Franklin D. Roosevelt vs Alf Landon

Declared 'flatly against any oath for school teachers not required of all other citizens' -- a break with Hearst and the Legion.

Keep the 1936 conservation-payment program, favor production 'of all the market will absorb' plus a reserve, judicious commodity loans on seasonal surpluses, and federal assistance to balance production with demand.

Replace the AAA/soil-conservation 'subterfuge' with payments giving growers of hogs, wheat, cotton and tobacco 'an American and not a foreign price', capped at family-farm production levels, financed within a balanced budget; protect the home market.

Enforce the criminal and civil provisions of the existing antitrust laws and, where corporate devices or judicial construction have weakened them, legislate to restore their effectiveness against monopolistic practices.

Vigorous criminal and civil enforcement plus new legislation to make private monopoly impossible; restore a free competitive system instead of NRA-style government-sanctioned price fixing.

Bring under the civil service law all continuing positions exempted during the emergency.

Return the civil service to a merit basis offering permanent careers irrespective of party; remove politicians from administrative jobs.

Keep the Wagner Act's guarantee of self-organization free from employer interference and the federal machinery for settling disputes; resist the 'labor spy' tactics of the pay-envelope campaign.

Keep government in the position of umpire protecting the public interest and mediating between groups; build effective conciliation machinery.

Protect self-organization and collective bargaining 'without interference from any source', with the employee equally free to join or refuse to join absent a contract; after Norman Thomas's inquiry, affirm that organizers may lawfully enter unorganized industries.

Cash payments for actual conservation performance where farmers cannot afford it, State participation with local administration by farmers, linked to water conservation and flood control, without penalizing dairy and livestock producers.

Seek legislation within the Constitution; if problems like wages, hours and child labor cannot be solved that way, seek a clarifying amendment giving Congress and the States the needed power. The candidate never said how he would deal with the Court's adverse decisions.

Support State laws and compacts against sweatshops and child labor 'within the Constitution as it now stands'; if working conditions cannot be regulated by the States, favor an amendment giving the States the necessary powers. Change only by amendment, never by usurpation.

Enact crop insurance so surpluses of good years carry farmers and consumers through drought years.

Study and develop crop insurance, a subject 'in neither platform', building on Kansas experience.

Maintain the managed dollar of 1934 ('the soundest currency in the world') and stabilize it to prevent the former swings that injured debtors and creditors in turn.

Restore to Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value by repealing the gold-devaluation, greenback and stabilization-fund delegations; cooperate on international stabilization when safe.

Fulfill all obligations the administration made with farmers who carried out their end; continue relief checks, seed loans and other aid to drought-hit farmers until they can raise a crop, 'promptly' and without politics.

Free enterprise 'from incessant governmental intimidation'; refuse national economic planning that tells farmers what to plant and workers how many hours to work; make the President answer whether he will re-enact NRA and AAA.

Use the organized power of government to give the average citizen 'equal opportunity in the market place' against concentrated control of other people's money, property and labor.

A posture, not a program: the forces of 'business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking' will be mastered in the second administration.

Let the farmer who stores insurable grain on his farm borrow from any bank against a federal warehouse receipt, so feed reserves are carried on the farm and surpluses evened out.

Federal cooperation in refinancing farm indebtedness at the lowest possible interest over long terms, and a program to reduce tenancy.

As national income rises from $38 billion (1932) toward $60 billion, receipts will cover ordinary and relief expenses 'within a year or two' without additional taxes; then reduce the debt.

Stop 'the folly of uncontrolled spending'; balance the budget 'drastically and immediately' by cutting out foolish experiments (a billion dollars 'any time it wanted to') while protecting relief allotments.

Justify the net debt increase as the price of averting starvation and concentration of property, offset by six billion in new assets; the debt will be paid out of rising national income, not oppressive taxation.

Let expenditures fall with unemployment so an increasing share is met from current revenues.

Aid those visited by drought and floods; conserve water 'from its source to the sea'; a national flood-control policy.

