Remarks at City Hall, Cumberland, Maryland.

Mayor and Mrs. Chaney, Senator Brewster, Senator Beall, Congressman Sickles, Congressman Mathias, my good friend Attorney General Tom Finan, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

They tell me other Presidents have been here, but I don't think any of them brought along most of their Cabinet. I want all of you boys and girls to have a chance to meet the Cabinet that sits with me in the Cabinet Room in the White House in Washington.

I first want to introduce Secretary Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture. Secretary Freeman.

Next I want to introduce Secretary Celebrezze, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Next I want to introduce the Secretary of Labor, Willard Wirtz.

The Under Secretary of Commerce, representing Secretary Hodges, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

The Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, Mr. Robert Weaver.

The head of the Tennessee Valley Authority that will be traveling with us in 5 States today, Mr. Aubrey Wagner.

I asked these men to come here with me to see these problems and to see these people. They came because I asked them, and they came because we care. We not only want to know something about the problem, but we want to do something about it.

For many years I have heard Maryland called the "Old Line State." Not until this week did I know that it got that name because of the courageous service of the Maryland line that was under fire during the American Revolution.

That revolution is not over. Lynda Bird told you something about the revolution that is just beginning with our Appalachia program and with our poverty program. So we begin to fight to finish in the 20th century what our forefathers started in the 18th. And Maryland, again today, as we meet here, is once again on the front line.

Your courage and your will to fight are as needed now as they were then, and I think you have just as much of it now as they had then.

Ever since 1634, when the Ark and the Dove landed 200 settlers on your shores, Maryland has played a vital role in building America. Those pioneers were men with a cause. They had suffered from unjust government at home. They came to find justice in a new land. They came--heedless of hazard--seeking new opportunity, new chance.

Those who came later often differed in habits and in custom, and in language and in religion. But they all came seeking a society that was free of the prejudices, the injustice, the rigid barriers to advancement which had disturbed their lives in the old world.

They came looking for freedom and tolerance, and that is what we look for today. They came looking for opportunity and abundance, and that is what we are trying to provide today. They came looking to free the human spirit from the bonds of the old society which thought a man's birth and station more important than his ability and his dedication.

They came looking for a government that they did not have to fear, because they wanted their government to be their own.

They faced grave difficulties and dangers on these untamed shores. The Piedmont was a wild frontier. But they knew that although the hazards were high, the rewards were rich.

From this wilderness they carved clearings and they gave those clearings names which ring today with their fears and their toil. "Trouble Enough" was one of them, "Scared From Home" was another, "All That's Left," and "Discontent." One Maryland farmer called his place "I'm Glad It's No Worse."

But they never lost sight of the desires which brought them across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1638 their representatives won the right to initiate legislation in the Maryland assembly. This was a landmark in American history. No other colony had made a more dramatic effort to achieve self-government.

And Maryland also became a fountainhead of religious freedom. In 1937 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.'s father, the President, wrote congratulating Maryland, he said, for "its noble service in the cause of religious toleration," and in that letter he warned that "we must recognize the fundamental rights of man."

He wrote that letter because he knew that this was a State which has always fought for the rights of man, and that that battle takes place on different fronts today than it did 300 years ago. Maryland and Marylanders must help to win it.

Because that same spirit still lives in Maryland, I came here this morning to ask your help in carrying forward the American Revolution. In many ways, today's battles are even more difficult. Then the enemy was clear. Today the enemies which menace our people are more complex. We are preparing to fight these enemies.

Our first objective is to free 30 million Americans from the prison of poverty. Can you help us free these Americans from the prison of poverty? And if you can, let me hear your voices.

We are going to do these things for those who are poor, aren't we? We are going to do it for those generations who will be condemned to poverty unless our generation provides a way out. We are going to provide the way out, aren't we?

President Franklin Roosevelt said, "It is not the pinch of suffering, the agony of uncertainty that the adults are now feeling that counts the most--it is the heritage our children must anticipate"--the heritage they must anticipate. "It is not just today that counts. Undernourishment, poor standards of living and inadequate medical care will make themselves felt for 50 years or more."

