Remarks at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Convention in Dallas.

Mr. Hunter, Mr. Ellis, ladies and gentlemen, members of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association:

It is good to be here with you. I have been spending a few days at a ranch on the Pedernales Co-op line, and I just felt that I didn't want to go back to big city life without stopping by and visiting with you.

Whenever I see so many country people in a big city like this, I think of that old definition of a farmer: "A person who occasionally visits the city to see where his sons and his profits went."

I think all of you know there is a good deal of truth in that.

The REA was founded a third of a century ago to try to halt the drain of life and wealth from the countryside. Men and women rallied to the REA banner from all over America, and they did it for the same reason: to try to make life better in the rural areas.

You have struggled for years to win that better life. And many of your dreams have come true. Many more will come true for your children. Not long ago, it was only 5 percent of America's farms that had electricity; today, only 5 percent of them don't have it.

I share your great pride in that progress, and I thank you for it--because all along your struggles have been my struggles. Clyde Ellis knows so well how much of my early life and heart went into building that Pedernales Rural Electric Cooperative in Johnson City, along with dozens of other cooperatives in this State.

I know the thrill, I think, as you know it, that every man and woman feels when he or she walks out into their front yard on a cold night to see what his house looks like, all lit up for the first time.

We had some very tough battles over the years--in the thirties, the forties, the fifties-and, yes, we lost some of them--temporarily.

But in 1961, the REA went back into high gear under that great President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And, in the last 4 years we have been proud to shove the throttle forward into even higher gear. In just a few years we won a 50 percent increase in kilowatt hours-nearly as much as in all the years of the REA combined.

But we are not going to settle for that. It isn't enough to say that the lights will never go out again in the countryside. It isn't time to stand pat and be satisfied with the status quo--not when your battles are America's battles--not when your struggles for a better rural life can also mean better cities, better suburbs, a better future for every American.

And so long as I am your President, I will do all in my power to work with you, to help you, to encourage you.

I will support the right of your systems to territorial integrity--to continue serving the areas where you pioneered.

I will support your right of access to additional power, so that the growing needs of your areas can be met with full and always dependable power. This means, to me, guaranteed access to bulk quantities--and a larger participation in the regional pools and other giant power complexes that will meet the power needs that we are going to have in the 1970's.

As long as I am your President, and even when I am a private citizen, I will support the principle of parity so that you can give rural people the rates and the services that are enjoyed by city people.

Most of all, I will support your most critical struggle--to gain, and win, fresh sources of capital to finance adequately your future growth.

I was disappointed, but not disheartened, last year when the Congress failed to approve the Rural Electrification Bank.

The REA Bank bill made good sense. It would have opened the way for stronger cooperatives to obtain needed capital from the great private money market. But all the people who have been fighting and slugging REA for 30 years and more came out of hiding and put their brands on it--and they cut the life out of it. They butchered it so badly that even the friends of REA couldn't support the remains that were left.

I know that your need for expanded financing has not died. And nothing can kill my determination, either, to see that you get that expanded financing. Your long-range study committee is working right now to try to find a successful formula. This administration will continue to work right along beside you to help you.

These are only some of the few initiatives that we must take right now to try to win our battle for a better America. I sent other strong recommendations to the Congress today in my special message on the farmer and rural America. I am going to send a copy of that message to every member of this organization, because you are interested in more than just the power needs of the farmer.

You are interested in the farmers' need for power and the farmers' need for prices, and the farmers' need for the same things that the city man needs---education for his children, clothes for them to wear, adequate purchasing power, a roof over their heads, a chance for them to live normal, healthy lives like all children in this country live.

This farm message proposes to put the farmer on the same basis with the other citizens of this land. We need your help to get him there.

The farm recommendations that I sent to the Congress today are companion recommendations to the ones I sent to Congress last week in my special message on the cities.

This is a turning point in our history. You recognize it, I think, with your convention theme--Target: Rural-Urban Balance.

That balance could make the life or death difference for this land that we love, this America of ours. It can mean the growth or the decay of our countryside and our cities. It can decide whether we live and work in harmony across this spacious continent--or cram together in rising hostility in a few concrete beehives.

