Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Filmed Conversation of the President and George Meany, AFL-CIO President and Chairman of COPE.

February 02, 1968

MR. MEANY. Mr. President, this film we are making this morning will be shown to officers and members of our unions throughout the country, mostly the leaders of the American trade union movement at the local level.

I want to express our appreciation and the appreciation of the membership of the AFLCIO for giving us this opportunity to talk to you about the many issues that we face, as well, perhaps, to talk a little bit about the issues we faced in the past, things that you are interested in and, of course, things that our members are very much interested in; for instance, the question of education, which I am sure you are greatly interested in.

THE PRESIDENT. Mr. Meany, I welcome this opportunity to talk with you and to the officers and members of your unions and specifically on this subject of education.

I was in Congress for 24 years. During that time we talked about education a great deal, and how important it was that we do something about it. But we did very little. We never had any overall comprehensive Federal aid to education during that period.

In 1964 and 1965, with the help of the AFL-CIO and the teachers of the country, and the mothers, we promulgated a program and finally passed through Congress a massive educational measure and supplemented it with more than 20 other bills.

The key bill is elementary and secondary education. So as a result, today, the Federal Government is doing more than three times as much in the field of education as it did 4 years ago when this administration began.

MR. MEANY. I think that's true. I think actually what happened in '64 and '65 was that for the first time in the history of this country the Federal Government assumed that there was a Federal responsibility for the education of the children of America at every level and what we, of course, have always held as a cherished goal of America's workers, that we would see the day when every boy and girl in this country would get all the education that he or she--that they could assimilate, that they had the aptitude for, and that they would get this irrespective of the economic circumstances from which they sprang.

THE PRESIDENT. That is the objective and the goal of this administration--to give every boy and girl in this country all the education that he or she can take. Through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, through the Higher Education Act, we are taking care of the people between the first grade and the college graduates, even the graduate school graduates.

But we have responsibilities even beyond that which we are undertaking. In the Head Start program we are getting the youngster before he gets in the first grade. And in the adult education program, we are going back and taking people who are in their sixties, and some even in their seventies and giving them adult education programs and teachings.

The sad thing about the world in which we live is that four out of every ten people, Mr. Meany, cannot read and write. This illiteracy and this ignorance is a terrible handicap to peace in the world, because when people are uninformed and when people are ignorant, they cannot reason and make judgments that they do if they have had the benefits of education.

So not only here in our own country, but throughout the world, one of the number one problems of our time is education and how we can get it to the masses.

We have a massive program in this country. We are going to continue it. We are going to expand it.

MR. MEANY. Well, of course, that's true, of course, that we feel that education and lack of education--illiteracy--makes a contribution toward the development of a situation where peace is not possible.

So we have been in this fight for a long time. For instance, the fight on poverty, the fight for minimum wages--this is not new, this is not new to us, and not new to you. Now, the first of February this year the minimum wage in this country went to $1.60 an hour. The first of February last year there were about 8 million people added to that.

Now, what does this mean? This means in the final analysis that as far as those families are concerned, something concrete has been done in the war on poverty. The minimum wage law is part of the war on poverty. I am sure you can recall, because you were a Member of Congress back in 1938, I think it was, somewhere back there, when we passed the first minimum wage law, 25 cents an hour.

You remember that. I am sure you remember that because you voted for it. There were people who said then that this was going to bankrupt the country, this was going to be a terrible thing.

Now, in the final analysis, what it does, it brings more and more people into the mainstream of the American economy in the sense that they become purchasers and consumers in the marketplace.

THE PRESIDENT. I have been through several minimum wage fights--the 25 cents an hour one, the $1 an hour one when I was leader in the Eisenhower administration, when I was Majority Leader of the Senate, and finally the $1.60 that we have worked on the last few years.

I am glad it is going in effect. I think it is absolutely essential that we have some guarantees of some minimum for the people in this country. I remember when we passed the first act we had women, mothers of children, working for 6 and 7 cents an hour in pecan shelling plants in my State. People predicted havoc if we passed a 25-cent minimum wage, just as they do when we take any progressive step in this field.

But it wasn't havoc. It was a substantial improvement for the entire Nation. I am very happy that the Congresses of recent years have recognized the necessity for upgrading and keeping these minimums in effect.

MR. MEANY. All of these things are tied together--education, minimum wage, because, as you said before, people today want a better world. We want a better world, and I'm sure the common people all over the world want a better world. All these things help.

