Remarks in Atlantic City at the Convention of the United Steelworkers of America

President McDonald, delegates of the United Steelworkers:

I had so much fun here the last time that I thought I would come back to Atlantic City.

Were you pleased with the results of the last Atlantic City convention? Well, that is wonderful. I was a little worried at first whether they made the right choice--for Miss America.

I am not here today as a partisan. I am not going to make a political appeal. I think that you should support any candidate of any party who favors strong and progressive labor unions.

In 1937 you won your first contract with United States Steel. And I entered the United States Congress that same year. We have come a long way together since that day, and we are going to keep moving forward together for many years to come.

I remember in 1938 voting for a 25-cent an hour minimum wage bill. They said that would wreck my political career. They said that act would wreck organized labor. But here we are.

There were also those who said that act would doom free enterprise and would destroy American freedom. And they made those same worn out, discredited arguments against every piece of progressive legislation from social security to the war against poverty. They are the same old arguments made in the same old way and written, I suspect, by the same old man. And they are just as wrong in 1964 as they were in 1938.

Neither you nor I, nor the American people have heeded those voices of doom and despair.

The gains of the past 30 years have not been easy gifts. We fought for them through a long and a bitter depression. We maintained them through a hard and a bloody war. We advanced them through an uneasy and a perilous peace. And we are going to keep and strengthen them through the years of challenge and promise which lie ahead.

We will never return to economic stagnation and national drift. We will not return to declining employment at home and declining prestige abroad. We will not neglect our duty toward the helpless or the demands of our oppressed.

We will keep moving toward a nation where every man can find work and a fair reward for his labor, where the old can live in decency and the poor can reach for dignity, where no man suffers from fear or hatred and where every man can seek fulfillment and hope.

That has been the 30-year-old goal of this progressive union. That is the goal of all American labor. That is the goal of most Americans of every section and every interest. And that is the goal toward which I hope to lead all America.

In this pursuit, America needs the vision and the vitality of responsible unions. Under the presidency of Dave McDonald, this union has charted a path of progress and has brought strength to all the American people. Every member of this union, from east or west or north or south, can be proud, as I am proud, of the role that each of you have played.

Your Human Relations Committee has established a fruitful pattern of day in and day out relations between the employer and the union. You have moved steel toward an era of creative, constructive bargaining, recognizing that labor and management have a common stake in each other's welfare, and in the health of the entire economy. You have shown the way to absorb enormous change with enlarged production, and without infringing the interests of your workers.

You have done this because your test is not just what is good for workers or, for that matter, not just what is good for labor. Your test is today, and has been through the years: if this is good for my country, if this is good for America, this is good for me.

And you have been wise enough to know that what is good for America is also good for the American labor movement.

There will still be differences and difficulties. But we approach the future bound together in a common awareness that there is much more to be gained through cooperation than conflict, much more to be gained through greater rewards in harmony than in hostility, a brighter future for all of us in unity instead of unrest.

Recent years have given us proof of this belief. We are today in the 43d month of the longest, strongest unbroken peacetime expansion in American history. This year, for the first time, we have broken the barrier of 70 million jobs, and right now we are creating additional new jobs at the rate of 100,000 every month. Average manufacturing earnings have risen nearly 16 percent, and weekly earnings in the primary metals industry have jumped 23 percent.

The fact is that wages are higher, employment is higher, profits are higher, and the economy is stronger than at any time in American history.

And this is a proud record. But it is characteristic of the American labor movement that we must never be satisfied with past achievement. And I am not satisfied, either. If there are any who think we have hit our peak, that we can just stand pat, or keep cool, or sit back in our rocking chair and enjoy the status quo, that we have finally reached the promised land, they better get out of our way, because I tell you they will be run over by a marching America.

We have a threefold task.

First, we must extend our prosperity to all Americans. Your government is completely committed to full employment and the eradication of poverty in the United States.

Second, we must avoid the pitfalls of recession. A recession today, like those of the 1950's, would mean a loss of $20 billion a year in production, a loss of 1 1/2 million jobs, a 40 percent rise in unemployment. And America just cannot afford a recession like that.

Third, we must harness the forces of enlarging technology and expanding population in order to improve the life of all of our people. By 1970 our labor force will increase at twice the rate that it has in the past decade, the past 10 years. We will need over 70,000 new jobs each week. At the same time, technological change is eliminating unskilled jobs and making old skills obsolete.

That is the challenge of our future. If we master it, we can enter a new era of American greatness. If we run from it, it will overwhelm us. I have no doubt about the choice that America will make. And I have no doubt what the steelworkers will do about it.

Because if you can judge the future by the past, I am here to say to you in the Presidency and the Congress no union in America has gotten up earlier, stayed up later, done more to help this President and help all the people of this country than the United Steelworkers of America. And we have just begun to march.

How do we intend to ensure continued prosperity in the face of these powerful forces ?

First, we will continue a fiscal policy which expands purchasing power to meet our power to produce. Our tax cut, which you helped us pass through the Congress, was a part of this policy. And in the months ahead we will not permit Federal revenues to become a drag on our economy. Next year we are going to cut excise taxes.

Second, in every area we will extend the hand of cooperation, not coercion. We will say to business, the employer, and to labor, the employee, "Your Government extends you the hand of encouragement, not the fist of harassment." We will ask both business and labor to join us under the tent that will keep prices in this country stable. That stability is the key to increased purchasing power at home. It is the key to an increased progress in the world market.

Third, we will encourage the expansion and the modernization of American industry through tax incentives and through increased research.

