Remarks at Columbus Circle, Syracuse, New York

Mayor Walsh, Mr. Mulroy, one of our great publishers, Mr. Rogers, ladies and gentlemen:

Two years ago I came to Syracuse to receive an honorary degree from your great university here. And I am glad that you invited me back. I hope that I can come again at some future date.

I want to thank the Members of Congress who have come here with Congressman Jones and the National Resources Subcommittee of the Public Works Committee of the House. They have done great work on behalf of the Nation. And I am delighted that they have come here to upstate New York today to continue their hearings to seek information that will be helpful to the entire Government in meeting this very serious problem.

I also want to express my deep appreciation to several other Congressmen who have come with me and have extended the warm hand of New York hospitality to me. I should like for each of them to stand, because I want you to know them.

They have been very helpful to the President. They have served the cause of democracy in the Capitol in Washington. And they deserve the recognition and respect that I know you will want to give them.

Congressman Multer of Brooklyn, Congressman Murphy of Brooklyn-Staten Island, Congressman Theodore Kupferman of Manhattan, Congressman Bingham from the Bronx, Congressman John G. Dow of Rockland and Orange, Congressman Joseph Y. Resnick of Ellenville, where we'll be in a few minutes, Congressman Seymour Halpern of Queens, Congressman Bob McEwen of Ogdensburg, Congressman Frank Horton of Rochester.

I want to thank Congressman Hartley for that first-rate introduction. I recognize that Congressman Hanley is a first-term Congressman who has already made his mark as a man who knows the problems of his district and he works long and hard for his people. And I do appreciate the chance to come here with him today and to meet his friends and constituents.

I am also glad to have my old friend Sam Stratton with me. I have known him for 25 years. He headed the House Armed Services Committee which went to Vietnam and came back with some very penetrating recommendations. He is a courageous Congressman and he is a true patriot, and I am happy that he could be here with us today.

I want to talk to you this afternoon about the center of our society--the American city.

Your two very able and distinguished Senators from New York will join us very shortly, but they couldn't leave Washington with us this afternoon because they had to stay there to try to pass a bill through the Senate.

They were successful in passing it by about a 2 to 1 vote which will mean something to every city in America. And I want to talk to you about the cities of America this afternoon.

Senator Javits and Senator Kennedy, I hope, can join us. And I want to thank them in advance for staying at their post of duty and doing a good job.

For 3 years my administration has been concerned with the question: What do we want our cities to finally become?

For you and your children, those of you who have come here in this hot sun, the question is: What kind of a place will Syracuse be some 50 years from now?

As I drove in from the airport, your publisher and your distinguished mayor and others were talking to me about the plans that you have for this great, growing city.

Syracuse can be a community where your lives are enriched. Syracuse must be a place where every person can satisfy his highest aspirations. Syracuse can be a place to advance the hopes of all of your citizens.

Now this is what we want Syracuse to be. And that is what we want every city in America to be. I think one word can best describe the task that we face--and that one word is "immense." Until this decade, we did too little too late. By 1975 we are going to need 2 million new homes a year in this country, we are going to need schools for 60 million children, we are going to need health and welfare programs for 27 million people who will be over 60 years of age, we are going to need transportation facilities for the movement of 200 million people, and they will be driving in more than 80 million automobiles.

In less than 40 years--between now and the end of this century--the urban population of this country is going to double, city land will double, and we will have to build in our cities as much as has already been built since the first settler arrived on these shores.

What it has taken us almost 200 years to build, we are going to have to build again in the next 40 years.

That is in your lifetime. We had better get started on it and we had better start learning about it and be interested in it right now.

Let me be clear about the heart of this problem: It is the people who live in our cities and the quality of the lives they lead that should concern every public servant today. We must open new opportunities to all of our people, so that everyone and not just a fortunate few will have access to decent homes and decent schools and good parks and good jobs.