Your vision has tipped the balance before, when the REA rescued the countryside from depression and darkness. Rural America 1968 shines with the blessings that you started to bring to it 30 years ago.

But your target is not the past 30 years. Your target must be the next 30 years. The question you and I want answered, therefore, is this: What will rural America be like in the year 2000? Will country life be far better or far worse in the third century?

So I came here this morning on rather short notice, at your invitation, to call on you now--here and now--as President Franklin D. Roosevelt called upon you 30 years ago, to give us new answers for a new day.

You have the know-how to do it. Your experience gives you the edge-and I want it to be the cutting edge that dears the way to the future.

You can answer the farmers and ranchers who want a stronger voice in shaping their own economic destiny.

You can answer their needs to organize, to learn the techniques of cooperative effort, and to learn how to bargain better and more collectively.

You can answer the needs of rural people for modern business skills--the knowledge to price their products, the knowledge to market their goods fairly and justly, and to manage their affairs in order to get a maximum profit.

You can answer the desires of small communities to plan efficiently for vital public services--better schools, better streets, better hospitals, and, yes, better water and sewer systems that will serve the small towns and the countryside, too--the facilities that bring towns and people together.

You can answer the hunger for rural jobs by going out and being the business-getters-the community builders who invite and who attract the big companies to the small towns--the new payrolls and new capital that mean new opportunity and new fulfillment for the people you serve.

And you can help answer another great and another human need. That is the need for pride--to be proud of ourselves--pride in a home, pride in our family, pride in our farm, our shop, our store, our main street, or even our farm-to-market road--pride that makes a fellow want to get up and paint his barn if he can finance it, or mend his fence, or thresh his wheat--that makes a town fix up, spruce up, and lift up its head.

A beautiful America can be a proud America. Your local leadership, through your board of directors, through your managers, through your employees, through your transportation system and communications system, can help us to preserve and nurture the beauty that gives a man joy and gives a community spirit.

These opportunities can be your targets. They are what we mean when we talk about a rural-urban balance, and use those high-sounding city words. We mean by that, that the problems of the cities, the suburbs, and the country are a single national problem. We can only solve that problem as national thinkers, and get away from our narrow, parochial leanings. We can only solve it as one single-minded people that pool their common experience and their common strength in one determined purpose, for one determined people, for one great and determined nation.

We mean that every American should have the right to live where he wants to live--city or country--without losing any fight to a happy, a full, and, yes, a prosperous life.

We mean that rural America must offer these rights to every American: good jobs for men and women, good schools for children, good hospitals for the sick, good homes for the families--all the good and all the necessary things to enlarge and to enrich the quality of life.

So let this be our declaration of domestic partnership, of domestic interdependence. Let us vow here and now to work side by side throughout the length and breadth of this good land, so that all of our people may have a fuller share of the better life that is their right.

That was the purpose of what I called the Great Society. Make no mistake about it-it is taking root, it is thrusting up, it is reaching out to banish need and to bring new hope into millions upon millions of lives.

We see it in Medicare. We see it in elementary education. We see it in antipoverty--attempts to try to improve the lot of all the poor people in our land. We see it in the biggest social security increase ever passed. We see it in more people working today than have ever worked before in the history of this land. We see it in health, in education, in conservation from one end of this Nation to the other.

If it is the work of 1 year, or 10, or if it is the work of the remainder of this entire century, or the third century as well--I am thankful for the chance to have launched it. I am thankful and grateful to you of the Rural Electrification Administration in this country for helping to advance my hopes for a great America. I predict and I pledge you-and strong, countless other Americans like you--that the Great Society that is designed to help people is here to stay.

This can be a nation of greatness for all, if we only work together; if we have the common will to rise above trial; if we have the matching strength to carry our responsibilities at home and our responsibilities abroad; if we have the unity, the good judgment, and the sound commonsense to persevere in the greatest purpose of all--the work of peace on earth.

Persevere in Vietnam we must and we will. There, too, today we stand at a turning point. The enemy of freedom has chosen to make this year the decisive one. He is striking out in a desperate and a vicious effort to try to shape the final outcome to his purposes.