Federal flood-control works subject to approval of State legislatures and executives.

An 'effective reorganization of the numerous Government agencies' to save taxpayers' money; appoint 'those men best qualified' and hold them responsible.

Replace uncertainty with a steady hand: make policies public, use the best talent irrespective of party, stop 'spending for spending's sake' and government competition with private payrolls.

Steadily extend the government's housing program for people of meagre incomes while encouraging private home construction; 'the wiping out of slums.'

Resist all attempts to impair the Court's authority; keep within the Constitution; oppose the lodging of reserved powers in the Chief Executive.

Widely understood -- from James Roosevelt's remarks and the President's Detroit statement that he was not through experimenting -- to intend renewed federal control of wages, hours and trade practices; the President answered Landon's question with 'you pay your money and you take your choice.'

Continue to seek federal action to reduce over-long hours, raise starvation wages, end child labor and wipe out sweatshops; the platform promises to seek this 'within the Constitution' and by clarifying amendment if necessary.

Continue the non-intervention convention, the abandoned Platt Amendment and withdrawn marines; seek an inter-American peace machinery at Buenos Aires in December 1936.

Continue the cheap-money policy, FHA/HOLC home financing and the reformed banking system.

Observe neutrality in others' disputes, use the neutrality legislation to cut war profits, avoid League political commitments, and resist the clamor for war trade if war comes abroad.

International arbitration through independent tribunals; arms limitation; no foreign alliances or political commitments.

Keep and extend the 1935 Act: old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, aid to the crippled, blind and mothers, with benefits rising as national capacity grows.

Continue TVA-style rate yardsticks and the Rural Electrification Administration's loans to bring cheap power to homes and farms.

Employment in private industry, agriculture, emergency agencies and the civil service; protection of personal safety.

Reject the 'red herring': neither seek nor accept support from advocates of Communism or any alien 'ism'; meet radicalism by curing the conditions that breed it.

Keep making executive trade agreements under the 1934 Act while protecting farmers and manufacturers against dumping and subsidized goods.

Repeal the 1934 Act as 'futile and dangerous', restore the flexible tariff and Tariff Commission, and require that trade treaties be ratified by the Senate or tariff changes enacted by Congress.

Claim credit for recovery and keep the policy of tackling 'the problems of those who were at the bottom of the economic pyramid.'

Federal grants-in-aid to States while need exists, relief run by non-political local agencies, staff chosen on merit, public works separated from relief; nobody in need to go without.

Accept the field of salutary regulation but lodge it in independent commissions acting under 'clear and specific laws.'

Keep the contributory old-age insurance and the employer-financed unemployment insurance as enacted; reject the 'pay-envelope' claim that workers bear the whole cost or that reserves will be diverted.

Repeal the payroll-tax insurance titles; amend the needy-aged title so every citizen over 65 gets the supplementary payment needed for a minimum income, financed pay-as-you-go by 'a direct tax widely distributed' and federal grants matching State contributions.

Maintain protection on all commodities competing with American farms and industries, including quarantine against imports from countries with weaker sanitary rules; keep free-list items free.

Keep the 1936 surtax on retained corporate earnings as an extension of the individual income tax, while correcting defects in application.

Keep the 1935-36 structure: earned-income credit, lower rates for small corporations, higher surtaxes over $50,000 and $1 million, higher estate taxes; reduce hidden consumption taxes.

Encourage 'honest and practical' State unemployment insurance laws; repeal the federal payroll-tax device that forces States to adopt systems.

Continue WPA-style work relief in cooperation with State and local governments where private industry fails to supply jobs; refuse to 'purge the rolls by starvation.'

Continue existing veterans' benefits (the bonus having been paid in 1936 over the President's veto).

Reopen negotiations on the roughly $12 billion of defaulted war debts.

Continue the NYA and CCC programs that keep youth in school and give constructive occupation.

Keep the CCC as a tide-over, not a permanent occupation; add educational programs and advancement on merit for 'the C. C. C. boys themselves.'