THE PRESIDENT. The thing you have done, though, Mr. Meany, that I think is a great monument to the labor movement in this country, to your leadership, and I think to the Government as well, is the health program that we have been able to enact into law in the last few years, Medicaid and Medicare, and the some 20-odd supplementary health measures, because it doesn't make any difference how smart a person is, it doesn't make any difference how skilled a person is, if he is in poor health he is not very productive.

So we must take precautionary measures in the health field. We are doing that. In the last few years, as a result of the leadership that labor and its individual members have given to the country and to the Congress, we have been able to pass the Medicare bill and the Medicaid bill, and supplementary health measures that result now in millions of people having a means to pay their doctors' bills, and millions of people who never had means to pay their hospital bill before. They now do not have to rely on their children to take care of them.

MR. MEANY. That's true.

THE PRESIDENT. And we're not going to be satisfied to stop there. We see that because we do not arrest the disease early enough, it brings on great complications and costs us much more.

MR. MEANY. You talk about health, and of course this leads you into another subject in which you are interested, and that is rebuilding the cities of America, because we have conditions in a number of our cities that are certainly, to say the least, unhealthy, and causing us a great many problems, and we, too, would like to see something done.

I hope that Congress is more cooperative in this coming session in going along with your program for helping the cities of America rebuild, because all of these things are tied together--the minimum wage, health, Medicare, urban renewal and all this sort of thing--and, of course, this brings us to a great big subject I am sure you must be interested in, and that is an overall housing program. Are we going to have an overall housing program this year? I hope we are.

THE PRESIDENT. We are. The greatest challenge that this Congress faces, really, in the domestic field, is the problem of the cities. I have a commission that has carefully gone into that and studied it. It is headed up by some of the ablest men in this country.

We know that the problems of the cities are many. First, we have some 500,000 hard-core unemployed people in those cities who are frustrated, that have no jobs, that have nothing to do. Our first problem is to try to find employment and training for that minimum, hard-core group that causes us problems in the cities.

The second thing is to get an overall housing program, certainly a program particularly for the poor, because we have had relatively a few thousand units built each year and there are more of them deteriorating and going out of date than new ones are replacing them. So we are having a minimum 10-year housing program where we hope that we can add not just a few thousand, but millions of homes for low-income people in this country.

We anticipate that this year we will have a minimum of 300,000 new homes, instead of the 35,000 or 45,000 that we have had for poor and low-income groups.

We must, Mr. Meany, find some way in this country to find a decent, a sanitary, a structurally sound house at as low a cost as possible for our poor and low-income groups. Now, if we can go to the moon, and if we can perform all these other feats of science, we have got to find the answer to low-income housing, and we haven't done that in our cities.

This administration had a committee working under the direction of Mr. Edgar Kaiser. We are hoping that we can present to the Congress a program that the Congress will adopt that will launch us on a 10-year housing effort that will result in millions of new homes for the people who need them most.

MR. MEANY. Well, I am sure that you find that the AFL-CIO will be back of you in this effort. Mr. President, education, housing, poverty, minimum wages, all of these things are related. But they bring to mind another question, and that is this question of crime, crime in the streets that people are talking about today. This, too, is one of your problems.

THE PRESIDENT. Mr. Meany, that is one of the major problems facing this country. Now, what are we going to do about it?

First, if we are going to do something about crime, we are going to have to do something about what causes crime. Unemployment, ignorance, disease, filth, poor housing, congestion, discrimination--all of these things contribute to the great crime wave that is sweeping over this country. We are going to--through our poverty program, through our education program, through our conservation-recreation program--try to get at some of the causes of crime.

But in addition to that, the Federal Government cannot ever develop into a police state and have its base here in Washington. Our Founding Fathers protected against that when they wrote the Constitution. So this is a problem that begins first in the home with the parents.

Someone said to me when I was home during the holidays that it would be a good thing if all parents could say "Where are our children?" at 11 or 12 o'clock in the evening. What are they doing? Do the parents know?

So the problem begins at the home. And then if the laws are violated, the law enforcement is local law enforcement. The Federal Government cannot pick the chief of police in a given city. The Federal Government can't select the sheriff. The Federal Government doesn't select the local judges. And law enforcement is a local matter, with the local people, in a local community, and in the State.

Now, we are doing everything we can to give the maximum amount of assistance to the cities and to the States. But, as I say, it is a problem of the home, it is a problem of the local community, it is a problem of the State, and the Federal Government has many suggestions. It has recommended a gun control bill. It has recommended a safe streets bill. It has recommended to provide research assistance and counseling with the cities and with the States.

But no one wants a Federal police force and the Federal Government cannot, by itself, control crime. It can only supplement what the local authorities do, and that we are going to do.

