Remarks in the City Hall, Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Governor Sanford, Senator Ervin, Senator Jordan, my old-time friends in the Senate, Congressman Harold Cooley, Congressman fountain, Congressman Kornegay, Congressman Bonner, Congressman Taylor, ladies and gentlemen:

This has been one of the most rewarding days of my entire life. Everywhere I have gone I have met good people who wanted to do something about the problems that face our country. Everywhere I have gone I have seen men and women who wanted to leave this country a better place to live in than they found it.

I was just looking at the program the Governor handed me, and a brief summary, and I thought how wonderful it must be to have been a part of a program that would present a proposal for adult education; to give people who are already grown--to still give them an opportunity to acquire more education, some of them to learn to read and write; vocational training, in cooperation with the local school boards, to provide training so that the boys and girls can equip themselves for life's responsibilities; a Negro nursing school, pre-school nurseries, student volunteer committee.

I commend you on the leadership and the progressive spirit that North Carolina has shown. This year, after that fateful day of November 22d, I had 37 days to make up a budget that appeared to involve some $103 billion. The question was how we would spend that money and how much we would spend.

I called in my Cabinet and all the heads of independent agencies, and I asked for their counsel and their advice. We concluded that we would try to cut that projected budget from $103 billion to under $100 billion; that we would try to cut our deficit from some $10 billion last year to $4.5 billion this year.

And we carefully examined with a finetoothed comb every expenditure that was proposed. We had several billion dollars for space, we had more than $50 billion, more than half, to defend this country by keeping prepared so that no enemy would ever dare attack us. We had several billion dollars for agriculture, to try to keep the agricultural economy healthy. We had several billion dollars for health and education and welfare, and for the Labor Department.

Then came the question of whether we were willing to undertake a program to do what President Roosevelt did in the early thirties, to try to make war on poverty and attack the causes of poverty, and try to do something about it.

I have just left a tenant farmer's home. I talked to the father and the mother, and the

7 children in that home, and the grandmother. They are good, honest people. They love their country. They want to do right by everybody. They are trying to eke out an existence with 9 acres of tobacco and 10 or 11 acres of cotton, working on the "halves," with no money, a little old-age pension check and a little advance--seven hungry mouths to feed. But they want to do what is right.

That is not much different from the situation that I found myself in after I discovered America. My father was a tenant farmer; he worked on the "halves." He had a cotton crop that usually ran from 8 to 12 bales a year. He had 5 children. We lived 4 miles from the nearest post office, 4 miles from the nearest school. He wanted his children to have an education. He wanted them to have an opportunity. He wanted to prepare them to assume the responsibilities of the 20th century. With the help of the Government, with the leadership of his neighbors, and with the cooperation of many good men, I was able to go through high school. I pushed a broom and helped myself go through college, and my brothers and sisters had a chance to do so, too.

So I came out on this trip today thinking about the blessings that had come to me, and hoping that somehow or other I could have the strength to transmit them to other people.

I came here to see what you are doing. I am running late. I am usually a dollar short and an hour late. But my intentions are good.

The reason we are late is we have seen so many more people than we anticipated. It is hard to leave when you are talking to the kind of people that I am talking to now. The heartland of America is made up of men and women like you. Most of you believe in the Golden Rule and I hope all of you practice it. I hope you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is what we thought about when we made up that budget.

So we decided that we would take 1 percent, less than $1 billion out of a $100 billion budget, and try to do something about poverty in 1964. In 1934 President Roosevelt said that one-third of the people were ill clad and ill fed and ill housed in this glorious, bountiful land of ours.

In 1964 we have made some progress in that 30 years. We no longer have a third of our population at the bottom of the heap. We have it cut down to one-fifth of our population.

But we decided we would do something about that one-fifth. We would establish agricultural credit, grants, and loans. We would provide some community projects, such as you have outlined here. We would have some work camps, where young men and young women could go and receive training and improve their physical fitness and their mental training.

We realize it is not a very complimentary thing to say about America, to realize that mothers and fathers produce young men and when they go and register for the service, 1 out of every 2 that they have produced has to be cut back because they are mentally unqualified or physically unqualified. I would go broke in a year if 1 out of every 2 calves I produce had to be cut back by the packer as unfit for use.

Yet that is what happens in our country. Here in the midst of plenty, here when corporation profits are $31 billion more than they were in January 1961, here in the first quarter of this year, from the first 1,000 corporations we have heard from, their profits are up 23 percent over the first quarter of last year, here when the laboring man has taken more than $50 billion more in wages than he took in 1961, labor wages having increased $50 billion in income, since 1961--here in the midst of the plenty, we find that 1 out of every 2 of our young men is not equipped to enter the service.

