Remarks at the "Briefing for Businessmen" Meeting.

Secretary Stans, Secretary Kennedy, all of the distinguished guests here in the Sheraton Park today:

I am very honored to be here in this company and, also, I want to express my appreciation to those who have come from all over the Nation to this meeting of business leaders.

I am delighted that you have had the opportunity to hear from the top members of our Cabinet and of our White House team in the economic field. I hope you have agreed with them. If they are wrong, I am wrong, and I want to be sure that they are right.

I can assure you, too, that in working with them over these past 10 months I have learned to respect them--I respected them before--but to respect them even more for their devotion, their dedication, and their ability to analyze difficult problems and to come up with what I hope are the right answers.

Now, I am not going to take your time today in any detail in covering the ground that they have already covered in the field of trade, in the field of tax reform, in the area of budget, and all the others that may have been discussed prior to my getting here.

I would simply like to underline some of the administration's basic economic decisions so that there will be no doubt in your minds or in the minds of the Nation as to where we stand and where we are going.

On January 20th we had to make a basic decision. We had had inflation in this country for a period of 4 years in excess of the amount that we thought was tolerable. We felt it was necessary to make some decisions to deal with that problem. There were two ways to move. One was an easy way. One was to do what had been done in the past and that is to call businessmen in and labor leaders in, blame business for raising prices when prices were raised, blame labor for asking for more wages when wages went up.

Now, while rises in prices and rises in wages of course are contributory factors to the whole problem of inflation, we realized that it was essential for us to deal with our own house and to put it in order. We moved on those points. I can assure you it was not the easiest way, to cut a budget by $7 billion, to ask for an extension of a tax rather than to get rid of a tax which we do want to get rid of-sooner than will be the case--and finally to follow at this time a policy of monetary restraint. These certainly were not the easy courses to follow.

We instituted these courses of action. We now see the first signs that those courses of action are working. We believe that they will work in cooling the inflation. We intend to continue on this course of action until we are sure that they will work.

We simply want to say to the businessmen here gathered--and I believe this-that those who bet on inflation are going to lose their bets in making their business plans, and those who bet on cooling the inflation will win their bets because we are committed and we believe that that is the first step which is essential to deal with this problem.

I realize that in talking about the cutting of budgets and the extension of taxes and monetary restraints that this is not particularly pleasant for any audience to hear, including an audience of businessmen.

I simply want you to know that this is the short-range policy, but because of these short-range, sound steps, we believe that we can look to the future with some optimism.

I understand that Paul McCracken [Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers] indicated that for the year 1980 we could expect an economy of a trillion and a half dollars. I believe that that estimate is one, based on what I have seen, that is reasonable, one that might prove even to be conservative. But whatever the case might be, I don'.t want to leave the impression that I am pessimistic with regard to the long-range future of this country or even with regard to the immediate future, once we get these inflationary factors under control.

In that connection, I think I can bring my thoughts to you in a rather direct way by sharing with you some correspondence that I have had recently on a very interesting subject with a major publication in this country. I am not going to criticize the publication, as a matter of fact.

The letter is dated November 13th. It is from Miss Ann Bayer, Assistant Editor of Life Magazine. It seems that Life is doing a photographic essay on teddy bears. The letter says:

"Dear Mr. President:

"We thought perhaps you might belong to that select fraternity who still cling to the same teddy bear they had as a child. If you do, please write and tell us no later than Monday, December 1, such specifics as your teddy bear's name, age, and physical condition and something of the life you and he have shared together. Feel free to express whatever personal feelings you have about your bear."

Well, I thought there could not be a better forum in which to answer that letter. Miss Bayer will also receive her answer in due time by maim think it takes

5 days. Is the Postmaster General here? We are also asking for your support of postal reform, incidentally, among other things.

But I am going to answer it this way, so she can see it on television, if it is carried on television, or in the newspapers, or in Life. I shall read the answer to you. "Dear Miss Bayer:

"I regret that I never belonged to the select fraternity you described. To the extent of not having a teddy bear, my early childhood might be described as disadvantaged.

"However, on January 20th of this year the Dow-Jones averages were 930. Today they are around 830. That means to me that the age and condition of my bear is ten months and about 100 points.

"As to my personal feelings, I am looking forward to the day when this bear turns into a bull."

So, to this group of American businessmen today from all over this Nation, we are optimistic about the future. We are optimistic about the future because we are doing the responsible things about the present. And we ask your cooperation in dealing responsibly with your decisions so that 'that future may indeed be a bright one for business and for all of the American people.

I would like in my remarks today to go beyond the subjects that have been discussed, go beyond them and perhaps put them in a larger perspective.

It has been said that the business of America is everybody's business. I have just concluded a series of meetings with the Prime Minister of Japan. As I talked to him, the leader of that tremendously productive nation, the third most productive nation in the world and second to the United States in the free world, I realized the truth of that statement. I have realized it as I have talked to the leaders of every major European nation and to the leaders of Asian nations on a trip around the world earlier in the summer.

What we face is this simple fact: Because of the power and the size of the American economy, because of the strength that that economy allows us to have on the military side, what happens in the United States affects the whole world.

This we know. And this is brought home to us every time we talk to a visiting leader, whether he is in the field of government or whether he is in the field of business or labor or education.

As we think of that awesome responsibility that we have, that the decisions we make, whether they are at the highest level in government or in business or in your communities, that those decisions may affect not only our Nation but the world, it gives us certainly a sense of not only national destiny, but also it gives us a sense of perspective as to what our future may be and also it requires us at times to look to our past to see where we have been.

