Dear
Ed: Contrary to your assumption, I had not seen the clipping that carried the story on your visit to Senator Bridges.1 The fact is that it is so tame or pale as compared to some things that are said about me, my family or Administration that the staff was not impressed sufficiently to call it to my attention.
I am interested in your statement, "I do think and have said so to you, that the Government is rapidly drifting into a socialistic state." A statement such as this seems indication to me that you are not studying the march of events with as clear an eye as you should; you are talking from impressions and prejudices without giving the important factors serious examination.2
In 1948, '49, '50, '51 and early '52, many hundreds of people were urging me to go into politics. Scores of different reasons were advanced as to why I should do so, but in general they all boiled down to something as follows: "The country is going socialistic so rapidly that, unless Republicans can get in immediately and defeat this trend, our country is gone. Four more years of New Dealism and there will be no turning back. This is our last chance."3
To all of these people I made the same reply time and time again:
(a) It is silly to believe that any individual in the world--or, indeed, any party--can actually turn a whole population back from a course it has pursued in the belief that that course is assisting the majority of the population. (Naturally, I am now speaking of a self-governing country.)
Neither I nor anyone else can bring about the abandonment of projects supported by the government that are generally believed to help the social or economic welfare of vast portions of our population.
(b) The most that anyone--even if he is supported by a good majority in the Congress--could do would be gradually to stop the trend in this direction, slowly to bend the rising curve toward greater socialism and eventually to flatten it out so that further advance in this dangerous direction would be prevented.
(c) To bring about this result would not only take persistence and patience by the government, but it would require a maximum degree of understanding on the part of the so-called "standpatters." These people will have to recognize the truth of the statements made in (a) and (b), and must devote their efforts to helping stabilize the situation rather than criticizing efforts which recognize that you cannot return to the days of 1860.4
Now just one or two more general comments. Shortly after I was elected, former President Hoover visited me in my office. He said something to me which I quote roughly as follows: "You have, from an economic viewpoint, the most difficult task that has ever faced any of our Presidents. All of us believe that there is great danger lying ahead in the direction we are now travelling. Yet you cannot go back. Your accomplishments will necessarily be confined to a gradual halting of that movement. As a result, the reactionaries will snarl at you, as well, of course, as the people that join the ADA and other so-called `liberal' groups. Education of the entire people will be a task of the Party, and since so many people will misunderstand what is going on, that education will be a slow and laborious process."5
My only other point is really a suggestion. Stevenson has lately been speaking in Oregon. Why don't you get copies of his talks and read them over? You will find that he is complaining bitterly because the Republican Party, under my leadership, is guided only by its devotion to the monopoly of money, to the service of the rich, and to the exploitation of the masses. Of course he makes different speeches in different States, but in Oregon he is applying these generalizations to my attitude about power development. Since I believe that the responsibility for power development should not reside exclusively in the Federal Government, he asserts that I am giving away to the rich the assets of the whole people. In other States he is quite capable of saying something entirely different.6
Even the big fight in the TVA region came about because I refused to build more steam plants at Federal expense to produce power for that area. All of the hydroelectric capacity has been developed in the area and so many steam plants have been built by the Federal Government that already one-half of the power for that region is produced in that way. Yet I am called a reactionary because I believe that the Federal Government should not be building more steam plants in that region.7
I am a little amused about this word "real" that in your clipping modifies the word "Republican." I assume that Lincoln was a real Republican--in fact, I think we should have to assume that every President, being the elected leader of the Party, is a real Republican.8 Therefore, the President's branch of the Party requires, for its description, no adjective whatsoever. I should think that the splinter groups, which oppose the leader, would be the ones requiring the descriptive adjectives. In any event, please look up sometime what Lincoln had to say about the proper functions of government.9 As ever