MR. MEANY. Well, as I see it, it is a problem that has got to be approached in two ways: Number one, you have got to have law enforcement, because while we realize that it is the ghettos and the disease and the poverty that provide the atmosphere for this type of local crime, it is the people in the ghettos in most cases who are the victims.

THE PRESIDENT. They are the ones that suffer most.

MR. MEANY. They are the ones that suffer most from these riots, from these crimes, and there are people with criminal minds who take advantage of these conditions. So I think what we have got to do, we have got to eliminate the conditions to whatever extent we can, and as rapidly as we can, but at the same time we have got to have respect for law, because if we don't have respect for law, we won't even be able to eliminate these conditions.

THE PRESIDENT. I heartily agree with you, and I think that one of the most important bills that the Congress will have to face up to this coming year will be the safe streets bill that I recommended last year, and I hope the Congress will enact this year; the gun control bill; and the other measures that will get at the cause of crime and also provide a remedy.

MR. MEANY. Yes, because just strict law enforcement might help, but it will not solve the problem. We have got to have law enforcement, and we have got to have a program to eliminate the conditions that breed crime in our cities. I think we have a two-pronged approach in this thing.

THE PRESIDENT. If we attack the discrimination problem, if we attack the poverty problem, if we find jobs, if we can provide decent housing, if we can help rebuild our cities, we can get at some of these causes. But the local law enforcement has got to be done at the local level. This begins in the home. This begins in local conditions.

We can help them. We can supplement them, but we must not supplant them.

MR. MEANY. I agree with you completely. I would like to bring up one other subject that I think is important. Don't you agree with us that we can do all these things and still keep our commitments to the other nations of the world, to the free people of the world? You see, we are always up against this argument that, well, we can't support the efforts of the people of South Vietnam to retain their freedom and independence which we are committed to do--we can't do that and at the same time do all these things on the home front.

We think America is big enough to do both.

THE PRESIDENT. America is big enough to do both. It can do both, Mr. Meany, and I believe that it will do both. This argument that is used--that because we are trying to protect freedom in some part of the world we can't protect our people at home--is a phony argument. It is an excuse.

Now, it is true that we do have to forgo some of the things. We can't do everything at once. We can't correct the neglect of centuries in a day. But we can try and we can make a start and we can get on our way, That we definitely are doing.

I am the father of two daughters. When I hear this argument that we can't protect freedom in Europe, in Asia, or in our own hemisphere and still meet our domestic problems, I think it is a phony argument. It is just like saying that I can't take care of Luci because I have Lynda Bird. We have to take care of both of them and we have to meet them head on.

Here is a nation with more people employed than ever in our history. Here is a nation with people working at better wages than ever in our history. Here is a time when our profits are higher than ever in our history. Here is a time when we have had 82 months of prosperity in this Nation. Here is a time when we have the greatest gross national product that we have ever had, and we are spending $25 billion in protecting freedom in Asia. To say out of the $800 billion we make, and the 25 billion we have to spend in Southeast Asia, that the other 775 shouldn't be used for the benefit of the people is just a very poor excuse.

We must educate our children. We can't neglect them. We must provide health for our people. We can't neglect it. We must provide conservation of our resources in this country. We cannot neglect that. We must find jobs for those who want jobs and who need jobs, and we are going to do it by encouraging private industry and the labor unions and the Government to work hand in hand in these matters, as we have been in the more recent years past.

There is no group that has been more helpful to bringing prosperity to this country and to launching a program for the benefit of all the people of this country than the AFL-CIO under your leadership.

I am happy to say that the businessmen generally have tried to listen and to be cooperative. I am hopeful in the days ahead that we can enact through the Congress a job program, a housing program, additional education measures, provide for additional steps that we ought to take in the health field, and at the same time protect freedom.

It is just a bunch of blarney that we can take care of one need we have and have to ignore all the others. It's just the same as saying you can take care of one child and you can't take care of the other.

MR. MEANY. I'm quite sure we have the same faith in America that you have; that America is big enough and strong enough to do this. Insofar as our commitments in Far East Asia are concerned, we in the trade union movement are very practical people. We know from experience what dictatorship means. We know it before anybody else knows it, because if anybody is going to dictate any place in this world he must control the means of production. They can wait awhile about controlling the artists or the scientists or the writers, but they can't wait insofar as the worker is concerned. They have got to control him immediately. This is what Hitler did. This is what Mussolini did and this is what Stalin did and Lenin, when they came to power 50 years ago in the Soviet Union. They took control of the workers.

