Remarks to Participants in the Signing of Equal Opportunity Agreements.

Mr. Secretary, Mr. Vice President:

I want to express my thanks to all of you. Looking down this list of companies we have some of the most important companies in the United States. I think the fact that you have been willing to sign up in the Plans for Progress will carry a good deal of weight with other companies which we hope to influence.

I know that you do this because you are as convinced as we are that all of us as Americans have a very definite obligation to secure adequate employment opportunities for all of our citizens. The whole essence of our country is the idea that the competition for talent and those that have it, those who have ability, those who are highly motivated, those who work hard, will have a chance to advance whether it is on a company basis or an individual basis, and that therefore the matter of color or racial origin, religion, and all the rest of it, should not be involved in a society based on the principles which ours is.

Now this requires an effort by all of us. There is no use in the Federal Government merely putting out an order and assuming that that is enough. There is no use all of you doing it voluntarily and, even though that is important symbolically, and then letting it go at that.

This requires, like every useful project, work by all of us. It requires work in the Federal Government. You may be familiar with one of our experiences in attempting to secure some Negroes in one of our service academies. We had to go out and find them, interest them, inform them of the opportunities, encourage them to come in. Now we are bringing them into the Coast Guard for, I think, probably the first time. But it is not easy. It requires a good deal of effort by all of us. A good many of the people who would be helpful to you in your company work may not feel that they have an opportunity. They may not have had a chance in the past; they may not expect it. So it requires not merely your setting up in your company standards and waiting for it to happen. We have to go out and make it happen. And therefore I want to first express my thanks to you, all of you, for signing up. I want to urge you to put someone in your companies, as has been well explained, who will follow it up and who can really show after 6 months that in this program, which represents a cooperative effort by all of us to try to achieve a great national objective, that this can be done, each company working on its own, so that when we get our semiannual report, we can really say that the number of people working in the various levels represent a genuine effort by the companies to secure the best talent available and also to make opportunities available for the best talent.

We have been working on this in the federal Government, but I don't think we have done enough here. It requires constant stimulus. If you look at it statistically at the lower level, I am sure that Bob Troutman probably went through these figures, we have an awful lot of people working in the Federal Government who are members of minority groups, but as you go up higher, it becomes more difficult. We have to go find them. We have to tell them about Government service. We have to insist that they be given a chance. We have to stimulate them and motivate them to come to work for the Government.

I think you will have to do the same or otherwise we will end up the year with a handful of changes. I think it is worth your effort; it is worth your time. We cannot have, as we are in danger of having, important segments of our population who are out in the cold, while opportunities are given to those who are in, based on what we would consider extraneous conditions.

This is only one phase of the whole challenge which is very serious. The number of school dropouts, the lack of skills--this is a real problem, the amount of people who are talented who can do these jobs. Because they don't have the education and the motivation they don't have the talents for the kind of work that might be available. You may have a good many jobs that you would be glad to give to members of minority groups, but you can't find the people who have the skill. You can't find the people who have the skills because they have not had the training and that starts away back before they might have come into your sphere of interest. So this is a very long job requiring the efforts of not only the companies, but the local communities, the school boards, all of us in the National Government, in an attempt to focus national attention on this matter.

I want to tell you that we appreciate your effort. And I hope that it will be possible for people to be assigned to each of the companies who have the responsibility, that the companies themselves will take pride in going to work on this matter. It will not be merely a question of acquiescing, but will be enthusiastically pursued with the feeling that you are helping advance a great national cause and of giving people a fair chance. So that is what this program is in the best sense. It is your doing it in coming in and signing up, on your own, and that is the way we want to keep it. And I think if we keep that spirit we can do an extraordinary amount.

I want you to know that we will continue to try to support this effort, support your efforts, and that what you are doing is very much worth your attention.

I want to express my thanks to the Vice President, who has been particularly active as the chairman of this, and the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Troutman, and others, who have been working very hard on this program, and particularly to all of you who have come down here--and I am very glad that this ceremony is held in this very historic room-and engaged in a great national enterprise.

Thank you.