So this morning I asked Secretary Celebrezze, who heads our Health, Education, and Welfare Department, to come and go with me and let's see how we are going to spend this billion dollars. Let's go into the tenant farmers' homes, let's go into the small communities. Let's look at some of the work camps that we could use in our forests and in our parks. Let's get out and, if you please, meet the people, because I never go and meet them that I don't return to Washington stronger and better fitted for the responsibilities that I have.

So Secretary Celebreeze is here with me, not because he likes to tour around the country, but because he cares about human beings and because I am going to ask him not only to care about them, but to do something about them. I want to introduce him. Secretary Celebrezze.

We have a young man who loved his country enough to get his jaw shot off in the Marines during World War II. He has now risen to the high position of Secretary of Agriculture. While he still carries the scars of battle, defending the flag of this country, he is out today waging a war for the underprivileged, trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number, as fine a yardstick as you can ever apply. Secretary Orville freeman, the distinguished Secretary of Agriculture.

Dr. Robert Weaver, the head of our Housing and Home finance Agency, will play an important part in this program. He is one of our ablest public servants. Dr. Weaver.

The head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the admiration and the envy of every country in the world, Mr. Wagner.

And last, but not least, a man who rightly wears and proudly wears a great name in American history, one that has done so much for the people of this country, the "p-e-o-p-l-e," Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

Now, we have come to listen and to learn and to see, and I hope to ultimately conquer in this war on poverty. We are not speaking to you as poverty stricken people. We are speaking to you as our beloved fellow citizens who occupy the same place that we do. We are saying that one-fifth of our families in America, 30 million of our population, still have an income that is way below normal standards. True, it exceeds the income of most other nations in the world, but it is not enough to meet the kind of life that we would like for Americans to live.

This family that I just visited, their oldest boy had to drop out of school to help his father, when in the seventh grade. The father and mother had to drop out of school early in their lives and they have had no education. He wanted to get into the Army. He went the other day and they accepted his physical, but because of his lack of education, he couldn't qualify.

I don't know how many members of that family will wind up as being recipients of welfare instead of taxpayers, but I hope that as a result of our visit today, and as a result of the bills we now have in the Congress, as a result of the work of your fine Senators and Congressmen--and there is no finer delegation in the Congress than the North Carolina delegation, no more honorable one, no more dependable one, no more respected one--I hope there is a work that we can do so that none of those children will wind up as public charges, but all of them will wind up as healthy, taxpaying citizens instead of taxeating charges. Now that is what we are doing here. That is what we are trying to learn about.

We are going back to Washington and try to take 1 percent of that budget, one penny out of every dollar. We saved it by cutting out more than $2 billion, more than twice as much, in obsolete military establishments alone, and the economies that we effected in the Defense Department.

Now we are going to try to take that money that we saved there and put it to helping people, doing the greatest good for the greatest number, hoping that every boy and girl that is born in this land has a chance to grow up and hold a job that they are trained for and they are equipped for, hoping that every boy and girl that is born in this land can have a roof over their head and food in their bodies and clothes on their backs, and can have a chance to have an education, without regard to their race or their religion or the region of this country in which they live.

We would like to be an example for the rest of the world, and we have a great opportunity to be that example. But we must not just change from one-third to one-fifth in 30 years, but we must move that one-fifth down to one-tenth and to one-twentieth until poverty is finally driven from the face of the United States.

So I say to you folks tonight, I appreciate your coming here. I am glad to learn of what you are doing under the North Carolina fund. I am proud of the progressive spirit that you have evidenced in legislation and in education through the years. You have led the South by your progressive works, and we know that.

I am hopeful that you can find your way to do more of this good work and that when our poverty bill is passed, when our Appalachia bill is passed, all of which is already in the budget, all of which has already been recommended to Congress, that you will make yourself one person that enlists for the duration of the war, the war on poverty, so that our children will be healthier, they will be better fed, they will be better housed, they will be better educated. And if they are, we will be a better people and have a happier Nation.

Can you think of anything under the sun that would give you more satisfaction than to feel that you met here tonight in the City Hall and you had a part, with your President, in planning a program that will ultimately drive poverty from the face of the United States? That will ultimately educate all those 7 little children we saw out there this evening? That will ultimately make it possible for every boy that is examined to be fit for the service instead of 1 out of every 2 being cut back ? Can you think of a more noble or worthy undertaking to be a part of than this undertaking?

So I have come to North Carolina to enlist your cooperation, to ask your help, to plead with you to give me your heart and give me your hand, and try to leave this a better land for our children than we found it for ourselves. We are mighty proud of the kind of country we have, but we want to make it better than it is.

Thank you.