Remarks to a Group of State Employment Service Directors.

Secretary Wirtz, State Employment Directors, ladies and gentlemen:

I know you will understand if I am a little late. My morning was spent in a good cause. The time of yours that I spent was in pursuing a subject that all of us want to obtain more than anything else in the world--and that is peace.

I had a very pleasant visit with the Secretary General of the United Nations at some length. We ran over some.

I met with our own Security Council. That explains why I have asked your indulgence.

Part of the promise of America is that all of us should have a chance to earn a living. We are happy to say that today more Americans are working than have ever worked before--some 75 million of us.

Our economy has been moving forward, surging ahead. In the last 4 years, we have created more than 7 1/2 million jobs. This year, God willing, if the economy continues as we hope, we will add another million and a half jobs.

I said the other day--and I repeat now--a very realistic person informed me the other evening that outside of peace in the world, there were two extremely important things for every man in public life to keep in mind. Since you are in public life--handling the Employment Service--I think I should remind you of this story.

One is the ballot. The remedy that we seek for almost anything that needs a remedy is the ballot. Everybody is equal on election day. You can pull that lever and you cast that vote.

The next thing he said is always vitally important--and that's the buck--the buck and the ballot, those two things. People are so much more rational when they have some money in their pocket. They are much more temperate and tolerant. There is just a better atmosphere--even here in the East Room-when all of us have jobs. And that is not an application for renewal.

But there are tens of thousands of people who are not here with us--scattered throughout the country--who do not have jobs. They have no real opportunity to work at all. There are reasons for this. They are unskilled and untrained and unschooled. There are many other reasons. Some of them are handicapped. Some of them are shut off because of discrimination. Some of them have incurred bad habits and have bad records or diseases that keep them from becoming employable. All these people need our help.

I have found through my years in dealing with folks like this that there is no one who can really do more to help them than the State Employment Services.

Now, the plight of these folks is not their plight alone because you can see that it affects everyone in the Nation. When a person down the street shows up with smallpox, we all head for the basement and they put the quarantine on. When we have poverty in our cities, and the riots. that have taken place in Detroit and Newark--the civil rights problems that we have--then I think America is going to have to answer that question.

I think America must.

How and where are we answering it?

Well, one way we are answering it is that I have recommended to the Congress a manpower program this year that contains a budget that is the largest in the Nation's history. It is $2.1 billion.

We have initiated an historic effort to find jobs in private industry. We have a goal of 500,000 hard-core unemployed.

Mr. Henry Ford and a blue ribbon group of businessmen--employers, management people--have set up their own organization. They are going to come in this weekend and report to me what they are trying to do in the cities of the land, trying to reach the hard-core unemployed. That is a great step forward--and I hope it will be productive.

We have strengthened and streamlined the Manpower Administration.

Now we are beginning to launch the work incentive program. Its objective is very simple:

--Replace the dole with the payroll.

--Rescue thousands of Americans from the waste of welfare.

--Start them along the pathway to productive lives.

This program will begin in 6 weeks. Between April 1 and June 30, we plan to help 32,000 people now on relief rolls. In fiscal year 1969, we are going to help another I 116,000.

The welfare check buys only food and clothing and a roof. But the paycheck does a good deal more. It brings hope and respect and dignity to its recipient. A paycheck is a man's passport to opportunity, for himself and his children.

As administrators of the State employment services, you are America's agents in this work. With the group of Employment Services I dealt with back in the dark days of the depression in 1935--we had an objective to work ourselves out of a job by getting everybody a job. We would go in there and see who you had registered and what their qualifications were, and try to get them jobs. We did and we went out of existence a short time later because we put boys in school and on highways and in parks and in CCC camps. We kept this country from undergoing a frightening, perilous situation.

So today I think you have that same chance and responsibility again. We don't have the unemployed walking the streets that we had then. But we have a more dangerous thing--these hard-core unemployed who are unskilled, and untrained, and unprepared. We must do something about it.

You have that chance and that responsibility, I think, to help us fulfill this part of what we believe is America's dream. It is a dream that we all share. It is a dream of a much better world than we are living in now. It is a dream of a Nation and a world at peace. It is a dream of peace in the world and peace for themselves. It is a dream of an America with a sound currency and a sound economy. It is a dream of a happy Nation. It is a dream of a busy, bustling, thriving, "go-go" Nation. It is a dream of a Nation that is productive; it is turning things off the assembly line with every click of the stile.

We need you; we count on you.

We hope that you can put yourselves in the position for the moment of one of these hard-core fathers or mothers or sons or daughters.

As President Roosevelt used to say, "ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-prepared, ill-trained, and ill-skilled"; say to yourself, "There except for the grace of God would be I."

Keep that person constantly in front of you. Then you help us find him and take him by the arm and put him over here where he is no longer a taxeater, but a tax-producer and a taxpayer.

If you do that, we can preserve this land; we can move it forward to new heights.

If you can't do it, I don't know who can. That is the reason I took the time and I asked each of you to come here to meet with me.

I said to your dynamic and inspiring leader, Secretary Wirtz, that while you were here I wanted to personally try to give you this mission.

Go back home, find out who they are, where they are, what they can do, what they cannot do--and then help us find the answer to it.

If we don't, we will just smolder in our own flames. If we don't, we will be failures. If we don't, we won't be worthy of the appellation that we often give ourselves--"The leader of the world."

But I don't want to think about what will happen if we won't--because we are going to.

Thank you very much.