NFO-183 (AV10682): American Heritage

welcome to Corning Iowa home of the national farmers organization and Nottoway Valley foods and a hundred and twenty other eight fine businessman Corning chamber of commerce this is one of the many signs of distinction there's going all across the United States with letters nfo and cooperation is the key this was a theme at rural America declaration of independence day by Ed Wimmer national federation of independent businessman public relations director the theme of his speech was American heritage many other outstanding leaders are praising the theme American heritage for example FHA and PCA officials see the family farm threatened an official the Farmers Home administration said recently the large farming enterprises are a threat to family agriculture in this country and the present price and market policies are cockeyed and upside-down Floyd h-f Higby deputy administrator of the organization made the comments in a speech before a regional FHA meeting you do not solve the farm problem by simply eliminating farmers Higby stated he criticized the way large corporations and monopolies have caused many people to leave the farm into the cities he said if present trends continue the entire nation's food supply could be controlled by fewer than 250,000 big farm operators another outstanding finance specialist mr. Homer Jackson a rifle Colorado a production credit official stated that the American people should keep in mind that it has been private enterprise not free enterprise that has made this America grow a great nation in this world the backbone of this country economic structure II stated consists of the private enterprise spread among the millions of farmers in small towns businessmen all over America mr. Jackson stressed that the economic destruction of America's farm families present a great danger to the strength of this nation and to our American Way of life mr. Jackson concluded by seeing the entire farm problem affecting agriculture credit can be explained in one word prices and prices alone Homer Jackson and another outstanding specialist Floyd Higby here now we go to Central Park now for a speech by Ed Wimmer at rural America declaration of independence day governor Dan and mr. mayor and my distinguished fellow Americans because to me the people that turn out like this to listen to what other people have to say are always distinguished you have honored me by your presence and I have been honored by nmo to come here today I'd like to hear a big yell how many of you are at Des Moines how many were in Louisville I'll tell you that's wonderful that does my heart good ladies and gentlemen I'm not going to talk about priorities and various other things that your nfo leaders are going to talk about I'm going to try to confine my remarks today as to why we are here where we are and where we may be headed this is the fourth of July and this is the day when we are supposed to celebrate freedom the father and son businesses and the father and son farms and the father and son banks are one of the three pillars of our American society and we are going to have to do something and do it fast to keep these sons on the farm and keep the sons following their fathers in small businesses and other enterprises or America is going to die on Main Street I'd like to introduce my oldest son who was here with me and has decided to follow me in the work that I am doing so far as Arnold Paulsen is concerned we'd be patting each other on the back if I was to say what I think about the crusading that he has done up and down this United States for the family farmer and for small business and for the free enterprise system in our representative form of government it would be a long story until I got into the nfo picture I didn't realize that you had men like Homer Jackson and orange Dailey and Butch Swain and Wilkins and think Stan in fact mr. fingsten came to my office to talk to me about speaking in Des Moines and I wasn't sure what he was there for for quite some time until we had discussed all the different background of the different work that I'm doing in the different work that that you are doing and that nfo was doing and then I got acquainted with the temp goal with real snickles I got acquainted with Jay Cohen who was trying to get some grain alcohol going in the gasoline to the United States and he wrote me a letter and he said I believe that the 4th of July meeting in Corning is going to make history ladies and gentlemen I believe it is - now as I've gotten around the country speaking at nfo meetings I run into a lot of fellas that didn't join they said 'we are going to wait to see what you can accomplish a wait to see what you're going to do or they had some other reasons and I always look at those fellas as the guy who says well halitosis is better no breath at all and then he leaves himself going without doing anything about it the base of operations for America's new challenge will not be New York it will not be Los Angeles there is too much strife and struggle it may finalize in the halls of Congress but it is going to begin in communities like Corning today we are a nation of strife a nation of struggle our nation of racial hatred a nation of violence which is stalking our land and making our headlines but behind those riots and behind the headlines and behind the violence is in America that absolutely nothing is going to conquer the real hellraisers of America really showing themselves yet when they do believe me ladies and gentlemen the picture is going to change now we need to be reminded on this day that the Patriots of our revolution put their faith in God they took God's Word as their trust his promise as their goal let those who spread hate today take note of that fact I think that we should pay a tribute to the chambers of commerce of the small towns and the cities for that matter but particularly to these small towns the ones that have been convincing with nfo that first it was a little bit tough for the businessman but today I find these chambers of commerce coming to life all over America and realizing that without family farms all around their towns there is going to be no Chamber of Commerce so they better