Remarks to Delegates to the National Convention, AFL-CIO.

Mr. Meany, convention members, the 174 guests of the AFL-CIO from foreign countries who have come here to express their interest and their leadership in the working people of the world, ladies and gentlemen:

Bal Harbour does not look like a battlefield. But it is, because you are here.

I don't know where a lot of people will be standing in the battle for freedom and progress that lies ahead in the years in the future, but I do know where American labor has stood in the past. I do know where American labor stands tonight. And it stands right in the first rank, unflinching and unafraid.

I believe that you will still be there when the summer soldiers have fled the field of challenge.

There was a time not long ago, when the American labor movement fought on a very narrow front. The question then was one of sheer survival--keeping the trade union movement going in the face of bitter opposition.

Later you fought for a national minimum wage and maximum hours law--not just for the right to work but for the right to work in dignity, in decent conditions for a fair wage.

There are many men in this hall tonight, perhaps some 2,000 of you, who bear the honorable scars of that victory. Labor could have sat back then and said, "I am all right, lack. I've got mine."

But you didn't. A few men of compassion and wisdom looked beyond the assembly line and beyond the craftsman's bench to see how their fellow Americans were faring. They knew that security and prosperity in America to be meaningful and to be lasting must be shared by the greatest number of people.

They believed in the motto "The greatest good for the greatest number," and they still do.

Labor, they all knew, was part of America. Laboring men and women lived in American cities. Laboring men and women sent their children to American schools, and their parents to American hospitals. They breathed American air and drank American water, and vacationed in American parks and at America's seashores.

They knew whatever was right with America they enjoyed, and whatever was wrong with America they suffered.

So labor returned to the battlefield. You took up the fight for the kind of programs that would make this country better for your children than it had been for you.

And it had been pretty good for you.

You supported the kind of men, and you fought for the kind of candidates who proposed those programs--who vote for those programs in the Congress--who stand up to be counted whether the polls are high or whether the polls are low.

And your President knows what your fight has meant for America in my time.

I want you to listen to the roll call of what we have done together.

Medicare--Already 4 million Americans have had their hospital bills paid, and more than 5 million have had Medicare pay their doctor bills.

Aid to Education--Already 9 million needy schoolchildren have been helped in the elementary and secondary schools, and nearly a million and a quarter college students, many of them the sons and the daughters of union families, now receive Federal help in education grants and loans that see them through college.

The hope of every American parent, when that first babe is born is to hope the day will come when they can see them get a college education. And that day has come.

Minimum Wage Protection--We have brought over 9 million American workers under the minimum wage with the new minimum wage bill, and by next February we will have raised that minimum by 35 cents in our time. That is 10 cents more per hour than when I cast one of my first votes in Congress to make the minimum wage the law of the land 30 years ago, and guarantee them at least 25 cents an hour.

Poverty--More than 5 1/2 million Americans have been lifted above the poverty line.

Employment--We have added 6 million workers to our labor force, and we have set a constant record of 81 long monks of solid prosperity to break all the records in American history.

Civil Rights--We have cleared away the last big obstacles to the right of every American in this country to vote, to be judged for a job on his skill and not his skin, to enjoy public accommodations and facilities as a free man should in a free country.

Immigration--We have scrapped the old discrimination of the national origins system and we have replaced it with an American system of open American opportunity.

Conservation--We have added three-quarters of a million acres to our national seashores and parklands, more than ever before in our history and for the first time we are putting more back into the public domain than we are taking out.

The Cities--We finally have the program that we need to build model cities. Blight, decay, and despair can be banished from our life--but we are going to need the muscle-the great big strong muscle of the American labor movement to turn our bold ideas into shining realities, and we are going to need all of you.

Pollution--For the first time we recommended and for the first time we passed the bills through the Congress, to give us the weapons to make an all-out attack on the filth that fouls our water and our air so our children can breathe clean air and drink clear, pure water.

Now for the consumer protection:

--We have ended the packaging tricks that once plagued the American housewife for so long.

--We have spared our children from dangerous and deadly toys.

--We have shut the door to unsafe products that make the home a booby-trap for the unwary.

--We have an Auto and Highway Safety Act to reduce the accidents that make our roads a death trap for the innocent, and particularly for the careless.

--We have moved against accidents in the doctor's office and the hospital by insisting that laboratories run the right tests, and they get them at the right time.

