The Federal Reserve Board’s 1949 Survey of Consumer Finance shows: 20,000,000 nonfarm families own their own homes; the equity in these homes is $132 billion; the average equity value is $7,000; of these 20,000,000 homeowners, 55% have no mortgages; there are now more homeowners than renters; 6,000,000 have been added since the war.
This number should increase about a million a year if the government program does not further stifle individual initiative and opportunity for home ownership.
This unprecedented record is the result of the freedom of choice of the average American citizen. He likes his home. The policy of the Government in guaranteeing credit has helped in building that record. But the bulk of the credit goes to the community loaning agencies which through their work among their neighbors have made such a sound program possible. Today in spite of the fact that bank and insurance investors have entered the field of home financing, savings and loan associations constitute about one-third of the mortgage market. Mortgages today constitute about 80% of all such associations’ investments. Your business is as characteristically American as is the desire for home ownership. The two cannot be separated.
We used to say that it could not happen here. It has already happened. The only question is how much further are the majority of the people going to let it go before we awaken and do something about it. Are we and the so many others like us going to let it go by default all the way with the accompanying destruction of everything generations of Americans have fought and died to preserve? It is indeed a sad commentary on the political economy of this nation that far too many of our representatives in federal public office from both major parties are today more interested in what they can get and keep than in what they can do to save this country from complete ruin. We now have government by a small, tightly entrenched clique. We and our friends and their friends must do one thing, we must carry this fight to all the people; must show them that the price tag attached to the so-called security of life philosophy that is being sold to them is terribly high — so high in fact that it is not measurable. Because to measure we must put monetary values and power as the motivating forces of man’s existence rather than the values all religions place upon a life devoted to the love of God, the love of country, and the love of neighbor. These involve the giving of oneself and the not taking from others through political spoils. If we do not soon return to the beliefs of our forefathers as to their fundamental duties to others and to themselves, we shall find freedom of individual thought replaced by predigested thinking by the state; freedom of action set aside for servitude to the state and obeisance to a central power composed of men superseding our belief in and duty of our God.
American beliefs. The attempt by the believers and proponents of the pagan philosophy of “What can I grab for myself” to destroy the age-old Christian concept of “What may I give,” makes it essential that the men and women be separated from the appeasers. For far too long the citizens of this Republic have compromised with, have avoided facing and taking issue with the reality of what this band of ruthless destroyers really intends. These Machiavellians who dare to deny the identity of man^ deny that man is endowed with mortal and immortal individuality and accountable to a supreme being; they assert instead that man is merely a serf of the state with a beginning and end-all of nothing but homage to that central power group. In this country we have stood by while we have witnessed nationalization of finance; seen the replacement of government by the people with administrative law and regulation through federal commissions, corporations, and administrations; watched taxing power being perverted to destroy all initiative, to confiscate and redistribute wealth, to take and then waste the savings of the public; been spectators to the purchasing of votes of favored millions with billions of the taxpayers funds; observed the development in Washington of the greatest propaganda unit that man ha-s ever known. You have heard of thought control in the countries behind the iron curtain. We have a strong start on the same thing right in this country.