Address by the President at a Luncheon Given in His Honor in Sao Paulo

Mr. President, Governor Carvalho Pinto, and other Governors here present, ladies and gentlemen:

I am deeply grateful for the generous welcome my associates and I have received in Sao Paulo. And I must personally express to you my deep gratitude for the warmth of the welcome with which you have greeted me in this hall.

This is my first visit to your great city, the industrial heart of Brazil. Here in your factories and workshops, much of the economic future of Brazil is being forged. It is indeed a privilege to meet personally so many leaders of Sao Paulo's progressive government, industry, and agriculture.

I do not wonder, as I look around me and see what Paulista energy and initiative have achieved, that you take pride in your city and state, and especially in the fact that in this area great opportunities exist for men of energy, talent, and initiative to carve for themselves important places in the life of the nation. This country, like my own, provides opportunities to all, however humble their origins and whatever the circumstances of their birth.

Opportunity, without discrimination--this is one vital aspect of democracy both in Brazil and the United States. The humblest may become the highest--through his own efforts.

Our societies are designed to permit everyone to pursue family welfare and happiness in liberty, and also to promote the well-being of all, not just a few, of the people.

We believe fervently that no one should be denied the chance for or the fruits of self-betterment because of his race, his religion, sex, class, or political beliefs. In short, in both our countries we make the concept of the dignity of the individual a living reality, knowing that, given a chance, each person is capable of running his affairs with wisdom, dedication, and due respect for the rights of others.

At this point in history, our countries may differ in economic development, but this difference can and will disappear, for Brazil is on the march. It is today a universal Brazilian aspiration to develop the country's resources, to extend the blessings of education to all, to realize the nation's immense potentialities. Let me say to you most earnestly that we pray for your success. And we rejoice in your progress not only because you and we are friends but also because we know that the progress of Brazil and of all the nations which aspire to develop rapidly will make a happier and more peaceful world for everyone.

Three hundred years ago there was little but forbidding wilderness in the United States of America. Great natural resources existed, as they exist in Brazil. But there were no houses, transportation facilities, utilities, factories, institutions of learning and culture. A hundred years ago half our people were engaged in agriculture; industry was beginning to expand. Even 60 years ago there was not a single industrial research laboratory in the United States. Today we have a mature, highly diversified economy. This has been obtained by the hard work and frugal management of the American people. And of course we are proud of what we have accomplished. But we take even greater satisfaction in the means we have employed. All our progress has been protective of personal freedom, political freedom, economic freedom--in my judgment, inseparable elements of true liberty. Other nations have amassed wealth. However, in no nation, ancient or modern, totalitarian or free, have the rights of the individual been more zealously safeguarded.

Sheer material wealth can of course be accumulated, and scientific miracles can be achieved, by authoritarian methods. But let us not be misled by the boasts that fill the air. The production of goods--either capital or consumer goods--is not an end in itself, nor is it a sound criterion for judging economic and governmental systems. Production is only one element in the human enterprise on this earth. You and I believe that each of us is an inviolable spiritual entity, capable of reaching the heights of creative thought. Each is endowed with the right to build social and cultural institutions compatible with our finest instincts, and more deeply devoted to the protection of human dignity and to love of God than to the mere acquisition of material things. We see then that production, to be praiseworthy, must serve these nobler .ends. Faced with no other choice, you and we in the United States would choose poverty in freedom, rather than prosperity in slavery.

But of course we need make no such choice, for freedom in the long run yields also the most productive economic system ever devised by man. The reason for this is simple. Every human being is capable of greatness. Given opportunity and responsibility, he will reach the heights. Controlled man may become an efficient automaton, but with the limitations and the joylessness of men in lock-step parade.

The proponents of Marxism-Leninism seek to belittle the American system. They speak of the "exploited masses." Certainly anyone who has studied history knows that capitalism, in its early stages, was often exploitative. But it is ridiculous to pretend that conditions of the 18th and early 19th centuries exist today in the economic life of the United States.

Our socially-conscious private-enterprise system benefits all the people, owners and workers alike. It has resulted in high productivity, high consumption, high wages, and reasonable returns on investment. Balanced progress is our watchword.

Sao Paulo is, I think it can fairly be said, the outstanding example of Brazilian private initiative and of Brazilian balance in development. Here is a concentration of factories which produce much of what all Brazil consumes. You are now helping to provide the means by which the remainder of Brazil will similarly progress. And the rewards of your production are indeed exciting.

In freedom the Brazilian worker is happily demonstrating the joys of life under a democratic system. He knows that you do not consider the accumulation of wealth to be the privilege of a few--rather that the true aim of production is to contribute to the greater well-being of the many.

I wish that all the world could see what I have seen today in this city--a demonstration that a dynamic economy, based on private enterprise and free labor, redounds to the benefit of the worker, the consumer, the public at large and the state which embodies their sovereign will.

I am sure that your workers, as ours in the United States, have attained positions of influence, honor, and prestige. Surely the old concept of "the exploited masses" deserves to be discarded, along with the idea of state omnipotence and the divine right of kings.

I take real pleasure in noting the modest but significant contributions which United States capital has made to the prosperity of Sao Paulo and Brazil. It cannot be coincidence that this area, in which foreign capital is most heavily concentrated, is also the most prosperous in Brazil.

We too benefited much from foreign capital in the period of our development. Late in the 19th century, foreign investments in the United States were as large as those in Brazil today. In fact, I think if we should take the price of today's dollars, the investments that then were made in our country were many times the amount that I am just speaking of. But at that time the revenue of our national government was only one-third as great as yours is now.

The contributions of United States private enterprise to Brazilian development are matched in other fields. We have sought to express our friendship and our interest in your development through loans of the Export-Import Bank and other public lending institutions, through our Point IV work, the re-loaned funds derived from the sale of agricultural surpluses, our support of the international coffee pact, grants by our private foundations, and through the backing we have given President Kubitschek's imaginative Operation Pan America proposal.

Within our financial and economic capacity, we shall continue to support Brazilian development. In view of the modest part we have had in your growth, it is, then, the more heartening to see the mighty contributions which Sao Paulo is making to the majestic future of our traditional friend and ally, the United States of Brazil.

And in closing, I should like to repeat the sense of the quotation that the Governor took from Thomas Jefferson, the United States wants to march forward as a true partner and brother to Brazil, as we seek earnestly toward that brightest goal of all mankind: peace with justice.

I thank you. Thank you again.