This is a problem that must be met not only by the Federal Government, but by every government, State and local, and by all the people of America. That is why I have enjoyed my afternoon with the Governor of your State, with the mayors of your cities, with your county leaders, with your civic leaders without regard to race or religion or population, or even the name of your town.

I came here today to pledge to you that the Federal Government, as long as I have anything to do with it, is going to meet its responsibilities.

At the same time I came here to ask your local government and your State government and every individual in those places to meet their responsibilities, too.

Now many of the conditions that we seek to tame should never have come about. I think it is shameful that they should continue to exist. I think it is wrong for some people to line their pockets with the tattered dollars of the poor.

So, the first thing we should pledge ourselves to do is to take the profit out of poverty. And there are several steps that we can take.

The first one: I am asking the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary Robert Weaver--whom President John Kennedy stated he intended to appoint to the Cabinet office if the Congress would create it--I'm going to ask Secretary Weaver to set as his goal the establishment, in every ghetto of America, of a neighborhood center to service the people who live in that area.

Second, I am going to ask the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Mr. Sargent Shriver, to increase the number of neighborhood legal centers in the slums of this Nation. I want these legal centers to make a major effort to help every tenant secure his rights to safe and sanitary housing if he lives in the United States of America.

Third, I am asking the distinguished Attorney General, Mr. Nicholas Katzenbach, to call a conference to develop new procedures to insure that the rights of tenants are fully and effectively enforced. And we will have at that conference the best legal minds in this country to work with our State and city officials, with our Governors, with our mayors, with our local councils.

Fourth, I will appoint a commission of distinguished Americans to make the first comprehensive review of codes, zoning, taxation, and development standards that has been made in more than two generations. I proposed the establishment of such a commission in my recommendations and in my message on the cities in 1965. Both Houses of Congress this week in conference agreed to fund this effort. It is coming late, but it is coming. We haven't given up and we are going to get on with the job.

I pledge to you and I pledge to the people of the cities of America that the work of this commission will begin immediately upon enactment of this legislation.

While I am at it, I want to thank the good people of Syracuse for giving to the Cabinet one of our abler and wiser executives, Mr. lack Connor. He is a proud son of this city. And he and Mrs. Connor lend dignity, strength and ability to the Cabinet and leadership to the people of this country.

I told you about some of the steps that we are taking. But let me be perfectly candid with you: This job cannot be done just in Washington alone. Every housing official, every mayor, every Governor must enforce their building, and their health, and their safety codes to the limit of the law. Where there are violations, the exploited tenants must be assured swift and sure action by the Courts.

Not even local officials can change these conditions. And unless you become indignant, unless you people are concerned with the treatment of the poor in your town, unless you can get a boiling point, unless you can go out and look after your neighbors, unless you can make justice for others a deep, personal concern of our own, poverty will profit from those who exploit the poor and who have been exploiting them for all of these years.

We have made important new starts in many vital areas. We no longer just talk about poverty. We came up and recommended a program to the Congress. And we spent $750 million the first year, $1 ½ billion the next year, and we have asked for $1 billion 750 million for this next year, working at the war on poverty, in assistance to law enforcement, and in our attack on pollution.

We talked at some length today in our speech in Buffalo about pollution. I hope some of you will observe that in your papers in the morning. This distinguished committee that is meeting here with you today is concerning itself with that problem here. Only yesterday, the committee made a report. The Senate has already acted upon a bill. And I hope the House will act upon one very shortly.

We are making great progress in the training of our manpower. Our unemployment has dropped from 6 or 7 percent down to a little over 3 percent--between 3 and 4. We have passed an elementary education bill and we are concerned with the education of our children.

We have passed 24 different health measures, including Medicare, to look after the health of our people.

But not all of these answers are in yet. Not even all of the questions have been asked. So we must continue to search and to probe, to experiment and to explore. We need constant study and new knowledge.

And that is why for the first time in our history our cities have a place in the Cabinet of the United States. More than a century after Abraham Lincoln created the Department of Agriculture, you have a voice in the Cabinet and your voice is being heard.