So we are more keenly aware of what dictatorship means. This is why we feel that you just can't stand by and see two or three million people go down the drain and hope that that's the end of it, because we are convinced that if we step aside, if we withdraw from Vietnam, that you are not going to satisfy the appetite of these people who believe in dictatorship. They will move down southeast, and the next thing you know they will be in the Philippines, and you know what that would mean to us.

So we are convinced that you are on the right track. The American trade union movement, as represented by the AFL-CIO, made it crystal clear at its last convention that we support the policy in Vietnam of fighting for the freedom of those people and that we also believe that we can do that and continue the Johnson program to make this a better nation for all of the American people.

THE PRESIDENT. Mr. Meany, our people are peace-loving people. We seek no war. We want peace in the world. But we have learned some things from participation in World War I and World War II and the Korean war and other disturbances in recent years, and that is you cannot successfully appease an aggressor. If you run and if you hide and if you let aggression spread, the time comes when you must face up to it sooner or later.

Now, we have the will for peace. We have the machinery for peace. No one in the world wants peace more than I do. I live with war 24 hours a day. I read the casualty lists every morning. But I know that until the enemy, the Communist enemy, is willing to genuinely and sincerely sit down and talk about peace in good faith, that we shouldn't hold out all these illusions and all these hopes that can't be realized to our people.

So the best road to peace that I know of is to remain strong, and remain firm, and to stand on principle. We haven't had an appeaser President in my lifetime. Every President that has preceded me has stood on the principle that when we were called upon to resist aggression and to perform under the treaties that this country had entered into, that the word of the United States could be depended on. As long as I am President, we are going to keep our word.

We are not going to let any of our nations who are bound to us by treaties and alliances be gobbled up by any would-be conqueror, any would-be dictator, while we stand by under an umbrella. Now, if they want to talk peace and if they will agree to self-determination in South Vietnam, we are willing to meet them at the conference table tomorrow.

We said in San Antonio, we will stop our bombing now if you will come and have a prompt discussion and a productive discussion in good faith. You can make all the proposals you want to. We will make our proposals. We will exchange views.

But they have not accepted that proposal. Now, I don't know how much further I can go. I don't think it would be in the interest of this Nation for us to stop our bombing, only to have them to continue theirs. A bomb dropped from a bicycle can kill as many people as a bomb dropped from a plane. It is rather ridiculous for some of our people to say "You ought to stop bombing," and then when I say, "Well, will we have a prompt discussion?" they say, "We don't know."

We don't have that answer. Will they have a productive discussion? Well, we don't know. Will they talk about just North Vietnam? That's what's indicated. That problem is in South Vietnam.

So we must pursue and explore the meaning of these so-called offers so that we don't buy a pig in a poke and so we don't repeat the errors of Panmunjom and we don't let the Communists lead us down a road that we don't know where we are going.

MR. MEANY. I think in exploring, Mr. President, we should also take into consideration the fact that every bombing pause we have had has resulted in an immediate Communist buildup that has cost American lives. So those who want us to stop the bombing, and stop it without qualification, I would like to ask them how many American lives do we have to lose before we start bombing again in case the Communists don't come to the conference table.

This is the problem, and I know this is your problem.

THE PRESIDENT. It is, and we live with it every day. We have the professionals who have rendered great service in our foreign policy field for many years and they are taking every word that is said and exploring it in every place they can in an attempt to find a reasonable way to get to the peace table. But until the enemy is willing to go to the peace table, and is willing to say if you stop your bombing he will promptly come and talk, and that we can have productive discussions, and that he will not take advantage of our restraint to put extra pressure on during that period, then I think that we would be endangering the lives of our men, and some men don't have that responsibility. But as Commander in Chief I do have, and I must take that into consideration before I make these decisions. We are going to continue to search every day for peace, but a peace with honor.

MR. MEANY. I am sure that the American people are in agreement, Mr. President. They want peace, but they want peace with honor, and they don't want peace as a sacrifice of our good word and a sacrifice of our commitments that we have made.

On behalf of the American trade union movement, I can say to you we are with you in this effort. I want to thank you very much for giving us this time and letting us know what is on your mind, so our members can listen in and certainly get closer to you and your problems as a result.

Thank you very much.

Note: The conversation was filmed at the White House on January 15, 1968, for showing first at New Orleans, Saturday, February 3, and thereafter at other regional COPE (Committee on Political Education) and union meetings.

As printed above, this item follows the text released by the White House Press Office.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Filmed Conversation of the President and George Meany, AFL-CIO President and Chairman of COPE. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/237368

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