I am happy to be in Ogden, Utah, this evening, because it is getting late in the evening and I am doubly pleased that this tremendous crowd has turned out.

You know, those eastern newspapers just won't believe it when they are told that past ii o'clock there are 10,000 or 12,000 people out to listen to me in Ogden. They just think it is not possible. But here you are! Somebody I hope will take a picture of it and send it to all the eastern newspapers. The prosperity which I have seen in Colorado and through Utah today is a prosperity which I am finding throughout the whole country, and I am finding it especially in the West. I spent yesterday in Colorado, and I thought everybody in Co~rado came out to see me, and I think they did. We had a good time, and I told them some things that I thought they ought to know. And I said the same things today in telling you peopl e here in Utah some of the things I think you ought to know.

I want to keep the West prosperous. I made that very plain tonight at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. And I want to say to some of you young men over there, that if you want to come up here and make a speech, I will abdicate and let you do it. The Democrats have a program for continued improvement and growth of the West, and for continued prosperity of the country, but there are serious obstacles in the way. They are the refusal of the Republican leadership to do anything about high prices, an d the outright sabotage of the Western States.

You know, this last Congress-this Republican 80th "do-nothing" Congress-tried its best to take all your prosperity away from you. I wish you would read the record of that Congress. Then if you send another one back there like it, you will deserve what yo u get. Let us look at what the Democratic administrations have done for the Western States-Utah, for example. In 1934 the Ogden River project was begun. That one project alone began making water available for 25,000 acres of farmland. On a project like this th e cash income of Utah farmers has risen so fast that it is now six times what it was in 1932-six times what it was in 1932! That cash income of all Utah people rose from less than ~150 million in 1932 to more than $700 million in 1947.

And that is why I wonder, that is why I wonder-back in 1946 you said you wanted a change; and only a third of you two-thirds of you stayed at home~only a third of you went to the polls, and you elected that awful 80th Congress. And you got just what you deserved. I don't feel sorry for you about it at all. I am trying to tell you what you are about to get, if you go to the polls again, and a half of you, or a third of you go to the polls again, and the rest of you don't vote. You will have something that will make the Western States sorrowful, because the sympathies of the Republican leadership don't come very far west of the Mississippi River. In fact, I think it stopped at the Mississippi River, and most of it stopped at the Appalachian Mountains. This great increase in this income was not accidental. It was due to the plans and policies of the Democratic administrations to develop the western resources for the benefit of the western people themselves, not for the benefit of the few bloodsuckers w ho have offices in Wall Street. The Republicans have fought bitterly against the Democratic program for soil conservation, reclamation, and irrigation. Tonight in Salt Lake City, I told them how the Republicans have been selling out the best interests of this country by slashing approp riations, attacking reclamation laws, trying to stop the Government from building public power transmission lines, and things of that sort.

And that has not been by accident. That has been by intention.

And if you want that continued, you can do it very easily. You can either vote a Republican ticket, or you can stay at home and not vote at all. But I don't think that is what you are going to do. I think you are going to vote in your own interest. I thi nk you are not only going to vote for me, but you are going to vote for yourselves. And when you do that, that will keep me from suffering from a housing shortage on January 20, 1949, and I won't have to move out of the White House. It has been a very great privilege for me to be with you tonight. I am glad to have had the chance to stop here. I had no idea that so many people would stay up to listen to the facts of life. Thank you very much.

NOTE: In the course of his remarks on September 21 the President referred to former Senator Walter Walker, Senator Edwin C. Johnson, and Democratic candidate for Representative Wayne N. Aspinall, all of Colorado; to Governor Herbert B. Maw, Mayor A. D. Keller of Price, Representative Walter K. Granger, Mayor D. K. Downey of Helper, and Democratic candidate for Representative Reva Beck Bosone, all of Utah; and to George A.Smith, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint s.