Remarks in New York City at the Jewish Labor Committee Dinner Honoring George Meany.

Mr. Zimmerman, Mr. Meany, Secretary Wirtz, Senator Javits, Mr. Randolph, Mrs. Meir, my old friend--David Dubinsky, members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, ladies and gentlemen:

I am delighted to be here tonight to join with the Jewish Labor Committee in honoring a great American. The fact that I am here bears out an old New York advertising slogan: "You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy George Meany."

When Mr. Dubinsky had told me that he and George Meany were going to be here in the same room together tonight I naturally assumed it would be for a gin rummy game.

That game, you know, has been played for many years under very special rules. The really special thing is that George doesn't know Dave's rules and Dave doesn't know George's rules.

Someone once called this contest "the oldest established, permanent, floating gin game in the world."

It has, in fact, been going on for almost 30 years in every convention site in America, wherever men who speak for labor have gathered. But one very important thing should be pointed out here tonight: Between gin sessions, American history has been remade--always to the benefit of all the American people.

George Meany has been busy remaking American history since his young manhood.

Some of you may remember what life was like in New York in those days when George Meany was a young man. It was in 1910--2 years after I was born--when Mike Meany's 16-year-old son George became a plumber's apprentice in the Bronx. Downtown that year--in the garment district-6-year-old children were working in the sweatshops, and when the workers asked for a day off every week, the bosses said: "If you don't come in on Sunday, don't come in on Monday."

I am glad to say that things are different now--and they are different in part because George Meany has fought the good fight. He has fought it in good company--he has fought it with a band of dedicated men and women across this country who knew that America could not become great unless its workers could live and labor in dignity. They were men like Mr. Dubinsky, Mr. Stulberg, Mr. Hillman, Mr. Rose, Bill Green, Phil Murray, Phil Randolph, John L. Lewis, and a number of others whom I don't have time to mention tonight.

These men fought and worked--and in time, their dreams came true:

--the minimum wage

--the 40-hour week

--the right to organize, the right to bargain or strike

--the child labor laws

--safer working conditions

--Medicare

--social security.

But there is more to the story--there is very much more.

By the time George Meany became president of the AFL in 1953, some critics were saying that the labor movement had gone soft. They said that it had lost its fighting spirit--that it had sold out for a few more dollars, 2 weeks of vacation, and a house in the suburbs.

George Meany had a different idea. He saw new battles to fight. He believed that what is good for America is good for American labor--and that is why we have come here to honor him tonight.

Tonight we can look back--although George Meany never looks back--but we can look back and we can count our victories. Tonight I can report to you, not about how labor has fared under George Meany's leadership--I think all of you know that-but what I want to report is how America has fared in a time when labor has put its shoulder to the work of social justice.

I have played some little part in these efforts. Together,

--We have fought for and we passed through the Congress of the United States and through the law of the land one civil rights bill, and a second civil rights bill, and a third civil rights bill. George Meany and the American labor movement backed every single one of them to the hilt every time.

--We fought for and we passed Medicare. George Meany was there for the battle-and he was there for the victory.

--We fought for and we passed the greatest series of education bills in history-36 in all--and George Meany's leadership helped that cause to triumph.

--We fought for and we launched a War on Poverty. When that war began, George Meany was already a five-star general.

Now, the struggle for progress and reform in America has never been easy. George Meany will testify to that. And I can tell you tonight that it is not easy going now.

On the one hand is the old coalition of standpatters and nay-sayers.

They never wanted to do anything. But this year they say they can't do it because of Vietnam. That is just pure bunk.

This crowd was against progress before Vietnam. They are against progress tonight and they will be against progress tomorrow. And they will be against it when the war is over and when it is nothing but a dim memory.

And far off at the other end of the political spectrum, there are those who say: "What America has built is rotten. Let's tear it apart."

I say they are wrong now. They will be wrong tomorrow.

I came to New York to tell you and to tell the country tonight that we can meet our commitments, and we can keep our word at home and abroad--and we will.

The world has lived through two remarkable decades since World War II. In those years, 200 million Americans and hundreds of millions of other men in other countries have found a measure of dignity, security, and freedom. Why? In great part, because this Nation has been willing to make-and to meet--commitments far from our shores.

Tonight as we meet here in peace and safety our commitment to a small and distant country in Southeast Asia is being tested. And along with it, America itself is being tested on the anvil of war.

If we fail, we may forfeit our hope for world stability. We may risk a far more terrible war in the future because we didn't see this one through.

The same kinds of issues are at stake tonight in the Middle East.

The last thing I did before I left my office and kept my people waiting for 15 minutes was to review a series of messages that have great importance to the world in which we live.

There in the Middle East, we see the agony of men struggling toward peace amid the great danger of war hovering all around them. We see people who have been threatened by war--hot and cold--for more than 20 years. Peace--even meaningful negotiations-may seem remote where there is so much tension and where there is such ancient hostility.

But we know we must try for peace until it is established. We know that we must help make it possible for men and women to live together in dignity and in mutual respect. We know that failure in the Middle East can condemn the children of that region to endless--and to senseless--warfare.

What we want in that troubled region-America wants all over the world.

I believe that Americans can defend these precious principles abroad without relaxing and giving up on the job we need to do at home.

This year at home we won only partial funding of a model cities bill. But before long, with your support, we are not only going to have a model cities bill: We are going to have model cities--cities that are a credit to this Nation, cities where the races can live together in friendship, where a life of poverty is not the inevitable fate of children who are born in it, where men and women can walk their streets without fear-day or night.

