Dr. John R. Brinkley, President of the United States?
In 1935 Dr. Brinkley announced that he was going to be a candidate for President of the United States. The headline appeared above the masthead of the newspaper, and it was presented in one-inch high, bold capital letters.
Dr. John R. Brinkley has announced he is a candidate for President of the United States. In announcing his candidacy, Dr. Brinkley outlined the organization of “The Doctor Brinkley Association to Abolish Work and Create Laziness.”
The platform outlined pensions for everyone….
This article lists the high points of the platform and announced that Brinkley’s full platform would appear in the newspaper the next day—which it did. It would appear that this has not appeared in print since 1935.
I am a candidate for President of the United States.
Numerous friends have been writing me asking my support of the Townsend Old Age Pension, my support in paying the soldiers’ bonus with greenback; in fact, my support for pensions and employment for everyone.
Watching the effects of our great and noble President in spending more than one million dollars a second, trying to give everyone a job, I note with much concern (and the President does too) that as soon as one group is put to work, that another group quits work and we continue to have 10 million unemployed even though we spend a million dollars a second.
Everyone is dissatisfied because everybody wants money. Everybody wants what the other fellow has, and no plan seems to work that way. But I have a plan that works and is going over with a BANG.
I am past 50 years of age, and why should I support a plan that pays everybody a pension of $200 a month after they obtain the age of 60. What about the poor devil that is 80 years of age when the age of 60 plan goes into effect. Well, he has just missed 20 years’ pay and that is not fair.
[Too] Much Work
Now, I am as lazy as you are and you are as lazy as I am, and the rest of the people are as lazy as we are. None of us work because we want to but because we have to. A few of us are a little too proud to accept charity and we work to keep from starving to death, but not because we enjoy it. More than half of my life has been spent in work and yours too. Those who do not have anything want to take away from us that have a little left and drive us down into the mud and starvation with themselves. Now, this ain’t right. Nobody should work and nobody should have to work. There is no sense in working. It is just an old scheme of the ages that nobody has succeeded in correcting. Adam and Eve were not working and were getting along just fine, got drunk on apple cider and were fools enough to go out and go to work. Then the gates were closed and they couldn’t get back to the Garden of No Work and All Pleasure.
My platform is entitled “The Dr. Brinkley Association to Abolish Work and Create Laziness.”
Of course, it is ambiguous to say “Create Laziness,” because all of us are already lazy and that part of it is already [a]complished. So all we have to do is abolish work. That is easy—watch my smoke?
I am going to give a pension to everybody when they are weaned from their mothers’ breast. Nursing babies can’t vote and besides when they are getting milk from their mothers’ breasts the milk is pension milk anyway because the mother is on a pension. Of course, I know there is going to be a big squawk form the kids, but they will just have to squawk because I am firm in my determination not to put them on a pension until after they are weaned.
No amount of squawking can change me from this firm decision. If they are on a bottle, why, we will feed them from pensioned cows.
Now this thing of having a lot of gold and silver hid away in vaults in Kentucky, Colorado and Washington for the purpose of being in relation to the amount of paper money we issue is all relegated to the horse and buggy days. Gold and silver in storage doesn’t mean anything any more than so much aluminum or iron or steel. You can’t exchange paper money for gold or silver in fact, we don’t know whether we have any gold or silver in storage or not. It may be all moved out of this country and the vaults now are being guarded may be empty. But they makes no difference because we can’t get any of it. All we can get 50% paper. The trouble is we can’t get enough of it because it is just as good as gold for spending purposes.
To Print Money
Now our government has always contended that they must have something in deposit in the Treasury in Washington against which paper money is issued. That is easy. When you elect me as your President, I am going to place a small hand-operated printing press that will print real United States currency at every mailbox in the United States. Whether the mailbox is on an R.F.D., city, town or hamlet route, it makes no difference every mailbox has along side of it has a government hand cranked printing press for the purpose of printing currency.