I have directed every member of the President's Cabinet who can help with the city challenge, with the urban problem, to meet at least once a week in the White House--or as often as necessary--to keep our cities program moving. I have asked each one of them to go out into the cities and to see the needs for themselves, and to come back and tell me what he finds.

One morning last week I spent the morning with the mayor of Milwaukee. That evening I spent the evening with the mayor of Baltimore. Each day we are meeting with the mayors of these cities that have these terrific problems. We are trying to coordinate the efforts of the local city council, the mayor, the Governor, the Federal Government, so that we can get on with the biggest task facing us. And don't be surprised if you see a lot of my Cabinet members in the months ahead.

That is why we have taken steps to set up summer programs for our young people. We are keeping the playgrounds open later at night in most of the cities over the country. We are opening swimming pools and fire hydrants on hot summer evenings with the cooperation of the local council and the services in some instances.

These temporary steps did not take an act of Congress. Any city could take them and I urge every city in this country to take a new look and see what it can do to provide a more beautiful city, to beautify the area, to open more playgrounds, to open more swimming pools, to give more supervised play to the youngsters that are growing up today who are going to be the leaders tomorrow.

Our administration has proposed to the Congress the most sweeping proposal that has ever been made by any President to meet the needs of our cities. And I am happy to report to you that early this afternoon the Senate passed one of the most important parts of that program. By a 2 to 1 vote the Senators enacted the demonstration cities bill and passed it through the Senate.

The House has reported that bill. I hope the Members of Congress--we almost have a quorum of them here on the platform this afternoon--I hope they get back to Washington next week and get it passed through the House.

Congress has given us the money to start the rent supplemental program that I proposed last year. Every $600 of rent supplements will let private enterprise build a housing unit worth 20 times that amount.

By this we are just beginning. I have laid before the Congress a broad program to help solve the problems. So, I want to say to Congress this afternoon: Give us action. Give us progress. Give us movement. And American cities will be great again.

Give us funds for the Teacher Corps and let our well-trained, skilled teachers bring knowledge and a quest for learning to those children who need it most.

Give us more resources for rent supplements-and let us provide better homes for so many who now live in substandard housing.

Give us the civil rights bill--and let us break the chains that bind the ghetto by banishing discrimination from the sale and rental of housing.

Give us the means to prosecute the war against poverty--and let us provide jobs and training for adults and a good head start for the very young people of this nation.

Give us the child nutrition act--and let us offer breakfasts and hot lunches to needy children who can be encouraged to stay in school.

Give us the legislation--and we can help overcome a shortage of trained medical personnel in this country.

Give us the hospital bill--and we can build and modernize hospitals in every city in this land to serve our citizens who live in these cities.

Give us the money for urban mass transit--and our cities can begin to provide adequate transportation for their people.

Give us a just minimum wage--and more American workers will earn a decent income.

Give us better unemployment insurance-and men out of work can be trained for jobs that need workers.

Give us a truth-in-lending bill--so that customers especially those who are poor, can know the honest cost of the money they are borrowing.

Give us the truth-in-packaging bill--so the hard-earned dollars of the poor, as well as of every American, can be protected against deception and against false values.

Yes, we have an agenda for action. We have taken the first steps toward great cities for a great society. And now if Congress will give us the power to move ahead on these fronts, we will get going.

This is no time for delay. This is no time to relax our efforts. We know that there is no magic equation that will produce an instant solution to the blight and the poverty and the want that is deposited in our cities by decades of inaction and indifference.

But we also know there is no substitute for action.

I do not know how long it is going to take to rebuild our cities. I do not know that we can. But I do know this: it must not--and will not--take us forever. For my part this afternoon as your President, I pledge that this administration is going to do all that it can to build great cities for a great society.

We hope the next time we return to Syracuse it will be an even greater city than it is today.

Thank you very much.