Americans want--and Americans should have--cities and a countryside where people drink clean water and where people breathe clean air; where children study in schools that are worthy of a prosperous and a hopeful land where our gross national income will be $850 billion next year.

All of this will come--it will come in time--but it will never come easily. It will not come at all if we ever yield to the forces of division and the forces of paralyzing dissension. And let me tell you, my friends-tonight, those forces are abroad in this land at this hour. They are the enemies of constructive action. Men who want to move this Nation forward must join us in resisting them.

Our problems are great. But America's resources are much greater--and they include the great human and moral resources of the great American labor movement. We can, if we will, find the means to answer the most pressing human problems in America and the world tonight.

Let me give you just one example:

Last year, under the leadership of that great American, Willard Wirtz, the Labor Department contracted for the first of a series of programs to recruit and to prepare young men to qualify for apprenticeship training. That pilot project--begun right here in New York by the Taconic Foundation in partnership with the Workers Defense League-showed great success. It enabled very poor boys to qualify for apprentice slots in unions, and it worked--and it worked because New York union officials helped to make it work.

Earlier this year, on the basis of the New York story, 10 new apprenticeship training programs were launched in 10 other cities scattered all over America.

Tonight, I came here to tell you that we are moving forward still more. Within the next few days six more cities are going to have these programs--in Dayton, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Denver, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.

Broadening the horizons of opportunity has always been a matter of great concern for the man whom you honor so wisely tonight, George Meany. He understands that America's most urgent problems are also the union's most urgent problems. Civil rights, the rights of the poor, the rights of the consumers, the rights of citizens to a pure and safe environment--all of these constitute the human rights of human beings and of our fellow Americans. We came here to honor this great champion of human rights this evening.

In the morning a little after 7 o'clock I will take off for a trip that will carry me to the aircraft carrier Enterprise out on the shores of California. I will visit the Marines, the Navy, the Army, the Coast Guard, and the Air Force before I come back on Sunday.

We will see the veterans who protect our freedom, tomorrow. But we came here tonight to see the veterans in civilian clothes who protected it for this century.

I am so happy to say that George Meany has realized all along with most trade unionists that as we stand at the outer frontier of disorder in Southeast Asia, we stand also at the inner frontier of disorder in our cities.

This is not merely a question of fighting in Vietnam or not merely a question of policing our cities.

A leader is always impelled by a vision that is driven by an inner conviction that a new world can be built.

Thus, George Meany and the other pioneers of the great American labor movement have never taken the time to relax in a record of past accomplishment.

They are not concerned very much with what has happened in the past two centuries. They are concerned with that century that is coming up that begins in 1976 and what happens in the next 100 years.

They are constantly driving the road forward into the uncharted wilderness: --They are working to solve the novel problems of the world's great urban industrial society.

--A society of many peoples, a society of many religions, a society of many and varied dreams and hopes.

--A society of strong-minded free men and women who have time and time demonstrated--despite the recurring prophecies of disaster and the voices of the calamity howler, the critic, and the complainer--that their dedication to the principles of democratic life is stronger than their economic and social interests-stronger than their social and religious prejudices.

As I walked to my plane this evening I had a letter delivered to me from a friend of mine in another branch of the Government.

He said: "My dear Mr. President: The Lord should feel good about this Nation's achievements as exhibited this last week--

"One, two Negroes elected as mayors of two of our greatest cities;

"Two, the first Negro Justice of the United States Supreme Court politely and wisely questioning the Assistant Attorney General of Alabama who was arguing a segregation case before the Court;

"Three, just now the Negro Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts moved the admission to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States of his friend, a white lawyer,

"And I know that when on October 21, standing on the stage of Constitution Hall, Pablo Casals embraced a Negro girl who was a member of the fine Howard University Chorus the Lord must have smiled.

"Only a few years ago that stage was barred to Marian Anderson. I hope, Mr. President, you feel good deep down in your heart about helping to make all of this possible. I am sure history will recognize that part and that unique role in the great progress that mankind is making."

I feel deeply in the debt of the Jewish Committee for recognizing that role that this great leader of social justice has courageously carried on all these years throughout this country.

That is why I came here tonight at the end of a long hard day--and the beginning of another one--to say that much has been written about him, about his being tough. He tries to look that way sometimes, I think, when he is talking to me.

About how hard-boiled he is--well, he said of himself and of his trade one time: "that anybody who has any doubt of the ingenuity and the resourcefulness of a plumber never got a bill from one."

In adversity, the family always pulls a little closer together, and as the war clouds hover around us and when we seek peace throughout the world, we seek prosperity at home, and we have all the problems--of health, education, conservation, and human rights-I think it is good that we could be here and be in the same room together tonight.

You and I know George Meany. We know him pretty well. We know him better than those who think he is so tough and hard-boiled. He is a kind man. He is a warm man.

He is a thoughtful gentleman. I never made a note on anything he ever told me because he always told me what he meant and meant what he told me--and kept his commitments to the letter.

I may be telling some secrets to the men whom he negotiates with. But to his fellow workers in the labor movement, to his great friends, the Jewish Committee, I tell you no secret when I say that he is a soft touch when people's welfare is at stake.

He is a great labor leader. He is a greater American leader. And I feel a lot better because I took the time to come here tonight and to salute him.