Typed draft for a speech by Senator John F. Kennedy, two pages, 8.5 x 11, titled and dated, "New York Herald Tribune Excerpt—Oct. 29, 1957 on Communist Situation in Kerala." A small number of notes and corrections have been made in an unknown hand. Drafted during Kennedy's tenure as a Democratic Senator, the speech focuses on the impoverished Communist situation in Kerala, in part: “It has a higher rate of literacy (around 40 per cent) than any state in India. Yet more than 1,250,000 of Kerala’s people are chronically unemployed. Unemployment and food are the state’s gravest problems, and any government that can solve them is assured of a long term of office. No solution is in sight. Wages are miserable. An unskilled laborer, for instance, receives the equivalent of thirty-two cents daily, a primary schoolteacher from twelve to twenty-four dollars monthly. The Communists won their election success here against a Congress party machine that had been discredited by corruption, nepotism and inefficiency. The Communists have made mistakes since taking office, but it must be said that they have given the state a more honest and hardworking administration than their predecessors.” In fine condition.
