Video: 'Rare Harry S. Truman Whistlestop Speech'

(Saturday, September 18, 1948, 12:30 p.m. CDT; during the United States presidential election, 1948 campaign) — On the first leg of a 9,500-mile campaign tour, U.S. President Harry S. Truman declared today that a Republican election victory would place the American farmer in “great danger” of “man-made disaster” from “gluttons of privilege.”

In a slashing “give ’em . . .” attack on his opposition, the gray-haired chief executive said that “Wall street reactionaries” are “putting up fabulous sums of money” to elect a Republican administration.

The Republicans, he continued, have already “stuck a pitchfork in the farmer’s back” and are now ready “to let the bottom drop out of farm prices.”