Remarks to a Group in Connection With the Montana Territorial Centennial.

WE ARE mighty glad that you are here. When Mike told me a few days ago that you were coming through, I told him how pleased I would be if you could come and see your White House and perhaps have a little visit with me.

Montana is one of the States in the Union that you can visit and still get the spirit of the frontier. Although you came into the Union when we were 19 years old, we still feel that we have much in common between Texas and Montana.

As a matter of fact, if you ever let it thaw out up there and get a little bit warmer, like it is here today, I believe all the Texans would move to Montana. I remember that my uncle in his early days went on one of the cattle drives and he decided to make his way there until the first winter. Then he came back to get warm in Texas. And I am not sure he has ever warmed up since.

But that shows how rugged you are, how hardy you are, and how well you live under those open blue skies. I want to thank all of you for the good judgment and the wisdom that you have shown in giving to this nation the leadership of men like Mike Mansfield, the great majority leader than whom there has never been a better one; Lee Metcalf, who is the Acting President pro tempore more than any other man in the Senate and who presides more, I think, than any Vice President, or any President pro tem ever has; Congressman Olsen; and I am delighted to welcome this morning Governor Babcock and his charming wife to this rose garden.

Montana people have a lot to be proud of and much to preserve. You are always willing to stand up and be counted. Your leadership here in the Capitol means much to us. Every Tuesday I meet with Senator Mansfield and get his recommendations and suggestions. He is always quiet and calm, always ready to stand up and be counted, and to do what is good and what is best for his people.

He is not like that preacher down in my country was when he found a member of his congregation one morning that always came to the church and snored through the sermon. He finally got tired of it and he decided he would play a little joke on him. While he was sleeping, he said, "All of you folks that want to go to heaven," in a rather low voice, "please stand." And everybody stood except the fellow on the front row that was sleeping and snoring. When they sat down, he said in a very loud voice, "Now, all of you folks that want to go to hell please stand." That stirred the fellow and he waked up and he heard him say "Please stand," so he jumped up and he looked around and saw that no one else was standing with him. He said, "Preacher, I don't know what it is you are voting on, but you and I seem to be the only two for it."

Now Mike does know what he is voting on, and he is willing to stand and be counted, as are your Congressman Jim Battin and Congressman Olsen and Senator Metcalf and Senator Mansfield. I am glad to see Maureen is here this morning. Mike and I have that in common, too--we both outmarried ourselves. Our wives are good friends and we work very closely together. I hope maybe that you have a chance to see Lady Bird if she is still over there and not out of the house working.

We have a lot of problems that come in here. You are out here in this beautiful rose garden that Mrs. Kennedy had constructed. Mrs. Paul Mellon spent months of her great talent bringing these beautiful trees in here and planting these beautiful flowers. All of the roses are out here, but the thorns are on the inside.

You and fate have selected us to try to carry on in the great tradition of this country and our free enterprise system. We are rather proud of the way the American people are cooperating today. We are trying to build a great society that will make your children and your grandchildren and the people three or four generations from today proud of what we are doing. We are trying to establish the fact that all Americans can be treated equally and that proposition has the Senate temporarily tied up, but Mike is going to find some solution to it in the next few weeks.

We have tried to pass a bill that will bring a reasonable cushion to agriculture and put a floor under prices where the farmer and rancher can have some prosperity. We are not unaware of the problems of the ranchmen and we are dealing with them every day.

I met the Secretary of Agriculture from New Zealand yesterday. He agreed to curtail their meat exports about 22 percent, which means that we think things will become better from the import side of it.

We are trying to pass a good food stamp plan in the Congress, a medical aid plan in the Congress, a pay bill that will not make it necessary for an employee who stays here to either resign or to steal, but one that will permit him to earn enough to meet the needs of his family.

In that connection, I think you should know that I know of no group of citizens anywhere in the world that gives as much to so many as the Members of the House and Senate. They do that and run for election, the Members of the House every 2 years, on a salary of $22,500, and you couldn't get those men in any top business in America for twice that much. Yet we expect them to stay here and meet all the demands of public office and go back and conduct a campaign every 2 years, and as a consequence, we are losing some of our best talent not only in the executive branch, but in the legislative branch as well. I hope that we can pass a good pay bill.

