No, we have not slipped backward in education. We have moved
forward boldly.

Never before in the history of Maryland has such an enormous
building program been undertaken as our highway building program
of the past eight years. I am advised that by the time our eight years
of tenure has come to an end we will have spent $1 billion on the
improvement of a highway system that has come to be known as one
of the finest in the entire country.

No, we have not slipped backward in road construction. We have
moved forward with great vigor and great imagination.

The same can be said of our progress of health, of mental hygiene,
of public welfare.

For the first time during this Administration, the State of Maryland
assumed the responsibility for bringing new industry to our State
and for encouraging existing industrial and commercial organizations
to expand their operations.

Under our guidance, with a bold new program of conservation
and rehabilitation, Maryland has regained the position it held for
so many years, and then lost, as the country's largest producer of
oysters.

We have doubled our acreage of parks and expanded our facilities
for recreation.

One could go on at great length with the listing. But the story is,
as the editorial writer said, that we have been going forward in just
about every facet of the services and the function which the State
government is expected to provide. Moreover, we have, I think, man-
aged the people's treasury — the money they pay in taxes for the
operation of their government — carefully and wisely, with the
result that it has not been necessary, during the entire eight years,
to increase the general fund tax for State purposes.

I am not trying to imply that these are achievements to be credited
to any one individual or to any small group of individuals. Certainly
they represent the combined efforts of a great many persons, many of
them connected with the State government organizations, some of
them not.

Nor am I trying to say that it is the achievement of a single political
organization. Nonetheless, it is the record of an administration given
the power by the people under the banner of the Democratic Party.
It is, in a way then, the record of the Democratic Party in Maryland,

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