Telephone Message to the Employees of HUD on the Occasion of the Department's First Anniversary.

I CALLED to congratulate you today on your first anniversary.

It is a great birthday, and I think the whole country must be celebrating with you.

I want to thank each of you for the wonderful job that you have done to bring greater opportunity, hope, and beauty to our urban people. You must never lose sight of that goal.

The only legitimate function of Government is to help people. Your job is not just to run an efficient office. Your real job is to enrich the lives of the two out of three Americans who now live in our overcrowded cities.

I hope that you will always ask yourselves these questions:

--Is it right for an infant to come into the world in a rat-infested slum?

--Is it right to condemn a child to joyless streets, where the sight of grass and trees and the smell of good, clean air are luxuries beyond his dreams?

--Is it right for a mother to lack the plumbing to wash her family's clothes? Or a father to lack the skill to earn a decent living?

--Is it right for an old person to spend the last years of his life shut up in a dismal attic room, alone, enfeebled--and forgotten?

I think those of you who work for HUD know the answers to all of those questions.

I think you know that you are the people who must carry our cities from the dark ages of stagnation and neglect into the bright sunshine of the 21st century.

A great and compassionate Congress has followed our recommendations and given you many of the tools:

--open space land grants,

--urban mass transportation,

--family relocation grants,

--stricter code enforcement,

--rent supplements,

--and finally, our revolutionary new model cities program.

And I believe that I have given you the leadership to use these tools. In the appointment of your Secretary, Robert Weaver, and your Under Secretary, Robert Wood, I know that you have two of the ablest and most dedicated men in the United, States.

You have already achieved much. But you have far to go. Your time is short, because in a very real sense, your agency was decades overdue. You know we tried for years to get it set up. You have not only to plan for the future, but also to make up for the neglect and the failures of more than 50 years.

So this afternoon I want to pledge you my fullest support for your work in the years to come. And on behalf of your fellow Americans, I renew our plea that you carry on with the same courage and the same imagination with which you have so well begun.

I wish I could be there with you, but I want to congratulate you, in my absence, from here at the ranch.

Thank you very much.