Remarks to Delegates to the Equal Pay Conference.

Secretary Wirtz, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Peterson, distinguished guests on the plat/otto, ladies and gentlemen:

This is a good day for our country, and, I am sure, a very proud day for all of you. I am pleased that we can meet together today as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 goes into effect all across this great land of ours.

As Vice President, I was privileged to be active in support of your efforts for equal pay for women. As President, I have been somewhat active in the cause of equal position for women within our Government. I am, and I believe you are, too, opposed to both stag government and "men only" opportunity.

When Thomas Jefferson was our Minister to France, before becoming Vice President and President, he wrote a letter home, in which he said:

"... All the world is now politically made. Men, women, children talk nothing else, and they talk much, loud and warm .... But our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are content to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate."

Well, I would be the last to disagree with Jefferson or to discourage wives from calming husbands--I find that is very important in my life sometimes--who return "ruffled from political debate." And that occasionally happens to me.

But I prefer to remember what Jefferson said about women and government--that between them and "the men who either pay or fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn."

America's progress toward a society of decency has been marked and measured by our attitudes toward the role and toward the rights of women. We have made America stronger, not softer, as we have laid aside, gradually, one by one, the old biases and the ancient prejudices against the equality of women. Every such effort has brought resistance beforehand.

Some men were sure that America would fall if women were allowed to vote. I remember hearing all those arguments as a child back in my favorite hills. Their fathers and their grandfathers were sure that society would crumble if wives sat with husbands at Sunday church.

But when we do those things that are decent and are right and are just, we wonder afterwards why we ever did them otherwise.

So today we work on many fronts to extend the scope of human rights. We do it because it is decent, because it is right, and because it is just. We can and do believe that the consequence will be greater tranquility instead of greater turmoil; greater peace, not greater provocation; greater unity in our country, not greater division.

We must and we shall keep moving forward toward a great and decent and just society for all, regardless of race or religion or sex.

The equal pay law moves us toward that goal.

This issue has been before us 100 years. But today we need answers to it, and not issues.

One-third of our working force are women, but they receive only about onefifth of the pay. The average full-time woman worker receives nearly $2500 less than the average full-time male worker.

This law is not a pay raise law. But it does say that wherever men and women do the same work, whether at the workbench or the office desk, they shall be paid equal wages for equal work.

I hope the ladies won't think this only proves it is a man's world, but the experts tell me that in the long run the law will benefit men as well as women, and employers as well as employees.

The basic challenge before our Nation today is to overcome the waste of our most precious resources, our human resources.

We must liberate ourselves from the burden of job discrimination, the burden of school dropouts. We must break the hold of poverty, and we are trying to make a substantial advance in that direction next week in the House of Representatives.

We must break the grasp of prejudice. We must overcome the loss of unschooled, undertrained, and unemployed human talent.

Now you in this group today have shown that you are "can do" people, and you have shown what you can do through your support of legislation. I want you to know that I look to you, and I count on you, to continue your support of the other measures on our agenda which are right, which are just, and which advance us toward a more decent society for all of our people.

I hope more women will work both in government and on government at every level. There are, as we meet here this morning, 91,000 governments in the United States. All of them can be made better, all of them can be made stronger by your interest, by your support, and, above all, by your participation outside and inside.

I do not know when the day will come that a woman will be elected President of the United States.

If it will not be taken as interference in the effort of a certain party to decide upon a certain nominee this year, I will say that I believe there are women today with the capacity to be President, although I don't want to inject myself in the affairs of another party.

The glory and the greatness of America lies in the open door, the open door of equal opportunity for all of our citizens regardless of their sex or their religion or their race.

So this morning, I conclude by asking your help, pleading for your assistance in doing what needs to be done throughout this land to open that door wider for all, regardless of sex, or region, or religion, or class, or race.

Let's open the door wider for all just as we have opened it today for women.

Thank you very much.