240 BANQUET. 
Your conception of Congress changes. About 18,000 bills were introduced in the 
last Congress. You would think that Congress was a big drug store and the President 
was a great physician, and every time the country had an ache or pain all you had to 
do was to get a presidential prescription, send it in to Congress, and then Congress 
would pull down some bottles of dope and fill it into a sugar-coated pill and give it to 
the country, and that would cure the country’s condition. Congress cannot perform 
any such feat, and you will never cure America in any such way—simply by legis- 
lation. The worst abuses that will come to this country will come through legislative 
halls, and just as soon as our people turn their eyes away from legislative remedies 
and give their attention to what has been always fundamentally American, just so 
soon will we solve our problems, and not until then. 
As to these 18,000 bills, most of them, if they were enacted into law, would com- 
pletely change the form of our government and the structure of things we believe in. 
They were absolutely out of harmony with fundamental American conceptions of 
government. I wish I had brought with me—I intended to do so—some six or seven 
postal cards I received from children in my district, who cannot be more than nine 
years of age, judging from the handwriting on the postal cards. We get many postal 
cards in Congress. Somebody said to me:-—“‘If you want to come back here, the way 
to do it is to write a letter to every one of your constituents telling them you have seeds 
and books to distribute, and if they want any you will send seeds or books to them.” 
I sent a letter to my constituents telling them about the fine flower seeds and the 
various pamphlets and saying I was ready to send them to anyone requesting them, 
and ] got back one postal card reading like this: ‘‘Dear John:—I do not want any of 
your seeds and I don’t want any of your books, but when do I get my beer back 
again?” (Laughter and applause.) If I could only answer that, he would never know. 
I would go out and make money on that knowledge. 
But I have six or seven postal cards from children, not in response to a letter of 
mine, but they came to me, and one read this way :—‘‘ Dear Sir: Please send me a walk- 
ing doll and a carriage and everything that goes with it.’’ Another read:—*' Please 
send me a painting set.’”’ Another read:—‘‘Please send me a cracker-jack book.” 
Another said:—‘‘Please send me a walking doll, a painting set and a cracker-jack book.” 
Men, do you believe it possible that a child seven, eight or nine years old wrote those 
postal cards—that they were written by children of that age? How do they know 
who their congressman is, and then, if they know, how do they know where his place 
of doing business is? 
There is somewhere in this country propaganda among the children of the country 
to teach them that the government is a great supply house where, if you want any- 
thing, they will furnish it to you. All you have to do is to ask for it and it will be given 
to you, and if it is not given to you, then you should be, as the child said in one of these 
postal cards, ‘‘mad” at the Government and ought not to have any liking for it. Cer- 
tainly childhood does not write requesting that out of the great toy house of govern- 
ment, things be given to them unless someone tells them to do so. But that concep- 
tion is not confined to childhood. The conception that government is something to 
live on rather than something to live under is quite prevalent and common, and a call 
for legislation for this, and legislation for that, and legislation for the other thing demon- 
strates clearly that there is a growing belief that the creature called a government is 
in fact a creator. Americans must everlastingly keep in mind that government is 
