Remarks at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Park, Lewiston, Maine.

Congressman Hathaway, all the nice public servants on the platform with me, and all of you private officials in the audience:

I want to thank each of you, as Mrs. Johnson did, for this wonderful welcome and for the privilege of coming back to Maine again.

When Senator Muskie talked about the last speech he made in this park, he told me that that evening while he was waiting on Senator Kennedy to come here that you people waited almost 4 hours in almost zero weather. And although I wasn't here, I am grateful and understanding of the loyalty and the appreciation you had for that great man whom I succeeded and for whom this park was named.

We have tried to carry forward his program, put it on the statute books, and execute it as he would have had us do.

The last 2 days we have traveled throughout the northeastern part of the United States and New England and we have talked about the problems of our people. We talked about pollution in Lake Erie in Buffalo yesterday.

We talked about the problems of our cities where 75 percent of all of our people are going to be living in just a matter of a few years, in Syracuse.

Last evening we dedicated a Hill-Burton hospital and talked about medical care, and the treatment of our bodies, and what we are going to do to save lives, and how we got rid of polio, and how we are going to get rid of cancer, and how we are going to stop heart disease--one of the greatest killers in this country.

This morning we talked to the young people over at the University of Rhode Island about their rights, about civil rights, about constitutional rights. But we also talked about the responsibilities that go with those rights and the understanding that goes with them.

Later in the day we were at New Hampshire, and we talked about the thing that is on most of your minds--our men in Vietnam, and how we can bring peace to the world and bring honor to ourselves.

I am going to talk about another subject here in Lewiston tonight, because I am so happy to be back in Maine.

Today, Congressman Hathaway, Senator Muskie, Governor Reed, Senator Smith, Senator Pell, Senator Mansfield, Senator McIntyre, Senator Aiken, Senator Prouty, Governor Volpe, Governor King, and a number of other public officials have been with me.

They are Republicans and they are Democrats. But we haven't been talking party matters. We have been talking people matters; problems of people. We don't want to just talk about problems all the time. We want to talk about our successes, too. And I am going to do that tonight.

Two years ago I stood on the steps of the city hall in Portland and I quoted from a message that Governor Joshua Chamberlain once sent to the Maine legislature. Governor Chamberlain said:

"A government has something more to do than govern and levy taxes to pay the Governor .... Government must also encourage good, point out improvements, open roads of prosperity, and infuse life into all the right enterprises."

I promised the citizens of Maine that night that we would try to follow that course if we were selected for this place of leadership.

And I have come back tonight to report that we have lived up to that promise. Your Government--and I think it is very important that each of you always remembers this is your Government, not my Government-this is your Government and it has been infusing life into one right enterprise after another.

And we have just only begun.

And I think there is no better example of this than the promising new Maine project that we call the Dickey hydroelectric project. We are going to put more than $300 million into this project, and every single one of those dollars will be a good, sound investment in the future of a stable Maine and in the future of all America.

I have two brilliant young men on my staff from the State of Maine: Milton Semer of Auburn and Hal Pachios, my Associate Press Secretary, from Portland.

They are both good lawyers and good citizens. But we were talking the other evening and one of them said, "You know, Mr. President, so many people have been listening so long to the old voices that constantly talk about big government, that they haven't caught up with the fact the United States is a very big country."

Our population increased by more than 2 million people alone just last year. Half a century from now we will have over 400 million Americans.

So we cannot have a stagecoach government in the era of orbiting astronauts. Government has to keep up with the times, and it has to stay ahead of the problems. For too long we have lagged behind and now we are trying to catch up.

I came here tonight to pledge to you good people--who are Americans first, but select the best government you know how--I came here to pledge you that as long as I lead this country we are going to keep up and catch up.

But I came here to say something else. Building a Great Society is not the job of a President alone. It is not the responsibility of the leaders of the Congress--some of whom are here with us this evening--alone. It cannot be done in Washington alone. It has to be the goal of every man and woman, every boy and girl. Every one of you has to pitch in and improve the corner of the country that you live in.

We can pass laws to bring justice to all our people, whatever their color. We can spend money for housing, education, and training. But until we have a domestic good-neighbor policy on every block, in every city, on every roadway, there is going to be racial strife in America.

We can start new programs to try to clean up the ghettoes of our cities, but until the people who live in our suburbs are color blind, there will continue to be discrimination in America.

We can establish training programs for young people who need a second chance, but until law-abiding citizens give them their second chance, there is going to be delinquency in America.

So if I could write just one letter to every American citizen tonight, I would make it brief, but I would try to make it directly to the point. And I would say something like this:

"My fellow American, democracy depends on whether you are willing to conduct yourself as if the destiny of many others were in your hands, as if the future and the character of our Nation were to be decided by what you are and by what you do. Live every day with the knowledge that America is the sum total of all the decisions that you and people like you are making this very hour."

