Remarks at the President's Conference on Occupational Safety.

Mr. Secretary, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a distinct honor and privilege to greet such a great body of Americans gathered here for such a human and noble purpose: the purpose of cutting down the accidents that bring suffering to people, that cost us so much in treasure and through which we lose so much of the skills that we need in our country.

I understand this is your tenth anniversary and the sixth of your conferences of this type. I have been informed by various members of the Administration that the results of your work have been noticeable through the years. These are not, therefore, conventions in the sense of being a good way to get away from the old hometown--to have a good time. These are conventions and conferences by serious-minded people, attacking with real success a very serious problem: the human values that are lost through the accident rate in our industry.

I understand there are something of the order of fourteen thousand people killed, to say nothing of two million--of that order--injured. The human values that are so lost are of course indescribable.

Belonging to a civilization that places human liberty, human rights and, above all, human dignity as the greatest value that our nation possesses, the value on which our whole governmental system is based is, of course, a tremendous contrast to a dictatorship where the individual is a pawn to be used at the behest and at the will of the state. In a dictatorship the individual has no fights, has no freedoms, and human dignity is a concept that is not even understood.

But we, having that value, are deeply concerned, first of all, with the human values that we lose through the accidents we incur in industry. You people are doing everything you can to prevent accidents.

Another value I should think would be that of skills. We put years in training people. It means an investment not only in money but in human satisfaction that a man gets for himself when he learns to do something better than he did before. As that training goes on and we lose one of those individuals from industry, we have a loss that each of us must feel to some degree, and certainly the nation cannot afford.

Finally, we come down to the financial costs of such losses. These also you are here to help prevent. Through such losses there are people without paychecks, there are people who have to pay long, big hospital and doctors' bills. Of course, the financial cost of a death falls most heavily upon the family and the locality, but indeed in the long run on the nation.

So we have, it seems to me, a purpose that is worthy of the trouble you people have taken to come here and confer about it, to discuss it with your fellow citizens, and to make certain that progress is not only constant but swift.

I feel that along with the old truth--the old axiom--that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, eternal vigilance is the price of safety, too. Because if we know what to do, if we are vigilant in the industrial leadership, and if each person working in national industry is vigilant, then through such vigilance we will do much to cut down our losses.

So I repeat, it is a distinct honor and privilege to be with you, to extend to you personally and officially a welcome to this Capital, and certainly above all things to wish you success in your work.

Thank you very much.