Remarks at the Annual Meeting of the President's Committee on National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week.

Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I am glad to welcome you this morning to this annual meeting. It's good to be with you again.

This year of 1951 will be the 7th year that we have observed National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. In those 7 years, we have made a lot of progress. The needs of the physically handicapped are much better understood throughout the country than they have ever been before. Many of the old prejudices against employing handicapped workers are disappearing. It is now well recognized that employment of the physically handicapped is a natural and very valuable part of our economic life.

The figures show that this is true. Secretary Tobin and Administrator Ewing will give you all the details. But it's very impressive to me that during this past year the public employment services were able to find 100,000 more jobs for the handicapped people than during the year before. That's a gain of more than 50 percent.

This kind of progress shows the value of the work of this committee--which has brought private citizens and private organizations and State and Federal agencies together in one great effort.

Much good has been done in these last years, but there is a great deal more that we must do. Our goal should be to see that every physically handicapped person that wants to work and who is able to work gets a chance at a job he can do.

I say this not only because we ought to do it as a matter of decency, but also because there is so much our handicapped citizens can do for us, if we help them to gain employment.

We need these people in our labor force. We need them badly. We need to use their skills and energies in our great program of defense production, to help us win the struggle for a just and lasting peace.

The production job ahead of us calls for the fullest and wisest use of all our resources--and especially of our manpower.

We are now employing more than 62 1/2 million people in this country. As defense production expands, there are going to be more and more jobs and it will be harder and harder to find enough people to fill them. A great proportion of the able-bodied young people who in earlier years would have been starting work for the first time, are being drawn instead into the armed services. These conditions are bound to continue for some time.

This means that in our national interest it is urgent for us to make full use of the skills and abilities of all our handicapped citizens. Those who have been trained should be employed at their highest level of skill. Those who have not yet been trained should be given rehabilitation and vocational training. Your 1951 poster puts the problem very clearly when it says--"America needs all of us."

I think that you should hammer this point over and over again. Giving the physically handicapped a job is not a charity. It is not just a gratuitous kindness. These people need jobs, it's true. But the more important fact is that the country needs their help. If they are given the right job--jobs fitted to their capabilities--they can do just as much as anyone else to increase the production of this great Nation.

The polio victim, the spastic, the blind, the deaf, and the amputee, as well as those suffering from heart disease and other disabilities can all do their part. All they need is a reasonable chance and good old American fair play. Once on the right job they ask no favors of anyone.

I hope that this committee will make every employer in the country aware of the fact that hiring the physically handicapped is not simply a humanitarian obligation, but a real business opportunity. These people include some of the best workers we have. They are people who have suffered the shock of being disabled, and have gone through the physical and mental suffering of being crippled or blinded or otherwise injured. And, in spite of all that, they have picked themselves up again, mastered their handicap and fitted themselves, sometimes through years of rigorous training, for jobs which they can do. It takes a lot of character to go through an experience like that, and in any kind of employment--I don't care what it is--it's character that counts.

I am going to have the pleasure this morning of presenting a trophy on behalf of this committee. This award is to be given annually to a handicapped individual selected by the committee for the best performance of the year on behalf of the physically handicapped.

The trophy was designed and made by four severely handicapped persons. The young man who has been selected to receive it this year is also a severely handicapped person. He is an employer in Chicago. He is in business for himself. He is successful in that business. Today, he employs 80 persons and 60 of them--three-fourths of them--are handicapped. Some of them are blind, some are deaf, some have lost an arm or leg. But that plant of his, during World War II, outproduced larger concerns that employed more workers. It did such fine work that it received the Army and Navy "E" award.

I am very proud of that young man-George Barr is his name. He has made this country a better place to live in--and he has shown what men can do if they have the courage and the will to do it.

There is a lesson for all of us in this story.

That lesson is that you never know what you can do until the going gets rough. The true measure of a man's ability--the true measure of the character and ability of a Nation--comes out only in a struggle against difficulties.

A lot of people are saying these days that the people of our country are soft. They are saying that we have had things too easy for too long, and that we do not have the strength of character to impose restrictions on ourselves and to undergo hardships in this time of crisis.

I simply don't believe it. I just don't think it's true. When I look at the record of our physically handicapped, and what they have done and are doing in American industry, I know it is not true. And if any further proof is needed, we can find it in the record of our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen in Korea. There's nothing soft about the job our fighting men have been doing over there, and there's nothing soft about the way our physically handicapped workers have been doing their jobs here at home.

If those among us who have been disabled can pick up their lives again, and fit themselves for jobs in spite of their handicaps, I am sure that the rest of us can do what we are called upon to do in this period of national defense.

This Nation is not soft. I believe we have the same kind of character we have always had. I believe we have the strength and the know-how to carry on through these difficulties. And I am here to tell you that I think this Nation can do anything it wants to, and I think it does those things when it is on the right track, and at no other time.

I know we can face up to any problems that lie ahead, both at home and abroad.

And I am confident that with the help of God, we can reach our goal of a just and lasting peace.