The Democratic Argument

To Detroit's Brodhead Naval Armory last week, after a round of campaigning for his party's candidates in home-state Illinois, went Adlai Stevenson, titular leader of the Democratic Party. In his Detroit speech were the usual Stevenson quips and quibbles, but also there--and available for Democrats everywhere to hang onto--was a hard and fast line: 1) the Republican Administration, on its record, has permitted the domestic economy to become stagnant and has caused the U.S. to lose prestige abroad, and 2) only a Democratic Congress can make things right.

"There seem to be two main themes of the Republican campaign for Congress this year," said Stevenson. "One is to elect a Republican Congress to do what they couldn't do--:with a Republican Congress. And the other is, curiously enough, a 1952 model--:crime, corruption, controls and Korea."

Such a G.O.P. reliance on slogans and catchwords is disturbing, said Stevenson, in these troubled and anxious times.

"There has been a dangerous deterioration in the world situation. The Communist states have won major victories and the U.S. has lost respect and confidence . . . At home the economy seems to be creeping toward G.O.P. normalcy. The Administration is right when it says we are not in a depression. We are just in a rut. We are having a second-best year, and it is the optimists, not the pessimists, who hold out the hope that next year may not be much worse."

Stevenson listed seven economic factors as proof of his argument. The seven:

P: "Our national income is about $20 to $25 billion less than it should be. The economy should have grown about 3% this year. Instead it has shrunk about 3%."

P:"One out of every 20 people in the labor force is unemployed . . . The President's chief economic adviser says that this level of unemployment is too high for the long run. I think it is also too high for the short run." "The cost of living is at an alltime peak. Does the housewife remember what the Republican candidate had to say about this in 1952? Well, her dollar is not buying more; it is buying less. Not much less, but less."

P: "While the cost of living is at a peak, the average weekly earnings of workers in industry have declined."

P:"The squeeze is on the farmer, too. His costs continue high, but the prices he receives are much lower."

Stevenson's summation: "The big economic problem ahead for the U.S. is to arrest the drift and assure the steady growth of our economy. During the 20 years of Democratic government, the country made big strides toward protecting itself against another terrible depression."

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