Remarks Outside City Hall, Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Ladies and gentlemen:

I am happy to have with me tonight your fighting Governor, Terry Sanford; two of the ablest statesmen, my close friends, in the United States Senate, Sam Ervin and Everett Jordan; Congressman Harold Cooley, the distinguished Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and the untiring champion of the food stamp plan that will give every child a chance for a healthy diet; my old and good friend, L. H. Fountain, in whose district I am appearing; my good friend, Congressman Herb Bonner, Congressman Horace Kornegay, and Congressman Roy Taylor.

Ladies and gentlemen, I salute the North Carolina delegation and thank them for the courtesy in coming here with me.

I want you to know the members of the Cabinet that I also brought with me: Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Mr. Anthony Celebrezze; Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Orville freeman; the head of the Housing and Home finance Agency, Dr. Robert Weaver; the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Mr. Wagner; the distinguished Under Secretary of Commerce, the Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

In the past 2 weeks I have visited nine States in the Appalachian area. I have seen two kinds of people: those who have a chance to earn a decent living, and those who don't. There are a lot of people in this country who deserve a better chance. There are more than 30 million Americans who live below the poverty line. They deserve a better break.

There is a difference between being poor and being in poverty--a big difference. Many of us grew up poor. I was born the son of a tenant farmer in a family of seven. But while we were poor, we were not the prisoners of poverty; we were not caught in the backlash of an industrial revolution as the people of Appalachia are today. We had a chance to break out and to move up, a chance many Americans don't have tonight.

Right here in North Carolina, the State where I stand, poverty has left its mark. Some people say that if these Americans are poor, it is their own fault. I have even heard others say that God ordains poverty for the poor. Well, I don't believe them, and I don't believe God believes them either. I believe the reason most poor people are poor is that they never got a decent break. I believe the reason most people are poor is they never had a fair chance when they were young, and they never got it later on.

Some people never got that break because they were born in the wrong part of the country. Some people never got that break because they were born with the wrong color of skin. Some people never got it because they went into farming and they couldn't get enough land to make a decent living when farm prices were too low and operating costs were too high.

One major objective of our bill is to help low-income farmers. The tax of poverty has fallen heavily on a lot of farmers in America, and we are determined to help lift it from their shoulders. I just came from a home that has used the food stamp plan, that lives off an old-age pension, that tries to feed a grandmother and seven children and a mother and a father--a family of 10--off of 9 acres in tobacco and 10 acres in cotton, on an advance of $20 a week, with a charge of 10 percent interest.

I just came from that home where the 17-year-old boy had gone to enlist in the Army, and while he met the physical standard, he had to be cut back and sent home because of an inadequate education. No, the planes we fly, the missiles we prepare, and the defenses of this country today cannot get along with an Army, an Air force, and a Navy made up of second-class boys.

I often hear people ask, "Why help people stay on the farm? Why not let poor farm families give up and go to the city instead?" Well, if we don't do something for fellows like I saw this afternoon, they are all going to be in the cities and they are all going to be on the relief rolls, and they are all going to be taxeaters instead of taxpayers. That is why our great cities are already becoming more congested while our small towns are dwindling away.

Many of the young people will leave the farms, but that is another matter. If they have been well schooled, they may find great opportunity. But the older families deserve a decent break, a chance to make a go on the farm. All they seek is a chance to earn enough to live on in their home communities among their friends and their neighbors.

I do not propose to give up on the small family farm as long as I am President of this country. I do not propose to abandon the small villages and the small cities and the trading centers of North Carolina as long as I am President of the country. I do not propose that America's small communities become ghost towns as long as I am President of the United States.

And I want to tell you frankly and candidly, and aboveboard, and put it on the table, I want economic opportunity to be spread across this land--north, south, east, and west--to all people, whatever their race, whatever their work, wherever they live. We must give to all Americans, those on the farms and those in the cities, a chance to drink from the cup of plenty.

A tragic twist of fateful sorrow has made me President. From that awful day on November 22d, when our President was assassinated, I have had but one thought and one conviction, but one objective, to be the President of all the people, not just the rich, not just the well fed, not just the fortunate, but President of all of America.

So I have gone to five States today saying the same thing to the same kind of people, all good Americans: I want for every family what my mother wanted for me, what every mother wants for her child--the chance for an honest living, an honorable job, a decent future.

I have come here tonight with this fine congressional delegation of yours and looked into the faces of all these patriotic people up and down the roads that I have traveled--I have come here to ask you to join the fight to build a great society in our land. Do something we can be proud of. Help the weak and the meek. Lift them up. Help them train and give them an education where they can make their own way instead of having to live off the bounty of our generosity.

So I say to you tonight, wherever you live, whatever you do, whatever your I.Q. or however big your bank deposit, there is a place for you in the army, in the army of Americans that are fighting the war--fighting the war against poverty and disease, fighting the war against illiteracy and against bigotry.

Yes, I have come to this great State of North Carolina that has led the way in so many progressive movements. I stand here with your fighting Governor and your two able Senators, and your fine congressional delegation, and I ask you to give me your heart, and give me your hand, and stand up with me and be counted. Stand with your country. Stand for courage and compassion and stand together, you and I, and all citizens of good will, and let us leave this land a better land than we found it, wiser than we knew it, and greater than we ever dreamed it to be. Wouldn't that be a fine objective? So let's all join in working toward that goal.

I have put in the congressional budget of $97,900 million, $1 billion for poverty, just less than 1 percent. One cent out of every dollar to try to do something about work camps, community projects, education, building roads, helping those who want to help themselves--one cent out of every dollar. That program is pending and we are going to pass it through the Congress, and when we do, we are going to start the war that we want you to enlist in.

You can teach children to read and write who don't know how to read and write. You can join in and have scholarship programs. You can have adult education classes. The stronger a nation, the wiser the nation, the better educated the nation, the better future we will have in this world in which we are competing.

Now that is a laudable undertaking, that is a worthy goal, that ought to give you an outlet for the desire that you have to achieve something for yourself and your family. You ought to want to put your name on that cornerstone in that roll of honor that we are now enlisting people for.

Franklin Roosevelt said in 1934 that onethird of the people are ill clad and ill housed and ill fed. In 1964, 30 years later, we moved that one-third to one-fifth, from 33 percent to 20 percent. Now let's move it to 10 percent in the next 10 years and to 5 percent in the next 5 years, and then wipe it completely from the face of the United States of America.

Think about what a glorious feeling it will be, and what a great land we will have when every child can grow up and have an education, when every child can have food for his body and clothes to cover his back, a roof over his head, and be his own keeper and earn from the sweat of his brow what he needs to provide the essentials of life.

That is all I am asking you to do. I am asking you to help me to start a program that will win this war. And with your help and God's help, we are going to win it.

Thank you very much.

I am sorry that Lady Bird couldn't be with me today, but for several months she has a project of preserving the White House. She is meeting with some distinguished Americans today, all day long, on that project. We have a project--preserving the people of this country, preserving America I brought a stand-in for her, my daughter Lynda Bird.