I am happy to return to West Virginia at the invitation of the Huntington Advertiser. And I shall be happy to return again, within the space of a week, on the invitation of your Democratic State Chairman Hulett C. Smith.
     For I have come to know the people of West Virginia and their problems. And I see them as Americans, and I see their problems as American problems - problems of the Nation as a whole.
     We dug deeply last April and May into the distress that hundreds of thousands of West Virginians face today in their struggle for a decent living, for jobs and homes and food and schools and opportunity for themselves and their children. We decided on many things that must be done. We invited members of the present Republican administration to come and see for themselves - and to help.
     We had a program. It was not a giveaway program. It was a sound, dynamic program to help West Virginians - and Americans in many other parts of the country with very similar problems - to help themselves. It would help attract new business and industry and restore and modernize and expand older industries, provide jobs and buying power and decent living standards - requisites of new hope and new growth, tools to do a job.
     In 1956, the Republicans in the Congress blocked legislation which would have put such a program on the road. In 1958, a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, vetoed another attempt by the Democrats to get it underway. In 1960 - this year - the legislation again passed the Congress.
     We thought this time the Republicans would help. We thought the results of West Virginia's primary election on May 10 were a mandate to Republicans as well as Democrats. Surely the call would be heard as far as the White House.
     But just 3 days after the West Virginia primary, President Eisenhower vetoed the area redevelopment bill - the legislation that would have started the job.
     We have our final answer from the Republicans.
     It is "No."
     I think we can spend too much time on the Republicans. We know the story. Let us move on from what they have not done and will not do - what they refuse to do. Time grows short. There is work to be done. And there must be no more vetoes for West Virginia - or for the Nation.
     The work ahead does not lie along an easy road. Nor can everything be done overnight. But we can make a good start in the days that lie immediately ahead. Let us elect a Democratic administration and a Democratic President on November 8 - an administration that is not afraid of hard work, a President who will not say "No" to the pressing needs of America.
     That will be a beginning - a very good beginning. For then we shall be able to start moving forward once again - in West Virginia, in the Nation, in the world.
     And let us look forward, beyond election day. We shall not have won our battle on that day alone. We shall have merely moved onto the field. The hard fight - the hard work - will be yet to come. But we have moved mountains before - and West Virginians know about that, for they have done it with their own hands.
     The work ahead is not just what one man can do alone, what a community or a city or a State can do alone. It is something the American people have to do together. It is a national job. And it is a many-sided job.
     First, we must go to work immediately to help our neighbors and friends who are in immediate and acute distress. We must pass legislation in the Congress to help get distressed areas, industries, and individuals on their feet. We must lay foundations for rehabilitation, redevelopment, and sound new growth. We must pass the area redevelopment bill which the Republicans have consistently blocked - and this time we will get moving.
     But we must go further.
     We must press at every point and at every level to put our idle or part-time workers and machines and industries to full-time work.
     We must put. a new floor under wages. We must have minimum wage legislation that can assure workers the wages necessary for food and home and clothing and self-respect for themselves and their families.
     We must provide help for our communities and our States - who cannot do the whole job alone - in building the new schools and in paying the many new, trained teachers we must have to educate our children.
     We must help our older folk to help themselves. We must help them obtain the medical care they must have in their golden years - without taking a pauper's oath.
     We must overhaul our compensation laws and we must help retrain workers who are displaced from jobs by automation or other developments in our fast-changing technology. We must realize the great promises and not the threat in an advancing technology.
     And we must open the doors once again to the intelligent, forwardlooking development and use of our great natural resources - our forests and rivers and mines.
     We must reopen the doors to the profitable and expanding production of coal. We must find new ways to use coal and better ways to produce it.
     We must have a national fuels policy. We need every bit of fuel and power we can produce in order to pump lifeblood into growing industries and growing communities. We must chart our fuel and power demands, now and in the future. We must know what our resources are and what they will be. We must decide how best to employ them in a growing America.
     And we must reverse the tight money, high interest policy which has brought stagnation and decline to the economy during the futile Republican years that are now drawing to a close.
     We must help make money available to those who need it to build and expand. We must help, through loans and other programs, to encourage the long-term industrial development that must be the foundation of a healthy, expanding economy - not only in West Virginia but in all America. We must encourage those who want to buy - whether it is a factory or a home or a tractor or a freezer - or an education.
     These are big "musts." But I think we are ready to face them - to move forward again.

