Remarks Recorded for the Opening of the United Community Campaigns.

My fellow Americans:

I welcome the opportunity to speak to you in behalf of the United Campaign across the country. No value is more deeply ingrained in our national life than that of community responsibility. In our earliest days of the nation, in the small communities of Jamestown and Plymouth, all the way to the western frontier, Americans helped each other build their lives, their communities, their homes. This has been a valuable part of our national experience. This country grew great by individual effort, but it was combined with a generous response to the needs of our neighbors. Now life in America has become more complicated. Our country has grown so large, people move so frequently from home to home, community to community, that we have lost some of this tradition. I believe that one of the most valuable ways that we can maintain it, one of the most valuable means by which we can help our fellow Americans, is through the United Community Campaigns.

This year there are over 2200 United Funds and Community Chests in 50 States. They are attempting to raise $478 million for nearly 30,000 State and local voluntary services, services that will help our fellow Americans in many, many ways: day nurseries, services for homeless children, special care for our aging citizens, care of the sick and the handicapped, help for young men and women in uniform, in many communities help for the Red Cross. I attach particular importance to those programs which will help young people meet their problems today so that they can build a better life for the future. The United Campaign brings together Americans of all races and all creeds in a great national effort. They work together, they plan together and by this means I think they renew a sense of community concern. The United Campaign can become not merely an expression of community will but it's also a means of building the strength and future of our Nation. William Bradford who helped found the Plymouth Colony, way back in the beginning of this country, nearly three and a half centuries ago in Massachusetts Bay, said, "As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled has shone unto many, yea, in some sort to the whole nation." I hope this year we can light many candles. This is the emblem for the Community Funds across the Nation this year--a young child who needs your help. I'm confident that in these great days of our country that all Americans will respond to this request. I congratulate Mr. Ford, the national chairman. I wish him and all those who are working so hard in this great cause the best possible success.