Now, after my printing presses are located at every mailbox, anybody that has been weaned is eligible to go to a printing press, turn the crank and crank out as many dollars as they want. This amount they stick in their pockets, then turn the crank and crank out an equal amount to be place in the mailbox along the printing press. Said money in the mailbox goes to the United States Treasury in Washington to remain on deposit against the amount the citizen has withdrawn for his personal use.
It is just as sensible to have paper currency on deposit in our bank vaults or treasury vaults to show the amount in circulation as it is to have gold, silver, pig iron or ingot steel. This means that every man, woman and child will have all the money they want. No restrictions on the amount withdrawn daily. If you want a million dollars and are not too lazy to turn the crank, why you can crank out a million provided you are willing to crank out another million and drop it into the mailbox as above stated.
This plan is fundamentally sound because it satisfies immediately the craving for money.
Pensions Young
Mr. McCullough, Dr. Townsend’s representative, called to see me when I was in Washington this Summer. I complained about his starting the pension for 60, because I am 50, and he assured me they would start the pension at 55 or 50 to take me in if I would support the plan. Of course, I thought of my friends—Clugston, Comer and others that are not 50 and I told Mr. McCullough that if he was going to give everybody 50 years or older $200 a month, that he should give everybody 50 and under $200 a month and he assured me he would get that worked out. Since he has not informed me that he has it worked out, I feel it my duty to announce myself as candidate with a program that is already worked out and will work.
Of course, I told Mr. McCullough that when everybody was getting $200 a month, I didn’t think anyone would work and the boys and girls that were working would quit their jobs and live off of the old folks, and nobody would work. Of course, he said he had a way to overcome that bet he didn’t explain his plan.
That is what worried me for a long time and is one of the biggest hurdles I had to make. I began to figure that if everybody could go to the old cranking machine and crank out all of the money they wanted, who was going to run the street cars, railroad trains, who was going to milk the cows, deliver the milk, print the newspapers, and what about the sick folks when the doctors had all the money they wanted. It just looked to me like everybody would quit work and we would be neglected if they were sick. This worried me a lot and I spent many sleepless nights trying to overcome this great hurdle.
One of my friends came to my rescue yesterday and completely solved this hurdle so now I have hurdled the hurdle and here’s how we do it:
Lunatics Work
We have thousands of people in the insane asylums of this country that are costing the taxpayers millions of dollars to keep them there under the very best medical attention, finest food, and best living conditions. These people claim they are crazy. I claim they are not crazy. I claim they are smarter than we are.
Now, my friend suggested we turn all of the inmates out of the insane institutions and put them to work because they were crazy and wouldn’t know any better. I can see that if there were enough of them actually crazy to carry on the business of this country while the rest of us went fishing. And how I love to fish. You do to.
Therefore, all of us who boost and work to put over my plan to Abolish Work and Create Laziness will cease to work and draw and draw upon the insane institutions for our brain trust and workers.
Of course, many of them will be cured when they find they have to work and won’t be crazy anymore and will go turning the old crank.
Now, when you elect me as your president I am not going to stay in Washington. I have always been fair with you and I am not going to mislead you. I am going to turn the gun boasts and navy boats to the people and we are all going fishing. I am going to be the head fisherman and have a war ship all to myself. My ship will lead the squadron. We have lots of fine boats lying around in harbors that are rotting and we will clean all of these up and use you folks will you them for fishing.
Of course, I will have a wireless and radio station on my big boat and will send you reports of my catches period[ically]. If the country starts to go to hell while I am away fishing, you can wire me and If I am not too busy fishing, I may answer you. But I can assure I will not come back and get messed up into anything because I want to fish.
Wants Token
To mark your sincerity in becoming a member of my great organization to Abolish Work and Create Laziness, I must have something from you of a sentimental value. I have been searching my brain and there is not anything that appeals to me so much as a “wart.” We all have warts. I have a dear old wart, and I know that men and women have warts that they let anybody see. Some folks call “warts” “moles.”
While I know that many of us will shed tears to sacrifice a beloved “wart” or “mole,” yet I feel in order to put this plan over, some extreme sacrifice should be made.