get into the swim whether they want to or not another thing I think that we should recognize is the wonderful way that the press and the radio and TV have covered nfo stories without trying to bury nfo now there has been some bad publicity you all know it as well as I do but on the whole ladies and gentlemen I think the press and the radio and TV and everybody else deserves a real hand for the wonderful cooperation that they have put behind the story of the family farm these last several years now when you think of somebody not speaking up when you think of yourself not speaking up when you're around in a small group and you want to talk for NF or you want to talk for it's a small businessman or you want to stand up for the family farmer and you say well they'll think I'm some kind of a nut well listen to this in Germany they came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because i wasn't a jew then they came for the trade unionists and i didn't speak up because i wasn't a trade unionist then they came for the catholics and i didn't speak up because i was a protestant then they came for me but by that time there was no one left to speak up pastor niemoller who almost died in the concentration camp in Germany what is the principal product of the farm it is your children and is there any institution I don't care if it's as big as the Rockefeller Institution is there any institution in the world that could take the place of the farm mother I've been around an nfo and my mother was a farm mother and I know what she did in the morning and I know what she did at night and for seven days a week and what kind of kids she tried to raise and I hope that maybe I might it be an example of something of what she she did but I'll put one farm mother for efficiency or anything you want to call it against the biggest corporation farm in the United States and make it look sick woman power goes beyond the home it goes into the marketplace and woman power in America today is 280 billions of dollars of spending and if the women of America had not been chasing trading stamps and gimmicks and games and contests if the farmers and their wives of America not been running to the post office to send money orders off to Sears and Roebuck if they had been patronizing their independent merchants up and down the Main streets of America and if the Main Street merchants of America would put up a fight for the family farm there wouldn't maybe any need for nfo even today if that would have been going the way it should we've all been changed we've all been changed and monopolized whatever we do whatever I do whatever nfo do does it's all going to be wasted if we can't find an answer to the monopoly problem in America and my theme in Des Moines was this that the shot heard at Concord bridge was heard around the world and the shot that was fired at Des Moines was heard in the White House and it blew the locks off of the doors of every single congressman when I left demoys des moines I had a feeling that veteran halls in Des Moines was Iowa's own Independence Hall a 1967 agricultural Declaration of Independence was written on that day and I say this because before Des Moines when I would go into the congressman's office and they would say well the little farmers going to have to go and then I would go to some other people and some economist and they would say well after all the buggy whip is gone and the and the covered wagon is gone and the Model T is gone now you just can't hang on to those things but after Des Moines and after Louisville where I come from down near there the story began to change and you'll remember with it the president started issuing statements out of the White House and Humphrey and Freeman and all them started traveling across the country I got a telegram here from John Kyl one of your congressmen out here and he says as one of us worked side by side with you and trying to preserve the independent business and the small farms of America I thank you for coming to our July 4th is the best day of the year for your speech because the independence of the individual is the genuine value of the American Way of life at Des Moines and all over the nation I am saying to the family farmers and to the small business men of America that you have not analyzed your position or your importance when you can stand up and look in the mirror when you can turn the key in the door of your small business when you can get up in the morning to go out and milk your cows or whatever else you are doing and you can know that when you are born the American Way of life is gone that there is no American heritage no country left then you've got something different to fight for than tractors and barns and a few extra profits and maybe to keep your kids on the farm now since this is declaration day and since Thomas Jefferson if the world today understood the life and the story and the teaching and the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson do you think we'd be in Vietnam do you think it would be a wall between East and West Germany do you think there would be a communist threat anywhere in the world if the life was of Thomas Jefferson was known and do you know that it isn't even known to 90% of our kids in our schools and colleges and then we're going out over the world like a meddling old bumbling uncle to try to tell the rest of the world but the American Way of life is when our teachers and our kids and our colleges don't even know what it is now Thomas Jefferson said it is not to the advantage of a republic that a few should control the many when Nature has scattered so much talent through the conditions of men and James Madison 30 years old hold fast the programs rational and moral that have as their central goal a constant diffusion of power and today we are the most power ridden nation that the world has ever known since the days of Rome and we are going exactly down the same path that Britain took do you think you could have told up an Englishman 35 or 40 years ago that there wouldn't be a single Englishman anywhere in the world singing Britannia rules the waves of course you couldn't he'd have thought it was the biggest joke on earth but you don't hear any Englishmen