Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks to the President's Conference on Occupational Safety.

June 23, 1964

Secretary Wirtz, delegates:

In this conference, and in your daily work, you are concerned with human safety. In many respects this is a strong, common denominator between your work and mine.

The first and constant concern of the American Presidency in this age is human safety also. Making the world safer, making this Nation safer, the values of our society safer, must be the objective of all that a President does, whether he is talking with old and good allies about problems between them, seeking with adversaries better understanding between us, or working with Americans themselves to overcome the problems in our society among ourselves.

Two thousand years ago Cicero said, "The Safety of the people is the supreme law." This truth has not changed. It is fundamental to the concept of democratic society in the West. It is fundamental to the purposes and policies and programs of your American Government in this age of clear and present peril. It is fundamental to the responsibilities of the office which was thrust upon me so tragically 7 months ago. I hope--and I don't mind admitting that oftentimes I pray--that my discharge of those responsibilities will always help guard and guide all mankind toward a safer life than men have ever known before.

I speak as I do to you because there is another common denominator between our work. The problems in your field of industrial and occupational safety are many and perplexing. Yet you know two things about those problems: You know, first, that there is no real comparison between the attitudes within industry today and 50 years ago, or 25 years ago, about the safety of the workingman. Second, along with this progress in our attitudes, there has been great progress in our abilities to eliminate the hazards and the dangers and the causes of industrial accidents.

So the question today is not whether we can eliminate the cruel costs of the on-the-job injuries and disablements and deaths; it is a question of when. When can we succeed by education, by leadership, by patience and perseverance, in cutting this costly toll? In many respects this is the situation facing this Nation and its Presidency, whoever he may be, in dealing with the threats to the safety of the world and dealing with the threats to all the human race.

There is no real comparison between the attitudes of most of the world's governments today and 25 years ago on the role of warfare as an instrument of national policy. War is obsolete, obsolete because there can be no winner. War is obsolete because the progress in mankind's abilities and knowledge make possible and imperative a new measure of national greatness, the measurement of how men are served by their system. The question is not whether the world can eliminate war. The question is when--when all nations will have the courage and the good sense to do so.

This generation of Americans has made an investment without parallel in history in the cause of keeping peace. I believe it is the desire of the American people that their President work wherever and however and whenever he can to support that cause of peace and to keep freedom safe until war is abandoned among all nations. Such a day may not come quickly. It will not come without unremitting effort and unrelenting vigilance. It cannot come without education or without leadership, or without patience and perseverance. But these qualities we have to give and we shall give them-give them to the last full measure to make this world safe and to make our freedom secure.

Whatever your politics, your philosophy, or your own individual perspective, I hope you will take home from your week here at least one strong and abiding conviction, and that is that your Government, and those who serve you in it, are determined that peace shall be preserved in the world, that the cause of freedom shall not be failed, and that the new horizons of human knowledge shall be put to the greater service of men in our own land and around the world to make human life safe and human hopes more secure.

Thank you and goodby.

Note: The President spoke at noon in Constitution Hall. His opening words referred to Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to the President's Conference on Occupational Safety. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239243

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