So the inadequacies of today will be felt in your life and in your children's lives 50 years from today. Here in Appalachia, one family in three lives on an income of less than $3000. Here in Appalachia the 1960 per capita income was a meager $1400 a year. In the rest of the country it was $1900.

Here in Appalachia, employment went down 1.5 percent between 1950 and 1960. In the rest of the country it did not go down--it rose 15 percent.

Here where you meet this morning only 32 out of every 100 people finish high school. Five out of every 100 finish college. More than 2 million people have migrated to join the unemployed in other places. But statistics do not tell the story.

I know what poverty means to people. I have been unemployed. I have stayed waiting in an employment office, waiting for an assignment and a placement. I have shined shoes as a boy. I have worked on a highway crew from daylight until dark for $1 a day, working with my hands and sweating with my brow. This has taught me the meaning of poverty and poor.

It means waiting in a surplus food line rather than in a supermarket check-out. It means going without running water rather than worrying about whether you can afford a color television. It means despairing of finding work rather than wondering when you can take your vacation. It means coming home each night empty-handed to look at the expectant faces of your little children who lack the things that they need. It means a lonely battle to maintain pride and self-respect in a family that you cannot provide for--not because you don't want to and not because you don't try to, but in a Nation where so many seem to be doing so well you seem to be finding it difficult.

Poverty not only strikes at the needs of the body. It attacks the spirit and it undermines human dignity.

It is not enough for the Congress to pass laws. We will not win our war against poverty until the conscience of the entire Nation is aroused. We will not succeed until every citizen regards the suffering of neighbors as a call to action. We will not overcome until every child in every city, in every town, joins its parents and helps us to mobilize its resources.

This can be done, and you can help do it, and you are going to do it, aren't you ? We won the first American Revolution because we were a people in arms. We mobilized every resource of a new and weak country. Every citizen had a role to play in that revolution. In this way, we defeated a great empire.

Today America is richer and stronger. We have the resources and we have the knowledge to win this war. The battle will not be a spectacular one. It will consist of thousands of small efforts that add up to a vast national effort.

For example, this week, just Tuesday, we approved a new program to train 50 machine-tool operators here in Cumberland. These 50 men will have new skills and they will be put to work in local industries. Fifty more men will have a chance for a decent wage and a productive job, and a better family life. So they will leave the ranks of poverty. Let's let these 50 just be the beginning of what we are going to do for all America all the time.

In this way, with small beginnings, do we move toward the great goal that Franklin Roosevelt set before us when he said, "The great objective we are demanding for the sake of every man, woman, and child in this country is a more abundant life."

That is our objective today. We strive for this goal by attacking the causes of poverty, and we are not trying to give people more relief--we want to give people more opportunity.

That is what the people want. They want education and training. They want a job and a wage which will let them provide for their family. Above all, they want their children to escape the poverty which has afflicted them.

They want, in short, to be part of a great Nation, and that Nation will never be great until all of you people are a part of it.

So I came here to Maryland this morning, to this wonderful place and these smiling faces, this seedbed of American liberty--I came here to call upon the pioneer spirit which made this a free country. From these hills again goes forth today a call to battle.

This is the first appearance that we will make today, here at your stadium, and here in front of your City Hall, here at your employment office, and here on your streets. This will go forth, our first call to battle in our effort to drive poverty underground, in our effort to improve our program through the Appalachia recommendations that I have made to Congress. This time it is a battle to open the gates of the great society, to open those gates to all who seek to enter.

We don't ask much. The average American does not demand much. But we have a right to expect in this rich country, if we are willing to work from daylight to dark, we have a right to expect a job, to provide food for our families, a roof over their beads, clothes for their bodies, and opportunity to have our children educated, and the right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

With your support and with your help and with your faith and with your confidence and with God's help, we will have it in America.

Thank you.