I would write that letter because I believe that what America needs more than it needs anything else right now is a strong dose of self-discipline. We need it to carry through and to support our men who are in the rice paddies of Vietnam tonight. We need it to bring racial peace and social justice to all our citizens in the United States. We need it to bring education to the mind and health to the bodies of all of our boys and girls in this country tonight. And we need it to maintain the strong economy that gives all of our people good jobs at good wages tonight.

Because never forget that no matter how many harassing, frustrating problems you may have, the strong economy is the underpinning of America's material strength. Let me illustrate what I mean.

People are talking a lot about inflation this election year. These same people used to talk a lot about unidentified flying objects. Well, now, what is inflation? Where is it going? Where did it come from?

I don't know the answers. But I do think that we should try to put the problem of inflation into perspective--and not just in terms of the early 1930's when prices were very low but few people had many dollars to buy much with.

I mean the perspective that comes from looking at both sides of the prosperity coin --looking at the rising prices without forgetting the rising standard of living.

There is poverty in America. We talk a lot about it these days--and we are doing a lot about it. There is want and there is some hunger--there is more of each than any of us would like to have. But I think most of you people that I am looking at here tonight in Lewiston, like most of my fellow Americans that I have seen in over 25 States, are tonight enjoying the best standard of living that you have ever known.

Now it may be in the 1930's some of you were doing better. It may be in the 1940's some of you were doing better. It may be in the 1950's some of you were doing better. But I think the majority of us are doing better now than we have ever done before.

Now prices have gone up. They have gone up 10 percent since 1961. And they will probably go up again. During that same time, though, wages have gone up, too. And they are going up some more. They have gone up not 10 percent as the prices have, but the wages have gone up 17 percent and most of you can buy more tonight than you could with your paycheck 6 years ago.

In 1966 the average wage--I try to make this as understandable as I can--the average wage of a factory worker will buy twice as much in the retail stores as it would when I came to Washington in 1931.

I want to repeat that because I want all of you to listen to it. In 1966, the year of our Lord tonight, the average wage of a factory worker will buy twice as much at retail as it would when I first came to Washington in 1931.

You could buy more bread, and more butter, and more milk, and more molasses, and more bacon with one hour of your earnings last year than you could in 1960. And that is also true of steaks, and potatoes, and tomatoes, and liver--if you ever eat it.

It is a fact that Americans are eating better food at a lower real cost than they have ever eaten before. After you get through paying your taxes--to all the Presidents and Governors and I don't know whether Senators and Congressmen think they have anything to do with it or not--but after you get through paying your taxes, your family is spending 18 percent of its income on food, 18 percent tonight, this year, compared to 26 percent of its income that it was paying 20 years ago.

So, I repeat--prices have gone up, and they are going to go up some more. We are going to do our best to have stabilization, but they have gone up and they will go up some more--but so has your standard of living gone up. And it is going up some more, too.

We have a goal, we have an objective, we have a future for America. We want to leave this world better than we found it. We have advantages that our fathers and our grandfathers didn't have. And we want our children to have things that we don't have ourselves.

So, prices have gone up and your standard of living has gone up, too. I hope you will keep that in perspective.

You know, I think that may have been what President Franklin Roosevelt's friend meant when he saw President Roosevelt during the 1940 campaign. You remember President Roosevelt asked him how he was voting. And his friend said, "Republican." "How come?" President Roosevelt asked. "Is the third term bothering you? .... No," the friend answered, "that's not it at all. It's just that I voted Republican the first time you ran"--this fellow lived in Maine, not in Lewiston, but in Maine--"and I voted Republican the second time you ran"--that was 1936, you know--"And I am going to vote Republican again, because I seem to have never had it so good!"

Now this is not to say that we should or we will ignore the threat that is made to our stabilization program and that comes with inflation. But keeping things in perspective will not chase the threat away.

I want you to know that, as your President, every day that I open my office I am going to be concerned about rising prices and will try to do as much as I intelligently can about them.

But I am as deeply concerned with finding the right way to deal with inflation. And that brings me back to my central point.

This morning at the University of Rhode Island I said along with rights we have responsibilities.

Tonight I want to leave this point: self-discipline.

The ideal way to keep the economy healthy without inflation is restraint--restraint on the part of those whose decisions have a real impact on prices. And I am looking into a lot of faces of people who make decisions that can probably have more impact on prices than I can.

For 2½ years now I have urged business and labor in many, many conferences I have had at the White House to bargain responsibly to reach decisions that will not trigger inflation.

And I am proud to report to you that many businessmen and many labor leaders have responded with restraint and with self-discipline to their President's pleas.

I am sad to report to you that not all of them have, and as a result we are faced tonight with a real danger to the prosperity which you have enjoyed for 6 consecutive years.

I would like for all Americans to know, those who can hear it and those who can read, unless there is restraint now, unless there is voluntary self-discipline by management and labor, then your Government will be compelled by sheer necessity to act in order to protect all of the people.