These “warts” of “moles” are too precious to not be treated with every consideration. Therefore, I am demanding that everybody who is desirous of “Abolishing Work and Creating Laziness” and seeing me President of the United States on this basis, send me their favorite “wart” or “mole,” gold mounted. I will accept no warts or moles in any mounting excepting solid gold. No gold plate goes. This precious “wart” or “mole” of yours will go into my private vault where it will be securely guarded against thieves and robbers. After a sufficient number have been received by me, I shall make a proclamation and go off the gold standard.
Roosevelt Willing
If the gentlemen of the bar and press will give my plan proper publicity, the other candidates will not even get one vote. Of course, we realize we have a hazard that the people in the insane asylums will vote for the opposition, but fortunately there is enough of us outside the insane asylums to kill off their vote.
Our delightful President who enjoys fishing so much will have done himself well had he appointed me a member of his brain trust rather than some others. Bur I hereby pledge to our good President that I will in no way interfere with his fishing. When I am elected President, I will see to it that he is supplied with a good boat and can fish all he pleases.
I am confident when our President receives this assurance from me, he will capitulate in my favor because he does not like to stay in Washington during the Summer heat with a sweating Congress anymore than I do, and I guarantee he wouldn’t have to anymore in the future.
We can abolish all laws when everybody has all the money they want because money is the cause of crime. Therefore, our Nation would be free of crime. Jealousy will be done away with because every person who is willing to turn the crank will have all the money they want.
If upon investigation I find some too lazy to crank the crank, I am going to put on a automatic electric cranker so that all they will have to do is push a button and the printing press will do the rest.
My plan will make everybody contented. We won’t care whether wheat is a million dollars a bushel or one cent. We won’t care anything about the price of anything because under my plan we can purchase anything we want. No more taxes to worry about. There used United States will become a Garden of Eden. Our fields friends now cultivated will grow up as great forests filled with all kinds of game and fowls. We will have no more dust storms because all soil we be covered with grass and weeds. Our Nation can truly be called a “Nation of Dreamers.”
Newspapers publishing my plan will publish in its entirety. Because it is too valuable to run in installments.
My 1936 campaign for the President of the United States is now underway, so let’s have your “warts” and “moles” rolling in mounted in pure gold.
If this plan brings to you a real vision of your dreams, my only reward I ask is that you allow me to fish.
Faithfully yours,
Dr. J.R. Brinkley
P.S. Alf Landon doesn’t have a chance. If it [is] not convenient to send a gold mounted wart then old gold in the form of watches, rings, breast pins and such trinkets especially if diamond set will entitle you to charter membership in our organization.
But, alas, the whole thing was a prank. At least Dr. Brinkley, unlike some others, admitted that his run was a practical joke.
Several weeks ago Dr. John R. Brinkley, the man who abandoned Kansas to put Del Rio on the map, announced his candidacy for president. Like everyone else who read the brief announcement carried in the state newspapers, the Lookout wondered at the motive, and [consequently] read with no little interest his “complete platform” recently published in the Del Rio Evening News….
In his platform for presidency, Dr. Brinkley leaves no loopholes that he might be taken seriously. Laziness is the admitted keynote of the message, and by promising everybody everything he [skillfully] manages to poke fun at every campaign platform ever written.
Whether the announcement of his candidacy will obtain the desired publicity is a question to be debated. Nevertheless, the entire platform, which is a bit lengthy, is one o ft eh most delightful bits of satire it has been our fortune to read in a long time, and the lookout’s hat is off to the one who wrote it. If Dr. Brinkley is responsible, then he is wasting his time making old men young. He should turn to writing.
The “Lookout” is an editorial writer for the Corpus Christi Caller.
“Dr. Brinkley Announces For President,” Del Rio Evening News, October 16, 1935, page 1; “Dr. John R. Brinkley’s Full Platform of Laziness That May Sweep Him Into The Presidential Chair Next Year,” Del Rio Evening News, October 17, 1935, page 7; “Brinkley For President,” Del Rio Evening News, November 11, 1935, page 1.