--We have acted against the moneylender who victimizes the poor and exploits the needy by concealing and hiding his interest charges.

This week, when I get back to Washington, I will sign the Flammable Fabrics Act that you helped me pass. It means that your family and your home will be safe from clothing and furnishings that blaze without warning.

--Next week we are going to sign in the White House the Wholesome Meat Act. It means that the meat on the family table will be pure, not rancid--that a mother can shop without fear of finding worms in a steak or a roast, or wood splinters in the baby's hamburger.

--In the weeks to come I hope also to sign the pipeline safety bill. It will guard us against a gas explosion ripping through a home, a school, or a crowded street.

Isn't this a remarkable and wonderfully hopeful record in itself? Yet these are only some of the many happy new triumphs we have won together for our American families.

The full record will show more consumer legislation enacted in the last 2 years than in all the 88 Congresses put together.

When the history of our time is written, it will testify that this administration, with your help, after 180 years, finally proclaimed into the law of the land a consumers bill of rights. And it is about time we did that, too.

And there is more--much more--that we have done together.

It wasn't easy. Every step of the way there were voices and there were votes that said:

--"No, no, not so fast."

--"Don't try it, this hasn't been tried before."

--"It's only a rehash of the New Deal."

--Or "the New Frontier."

--"It costs too much money."

--"Don't you know there is a war on? We can't have both butter and guns, or guns and butter. You will have to stop progress here at home."

--Or one side would cry, "It is all for labor or for the minorities," and the other side

cried, "It is all for the middle class."

I have heard them all and we have answered them all.

Our answer is: "Yes, it is for labor. Yes, it is for the minorities. Yes, it is for the middle class. Yes, it is for the young, the old, the worker, the businessman, the farmer, the teacher, the student, the doctor, and the patient."

"Yes," we said, "for once you are going to be right. Our fight is not for a part of America. Our fight is for all of America."

But in the Congress some closed their ears and their ranks. In vote after vote the House Members of the other party lined up like wooden soldiers of the status quo.

--93 percent of the House Republicans voted to kill the Medicare bill.

--90 percent of them voted to kill the poverty bill.

--68 percent of them voted to kill our education bill.

--66 percent of them voted to kill our civil rights bill.

--80 percent of them voted to kill all the funds for model cities.

--93 percent of them voted to kill all funds for our housing and rent supplements.

--And, my friends, 72 percent of them voted to kill your minimum wage bill.

The only time they really said, "yes," an enthusiastic "yes," was when they could vote to recommit a good bill--to bury in a blanket of rhetoric beneath the wave of Republican reaction.

But they are not fooling anybody, are they?

The people know that the old Republican buggy can go only one way and that is backwards, downhill.

The only program that that Grand Old Party offers is the remains of what they backed into and what they have run over on the road, the bits and pieces of what somebody else has built.

No wonder we have worked so hard to pass the Highway Safety Act. That old Republican buggy has been colliding with us all year long.

And it is carrying more passengers this year. It is carrying more dead weight.

The 47 Democrats who helped us write the historic legislative record of the 89th Congress are gone. They have been replaced by 47 Republican nay-sayers. And America's advance has temporarily been slowed.

Not always; not by any means always. We have fought and we have won some funds for model cities, some funds for the Teacher Corps, and some funds for rent supplement.

We have continued our efforts for older Americans, mental health, and consumers. We have passed a good bill for the Vietnam veterans who are returning. We have passed a bill to control rats in our cities.

With your help we passed that rat bill because a Nation's conscience cried out louder than Republican laughter.

Don't let anyone fool you that we are standing still. This hasn't been the greatest Congress we ever had but this has been a productive Congress. And labor's leadership has helped make it productive.

But we need not just productive Congresses. We need great Congresses again, not just good ones. They must match and even surpass the 89th. And we are going to have to work.

We are going to have to roll up our sleeves and put our shoulder to the wheel-every man get to work and work through next November.

We still have to meet the great tests of our time--improving our educational and our medical systems, rebuilding our cities, providing jobs for all who can work, ending lawlessness in our streets and controlling our crime, and uniting our people in common and progressive purpose.