singing it today and ladies and gentlemen it is going to be our fault if some day instead of singing god Bless America we're on our knees praying god save America now my position is that this country was built on widespread my position is that this country was built on widespread independent ownership of farm home and business enterprise wherever practical and possible with local control over local affairs in government this is a big country we need big business and we couldn't get along without big business we're going to have some big farms and there's nobody objecting to some big farms we're going to have big labor unions don't you ever forget it they're here to stay big banks and we're going to have big government but when cutthroat competition then mergers and consolidation and rigging of farm prizes when all of those things enter into a picture of developing gigantic corporate farms gigantic corporate businesses gigantic labor unions and gigantic government I say to you on this day when we celebrate a republic that there is no room in a republic for monsters or for giants in any field I would not be here today and pleading this cause if I thought that you were asking for anything that you are not entitled to if I thought that your campaign was a selfish campaign to just help the farmers and not be worried about the small businessman of the future or America or the boys at beat them do you think that I would be away from my two grandsons in Covington Kentucky today that wanted me to go out to Coney Island with them and spend the day with them you know that I wouldn't nothing would be worth taking away from that if this is what this meeting was called for in 16 years the Farmers of America have been underpaid by four hundred and twenty two billions of dollars which is the greatest subsidy that was ever made by this country or the people of the world at any time in history that's where the subsidy lies is the subsidy to the towns and the cities not the subsidies of the towns and the cities to the farmers now what about your young people how many of them want to stay on the farm they come up to me in these meetings as I go around the country and they say mr. Wimmer do you really think we should stay on the farm and then I'll have the young people come up to me after I talk to organizations business organizations and they say my dad has told me to go get another job because he doesn't believe there's a future for our shoe store or our hardware store or whatever the case might happen to be and I say to you today out there that a society in which the young people have lost their boldness and sense of adventure and their zest for exploration and risk-taking is a society that's going on the rocks now what about this unity that we have today among the small businessmen and among the family farmers and the local bankers shall it be said in the future they inherited not the American Dream but the ax forgotten dream shall it be said five years from now that instead of three million family farms we have maybe five hundred thousand or a million at the most and I went into one of those complacent towns in Minnesota there were 22 empty stores on the Main Street two hundred farmers were gone both doctors had left the town the dentist was packing up to leave two churches were consolidating two schools were sawed consolidating it was a ghost town and when that happens all over America America will be a ghost America now Parade magazine said if the house divided against itself that house cannot stand and then they went on to say how labor business agriculture government and banking must get together in a common cause to save the little guy now this was Parade magazine this wasn't Orange stainle or Pinkston or butch Swain this was an or Ed Wimmer or Paulson this was Parade magazine that if they don't get together they'll hang well our National Federation of Independent Business has a quarter of a million members and we've been fighting for the family farm since 1932 right along with the family business the National Association of retail druggists have come out for the NFL program the national independent Bankers Association sounds more like farmers then they sound like bankers now this ladies and gentlemen is progress and if you will walk into your stores as farmers and start trading with your independent merchants and start telling them where you stand and quit chasing after all those trading stamps and gimmicks and contests and all the rest of the things that the chains are offering and don't you forget for one single minute that the reason that the family chicken farms are all gone from the highways of America is because the chain stores have been using chicken as a bait for 40 years the reason that the farm that turkey farmers are gone in in Wisconsin ten thousand of them is because when the turkey raisers brought their turkeys to town the chains were selling them below the cost of raising them and whether it is potatoes or whether it is strawberries or tomatoes on the Rio Rio Grande or whether it is cattle or what it is you can put yourself down today and maybe I'm going a little bit too far even for nfo I don't know I don't think so but you put yourself down right today that monopoly power and change tourism in America is public enemy number one and I'm considering it along with the racial riots there are some people who don't believe that they always remind me of the guy that didn't believe in flying saucers until he pinched a waitress and then he changed his mind real fast there's another big chain that's going to open up in the United States it's going to be backed by Gulf oil by some of the other biggest corporations in the United States and they call themselves the National let me get this the National farm stores there's no more farm to it other than they're going to sell firm products and they're going to open up gigantic shopping centers in all strategic points and they're going to sell everything that the farmer needs from automobiles tractors on down to insurance and everything else and they're going to open up these great big shopping centers all over America well ladies and gentlemen you better start thinking about it pretty fast now nature gave