For in a democracy, the interest of all the people is, and should be, always overriding. And it is Government's duty and it is your president's duty, and he will exercise that duty by trying to reason--"come reason together"--to protect that interest.

But if, after we reason and after we appeal for self-discipline, after we ask for restraint, there are still general excesses, then I pledge you tonight we are going to protect your interests.

Now that sums up about all I have to say on the inflation problem. This will end my speaking for this week--at least this Saturday. I have told you the general subjects we have discussed.

I just want to conclude by talking about one that we have not discussed.

We have been talking about problems. But I want to talk about successes. I want to talk about the day in America when we have 76 million people working, working full 40-hour weeks, some of them drawing good overtime, working at an average factory wage in excess of $112 per week-the highest in the history of this Nation-more people working, getting more pay, than at any time in the history of this Nation. We have the best education and health programs that any government has ever inaugurated. Our citizens are eating more. They are wearing more. Their children are going to better schools.

They are driving better automobiles and more of them--some people even have two. They are living in better homes, although all of them don't have good homes. And except for our problems in Vietnam, we have so much to be thankful for.

So when you go home tonight after having listened to those whose principal job all day has been complaining, to those who got up on the wrong side of the bed and have been martyrs all day long, feeling that nobody loved them and they had been mistreated, just think about what other country you would like to trade your citizenship in for.

Just think about what other flag in the world represents as much to you as that one does. Just think of what boy and girl that you know who has more constitutional rights, more liberty, more freedom, more educational opportunity, more care of their body and their health, more opportunity for recreation, more opportunity to make individual decisions and be independent of everybody than you have here in America.

I have never felt that our people were unreasonably demanding. I think the average American doesn't ask much, doesn't expect much, doesn't have to have much.

He wants a church where he can worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. He wants a home where he and his wife can raise their family in comfort. He wants a job where he can earn enough to meet his responsibilities as a parent. He wants to be able to provide health care for his growing family and security for his old age.

And he may want to go to a park or a seashore once in a while, or even a movie, or to sit and listen to television. But outside of that, that is about all he asks for. And most of us have that and we ought to be thankful for it.

So if I could leave one thought with you, finally. I have gotten great strength from visiting with you and looking into your faces and giving you my views. I have learned something from you, too, you people in the five States that I have visited.

I can go back and listen to the complainers-if there be any in Washington--the commentators, I can hear their individual viewpoints. But I will have enough strength to make my judgments and my decisions, because every man that's ever been President of the United States wants to make the right decision.

No man who has ever been President, whether it was Hoover, Wilson, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, or Kennedy--every single man that has ever been President, wanted to do what is right. Their great problem is knowing what is right because most of the decisions that come to a President are balanced just like this. The easy ones are settled by the Congressmen, the Senators, and Governors.

Last week or the week before, when we settled the airlines strike the first time, before the machinists had had their vote on it and had a chance to express themselves, I picked up some of the leading journals of this country which really have a good deal of information on a good many subjects.

One of the editorials said that I was a dictator, and I had arrogance of power, and I twisted arms, and I had brought about an agreement. That made me sad, because I don't like for people to say ugly things about me and I don't want to be a dictator.

And then, the next day they didn't ratify the contract. They turned it down and a week went by. Some of the writers had to ride a train from New York to Florida instead of being able to go by airplane. So then they said, not that he was a dictator, but they said, "Why doesn't he show some leadership?"

So then I was talking to Ed Muskie about it. I said, "I am between the devil and the deep blue sea. I don't want to be a dictator; I do want to have some leadership. Now how do I go about it?"

He said it reminded him of the story about the fellow and the donkey. He said, "A man was walking along with a donkey. Someone said, 'Why would a man want to lead a donkey? Why doesn't he ride it?' Said he got on the donkey and the little boy he had with him was walking along beside him. Someone said, 'Why did that old, big man get on a donkey and let that little boy walk?' So the fellow said, 'OK,' and put the little boy on the donkey.

"As they went on down the road a little bit, one of these complainers saw the little donkey coming along with the man and the boy both on it and they said, 'Why do those two big men ride that poor little donkey?' And they went on down a little bit further and finally someone said, 'That is an outrage! Why don't - they carry the donkey?'"

Now dissent, different viewpoints, different objectives are the strength of America. We don't all see everything alike or we would all belong to the same church, we would all wear the same clothes, we would all drive the same automobile, and we would all want the Same Wife.

It is this difference and this right to express it that makes this the most powerful, the most wealthy, the most stable nation in all the world.

But while we are exercising all these rights we have, all these liberties we cherish, all these privileges that we claim, let's not ever lose completely our perspective. Let's not start feeling so sorry for ourselves that we fail to be thankful and that we fail to realize really how many blessings we have.

Thank you, and good night.