In 1935 Dr. Brinkley announced that he was going to be a candidate for President of the United States. The headline appeared above the masthead of the newspaper, and it was presented in one-inch high, bold capital letters.
Dr. John R. Brinkley has announced he is a candidate for President of the United States. In announcing his candidacy, Dr. Brinkley outlined the organization of “The Doctor Brinkley Association to Abolish Work and Create Laziness.”
The platform outlined pensions for everyone….
This article lists the high points of the platform and announced that Brinkley’s full platform would appear in the newspaper the next day—which it did. It would appear that this has not appeared in print since 1935.
I am a candidate for President of the United States.
Numerous friends have been writing me asking my support of the Townsend Old Age Pension, my support in paying the soldiers’ bonus with greenback; in fact, my support for pensions and employment for everyone.
Watching the effects of our great and noble President in spending more than one million dollars a second, trying to give everyone a job, I note with much concern (and the President does too) that as soon as one group is put to work, that another group quits work and we continue to have 10 million unemployed even though we spend a million dollars a second.
Everyone is dissatisfied because everybody wants money. Everybody wants what the other fellow has, and no plan seems to work that way. But I have a plan that works and is going over with a BANG.
I am past 50 years of age, and why should I support a plan that pays everybody a pension of $200 a month after they obtain the age of 60. What about the poor devil that is 80 years of age when the age of 60 plan goes into effect. Well, he has just missed 20 years’ pay and that is not fair.
[Too] Much Work
Now, I am as lazy as you are and you are as lazy as I am, and the rest of the people are as lazy as we are. None of us work because we want to but because we have to. A few of us are a little too proud to accept charity and we work to keep from starving to death, but not because we enjoy it. More than half of my life has been spent in work and yours too. Those who do not have anything want to take away from us that have a little left and drive us down into the mud and starvation with themselves. Now, this ain’t right. Nobody should work and nobody should have to work. There is no sense in working. It is just an old scheme of the ages that nobody has succeeded in correcting. Adam and Eve were not working and were getting along just fine, got drunk on apple cider and were fools enough to go out and go to work. Then the gates were closed and they couldn’t get back to the Garden of No Work and All Pleasure.
My platform is entitled “The Dr. Brinkley Association to Abolish Work and Create Laziness.”
Of course, it is ambiguous to say “Create Laziness,” because all of us are already lazy and that part of it is already [a]complished. So all we have to do is abolish work. That is easy—watch my smoke?
I am going to give a pension to everybody when they are weaned from their mothers’ breast. Nursing babies can’t vote and besides when they are getting milk from their mothers’ breasts the milk is pension milk anyway because the mother is on a pension. Of course, I know there is going to be a big squawk form the kids, but they will just have to squawk because I am firm in my determination not to put them on a pension until after they are weaned.
No amount of squawking can change me from this firm decision. If they are on a bottle, why, we will feed them from pensioned cows.
Now this thing of having a lot of gold and silver hid away in vaults in Kentucky, Colorado and Washington for the purpose of being in relation to the amount of paper money we issue is all relegated to the horse and buggy days. Gold and silver in storage doesn’t mean anything any more than so much aluminum or iron or steel. You can’t exchange paper money for gold or silver in fact, we don’t know whether we have any gold or silver in storage or not. It may be all moved out of this country and the vaults now are being guarded may be empty. But they makes no difference because we can’t get any of it. All we can get 50% paper. The trouble is we can’t get enough of it because it is just as good as gold for spending purposes.
To Print Money
Now our government has always contended that they must have something in deposit in the Treasury in Washington against which paper money is issued. That is easy. When you elect me as your President, I am going to place a small hand-operated printing press that will print real United States currency at every mailbox in the United States. Whether the mailbox is on an R.F.D., city, town or hamlet route, it makes no difference every mailbox has along side of it has a government hand cranked printing press for the purpose of printing currency.
