Remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the First State Workmen's Compensation Law.

Mr. Vice President, Governor Freeman, Postmaster General Day, and members of the Cabinet:

I want to express our great pleasure at being here this morning and having this opportunity to salute the State of Wisconsin, the State Legislature of that State, for the action it took in 1911, 50 years ago, in passing the first State workmen's compensation law. And the leadership shown in that State on that occasion was followed in later years by other actions which that State took in the twenties, which led directly to passage in the thirties of the National Social Security Act.

This first step, to provide security for American working men who may have been injured, to provide security for their families if they may have been fatally injured, represents one of the great landmarks of social legislation on our books in the long history of this country. That promising beginning has meant security to millions of Americans, and it represents the kind of forward-looking action on State and national level, the need for which faces us in our own day in 1961.

We look back today, but we also look forward, and we recognize that in our time, in the States and in the National Government, ment, there is still a good deal of unfinished business: to provide more security for our younger people who want jobs and can't find them; to provide more security for those who are unemployed--for those particularly who are unemployed chronically and who have families who depend upon them, who exhaust their unemployment compensation, who have exhausted in recent weeks the emergency unemployment compensation, and who now want to work and find themselves having to turn to inadequate public assistance.

And we also recognize the great need that lies before us to deal more satisfactorily with the question of health in our society; most particularly and immediately is the health of our older citizens, those who are chronically ill, those who come to the end of their working lives with inadequate resources stored away in spite of many years of devoted labor--inadequate resources to meet their medical bills.

I believe it is the national responsibility in the sixties, and the national opportunity, as it was the responsibility and opportunity of the Wisconsin State Legislature in 1911, for us to meet this problem of medical care for our older citizens, and better medical care for all our citizens.

So I want to congratulate the Post Office for this memorial to progress. I'm delighted that the Governor--a distinguished Governor and progressive Governor of the State of Wisconsin, to which we all owe much-that he has come here today and participated in this ceremony. And I'm sure that his presence here--this stamp--that when all of us look at this stamp and put it on any letter, or see it on any letter we receive, that we remember that all of us, in our time and generation, have as great an opportunity as the State Legislature of 1911, and we mean to take advantage of that opportunity and meet that responsibility in the areas I've described. I'm grateful to all of you for coming today.