man two ends one to sit on want to think with what happens to end depends on which end to use the most on this July 4th freedoms holiday a day to honor the men who live fought and died for freedom July for the day when you spell out a word that gets meaning to our lives meanings to the teachers and the sacrifices the honor and the greatness of human life the word freedom under God last week a hundred and eighty-six boys were killed in beatin and ten thousand since January the 1st and when you look at that flag and you look at yourselves and your families and you ask yourselves if we kill ten thousand young men in America in Vietnam since January the first to make this country safe for the chain store monopolist and the giant business and the selfish labor leaders and these racists that are stirring up all this fire and trouble and riots in this United States and claiming that had no freedom how do you go home and forget the obligations of this day how do you forget that five signers of the Declaration for example who were captured by the British as traitors were tortured and shot twelve had their homes ransacked and burned thank were killed in battle too lost their sons in the war Carter Braxton of Virginia wealthy planter saw his ship swept away but the British Navy he sold his home and property to pay his debts and he died in utmost poverty lest we forget less those merchants business and professional men and farmers of today forget the ones who refuse to sacrifice a few dollars to save what was won in those terrible days lest they forget I would remind them that Thomas McKean a signer little-known of our days a signer of the Declaration was founded by the British so much the abdomen his family constantly he served in Congress without pain his possessions were taken from him and poverty was his final reward ladies and gentlemen compare this kind of a sacrifice of Jim Hart who came home to find his thirteen children banished and never found them again his property laid waste he lived in caves and forests a few weeks after he returned home he died of a broken heart one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence how old were these men we talked today about the frustration of our youth we see them marching and throwing bottles and look what happened in Minneapolis last night when George Wallace was over there and made his feat a terrible thing to look at but don't you sell those kids of our short because 90% of them back there have got their eyes open and their hearts open and their minds open and they want a decent honorable America they don't know just for sure how to go about getting it but I think the leaders of nfo knows how to go about getting it I think that some of our candidates know if they'll speak up and say so and I hope that our organization knows but listen to these ages Alexander Hamilton 19 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence James Monroe 18 Aaron Burr who later was killed by hampel Hamilton in a duel was only 20 James Madison who came to warn about future Americans to hang on to their programs rational and moral and keep power down James Madison was 25 and Thomas Jefferson was 33 it is their lives it is their sacrifices it was their revolution that we are supposed to be celebrating here today and in closing ladies and gentlemen what could I say to you except to wish you Godspeed home to listen to the words of Samuel Foss who said bring me men to watch my valleys bring me men to watch my plains men with dreams to match their courage and with victories in their veins a free society ladies and gentlemen is tough to build it's tough to hold it's tougher to recapture if it gets away ours will get away if the ideals and fundamental principles of the founding fathers the aims and the purposes of nfo in all of its statements and all of its writings and its work if we can't find a little way ladies and gentlemen to make those come true I will guarantee you that the book that was written about 1984 that there was nothing be left of the American heritage by that day it will happen much sooner god bless you god bless america and as I said before watch out for your kids because they're the most valuable possession that we've got thank you very very much mr. ed Wimmer public relations director for the National Federation of Independent Business men brought out the cooperation among the organization forces to save rural America the National Federation of Independent Business the national independent Bankers Association and other organizations like the National Association of retail druggists and the national independent food dealers association and hundreds of local Chamber of Commerce's now rallying behind the cause of rural America he stated fighting for the family farm fighting to save independent business fighting to save America he said the cooperation can save the private enterprise system and our representation form of government this is democracy in action mr. Wimmer said if three if there was ever a time in American history the time is now to stand up and be counted and heard whether you're a farmer a rancher a businessman on Main Street a doctor or a lawyer or a minister or even a teacher all America has a greater things at stake he said which lies outside the city limits the businessman he called on the farms and ranches for the income pattern of agriculture he said sets the true prosperity level of the nation it appeared in the Duns Review the vanishing farmer challenge to the economy pointed out that no one can truly answer the question where the economy will land but in this age of the draining gold reserve a dollar under fire and unbalance of payments a historical simile might be worth keeping in mind America always has prospered when agriculture has prospered and agriculture itself has prospered when US has a high level of exports as history has shown when agriculture is received true honest equity cost of production plus a reasonable profit it has led to a strong and stable dollar for the men who make policies in Washington as well as the man in corporate headquarters which are now far removed from the parts of this country the link between a prosperous farm and a strong dollar bears consideration