Fourth, we will work to provide our people with the skills and the knowledge that they need to find a place in a changing economy. We have come to understand, in the past few years, that economic growth alone will not solve all of our problems. Men and women without education and without training cannot be absorbed by advancing opportunity.

Fifth, we will extend the helping hand of a just nation to the poor and to the helpless and to the oppressed. We will do this through a program of medical care under social security for all older Americans. We will do this through strengthened unemployment compensation and minimum wages. We will do this through fair and just and equal opportunity for every American of every race, color, religion, and belief.

And we will do all these things because we love people instead of hate them; because we have faith in America, not fear of the future; because you are strong men of vision instead of frightened crybabies; because you know it takes a man who loves his country to build a house instead of a raving, ranting demagog who wants to tear down one.

Well, no one has anything to fear in our beloved land from increasing opportunity for all Americans. History proves and reason confirms, the more Americans who take a productive place in our society the greater the prosperity for all of us. The only real danger to any of us is the failure to use our skills and to use the labor of all.

We need not spend any time looking back. But if we did, we could see what kind of leadership produced the soup lines. And let me say this: If anyone thinks the American people are ever going back to the soup line, they don't know the modern America.

If anyone thinks that the American people are going to shape the future of freedom, the prospect of prosperity, the hope for peace for all of our children--if they think we are going to do that on the basis of fear and prejudice and bigotry, and hatred and division, then I say they just don't know the American people.

Sixth, we will move forward to meet the great public needs of our country, in our exploding cities, in our fading countryside, by beautifying our highways and cleaning out the old second car dumps that blight them; by improving our crowded classrooms, and building new schools with better teachers; and in every other area which has been the victim of neglect or indifference.

This is not an easy job. It will require the work and the sacrifices and the planning of government at every level. It will require the cooperation of labor and of business and of private groups and of private citizens.

But the American labor movement has never hesitated to work toward those goals, and today you are not alone. American business is with you. Most of the American people are with you and the President of the United States is with you.

With these as our policies, we can look to the future with confidence. We must now think not just of next month, not just of next year. But it is your job and it is my job, and it is your responsibility and it is my responsibility to think and to plan and to work for the next generation.

Many of our children will be working when the year 2000 rolls around. It sounds so exciting I just wish I could buy a little slice of it myself, because by then there will be 330 million Americans living here. We should have more than 120 million jobs, and if we sustain our current progress, our gross national product should be more than $2.4 trillion. And here is something we would all like to have even before the year 2000: an average family income twice what it is today.

Well, that is the goal of your Government's present economic policies.

Our strides toward that future will come from the unity that was forged in the struggles of the past. A united country, a unified America, submerging petty difference in common purpose, will find no limit to its achievement.

We have the knowledge. We have the resources. We have the tools. All we need is the courage and the faith and the vision. And you know in your heart that I am telling you the truth.

There will be voices abroad in the land tomorrow as there were yesterday who constantly tell you that they won't or that they can't. But they did not build this land. And thank God they have not destroyed it. We ask for little, but we will produce much.

A great leader of this great Union many, many years ago inspired me with the simplicity and the eloquence and the depth of his compassion when he, Phil Murray, said "All the working men and women in America want is a rug on the floor, a picture on the wall, and music in the home."

We have the greatest government that human ingenuity ever fashioned. We have the highest standard of living that any people anywhere ever enjoyed. We are prepared to protect and to defend our country as we have never been prepared before.

We are going to seek peace in every capital with every person who will meet us halfway. We know the price of destructive war. We hate it. We love peace. We will always march, though, with our hand out but our guard up. We will never bully or threaten or intimidate or provoke. But we will always stand firm to protect and to preserve the principles of freedom for which our forefathers died.

We love our system of government. It has done too much for us, for us to ever turn our back upon it. But it is a cooperative system that I said earlier was based on encouragement of all segments instead of harassment of any.

If freedom in the world survives, it will be because of the quality of our system. If we permit numbers alone to determine whether freedom or communism prevails, the Communists have more people in the Soviet Union than we have free people in the United States. Their resources are many and are extensive.

But we are relying on our system because the capitalist who can invest his dollar and hope to get back a fair return without it being confiscated, the manager who gets up early and works late to plan that machinery and those men, and working together, hoping some day that he will get a bonus or a profit-sharing plan, the worker who has maximum wages and minimum hours, and other benefits, realizing he has the highest standard of living of any worker in the world--all three of those make up the American system of free enterprise. And don't tell me that they can't produce more, faster, cheaper than any commissar anywhere can direct.

Yes, we have much to preserve, much to protect. We have a glorious future ahead for ourselves and for our children if we only recognize it, if we only put our shoulder to the wheel, if we only look forward to tomorrow instead of backward to yesterday.

Beware of those who fear and those who doubt, and those who rave and rant about the dangers of progress. Beware of those who say "Don't touch this," "Leave that alone," "Let's wipe this out," "Let's go back to working by yourself against your neighbor."

Embrace those who tell you to follow the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and to love thy neighbor as thyself.

So in this hour of our great triumph here, with all the future open to us, let us, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, say to our fellow man, whether it is our worker at the lathe, whether it is our employer in the shop, "Come now, let us understand how much we have to lose by dividing instead of uniting, how much we have to lose by hating instead of loving, how much we have to lose by not having faith in our country," and then ask the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker to all come under our great family tent and let us reason together to produce the greatest, the richest, the finest, the freest land in all the world for all the people.