Remarks to the Press on the Message "To Earn a Living: The Right of Every American."

George Christian asked that I make a brief statement similar to the one that I made with the members of the appropriate congressional committees earlier this morning about our JOBS program.

Six out of every seven jobs are in the private industry. Nine out of every ten jobs that we train people for are filled by private industry. When we train 10 people, we get nine of them jobs.

So we feel very deeply that since the greatest hope for jobs ultimately under our setup is in industry itself, and since the people that we have trained in the past have been successful in breaking into industry, we should now--with the cooperation of the businessmen of this country and the labor people in this country--try to get at the hard-core unemployed in this country and get them into training and shortly thereafter into jobs.

So we have revised our manpower program that was training only 75,000 a year in 1963 and is now training over 1 million a year.

Last year, we had a million and a half new jobs in this country. The last 4 years, we have had 7 1/2 million new jobs in this country. We have to try to give additional training to fill more new jobs because we have people with new skills.

I have asked Mr. Henry Ford II to head up this National Alliance of Businessmen and employers. He will be Chairman of the new committee. He has accepted and will come to Washington this weekend to meet with me and with the other businessmen associated with him.

I have asked Mr. J. Paul Austin, the president of the Coca-Cola Company, to be Vice Chairman of this committee.

Mr. Leo C. Beebe, the vice president of the Ford Motor Company, is here now. He will be the Executive Vice Chairman in charge of this Alliance committee. Mr. Beebe is standing here by Secretary Wirtz and will participate in the briefing.

We have two or three additional names that we have not cleared but, before some of these that have been cleared leak, I think I had better just give them to you.

Mr. Roger P. Sonnabend, president of the Hotel Corporation of America, from Region I in Boston (Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont).

Region II (New York, New Jersey, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico), Mr. Harold S. Geneen, chairman of the board of IT&T.

Region III (Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia), John D. Harper president and chief executive officer of the Aluminum Company of America.

Region IV, Atlanta (Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida), Mr. J. Paul Austin, president of the Coca-Cola Company.

Region V, James Cook, president of the Illinois Bell Telephone Company (Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota, and Kentucky).

Region VI, Kansas City, James C. McDonnell, Jr., who is the largest employer in the State. He is chairman of the board of McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft. This covers Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Colorado.

Region VII, Clyde Skeen, president of Ling-Temco-Vought (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas).

Region VIII, San Francisco, Walter A. Haas, Jr., president, Levi Straus and Company (Arizona, California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii).

A. L. Nickerson, chairman of Mobil Oil, will be an at-large member.

There are also some additional names that will be coming shortly.

We plan to devote $350 million in putting 100,000 men and women on the job by June of 1969. The 3-year target is 500,000.

In addition to these 15 top business leaders--I have given you a partial list--we will have leading business executives from the 50 largest cities who will assume responsibility in their city and then name a committee. The regional man will help us work to get a city man; the city man will get a committee. We will try to get to the grass roots.

We are very pleased that the labor people are cooperative and helpful on this. They were thoroughly briefed on it. The NAM [National Association of Manufacturers], the Business Council, the Chamber of Commerce--we have gone to them for suggestions both for personnel and the program itself.

We know that in the past we have had high levels of unemployment. It has dropped from 7 million to 3.7 million, the lowest in 10 years. We want it to drop more.

In the past, it has been necessary for Government to go out and develop make-work projects. We find that in many of the large cities employers are asking for workers and workers are asking for employers--but they cannot take each other because the workers don't have the skill to do the job the industry needs.

Now industry is going to work with us to help them attain that skill. I hope that it won't be necessary for us to have any more public employment programs similar to what we had back in the thirties.

We think this is a better route. We are going to try it. It may not succeed. We don't want to predict defeat to begin with, but it is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all.

We are very heartened by the attitude of the labor people and very grateful and encouraged by the attitude of the business people.

Secretary Trowbridge of the Commerce Department, Secretary Wirtz of the Labor Department, and Mr. Califano will give you any details.