Now, after my printing presses are located at every mailbox, anybody that has been weaned is eligible to go to a printing press, turn the crank and crank out as many dollars as they want. This amount they stick in their pockets, then turn the crank and crank out an equal amount to be place in the mailbox along the printing press. Said money in the mailbox goes to the United States Treasury in Washington to remain on deposit against the amount the citizen has withdrawn for his personal use.
It is just as sensible to have paper currency on deposit in our bank vaults or treasury vaults to show the amount in circulation as it is to have gold, silver, pig iron or ingot steel. This means that every man, woman and child will have all the money they want. No restrictions on the amount withdrawn daily. If you want a million dollars and are not too lazy to turn the crank, why you can crank out a million provided you are willing to crank out another million and drop it into the mailbox as above stated.
This plan is fundamentally sound because it satisfies immediately the craving for money.
Pensions Young
Mr. McCullough, Dr. Townsend’s representative, called to see me when I was in Washington this Summer. I complained about his starting the pension for 60, because I am 50, and he assured me they would start the pension at 55 or 50 to take me in if I would support the plan. Of course, I thought of my friends—Clugston, Comer and others that are not 50 and I told Mr. McCullough that if he was going to give everybody 50 years or older $200 a month, that he should give everybody 50 and under $200 a month and he assured me he would get that worked out. Since he has not informed me that he has it worked out, I feel it my duty to announce myself as candidate with a program that is already worked out and will work.
Of course, I told Mr. McCullough that when everybody was getting $200 a month, I didn’t think anyone would work and the boys and girls that were working would quit their jobs and live off of the old folks, and nobody would work. Of course, he said he had a way to overcome that bet he didn’t explain his plan.
That is what worried me for a long time and is one of the biggest hurdles I had to make. I began to figure that if everybody could go to the old cranking machine and crank out all of the money they wanted, who was going to run the street cars, railroad trains, who was going to milk the cows, deliver the milk, print the newspapers, and what about the sick folks when the doctors had all the money they wanted. It just looked to me like everybody would quit work and we would be neglected if they were sick. This worried me a lot and I spent many sleepless nights trying to overcome this great hurdle.
One of my friends came to my rescue yesterday and completely solved this hurdle so now I have hurdled the hurdle and here’s how we do it:
Lunatics Work
We have thousands of people in the insane asylums of this country that are costing the taxpayers millions of dollars to keep them there under the very best medical attention, finest food, and best living conditions. These people claim they are crazy. I claim they are not crazy. I claim they are smarter than we are.
Now, my friend suggested we turn all of the inmates out of the insane institutions and put them to work because they were crazy and wouldn’t know any better. I can see that if there were enough of them actually crazy to carry on the business of this country while the rest of us went fishing. And how I love to fish. You do to.
Therefore, all of us who boost and work to put over my plan to Abolish Work and Create Laziness will cease to work and draw and draw upon the insane institutions for our brain trust and workers.
Of course, many of them will be cured when they find they have to work and won’t be crazy anymore and will go turning the old crank.
Now, when you elect me as your president I am not going to stay in Washington. I have always been fair with you and I am not going to mislead you. I am going to turn the gun boasts and navy boats to the people and we are all going fishing. I am going to be the head fisherman and have a war ship all to myself. My ship will lead the squadron. We have lots of fine boats lying around in harbors that are rotting and we will clean all of these up and use you folks will you them for fishing.
Of course, I will have a wireless and radio station on my big boat and will send you reports of my catches period[ically]. If the country starts to go to hell while I am away fishing, you can wire me and If I am not too busy fishing, I may answer you. But I can assure I will not come back and get messed up into anything because I want to fish.
Wants Token
To mark your sincerity in becoming a member of my great organization to Abolish Work and Create Laziness, I must have something from you of a sentimental value. I have been searching my brain and there is not anything that appeals to me so much as a “wart.” We all have warts. I have a dear old wart, and I know that men and women have warts that they let anybody see. Some folks call “warts” “moles.”
While I know that many of us will shed tears to sacrifice a beloved “wart” or “mole,” yet I feel in order to put this plan over, some extreme sacrifice should be made.