We want to pass another measure that will preserve humanity. It ought to almost be called P.H. Bill--the bill to preserve humanity. They call it the poverty bill. But it is going to take these young men that have been rejected by the draft--some 500,000 or 600,000 are turned back each year--and put them in camps, conservation camps, in your country, developing our resources; but first of all, developing them, teaching them to read and write, the mental turndowns are 25 percent, the physical are 75 percent, and try to equip them and prepare them to be taxpayers instead of taxeaters.

When President franklin Roosevelt came in, he had a country that was one-third ill clad and ill fed and ill housed. Today we have, after 30 years, moved that one-third up to one-fifth, but we still have 20 percent of our people in that bottom group. We want to have the glorious kind of society where people are prepared to earn their own way, where they are prepared and trained and have the physical and mental resources to help support their Government, instead of have their Government support them.

So under the leadership of that great young American, Sargent Shriver, who has carried the peace program to all corners of the world, we are going to have a poverty program that will take care of our less fortunate young people throughout the Nation and that will materially reduce our unemployment. We have reduced it from 5.8 percent to 5.4 percent. We have the greatest profits in the history of our country. They have increased in 3 years by more than 50 percent. So we can afford some of these things.

Our wages have increased by more than $50 billion. We now have more people: employed than we have ever had in the history of our country, more than 70 million. They are earning wages in excess of what they have ever earned before.

So now is the time for America not to think just of yesterday or not just of tomorrow, but to think of generations yet unborn, so that we can prepare this society for them and leave it a society that is a glorious society that we can be proud of and that the historians will point to as a development that is unheard of in any nation.

We hear of the rich nations and the poor nations. We must be thankful that we are a rich nation, but if we don't use those resources to help those who are unable to help themselves, the day will soon come when the crying masses of all the world-- and two-thirds of the people of all the world are crying masses--will come and see that justice is done.

I know that in this great effort to build this great society that we can depend on the independence and the constructive fearlessness of Montana people and their leaders. for that reason, I have taken a little longer this morning than I wanted to take to tell you how proud I am of your State, how proud I am of the leaders that you have sent here, how high and tall they stand in the counsels of this Government, and how we know that you are going to join us in working to make this a better country than you found it, and to leave more for your children than your parents left for you.

Not that we are not thankful and not that we are not appreciative, but we are in the 20th century, and we must never be content with the status quo. We must never permit ourselves to stand still. We must move forward, as we are moving with civil rights, with medical care, with poverty, with the pay bill, with the food stamp bill, with the immigration bill that asks not "Where do you come from?" but "What can you do and what do you stand for?"

We are going to do those things so that that Statue of Liberty that is up there in New York that you have seen or are going to see will always be a beacon to those from other lands, to know that there is opportunity left in America. You are responsible for that opportunity because in your wisdom you have selected men who love this system and who are willing to die for it.

Thank you for coming.

One thing I wanted to tell you, a thing I like so much about Montana, and something that is a precious heritage to all of us, is that great artist that you had there for so many years, Charles Russell. I have one of his paintings hanging in my office, and I asked them to bring it out here because I wanted to give you just a little touch of Montana this morning.

I remember the stories that he wrote from New York back home to the saloonkeeper, Sid Willis, and how he told them that he never realized until he got to New York just how wonderful the people of Montana were. I want to quote to you from one of Russell's letters that especially intrigues me, to his friend the saloonkeeper: "I am lonesome tonight and far from my range. I thought it might help for me to write you. Just think--I am in a camp of 4 million and I guess I know only eight."

But although he was in New York writing back to Montana, everybody knew where his heart was all the time.

After the meeting here this morning, if those of you want to tour the White House, I have arranged through Senator Mansfield and Senator Metcalf, and the Congressmen, to have that done.

[At this point the President was presented with a Montana Centennial Medallion and Coin. He then resumed speaking.]

Thank you very much.

I hope you enjoy your tour, now. I will go back in and get some work done.