(Vice President Nixon's guest editorial below was contributed at the invitation of the Advertiser. Senator Kennedy's editorial appeared last month)

     The United States, as a whole, has made marked progress toward the goal of constant full employment during the 7½ years of the Eisenhower administration.
     Our progress is the more encouraging when we remember that the Eisenhower years have been peace years. That is to say, there have not been the diminished civilian labor force and artificial scarcities of wartime, which tend to result in full employment.
     Let me illustrate the progress of these last years by noting that at the end of September 1960 - last month - 67,767,000 Americans were employed, a record for the month of September.
     But despite this swelling employment, certain areas still suffer acute unemployment. The development of these so-called depressed areas has become a matter of national concern and a subject of much congressional debate within the last few years. The Republican platform pledges "constructive Federal-local action to aid areas of chronic high unemployment" and the next Republican administration will do all in its power to carry out that pledge.
     West Virginia is one of the States which has been hardest hit by unemployment. Changing markets, advancing technology, and the spread of mechanization have been responsible for the anomaly of what is in effect a local depression in the midst of prosperity. Other fuels have tended to replace West Virginia's bituminous coal in existing markets. Mechanization has not been practicable in the case of narrow seam mines, leading to the shutting down of many smaller producing facilities in the State. Reduced coal operations have had an impact on such other industries as railroads with a consequent further decrease in employment.
     The Republican platform puts the emphasis on the urgent need for "Federal-local action." Such joint action is important. Much of the adjustment of depressed areas to new economic conditions can and should be carried out by local communities themselves. The people most immediately concerned must take the lead in planning and financing lasting solutions and long-range objectives - economic diversification and the development of new industries. Not only, must the local community take a major role but the States also must help, as some are already doing.
     But together with such local and State action, the Federal Government also should undertake a vigorous role in coping with the problem. The Eisenhower administration has moved in several ways to combat this problem, and a future Republican administration would continue to develop and expand its program.
     For instance, regulations have been issued to provide for preference in Government procurement, and in Government facilities construction and expansion, for areas with persistent, high unemployment levels. Prime contractors are encouraged to award subcontracts so that a substantial portion of the production will be performed in surplus labor localities. The Veterans' Administration has changed its procurement regulations to permit an additional 6-percent differential in favor of depressed areas. Steps are being taken to expedite aviation facility and airport construction work in labor surplus areas.
     The Office of Area Development in the Department of Commerce has been enlarged to handle an increasing number of inquiries from communities having labor surplus problems, and a special pilot project to increase placement of Federal contracts in labor surplus areas is being tested whereby firms possessing idle production facilities in a persistent labor surplus area may register if they wish to bid on Governments contracts or get subcontract work from a major prime contractor.
     But this still is not enough. We must put to maximum use the tremendous human and natural resources of these "depressed areas." We should eliminate this persistent unemployment, without allowing this urgent question to become a political football.
     Furthermore, we must have Federal legislation which will help these depressed communities to attract new industries and to provide gainful employment for all who want to work.
     For the last few years President Eisenhower has been urging that Congress act on area assistance legislation. In May of this year he vetoed a Democratic sponsored area assistance bill, because its funds were so diffused as to fail to meet the objective we seek.
     The chief reason given by President Eisenhower for his veto was that the bill included communities with temporary, seasonal, and mild unemployment problems. This meant only that less aid would be available for those communities, fewer in number, faced with the specter of high and persistent unemployment - communities which desperately need help.
     The administration then had introduced its own bill, which sought to mesh together all the public and private efforts to generate area redevelopment and to lay the foundation for permanent economic progress. The Democrats who controlled the Congress refused to act on the administration bill.
     There were three main features of this bill
     First, it provided for loans to these areas for (1) the purchase of land and facilities for industrial use; (2) the rehabilitation of abandoned or unoccupied factory buildings; and (3) alteration, conversion or enlargement of existing buildings for industrial use. The total amount of loans which could be outstanding at any one time was $75 million.
     Second, it provided grants for technical assistance, including studies to evaluate the needs of depressed areas, and to develop potentialities for economic growth.
     Third, it required that the Housing and Home Finance Administration give top priority to applications for financing public facilities which directly serve an industrial plant construction or refurbishing project undertaken under the bill's provisions.
     Secretary of Commerce Mueller, testifying in August, gave this comparison of the amounts which would be available for help to West Virginia under the Democratic and administration bills:

     I believe these figures present an effective comparison of the Democratic and the administration plans to alleviate the problem. More than that they show Republican plans and policies for doing something, and they show those plans in a real form. I am confident that under the next Republican administration legislation will be passed which will aid areas where the unemployment problem has been of long duration and which truly need such aid.
     The people in the localities of West Virginia which are afflicted with the problem of unemployment do not want handouts from the Federal Government. They want to find their own way with a minimum of Federal aid. They want to use their own resources and their own funds to bring in new industry. Operation Bootstrap has been accomplished by many communities in the last decade.
     The Federal Government has a responsibility to help convert depressed labor areas into thriving communities. But I also believe the approach taken by the Eisenhower administration - which would be the approach of a succeeding Republican administration - is the one which offers most real help. For each program of area assistance will achieve greatest success when it is supported by the initiative and individual effort of the people directly concerned.