Remarks to Student Winners of a Contest Sponsored by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

I am happy that I can meet with you this morning here on the White House lawn. The White House is the symbol of what is good in the leadership of our country. I hope that every young man and woman will always feel thrilled to stand on the soil of the White House lawn in the shadow of this, the first house of the land.

I am particularly happy to welcome this group because of my years of association with the REA.

When I was your age, our job, our crusade, our revolution, was against the kerosene lamp and the lantern, and to light up the countryside and to bring power to rural America.

We have largely done that. In the 33 years since REA was formed by an Executive order of a daring President with great vision, you have done that job. Our rural people have made great progress--more progress than any other people anywhere in the world, more than your fathers made and more than your grandfathers made.

But just as you have come far, there is still a long way to go. If we are not to stand still, if we are not to be content with the status quo, if we are to dream dreams and make them come true, then you young people are going to have to get with it and stay with it and do something about it; call them as you see them and take an active part in making those dreams come true.

What should we dream?

First of all, I thought many years ago that it was important to reach down to the soil of America--back to the rural home, back to the countryside, back to the land--and give the young people who grow up there-without a polluted atmosphere or polluted water, where they can keep their cool without the roar of the streetcar or the bumpers hitting each other, where they could make judgments--give them an opportunity to provide leadership in government.

So I asked the REA to take on that task-not just to light up America, but to light up some young people and get them interested, bring them to Washington, let them serve as interns and work in Congressmen's offices and in Senators' offices and in executive department offices.

I went to Chicago to one of the REA conventions. And I proposed that program. It was adopted and a good many young men and women have come here and have made good. They have provided leadership. They have learned. They have taught.

They were poor people. They came from the rural countryside. They were not millionaires, but they had what it took. They have given a good accounting of themselves.

Thirty-three years ago I was working for a poverty program, a poor program, with rural people in Texas. It was called the National Youth Administration. We dealt with people your age. Those people worked for $10 and $12 a month. Just think of it. That is unbelievable, but that is what we paid them.

A year or so ago I went back to the place where I went to school when I was your age. We opened up a Job Corps camp to take care of some of the fine, young people of our country. We had a platform there that day and a lot of people sitting on it, as you have here today. We had the mayor, who was the presiding officer--they usually are, you know. He introduced the rest of us.

Then we had the Congressmen; then we had the chairman of the board of regents for all the State schools and colleges; then we had the Circuit Judge of the Fifth Circuit; then we had the Governor of the State; then we had the director of the poverty program, Sargent Shriver; then we had the President.

I looked back 35 years, and all of those individuals--the mayor, the Congressmen, the Federal Circuit Judge, the Governor of the State, the chairman of the college board of regents, Sargent Shriver, and the President of the United States--all worked for NYA and came out of that organization.

I would like to look back 30 years from now and see some Presidents, some Governors, some mayors, some Congressmen, and some Federal judges come out of the REA organization--these young people that they send to Washington.

You have your obligation to your parents, to your teachers, to your principals. But you also have a very strong, compelling obligation to your country.

If we are going to survive as a free nation; if we are going to have the liberty, independence, and freedom that we want; if we are going to have the opportunity, the prosperity, the jobs, the housing, and the beautification--all the things that we like and want--we are going to have to have, first, qualified leaders.

You can't find better talent to work on than you young people who come from rural America. Now, a good many of you are out in Vietnam. I went to the hospital yesterday where I saw boys from Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, New York, and California who had left an arm or a leg in Vietnam so you would be free to come here this morning and examine what the President had to say and accept it or reject it; so you would be free to go into your classroom and listen to what they had to say and accept it or reject it; so you would have some independence. They had been there fighting for you.

Now, I don't know what you have been doing here for them. They have not asked you to parade much. They have not asked you to sing for them. Not many of them have asked you to even buy bonds to support them.

But you have an obligation to them and, most of all, to this country, the same as they do. You don't have to be in a uniform. You don't have to be drafted by your local draft board.

Every person born in this world not only has an obligation to their country; they have an obligation to themselves, and that is to justify their being here. We pay taxes every month in order that we can pay your teachers, in order that we can buy your books, in order that we can get you to and from school, in order that you can go to college.

As you receive much, you also must give much. You have to ask yourself this morning, "What am I giving to my country?"

I think you ought to give a part of your time, your talent, and your training, and learn how to be a public leader in a democracy. I think every person in this land ought to have some governmental responsibility sometime in his lifetime.

So I want to thank the REA for sponsoring a program that would interest young people in coming to their Capital where they can look out and see the Lincoln Memorial and review the critical period that Lincoln went through; where they can see the Washington Monument and remember what he sacrificed in order that you could be here; where they can look at that house and see all that has come and gone since the British burned it; and where, most of all, they can look at themselves and engage in a little introspection and go back home and say, "I do have an obligation to better humanity. I do have an obligation to make things better in this world, not to dream dreams that can never come true, but to dream dreams and then make them come true."

Young people have the energy. They have the vim, vigor, and vitality. They can if they will. The trouble is that some of you have just been too busy, interested in yourselves and looking after things at home, without really asking yourselves what obligations you have to your fellow man, what obligations you have to your country.

Well, I think that you are, in a way, meeting those obligations both to your fellow man and your country by coming here on this trip and learning something about your Government and learning something about public service.

And I hope when you go back that you will have a little more interest in government. When the election comes around-first of all, you ought to tell everybody you see that you think they ought to have a vote for 18-year-olds.

I have a daughter over there in the house who is a young mother. She hasn't been able to vote yet. But she has been a better qualified voter for 4 or 5 years than I was when I first voted, because she learned more, she had better teachers, better training, and better opportunity. The young people of today do, too. They are capable, and if they have the responsibility, they will prepare themselves to vote.

I hope you will see who is running for mayor, who is running for Congress, who is running for Governor, who is running for the Senate, and who is running for President, and you will get active on whatever side your conscience tells you you ought to be on and do something about it.

Education is the guardian genius of democracy. If we are going to preserve this Government, and not allow it to decay, not allow it to be said of us some day--what they remind us of now, the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome--not have it said that America does not occupy the position a century from now that she occupies today, it is going to be because of what you do.

So I hope you do it. I hope you ask yourselves, while I am talking and when you leave here, what you can do to be a better citizen, what you can do to better humanity, what you can do to satisfy and discharge the obligation you owe your country.

You won't have to give it an arm or a leg, we hope. You won't have to go away in a foxhole and stay many months. You can do a lot of it right there at the general merchandise store, the gin, or by the cultivator, the baler, the dairy barn, or wherever you live, by taking an interest in what is happening in your own community, your own county, your own State, and your own Nation.

I expect every person here--and I think I can say this without violating the Hatch Act; I am not a candidate for anything-but I expect every person here who accepted my invitation to come to the White House this morning to do something about who lives in that White House next year.

You say, "Okay, what do you expect me to do?" I expect you to look at any and all whom you think are qualified. Then use your head and your heart. Select the person who you think will best serve this wonderful land of ours, because we have so much to preserve and so much to protect. There is so much good about it and you just hear about the bad things.

I want to do something about the bad things instead of just talking about the bad things. I want you to help me--won't you?

Thank you very much.