Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

Remarks to the American Council To Improve Our Neighborhoods.

November 15, 1954

General Irving, ladies and gentlemen:

It is indeed a rare privilege to have this opportunity to come over here to welcome this particular group to the Capital City.

First, I must remark on seeing General Irving here in the position of presiding officer and understanding he is president of this organization. Old soldiers are, after all, supposed to fade away. We just seem to reappear.

It does give me the opportunity to congratulate you on securing such a president for this organization. After long experience and association with him in the Army, I wouldn't hesitate to write a rather large blank check as to the character of performance you will get from him.

Now, I can think of a dozen reasons why I am particularly delighted to see this organization meeting and starting to work on the purposes for which you have been organized. I like your title. As a matter of fact, I think you worked up the initials and then worked out a title to go with the initials. And it's the kind of thing, of course, that appeals to a soldier's heart: decide what to do, and then do it, and stop the talking about it.

I am particularly pleased, though, of course, by the fact that this group seems to represent, to me, much more definitively, and much more emphatically than do most, almost the philosophy of government by which I try to live: that Federal Government has certain functions, but that Federal Government, or any other government of the kind that we have and under which we live, can succeed only as the locality and as the individual citizen does his full part and seeks ways of organizing and combining together to do his part collectively and locally--else something is going to happen to us that we don't like.

So, with the million houses, I am told, becoming slums each year, to find the local people undertaking to do something about this to stop this kind of economic deterioration, is very wonderful.

But it seems to me to be even more wonderful when we understand what this means in stopping the erosion that takes place in the sense of dignity and decency, in the pride of the individual American, when we are trying to preserve for him a good home, and where we can't preserve it, then to get busy and build them so that he can have that great sense of high pride that goes with living as a good American in this great country.

I couldn't possibly find words in which I could describe to you the sense of admiration I feel for each of you in joining up with this group. But the gratitude I feel is because it means we are all jumping in together-we in the Federal Government, and you as the local citizenry and groups--to do a job that must be done.

You know about the hearings and finally the bills that were passed at the last session of the Congress to help along in this way. But again and again we come back to the theory that the mainspring of all authority in this country is the people. So is the mainspring of all energy and real constructive thinking. It comes from this great mass we call America.

So, for your meeting, my very best wishes for an interesting and enjoyable time. And for the work you are going to do, my profound gratitude and the assurance that I will follow it every step of the way, certain that you are doing a great job for the United States of America.

Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at a luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington at 12:30 p.m. His opening words "General Irving" referred to Maj. Gen. F. A. Irving, USA (Retired), Chairman of the Council.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks to the American Council To Improve Our Neighborhoods. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233296

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