This is our national agenda and it can only succeed if there are men in Congress and men in the administration who will make it their personal agenda. We must work harder than ever to elect good men--to elect these men who will support these programs. It can be done. It will be done, because a nation depends on us not to fail, and not to fall back---but to go on fighting and go on winning for all America.

As America depends on your social leadership, I say to labor, it also relies on your sense of economic responsibility.

In our system, the price changes are inevitable and they are desirable. But if we are to have the full blessings of free enterprise, business and labor must place the fundamental national interest first. Each must do its share and contribute its part to maintaining a stable level of overall prices.

I emphasized this to your partners in prosperity--the American businessmen--in Washington just last week. I told them that you--when I came to speak to you--would expect to receive equal time.

If industry, I said, if business, tried to raise prices and profit margins--even when they have excess capacity on their hands--we are bound to suffer rising prices, and this is simply murder--murder to all labor and to all people with low or moderate incomes.

If labor, I say, tried for a wage rise twice the nationwide increase in output per man-hour--even when there is no real labor shortage-we are bound to suffer rising prices.

Business suffers. Labor suffers. All America suffers from a wage-price spiral. And we want to avoid it if we can.

I told the businessmen that they should not point the finger of blame at you. I say that you should not point the finger of blame at them.

I say to both labor and to business that you are two fingers on one hand. It is your joint responsibility to try to stop the spiral.

To both of you, I say: It is your America. This is your land. This is your country. It is your prosperity. These are your jobs and your profits that we want to see protected. These are your dollars whose strength we want to maintain. I have urged business to refrain from avoidable price increases and to intensify its competitive efforts in the world.

I tonight urge labor to look at its responsibilities-to look hard and deep into its wise heart and restrain its demands for excessive wage increases.

Look around you as you calculate. Here is your country, fighting gallantly again for freedom--but doing it for the first time in American history without any wage or without any price controls.

It is that voluntary restraint that has made involuntary curbs unnecessary. Your Government wants to keep it that way. We want to be partners in responsibility and prosperity with labor and with business.

And we will, if each of us does his share for the good of all. And I think you want to do that. I think all America wants to do that.

I cannot close without sharing a few thoughts with you on a matter that I think troubles all of our hearts--that is the tragic but the vital struggle in Vietnam that is going on there tonight.

You have long stood in the front ranks of this fight for freedom. But here in Florida this winter you have added bright new testimony to your resolve--and you have given new heart to all who stand with you in search for peace.

I am very proud and I am very grateful, Mr. Meany, for the resolution that you all have passed here in support of freedom's cause. It is a ringing declaration of your firm resistance to aggression. That staunch spirit is constantly personified by that great, courageous leader--"Mr. Labor"--George Meany. I thank him and I thank all of you-from the bottom of my heart.

I thank you, too, for another man.

He does not live in the White House. He does not guide the destiny of the Nation, and he doesn't have the responsibilities throughout the world on his shoulders alone. But he is face down tonight in the mud of the DMZ. Or he is out there storming a hill near Danang. Or he is crouched in a rice paddy in the Mekong Delta.

The American soldier, too, thanks you from the bottom of his heart. He knows, even if some others don't, that your expressions of support are not just so many flag-waving words.

Whoever thinks that has never heard the question that comes to me so often from the foxholes in my letters every day. He has never felt the ache of a soldier who writes his Commander in Chief and asks him, and this comes in letter after letter: "We are doing okay--but are the folks back home really behind us?"

American labor has answered that question with a resounding "Yes," and a firm "Yes." You have said it before and you have repeated it here--so strongly, that even Hanoi cannot mistake its meaning or misinterpret what it says.

I know that many of labor's sons have left their parents and have left their homes to risk their lives for liberty and freedom in Vietnam. I know that is torture for you, as it is for me. I know that you regret every single dollar that we spend on war--dollars that we want to spend on the works of peace here at home.

But you and I know that we must persevere. The torture we feel cannot beg the truth. It is only our unswerving will. It is only our unshakeable determination that can ever bring us peace in the world.

Oh, it is very easy to agonize over the television or to moralize or to pin your heart on your sleeve or a placard on your back-and think to yourself that you are helping somebody stop a war.

But I only wish that those who bewail war would bring me just one workable solution to end the war.

The peacemakers are out there in the field. The soldier and the statesman need and welcome the sincere and the responsible assistance of concerned Americans. But they need reason much more than they need emotion. They must have a practical solution and not a concoction of wishful thinking and false hopes--however well intentioned and well meaning they may be.