So far we think he has failed in his major objectives. He has failed--at a terrible cost to himself and a tragic cost to his civilian victims.

I saw General Westmoreland's report this morning and he shows, since the Tet period, 43,000 of the enemy have been killed and 7,000 have been captured. He has lost 50,000 men since that holiday period began--because thousands of our courageous sons and millions of brave South Vietnamese have answered aggression's onslaught, and they have answered it with one strong and one united voice.

"No retreat," they have said. Free men will never bow to force and abandon their future to tyranny.

That must be our answer, too, here at home. Our answer here at home, in every home, must be.' "No retreat from the responsibilities of the hour and the day."

We are living in a dangerous world and we must understand it. We must be prepared to stand up when we need to.

There must be no failing of our fighting Sons.

There must be no betrayal of those who fight beside us.

There must be no breaking of America's given word or America's commitments. When we give our word it must mean just what it says. America's word is America's bond. Isn't that the way you feel about it?

There must be no weakening of the will that would encourage the enemy or would prolong the bloody conflict.

Peace will come of that response, of our unshakable and our untiring resolve, and only of that. The peace of Asia and the peace of America will turn on it. I do not believe that we will ever buckle. I believe that every American will answer now for his future and the future of his children.

I believe he will say: "I did not retreat when the going got rough. I did not fall back when the enemy advanced and things got tough, when the terrorists attacked, when the cities were stormed, the villages assaulted, and the people massacred."

I think every American would want to say: "Where was I? I stood up to be counted. I stood fast beside my brothers and my sons who went away to fight for me. I stood firm with my Government to fight to preserve the way of life that we hold so precious and 80 dear."

I believe in the wisdom and the fortitude of the American people. I believe in the good sense and the stout hearts of people like you. I believe with all my faith in the American future that you have worked so long and so well to shape.

It will be a future of limitless promise where every citizen, regardless of race or region, can grow to his fullest measure. It will be a shining land where rural poverty and urban slums have gone the way of the kerosene lamp--if we only have the vision, the determination, the stick-to-it-iveness, and do not allow the dividers among us to succeed.

I had a letter last night from a great historian whom most of you have followed through the years--Mr. Allan Nevins. And he said: "My friend, Mr. President, don't be discouraged by the croakers. We have had the croakers since the days of our first revolution, and they are always present but rarely successful."

Yes, this land will be a shining and peaceful land, where rural poverty has been conquered. It will be a nation not only of rural beauty and urban energy, but of rural energy and urban beauty, too. And the men and women in this room today should pledge themselves to make it so. And I pledge myself, here and now, to you that I will go the last mile with you.

I want to thank the leaders of agriculture in the 50 States, the leaders of the REA and this great organization which has done so much to preserve the unity of all co-op REA movements; the great agricultural leaders in the Congress: Chairman Poage, Chairman Ellender--and Chairman Whitten, who honors us with his presence, who heads up all agricultural appropriations.

The journey we make will remake America, and I think that every American looks ahead with my eagerness and my excitement to that. This Nation shares my pride and my happiness in moving on with you.

We have a long road ahead. There will be much blood, sweat, and tears shed en route. The weak will drop from the line. Their feet will get sore and their voice will get loud. But in the spirit of the pioneers, there are new problems to be solved--there are new areas to be worked.

I hope that you will leave this great convention inspired and stimulated, to be not only a part of a great rural movement in this country that remade America, but as a part of a continuing movement to better humanity. That is about the only reason, after all, that we are here. That is about the only justification for our presence.

What can we do to better the life of human beings--brown, black, and white--people in our own land, people throughout the world ? There is not such difference between a crying baby's voice wherever he lives, whatever his parents. They all want the same thing.

The average family everywhere in the world has the same needs: food to sustain their bodies, clothes to cover their nakedness, a roof over their heads to protect them as shelter from the rain and the sun, a school where their children can listen and learn, a church where they can worship according to the dictates of their own conscience.

People don't ask for much. That is precious little. But America is leading the way in the world for better health, for better education, for better conservation, and for a better rural and city life.

You are leading the way for America.

Thank you and goodby.