration of enormous authority in the hands of the Executive—the discouragement of enterprise—and the continuance of economic dependence for millions of our citizens upon government. Nor do we believe in verbal provocation to war.

On the other hand we stand for a free America—an America of opportunity created by the enterprise and imagination of its citizens. We believe that this is the only kind of an America in which democracy can in the long run exist. This is the only kind of an America that offers hope for our youth and expanding life for all our people.

Under our philosophy, the primary purpose of government is to serve its people and to keep them from hurting one another. For this reason our Federal Government has regulatory laws and commissions.

For this reason we must fight for the rights of labor, for assistance to the farmer, and for protection for the unemployed, the aged and the physically handicapped.

But while our government must thus regulate and protect us, it must not dominate our lives. We, the people, are the masters. We, the people, must build this country. And we, the people, must hold our elected representatives responsible to us for the care they take of our national credit, our democratic institutions and the fundamental laws of our land.

It is in the light of these principles, and not of petty partisan politics, that our opposition must be conducted. Itis in the light of these principles that we must join in debate, without selfishness and without fear.

Let me take as an example the danger that threatens us through our national debt.

Two days after the election, this Administration recommended that the national debt limit be increased from $49,000,000,000 to $65,000,000,000.

Immediately after that announcement, prices on the New York Stock Exchange and other exchanges jumped sharply upward. This was not a sign of health, but a sign of fever. Those who are familiar with these things agree unanimously that the announcement of the Treasury indicated a danger —sooner or later—of inflation.

Now you all know what inflation means. You have lately watched its poisonous course in Europe. It means a rapid decline in the purchasing power of money—a decline in what the dollar will buy. Stated the other way round, inflation means a rise in the price of everything—food, rent, clothing, amusements, automobiles—necessities and luxuries. Invariably these prices rise faster than wages, with the result that the workers suffer and the standard of living declines.

Nor no man is wise enough to say exactly how big the national debt can become, before causing serious inflation. But some sort of limit certainly exists, beyond which lies financial chaos. Such chaos would inevitably mean the loss of our social gains, the destruction of our savings, the ruin of every little property owner, and the creation of vast unemployment and hardships. It would mean, finally, the rise of dictatorship. Those have been the results of financial collapse in every country in the history of the world. The only way that we can avoid them is to remain sound and solvent.

It is not incumbent upon any American to remain silent concerning such a danger. I shall not be silent and I hope you will not be. This is one of your functions as a member of the minority. But in fulfilling our duties as an opposition party we must be careful to be constructive. We must help to show the way.

Thus, in order to counteract the threat of inflation and to correct some of our economic errors, I see five steps for our government to take immediately.

First, all Federal expenditures except those for national defense and necessary relief ought to be cut to the bone and below the bone. Work relief, obviously, has to be maintained, but every effort should be made to substitute for relief productive jobs.

Second, the building of new plants and new machinery for the defense program should be accomplished as far as possible by private capital. There should be no nationalization under the guise of defense of any American industry with a consequent outlay of Federal funds.

Third, taxes should be levied so as to approach as nearly as possible the pay-as-you-go plan. Obviously, we cannot hope to pay for all the defense program as we go. But we must do our best. That is part of the sacrifice that we must make to defend this democracy.

Fourth—Taxes and government restrictions should be adjusted to take the brakes off private enterprise so as to give it freedom under wise regulation, to release new investments and new energies and thus to increase the national income. I do not believe we can hope to bear the debt and taxes arising out of this defense program with a national income of less than one hundred billion-dollars—our present national income is only $70,000,000,000—unless we lower the standard of living of every man and woman who works. But if we can increase our national income to $100,000,000,000 we can pay for this defense program out of the increase produced if we free private enterprise—not for profiteering but for natural development.

Fifth, and finally, our government must change its punitive attitude toward both little and big businessmen. Regulations there must be—we of the opposition have consistently recommended that. But the day of witch hunting must be over.

If this administration has the unity of America really at heart it must consider without prejudice and with an open mind such recommendations of the opposition.

National unity can only be achieved by recognizing and giving serious weight to the viewpoint of the opposition. Such a policy can come only from the administration itself. It will be from the suppression of the opposition that discord and disunity will arise. The administration has the ultimate power to force us apart or to bind us together.

And now a word about the most important immediate task that confronts this nation. On this, all Americans are of one purpose. There is no disagreement among us about the defense of America. We stand united behind the defense program. But here particularly, as a minority party, our role is an important one. It is to be constantly watchful to see that America is effectively safeguarded and that the vast expenditure of funds which we have voted for that purpose is not wasted.

And in so far as I have the privilege to speak to you, I express once more the hope that we help to maintain the rim of freedom in Britain and elsewhere by supplying those defenders with materials and equipment. This should be done to the limit of our ability but with due regard to our own defense.

On this point, I think I can say without boast, that never in the history of American Presidential campaigns has a candidate gone further than I did in attempting to create a united front.

However, I believe that our aid should be given by constitutional methods and with the approval, accord and ratification of Congress. Only thus can the people determine from time to time the course they wish to take and the hazards they wish to run.

Mr. Roosevelt and I both promised the people in the course of the campaign that if we were elected we would keep this country out of war unless attacked. Mr. Roosevelt was re-elected and this solemn pledge for him I know will be fulfilled, and I know the American people desire him to keep it sacred.

Since November 5 I have received thousands and thousands of letters—tens of thousands of them. I have personally read a great portion of these communications. I am profoundly touched. They come from all parts of our country and from all kinds of people. They come from Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Christians, colored people and white people. They come from workers and farmers and clerks and businessmen—men and women of all the occupations that make up our American life.

All of these letters and telegrams, almost without exception, urge that the cause that we have been fighting for be carried on.

In your enthusiasm for our cause you founded thousands of organizations. They are your own organizations, financed by you and directed by you. It is appropriate for you to continue them if you feel so inclined. I hope you do continue them. It is not, however, appropriate to continue these organizations in my name. I do not want this great cause to be weakened by even a semblance of any personal advantage to any individual. I feel too deeply about it for that; 1944 will take care of itself. It is of the very essence of my belief that democracy is fruitful of leadership.

I want to see all of us dedicate ourselves to the principles for which we fought. My fight for those principles has just begun. I shall advocate them in the future as ardently and as confidently as I have in the past. As Woodrow Wilson once said: “I would rather lose in a cause that I know someday will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail.”

Whatever I may undertake in the coming years, I shall be working shoulder to shoulder with you for the defense of our free way of life, for the better understanding of our economic system and for the development of that new America whose vision lies within every one of us.

Meanwhile, let us be proud, let us be happy in the fight that we have made. We have brought our cause to the attention of the world. Millions have welcomed it. As time goes on millions more will find in it the hope that they are looking for. We can go on from here with the words of Abraham Lincoln in our hearts:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds. . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Good night. And God bless and keep every one of you.

(Photo credit: TheAtlantic.com)