Remarks by Telephone to the First White House Regional Conference Meeting in Chicago.

WELL, MAYOR, I want to thank you and Governor Kerner and the citizens of Chicago and Illinois who are participating in this White House Regional Conference.

On other occasions, as you know, the White House has had conferences here in Washington, but we believe that it is vitally important that the Government remain close to the people, and therefore we have arranged to have representatives of the various agencies and departments of Government travel through some of the major cities of the United States, to talk to informed and interested citizens on the problems that our people are facing and on those governmental actions which might assist our country to move forward.

We have a steadily rising population. We have the problem of maintaining high employment. We want education for our children. We want our families to live in decent housing. We want to keep our employment steadily growing, and to take advantage of the millions of young men and women who are coming into the labor market everywhere. And we want to provide security for our older citizens.

If we can provide a strong economy here at home, with steadily improving life for all of our people, then we can maintain our position abroad with more effectiveness, and we can demonstrate what a free system can do in this competing world.

So I want to express our thanks to you, Mayor, for serving as host. This is a nonpartisan effort to attempt to bring the people and the Government, which is attempting to serve the people, closer together, and I appreciate very much the efforts by everyone to make this meeting a success.

Thank you, Mayor, and good luck to you, and Chicago, and Illinois.