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Remarks to Members of the Advisory Council for Minority Enterprise.

October 13, 1969

Mr. Secretary, and gentlemen:

I wish to express my appreciation to this advisory committee for taking the time to come to Washington to give us the benefit of your views and also to gather from us our views that you can take them back to the country.

In a sense, you are ambassadors from the business community to Washington, and I trust ambassadors from Washington to the business community.

I read over the list of people that are attending this meeting. And, if you will look to the right of you and look to the left of you and look around this room, there is probably gathered here as much business power and examples of successes in private enterprise as you could find in any one room in America.

This is a powerful group, a very powerful group in terms of what individuals have done to build their own businesses and thereby to contribute to the building of America.

And what we want to do is to enlist this power, this creative power that all of you have, because I know the backgrounds of so many of you--how you started with very little and then built the business enterprises which have so much. We want that creative power enlisted in a very high risk enterprise.

Now I am going to be quite blunt. You all know that any business is a risk. You all know that a small business is a much bigger risk. And it is certainly no secret that a minority small business is the biggest risk of all. This is the truth. These are what the figures show.

But all of us know that the bigger the risk is, the bigger the potential gain is, whether it is in betting on a contest-the higher the odds, if you win, the greater the gain.

That is why in this whole field of minority business enterprise, much of which will begin small but can eventually grow until it is big, you have such a challenge-a challenge that we want 'to work with you on. Because, while the risk is great, the risk of minority enterprise, for reasons that are no fault of the minorities, while the risk is great, the risk of small business, because small business does not have the capital that big business has, it doesn't have the talent that big business has, nevertheless, it can be done. And it will be done provided we can add this extra ingredient of the talent and the ability that is represented in this room, not only by you, individually, but by all the people in your companies.

Now, one other word: I know from looking around this room that I have seen many of you over the years who have been to meetings in Washington, D.C. You have come here for this committee and that committee and the others, and you hear a lot of fine speeches. Sometimes you go home charged up and other times you go home and say, "Was this trip necessary?" or "Was this trip worthwhile?"

I am keenly aware of that. And, I suppose, too, that at a meeting like this, the real question is, "Was it necessary? Was the trip necessary? Was the meeting necessary?" And the question also is raised, "Can we really come forth from this meeting with something new that will change America--change it for the better?"

I believe we can. I spoke to this subject quite often long before I officially became a candidate for President and throughout the campaign. I spoke to the point that it was not enough simply to see that all people in this country had an equal opportunity to get a job--and that is an enterprise that many of you as businessmen have contributed to enormously--but that it was necessary for every individual in America to be able not only to get a job, but to have a chance to become an owner or a manager, to have a piece of the action in private enterprise in this country.

And, frankly, there are a lot of people that are skeptical about that. There are a lot of people who believe that this is so long away in the future, it is so much of a dream, that the concentration should be almost exclusively on the area of jobs.

I don't think that is enough. We don't want a minority that is a class apart simply as job holders. We want a group of people who not only can be employees, but who can honestly feel that they have an equal chance to go up, to go up from that job, that employee status, to become an owner and a manager--as a matter of fact, to become what the people in this room are, people who are eminently successful.

You know you wouldn't have had the chance, those of you who came from small beginnings to the big businesses that many of you represent--you wouldn't have had it unless you had a helping hand along the way.

What we are simply saying here today is, we need your help, the Government needs your help. A lot of people who won't have that chance need your help in order to get this program moving and to provide opportunity for literally hundreds of thousands at the beginning, and we hope millions in the end, of Americans to proudly stand up and have the dignity that comes from not simply being part of an organization, being an employee, but from being an owner and a manager just as those in this room, for the most part, are.

Finally, I want you to know that I feel very deeply that the trip that you have taken to Washington is worthwhile; that as a result of the impetus you give to this program that we are going to find that there will be a new hope, a new hope in the minds and the hearts of hundreds of thousands of young people in this country who otherwise wouldn't really think they had that chance--a chance that you have had, a chance that I have had.

Now this is America at its best. It is something I believe in. It is something you believe in. It is something that your successes prove. And for that reason, I appreciate your taking the responsibility as members of this committee. It has my complete support and I know it will have yours.

Together, working together, working with all elements in the Government and all elements in the business community, we can take this very high risk enterprise and we can get one of the greatest gains that America has ever had.

Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:21 a.m. in the Indian Treaty Room at the Executive Office Building. In his opening words he referred to Secretary of Commerce Maurice H. Stans.

Richard Nixon, Remarks to Members of the Advisory Council for Minority Enterprise. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239793

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