It was, of course, not always this way. Two hundred years ago the United States was a very weak country militarily; it was a very poor country economically. But even then the United States of America, to millions of people who were never to see it, was the hope of the world.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in an unfinished novel, unfinished at his death, wrote this: "France is a land; England is a people; America has about it the quality of an idea and is more difficult to describe."

It was that idea that 200 years ago caught the imagination of the world. It was that idea that over these 200 years has continued to mean something in the world far beyond how wealthy we were and how strong we were.

Today America is the strongest nation in the world militarily. We are the richest nation in the world economically. The question is: Do we still have the quality of an idea, an idea that goes far beyond military strength and economic wealth?

Alastair Buchan, the distinguished British Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, wrote recently: "If the United States proves ungovernable in the face of new pressures, then there is no hope for a world order. If the problems of racial integration prove intractable in the United States, then the prospects elsewhere are in doubt. If the problems of developing an effective and orderly system of higher education have been misjudged in the United States, then they have been misjudged elsewhere."

There is the confused feeling in the world today that the United States has ceased to be the last best hope of man, and has become the cockpit of violence, adolescent malaise, racial tension, a network of decaying cities in which the virtues of the American past have been obliterated.

That was not his judgment. He was simply indicating what many people in the world were now concluding about the United States.

So I would like to leave with this audience a challenge that goes far beyond the vitally important responsibility you have in terms of the business decisions that you will make.

I know that reference has been made to the importance of the employment of hard-core unemployed. I know that reference has been made, too, to the community action responsibilities that businessmen increasingly, in this Nation, have undertaken--undertaken with a high sense of purpose.

I would add to that, that whether we are talking about the generation gap, whether we are talking about giving to our young people a sense of participation-participation in business, if they go into business--that sometimes they do not presently have, that in all of these areas we are, in a sense, working at this problem--this problem that goes beyond mere wealth and goes beyond mere military strength, the quality of an idea that once caught the imagination of the world and that is still here, that we can still be very proud of.

We can look at America today and look down to the end of this century and we can see that we will then be the best clothed, and the best housed, and the best fed people in the world, as we are today, but the critical question will be: What has happened to the American idea? Have we become all of those things and are we torn apart by division? Are we tom apart by strife? Do we have gaps between the generations, between the races, between the regions of this country which could pull apart even a nation as strong as this?

I pose these only as rhetorical questions. I do not believe that is the case. I think there has been a tendency in this country in talking about our faults to overlook our virtues.

I believe in America, and I think we have to speak up more for America and the strength of America and what it means to us and what it means to the world.

We talk about hunger in America, and we have some. We are having a conference on nutrition and hunger in which we are going to deal with some of those problems. But as we consider the problem of hunger in America, let us not overlook the fact that American agriculture produces enough to make Americans the best fed people in the world and enough to give billions of dollars of food away to other nations in the world. That is the strength of America.

We can talk about our problems in other fields. We can talk, for example, about that fact that there are inequities in this country. There are some who are rich and there are some who are poor. But as we look at the overall situation among the 200 million Americans, and over the history of mankind, from the beginning, never in the history of the world has more wealth been more fully shared by more people than in the United States of America, and we should not be defensive or apologetic about that.

I know the concern about dissent in America. We have had some evidences of it in this city, and you have seen it in your own cities. But let us not overlook the fact, and this is the important fact, that the right of peaceful dissent has been and is recognized and is protected in America. That is the point that should be emphasized.

If there is any doubt on that score, even the Vice President has the right to dissent in the United States of America.

I do not intend to try to speak to this group in what is usually described in the "Chamber of Commerce" fashion, about a Pollyanna-ish view of the United States and its problems. Our problems are serious at home and our burdens are very great abroad.

But I leave with all of you this thought: When we consider where we would like to be, where we would like to live, and we look at America and we look at the other nations in the world, as I have often said, this is the time and this is the place in which I would like to live.

Yes, we do have problems abroad. We have responsibilities that Americans did not ask for. We are the only nation in the history of the world that acquired a position of world leadership as a result of a policy which was not designed to reach that position.

Nevertheless, however, as we look at that position of world leadership, would we have it another way? We do not say this, and I do not express it in any arrogant or jingoistic way, but I do say that the United States of America, at this time in its history, having no designs of conquest or of domination over any other nation of the world, can and will furnish the leadership that the world needs.

The fact that, in four wars in this century-in World War I, in World War II, in Korea, and in Vietnam--we have given our men, we have spent our money. We have done so generously and we have done so without regard to what we might gain in the way of territory or domination over other nations; the fact that the United States does honestly stand for the right of every other people in this world to choose their own way without any domination from us or anybody else-this is, in itself, a great idea. We should be proud of it. We should not be defensive about it and we should stand up for it.

To you, the members of the American business community, I simply conclude with these words: I have no question about the future of America from the standpoint of its economic growth. It is in good hands and our prosperity is assured by what you will do, the decisions you will make.

But we need more than that from you. The men who can create the tremendous business establishment that we see in this Nation have leadership capabilities that are needed. They are needed in your communities, they are needed in your States, and they are needed in this Nation.

We have appreciated that leadership that you have offered so voluntarily to this administration and to previous administrations.

One of the reasons I am confident about the future is that in addition to the business leadership you will provide, that the brains and the ability and the dedication in this room also are going to be available to this Nation to see to it that America at this critical time in the world's history will meet its responsibility--meet its responsibility not only to make America rich and strong, but meet its responsibility to make America as it was in the beginning, the hope of the whole world.