Proclamation 3759—Youth for Natural Beauty and Conservation Year

Last June, young men and women of the National Youth Conference on Natural Beauty and Conservation met in Washington and dedicated themselves:

—to work toward creating a healthful environment in our cities and towns.

—to speak out for the appreciation and protection of the beautiful.

—to clean, to plant, to plan and build for beauty. —to plead with others to join them in that effort.

They made this pledge because their generation will soon inherit an America that threatens to become physically ugly.

The great industrial progress we have made in this century—resulting in an unparalleled prosperity for most of our people—has not been achieved without waste and blight. That progress grows with each year—and refuse, pollution and decay grow with it.

It is no part of America's dream that we should erect a house of material well-being in the cheerless atmosphere of physical blight. Our people will be denied their heritage if they must live out their lives among polluted rivers, spoiled fields and forests, and streets where nothing pleases the eye.

Young people sense this strongly. They have not grown accustomed to ugliness. They have not resigned themselves to living among the litter and neglect of a careless civilization.

May they never do so.

But it is not enough to be offended by ugliness. Those who would not live without beauty must join in a tireless effort to bring it into being. They must help to reverse the sorry decline of cities and countryside. They must become a force for restoring order and dignity to the environment that surrounds them. I know that ugliness will yield to such a force, if it is supported by millions of our people, in public and private life.

And, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the year 1967 to be Youth for Natural Beauty and Conservation Year; and I ask our young people—individually and through clubs, school groups and other organizations—to observe, to plan, and to act to preserve and protect, salvage and restore, develop and enhance their surroundings.

I ask the youth organizations which sponsored the National Youth Conference—and all other organizations and individuals working with youth—to expand the natural beauty and conservation activities now under way, and to begin new activities. I expect them to report their accomplishments to me during the year and also their plans for the future.

I call upon the President's Council on Recreation and Natural Beauty, the Citizen's Advisory Committee on Recreation and Natural Beauty, and all Federal officials and agencies to cooperate, consistent with their authorities and available funds, in providing technical assistance and support to the young people. It is an investment in better environment, and in better citizenship.

I further call upon all citizens to be alert to the activities and hopes of our young people, to hear their requests, to encourage and assist them, and with them to grow more aware of the beauty of America and the ways in which we can preserve it.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this 28th day of December in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-first.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

By the President:

Secretary of State