I can't tell you how very much I appreciate this wonderful turnout at this time of day and the train 15 minutes ahead of time. You know, that's the most unusual thing in history-for a train to run 15 minutes ahead of time.

I wonder if the colorbearers would let the flags rest on the ground until I get through speaking, so the people behind can see Thank you very much.

I have been acquainted with Shawnee for a long time. You've got a Baptist school here, and I am a Baptist myself. Not only that. In years past Shawnee was, and still is, one of the oil capitals of this great oil State of Oklahoma.

But Shawnee decided that the fundamentals come out of the top of the ground, in the form of farm products; and I'm informed that there are more than 4,400 farms and 500,000 acres in cultivation around this great agricultural center and that you are, from year to year, producing more and more of the things that go to make up the good things in life-which is fiber, grain, and things of that sort-and we have, in this campaign, a very decided and clear drawn issue. It is the people against the special interests. And this last Congress made a sincere effort for the special interests to abolish our farm program. I just want to give you some statistics on things that happened in the House of Representatives in this last Congress.

The Republican House Appropriations Committee, headed by one of the worst old mossbacks in Congress, John Taber of New York, said, "To hell with the farmers out West." That's an exact quote from him. And they voted to cut the funds of the Department of Agriculture by 37 percent. The cuts they made put the axe to your program of rural electrification, school lunches, and small farm loans and soil conservation. Those are among the most important things to the farmer that ever have been on the law books of the country.

Then my friend Clarence Cannon, a great Democrat and your neighbor over here in Missouri, who used to be Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, tried to get those cuts restored; and he was supported by every one of the Democrats on the Committee and every one of the Democrats in the House, including all the Representatives from the great State of Oklahoma. The Republicans ganged up against us and they defeated that attempt to put those appropriations back, by 180 to 174. But there happened to be a very good bunch of fighting Democrats in the Senate, and they got most of it restored.

But it just goes to show you that if these Republicans could get complete control of the Government of the United States I don't think the farmer would have a chance. They'd take every gain that the farmers made in the last 16 years away from him. I'm just as sure of that as I'm standing here; and I started out this campaign on this trip at Des Moines, Iowa, and explained to the farmers just exactly where they stood with these Republicans. Stassen has made it very plain that they want to revise the price support program down to the point where the farmer won't have a chance in these high markets.

I hope you weigh these things very carefully and that you'll consider your own interests when you go to the polls on November 2nd and vote for yourselves. Vote for yourselves as well as vote for the Democratic ticket, and when you do that you'll be sure that the country is in safe hands.

Now, I'm particularly interested in these young people who come out to these meetings. These young people are going to be in a position to run the country the next generation, and I think we are facing the greatest age in history; and as I said time and again, I wish I was 14 instead of 64 so I could see what was going to happen in the next 50 years, because I think we are going to face a situation, when you get all the wonderful inventions and the harnessing of atomic energy, to the point where the world will be the happiest place to live in possibleif we can just succeed in getting a few contrary people to understand that peace is much more profitable than war.

And I think we're going to get that done before we get through. If you really want to implement these policies, if you really want to do the proper thing for the most people in the United States of America, you'll send Bob Kerr to the Senate and you'll send my good friend Steed, here, to the House of Representatives. And Steed knows his way around Washington. He has been secretary to three Congressmen, and if he doesn't know where all the places are it's not his fault. Secretaries, you know, do most of the work for Congressmen.