Harold H. Velde
on the Record

My good friends of the eighteenth congressional District, I am deeply grateful for the support you have given me and your confidence in my ability to serve you as a congressman. I am humbled by the responsibility the offices [sic] place upon me and I promise you I will fill it to the very best of my ability. I want to express my respect for my opponent Dale Sutton for the clean and vigorous campaign he conducted and assure him of my cooperation. I hope that he and the other good [D]emocrats of the district will feel free to make suggestions that will be for the benefit of everyone in the district. My most sincere and deepest thanks go out to every person in the district who has worked to make my campaign a success. Without them I could not have won. I give my special thanks to Phil Hauter of Morton who is my campaign manager.

We know that Communism has its sorry converts everywhere—and particularly in this country which they regard as the number one enemy. In out schools, in our shops—and in sensitive places in our government. These things are not hearsay—they are proven facts.

Since my service here as your Representative I have become fairly convinced that those who control the Democratic administration in Washington have no intention of reducing our national debt, our swollen bureaucracy or our confiscatory taxes. Rather they are determined to direct and control the lives and occupations of our present and future citizens by destroying the sovereign power of the states. This is being done through grants or subsidies, by taxing and spending and controlling elections, thus making America over into a socialistic state.

Mr. Speaker: The present world crisis that demands that Congress immediately put into law H.R. 10, a bill to facilitate the deportation of aliens from the United States and to provide for the supervision and detention, pending eventual deportation, of aliens whose deportation cannot be readily executed because of reasons beyond the control of the United States. . . . The bill, if enacted into law and I assume that it will be, will prevent repetition of such infamous crimes as Gerhard Eisler skipping the country and conveying to a potential enemy information which he obtained while allowed to remain in our beloved country unhampered.

The Republican Party is now, as it always has been, a mighty force for the protection of individual freedoms. Vicious propagandists for the New Deal have made every attempt to make the voters believe that the Republican Party has no constructive program—that we are against progressive legislation—that we are only interested in the welfare of wealthy people. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is true the Republican Party is against most of the New Deal schemes to regiment the American people and to promote a socialistic dictatorship in America.

I have no quarrel with the Democratic Party. It has had a long and honorable life, but in the last eighteen years it has been taken over by corrupt city bosses, racketeers of labor, and fellow-travelers of Communism. It has, both in deed and in fact, become the radical party in America.

My friends: In accepting this kind token from you, I do so on behalf of the Members of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the staff. Speaking in their behalf and for myself, I wish to express my appreciation for the excellent support and cooperation which is signified in this plaque.

I may say, without exaggeration, that since assuming the Chairmanship of this Committee, I have been the object of showers which are generally of a nature other than appreciation. Notwithstanding the violent and vociferous outcries of the Committee’s critics, I am heartened by the knowledge that the great majority of American people, such as you, recognize and is appreciative of the work being done by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It is unfortunate that my critics know so little about me. I have been determined and will continue to serve the American people in the best interests, notwithstanding personal attacks upon me or upon the Committee. To do otherwise would to be disavow the charge that was placed upon me by the fine people of Illinois who chose me to represent them in their Congress. I would be unworthy of the responsibility designated to me by the Congress when they chose me as Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities if I should buckle under any weight of criticism or abuse, no matter how heavy.

The most shameful and sordid period in the relatively short history of our great country is the more than twenty years during which Soviet espionage has been allowed to spread its tentacles over the United States. I wish that it were possible for me here today to state that there has been a decline or abating of this grave menace. The true fact, however, is that as in a malignancy which is not checked with positive remedy and treatment, the danger is as grave today as at any time during these past twenty years.