I could tell you of one from Pennsylvania. He was a coal miner before his induction, and his father is a coal miner. He was seriously wounded by Nazi machine gun bullets while he was on a bombing mission over Europe in a Flying Fortress.
Another boy, from Kentucky, the son of a coal miner, was wounded when our troops first landed in North Africa six months ago.
There is still another, from Illinois. He was a coal miner—his father and two brothers are coal miners. He was seriously wounded in Tunisia while attempting to rescue two comrades whose jeep had been blown up by a Nazi mine.
These men do not consider themselves heroes. They would probably be embarrassed if I mentioned their names over the air. They were wounded in the line of duty. They know how essential it is to the tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—and ultimately millions of other young Americans to get the best of arms and equipment into the hands of our fighting forces—and get them there quickly.
The fathers and mothers of our fighting men, their brothers and sisters and friends—and that includes all of us—are also in the line of duty—the production line. Any failure in production may well result in costly defeat on the field of battle.
There can be no one among us—no one faction powerful enough to interrupt the forward march of our people to victory.
You miners have ample reason to know that there are certain basic rights for which this country stands, and that those rights are worth fighting for and worth dying for. That is why you have sent your sons and brothers from every mining town in the nation to join in the great struggle overseas. That is why you have contributed so generously, so willingly, to the purchase of war bonds and to the many funds for the relief of war victims in foreign lands. That is why, since this war was started in 1939, you have increased the annual production of coal by almost two hundred million tons a year.
The toughness of your sons in our armed forces is not surprising. They come of fine, rugged stock. Men who work in the mines are not unaccustomed to hardship. It has been the objective of this government to reduce that hardship, to obtain for miners and for all who do the nation's work a better standard of living.
I know only too well that the cost of living is troubling the miners' families, and troubling the families of millions of other workers throughout the country as well.
A year ago it became evident to all of us that something had to be done about living costs. Your government determined not to let the cost of living continue to go up as it did in the first World War.