--It must be a solution that does not call for surrender or for cutting and running now. Those fantasies hold the nightmare of world war III and a much larger war tomorrow.

--It must be a solution that does not call for stepping up our military efforts to a flash point where we risk a much larger war today.

The easiest thing in the world for the President to do is to get in a larger war. It is very difficult to continue day after day to pressure the enemy without involving yourself in additional problems.

I, for one, would be glad and grateful for any help that any citizen can give me. Thousands of our soldiers' sons would also thank anyone who has a plan or a program or a solution. I cannot help but feel that we would be joined in our gratitude and our gladness by all of our allies and by millions of thoughtful Americans. They are really the concerned Americans who recognize the responsibilities that accompany their rights and the duties that accompany their freedom and their liberty; and who see it as a duty of citizenship to try to be constructive in word and constructive in deed.

For as long as I have borne the responsibility of conducting our foreign policy, I have known what I want you to know: I want all America to know that it is easier to protest a policy than to conceive one.

And so your President has followed a rather simple practice:

--If someone has a plan, I listen to it.

--If it seems worth pursuing, I ask the best Americans I can find to give me their judgment on it. I have asked your president many times for his judgment on these matters.

--If we like it and it seems wise to the President, then I try to put it into operation.

I can promise all who shout their opposition, as well as any who have quieter doubts--and no political aspirations--that I will continue this practice. I will always be ready and anxious to hear and to act on any constructive proposal they offer.

But in the meantime, I want you to know, and I want all America to know, that I am not going to be deterred. I am not going to be influenced. I am not going to be inflamed by a bunch of political, selfish men who want to advance their own interests. I am going to continue down the center of the road, doing my duty as I see it for the best of all my country, regardless of my polls or regardless of the election.

--I will devote my days and my nights to supporting and to supplying half a million of the bravest men who ever wore the American uniform and who ever left these shores to fight to protect us.

--I will honor and respect our sworn commitments to protect the security of Southeast Asia, because in protecting their security I protect your security, your home, and your family, too. We will not now betray the troubled leaders and the hopeful people of that region who have relied on Uncle Sam's word to shield them from aggression--not after other Presidents who preceded me gave their solemn word. I am going to see that that word is carried out.

--We will hold the line against aggression as it has been drawn so often by the Congress and by the President. We will not now nullify the word of the Congress or the people, as expressed in the SEATO Treaty, that we would come and take our stand in the face of common danger--that treaty was ratified by a vote in the Senate of 82 to 1--or the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, where there were only two votes against it, when they said they would support the President in whatever means it was necessary to take to deter aggression. I call on all of them to support him now.

--At all times and in all ways and with all patience and all hope--your President and your country will strive for peace.

Let no man, friend or foe, American or Asian, mistake our meaning.

I remind all of you again tonight, and my fellow Americans who may be viewing this proceeding, of our exchange of correspondence with Ho Chi Minh. The North Vietnamese themselves released my letter on March 21st. In it, the President of the United States, on behalf of the United States, made what we thought was a fair and a firm offer.

I said: "There is one good way to overcome this problem and move forward in the search for a peaceful settlement. That is for us to arrange for direct talks between trusted representatives in a secure setting and away from the glare of publicity ....

"As to the site of the bilateral discussions I propose, there are several possibilities. We could, for example, have our representatives meet in Moscow, where contacts have already occurred. They could meet in some other country such as Burma. You may have other sites in mind, and I would try to meet your suggestions .... "

Can we be any more specific? Hanoi has spurned that olive branch. They answered with a rude "No," and they have repeated it time after disappointing time. Until they relent, until they see room for compromise and area for agreement, we must stand firm and we must stand unafraid. And we will.

Peace will come---I am convinced of that. But until peace does come, I will continue, with the support of our loyal, determined people, to hold the line that we have drawn against aggression--and to hold it firm and to hold it steady.

In all that I do, I will be strengthened by the powerful testimony for freedom that you sons of labor have given here in this hall. You courageous men of labor have supported our fighting men every time they needed you. You have spoken as free men under fire must speak. Now, may all the world hear you. And may God bless you for what you have said and what you have done. May God keep those men until we can bring them back home in honor and in victory.

Thank you very much.