These “warts” of “moles” are too precious to not be treated with every consideration. Therefore, I am demanding that everybody who is desirous of “Abolishing Work and Creating Laziness” and seeing me President of the United States on this basis, send me their favorite “wart” or “mole,” gold mounted. I will accept no warts or moles in any mounting excepting solid gold. No gold plate goes. This precious “wart” or “mole” of yours will go into my private vault where it will be securely guarded against thieves and robbers. After a sufficient number have been received by me, I shall make a proclamation and go off the gold standard.
Roosevelt Willing
If the gentlemen of the bar and press will give my plan proper publicity, the other candidates will not even get one vote. Of course, we realize we have a hazard that the people in the insane asylums will vote for the opposition, but fortunately there is enough of us outside the insane asylums to kill off their vote.
Our delightful President who enjoys fishing so much will have done himself well had he appointed me a member of his brain trust rather than some others. Bur I hereby pledge to our good President that I will in no way interfere with his fishing. When I am elected President, I will see to it that he is supplied with a good boat and can fish all he pleases.
I am confident when our President receives this assurance from me, he will capitulate in my favor because he does not like to stay in Washington during the Summer heat with a sweating Congress anymore than I do, and I guarantee he wouldn’t have to anymore in the future.
We can abolish all laws when everybody has all the money they want because money is the cause of crime. Therefore, our Nation would be free of crime. Jealousy will be done away with because every person who is willing to turn the crank will have all the money they want.
If upon investigation I find some too lazy to crank the crank, I am going to put on a automatic electric cranker so that all they will have to do is push a button and the printing press will do the rest.
My plan will make everybody contented. We won’t care whether wheat is a million dollars a bushel or one cent. We won’t care anything about the price of anything because under my plan we can purchase anything we want. No more taxes to worry about. There used United States will become a Garden of Eden. Our fields friends now cultivated will grow up as great forests filled with all kinds of game and fowls. We will have no more dust storms because all soil we be covered with grass and weeds. Our Nation can truly be called a “Nation of Dreamers.”
Newspapers publishing my plan will publish in its entirety. Because it is too valuable to run in installments.
My 1936 campaign for the President of the United States is now underway, so let’s have your “warts” and “moles” rolling in mounted in pure gold.
If this plan brings to you a real vision of your dreams, my only reward I ask is that you allow me to fish.
Faithfully yours,
Dr. J.R. Brinkley
P.S. Alf Landon doesn’t have a chance. If it [is] not convenient to send a gold mounted wart then old gold in the form of watches, rings, breast pins and such trinkets especially if diamond set will entitle you to charter membership in our organization.
But, alas, the whole thing was a prank. At least Dr. Brinkley, unlike some others, admitted that his run was a practical joke.
Several weeks ago Dr. John R. Brinkley, the man who abandoned Kansas to put Del Rio on the map, announced his candidacy for president. Like everyone else who read the brief announcement carried in the state newspapers, the Lookout wondered at the motive, and [consequently] read with no little interest his “complete platform” recently published in the Del Rio Evening News….
In his platform for presidency, Dr. Brinkley leaves no loopholes that he might be taken seriously. Laziness is the admitted keynote of the message, and by promising everybody everything he [skillfully] manages to poke fun at every campaign platform ever written.
Whether the announcement of his candidacy will obtain the desired publicity is a question to be debated. Nevertheless, the entire platform, which is a bit lengthy, is one o ft eh most delightful bits of satire it has been our fortune to read in a long time, and the lookout’s hat is off to the one who wrote it. If Dr. Brinkley is responsible, then he is wasting his time making old men young. He should turn to writing.
The “Lookout” is an editorial writer for the Corpus Christi Caller.
“Dr. Brinkley Announces For President,” Del Rio Evening News, October 16, 1935, page 1; “Dr. John R. Brinkley’s Full Platform of Laziness That May Sweep Him Into The Presidential Chair Next Year,” Del Rio Evening News, October 17, 1935, page 7; “Brinkley For President,” Del Rio Evening News, November 11, 1935, page 1.