Remarks at a Ceremony Marking the Progress of the Neighborhood Youth Corps.

Secretary Wirtz, Mr. Shriver, Members of the Congress, honorees, ladies and gentlemen:

The Presidency has its cares and has its burdens, but it also has its great joys. And I am keeping no secret when I tell you that this is one of them.

It is a great pleasure for me this morning to welcome to the White House you three young people whose personal stories, I believe, help to explain what the war on poverty is all about--in a small way, really, what this Nation is all about.

I am happy to introduce to you Miss Bernice Del Rosso of Newark, New Jersey, the first volunteer who enrolled in the Youth Corps; Miss Shirley Rolland of Rienzi, Mississippi, Youth Corps enrollee number 10,000; and Mr. Robert Martinez of Wilmington, California, who just this very week became Youth Corps member number 100,000.

Last January the Youth Corps got its start by Secretary Wirtz and his associates taking the leadership after months of patient preparation. Bernice became the first enrollee. Since then, 532 Youth Corps programs in 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have gone into operation.

The Federal Government is providing funds to States and to local governments, and to other nonprofit employers, so that they may enable young people to be contributors to society instead of society's burdens.

All Youth Corps programs have a common purpose--that is, to provide employment to young people while they finish their high school education, to provide full-time work and training to those who have dropped out of school and who lack the training and the skills to find jobs.

It is true that we live in a time of general economic expansion and national prosperity, for which we are very grateful. Total employment in May stood at 72,400, 000--a gain of more than 900,000 since December. Factory employment today is at its highest peacetime level. Average weekly earnings are at an all-time high. But these averages do not cloud the fact that not all Americans share our prosperity.

Young people are the only group in our economy whose employment situation has not improved significantly in 1965. Gains in youth employment have not been enough to offset the enormous number of postwar babies that are now approaching adulthood.

Teenage unemployment stands at 14 1/2 percent--more than three times the average for the population as a whole--and six times as many Negro youths as white youths are unemployed. Such conditions would be a tragedy in any nation. They are intolerable in America, because we are the wealthiest and the most powerful in all the world.

So, what are we doing? Well, we are determined to use our wealth, and to use our power, and to use our ingenuity to change these conditions.

I just received from our very able and popular Vice President a report on the youth opportunity campaign, which we recently launched. It is a new offensive on poverty and on unemployment. The Vice President reports that so far more than 300,000 summer jobs for young people have already been provided by Federal, and by State, and by local governments, and by private industry. This is a magnificent response and the reports of the progress are still coming in, which indicate that we will soon reach our goal and go over the top with a 500,000 figure that we originally set.

These young people whom we greet today are living symbols of the success of the Youth Corps, and I am very happy to take these few moments this afternoon to meet with them, to reaffirm our deep conviction that the work of this Nation is not constructing bombs but building opportunities for greater liberty and security and happiness for all of our citizens.

I have talked to a number of the Governors in the States of this Union, and I have asked them to take the leadership that we are trying to take in the Nation--to call together not only their State officials who have employer contacts and who do a lot of employing themselves, but to call together the leaders of industry in their areas to see what can be done now to correct this 14 1/2 percent teenage unemployment.

Thank you for coming here. We look forward, in the days ahead, to getting the results which we have talked about.