immediate recovery of business and a degree of prosperity in the country such as we have not seen for a long time.
Mr. BURKE. Mr. President, inasmuch as the Senator from North Carolina will discuss this matter and read the statement, I will not ask unanimous consent to have it inserted in the Appendix of the Record, and will draw my remarks to a close by saying that 2 years ago, approximately, on the 4th of January 1936, I had occasion to give out a statement. There was no doubt as to its authorship, as it was in the form of a letter which I signed. It was called to my attention in connection with the declaration of principles we have been discussing, and I should like to read just an excerpt from my letter of January 4, 1936, in which I stated:
I have become convinced that there will be no real and permanent recovery until confidence has been restored to business and industry, so that private capital can once more seek a legitimate and proper investment. This will not come until the Federal Government gives assurance that expenditures are to be curtailed so that a beginning may be made of a reduction in the national debt. It will not come until that same Government indicates a fixed purpose that there shall be no further extension of Government competition with private industry; but, instead, a withdrawal from many activities made temporarily necessary by the emergency, but in which recovery has progressed to the point that Government operation or control is no longer necessary. Most important of all is the problem of getting workers off relief, away from made-work jobs, removed from the Government pay roll, and restored to privately conducted business and industry.
I was interested, Mr. President, in this address to the American people, because it seemed to me that in my own feeble way I had been reaching out for the same solution of some of our problems which is so hopefully and so forcefully expressed in this address to the people of the United States about which we have been talking.
Mr. PEPPER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. BURKE. I yield.
Mr. PEPPER. I appreciate the kindness of the Senator from Utah in attributing to me the quality of wonder and curiosity. I am certainly one of the uninformed and am just as desirous of our reaching the laudable objectives which have been mentioned as I am sure the Senator from Nebraska is. The dilemma under which I labor is in not knowing how specifically to reach those very praiseworthy objectives. In view of the fact that the Senator from Nebraska has appended to this declaration of principles not only his own declaration of approval but a written statement of concurrence with it, I am sure he has given a great deal of study to the declaration of principles contained in the general declaration to which he adverted, as well as in his own declaration.
Will not the Senator be good enough to do the Senate, and certainly the Senator from Florida, the favor of going specifically into the ways by which he would achieve the very splendid objectives which he has embodied in his own personal declaration and enlighten us as to how we could achieve the objectives he has enumerated, item by item, and detail by detail, giving in substance legislation which he would propose, if any new legislation, and inform us as to legislation which he would repeal, if any should be repealed to accomplish those purposes?
Mr. BURKE. Does the Senator from Florida desire to spend Christmas Day and Christmas week in the Senate, or does he wish to go to Florida?
Mr. PEPPER. The delights of Florida are so great that I am sure all Senators would wish to go to Florida, and I certainly do; but I should think that at some appropriate time, if the Senator could get to the matter in detail, it would be instructive—at least, it would be to one who needs information on the subject.
Mr. BURKE. I shall do so at the appropriate time. I thought the Senator was suggesting that I go ahead at this moment and make a beginning. But inasmuch as the query of the Senator from Florida is somewhat answered by the address to the people of the United States which the Senator from North Carolina is to present to the Senate, I will not go into the details; but at a later date I should be glad, either privately or on the floor of the Senate, to give the Senator from Florida the benefit of any views I may have on the subject.
Mr. BAILEY obtained the floor.
Mr. BURKE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The Chief Clerk called the roll, and the following Senators answered to their names:
| Adams | Donahey | Lodge | Reynolds | |||
| Andrews | Duffy | Logan | Russell | |||
| Ashurst | Ellender | Lonergan | Schwartz | |||
| Austin | Frazier | Lundeen | Schwellenbach | |||
| Bailey | George | McAdoo | Sheppard | |||
| Bankhead | Gerry | McCarran | Shipstead | |||
| Barkley | Gibson | McGill | Smith | |||
| Borah | Gillette | McKellar | Steiwer | |||
| Bridges | Glass | McNary | Thomas, Okla. | |||
| Brown. N.H. | Graves | Maloney | Thomas, Utah | |||
| Bulkley | Green | Miller | Townsend | |||
| Bulow | Guffey | Minton | Truman | |||
| Burke | Hale | Moore | Tydings | |||
| Byrd | Harrison | Murray | Vandenberg | |||
| Byrnes | Hatch | Neely | VanNuys | |||
| Capper | Hayden | Norris | Wagner | |||
| Caraway | Herring | Nye | Walsh | |||
| Chavez | Hitchcock | O'Mahoney | Wheeler | |||
| Connally | Holt | Pepper | White | |||
| Copeland | Johnson, Colo. | Pittman | ||||
| Davis | King | Pope | ||||
| Dieterich | La Follette | Radcillfe |
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eighty-five Senators having answered to their names, a quorum is present.
Mr. BAILEY. Mr. President, on the fifteenth day of November the President of the United States sent to the Congress a message in which he stated that an obvious task of the Government and of the Congress—"an obvious and immediate task," if I recall his words-was to induce the investment of private funds in business and enterprise. That statement made a profound impression upon me. It was very gratifying and heartening, and it may be recalled that a day or two later I spoke here in the Senate on the subject and undertook to express my views as to the political and civil conditions necessary to bring about the accomplishment of the obvious task to which the President had so wisely called our attention.
I had a good many conferences with Senators. They were not private conferences in any sense of secrecy, but I have always understood since I have been in the Senate that when two Senators discussed a matter neither was at any great liberty to go around and say what the other Senator had said.
In the course of the conferences I found a very gratifying number of the Senators sharing the views of the President as expressed in his message. Finally I, of my own accord, upon the encouragement that I had received from these conferences, undertook to prepare a statement of principles and objectives, still with no sense of secrecy, but not disclosing my views especially as my own, because I did not care to undertake the responsibility of making a statement on my own responsibility. I did not think I was equal to that. I thought that would be presumptuous in me.
I received in consequence a great many suggestions from Senators, and finally I did write this paper and submitted it to a number of Senators, and then I brought a good many copies into the Senate one day and gave them to Senators who were friendly to the suggestion, and gave them liberty to give the statement to any Senator with a view to receiving his suggestions, his criticisms and, if possible, his assent to a statement of principles and policies and objectives that might be very helpful to the Congress and also to the people of our country.
There was no secrecy about that either. It was intended and in contemplation that the statement should be submitted to every Senator, and every Senator should have a fair chance to make such suggestions as he pleased. If there should be something in the statement that he did not like, he would have opportunity to say so. If he wished to put something in the statement that was not there, he should have a chance to do so.
