Remarks at the Opening Session of the White House Conference on Children.

Mr. Secretary, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen, all of the delegates to this Conference:

Before I begin my prepared text, I would like to express my deep appreciation to all of you who have come to this Conference, and also for the very special entrance that was arranged on this occasion.

One of the great privileges for the President of the United States, of course, is to hear "Hail to the Chief." I have heard it many times since I became President almost 2 years ago. I have never heard it played better than by the East Atlanta School from over here, an elementary school.

Speaking as one that played a very poor second violin in a high school orchestra, I appreciate all of the work and the talent that is represented therein by the leader who was able to develop those talents.

I am very proud tonight to share with six of my predecessors, starting with Theodore Roosevelt and, most recently, Dwight Eisenhower, the honor of convening a White House Conference on Children. And I take very special pleasure in. welcoming all of you here.

Our concern at this Conference is with the well-being of 55 million individual human beings who happen to be children under the age of 14, and who represent, one-fourth of all the people in America.

Now when I refer to them as 55 million individual human beings, I mean to put the emphasis precisely on that--on the fact that nothing is so intensely personal as the private world of a child; nothing so removed from the statistical abstractions of a chart or a computer.

In talking about our children, we are talking about our world and about its future, but in the most special, the most human, the most individual sense of anything we do or consider.

The refreshing little flower emblem that has been used as the symbol of this Conference is a reminder to us of one very simple and very basic truth: that the world of the child is different and very special, and full of promise and very much alive.

It also reminds us that whether we speak of a community of 200 people or of 200 million, the important thing to remember is that no two are alike.

I am sure some of you have heard the little television commercial, a musical one, that has the little ditty that goes: "No one else in the whole human race is exactly like you."

Because of this, what is right for one child may be all wrong for another.

Here in Washington, in government, we have a tendency to think about things in the mass, about cities of more than a million or less than a million, of people over 65 or those under 21, or about whole school systems or health delivery systems.

Just yesterday, I spent a great part of the day working on next year's Federal budget, on billions for this and billions for that, and how perhaps $100 million could be saved here in order to do something we want to do someplace else; trying to balance the needs and hopes of dozens of Government departments and agencies that operate thousands of programs involving millions of people. And sometimes, after a day like that, I find myself reflecting on both the necessity and then the impersonality of it all. Budgets have to be made and they have to be followed because that is the way the real world operates. And governments have to deal with great masses of people because this is the way governments operate.

But how far removed this can get us from the perspective of the individual person. How great a tendency there is in government to lose track of people as people, to get so wrapped up in charts and projections and columns of numbers that we lose sight of what ultimately it is all about.

If there is one thought more than any other that I would like to leave with you, all of the 4,000 delegates to this Conference, it is this: to remember that what matters is one person, one child, unlike any other, with his own hopes and his own dreams and his own fears, who lives at the center of his own separate and very personal world.

I am sure that each one of you is here taking part in this great Conference because you do care not only about children in the mass but about the child. I hope you will help us in government to keep the focus on that one child.

One of the special glories of America is that we are a nation of individuals and individualists. We produce people, not automatons. We recognize diversity not as an evil but as a virtue. We turn not to one institution alone but to many to perform the great tasks of achieving a better life for all.

We recognize, of course, a role for government, for the church, the home, the school, the voluntary agencies that are so distinctive a feature of American life. And we do know that this is a case in which individual cooks, and additional cooks, do enrich the broth.

There is, of course, the large and vital role government must play in insuring the best possible opportunity for the child.

Tonight I would like to speak briefly to you about just one Government program, a Federal Government program presently being considered by the United States Senate, which I believe particularly deserves your support.

The great issue concerning family and child welfare in the United States is the issue of family income.

For generations, social thinkers have argued that there is such a thing as a minimum necessary family income, and that no family should be required to subsist on less. It is a simple idea, but very profound in its consequences.

On August 11, 1969, over a year ago, I proposed that for the first time in America's history we in this great, rich country establish a floor under the income of every American family with children. We called it the family assistance plan. It has, in turn, been called by others the most important piece of domestic legislation to be introduced in Congress in two generations.

In terms of its consequences for children, I think it can be fairly said to be the most important piece of social legislation in the history of this Nation. I am sure you know the story of the legislation. In April, it passed the House of Representatives by almost 2 to 1. Then it became mired down in the Senate. It is still stuck there, but it is not lost. There is still an opportunity for the 91st Congress to change the world of American children by enacting family assistance.

In these closing days of that Congress, I want to emphasize once again unequivocally my personal support for welfare reform this year, and to urge your support for welfare reform this year.

In the last 10 years alone--listen to this--the number of children on welfare in America has tripled to more than 6 million. Think of it--6 million children -- 6 million children caught up in an unfair and tragic system that rewards people for not working instead of providing the incentives for self-support and independence; that drives families apart, instead of bringing them together; that brings welfare snoopers into their homes, that robs them of pride and destroys dignity. I believe we should change that.

The welfare system has become a consuming, monstrous, inhuman outrage against the community, against the family, against the individual, and most of all against the very children--it has become an outrage most of all against the very children who are our concern, your concern, in this great Conference, the children it is meant to help.

We have taken long strides--not enough, but long strides--toward ending racial segregation in America. But welfare segregation can be almost as insidious.

Think what it means to a sensitive child.

Let me give you one example. My daughter Tricia does tutoring at an inner-city school here in Washington. She tells me of her deep concern each day to see the welfare children herded into an auditorium for a free lunch, while the others bring their lunches and eat in the classroom.

Now we have to find ways of ending this sort of separation. The point is not the quality of the lunch. As a matter of fact, she tells me that the free lunch is probably nutritionally better than the ones the others bring from home.

The point is the stigmatizing by separation of the welfare children as welfare children.

I remember back in the Depression years--and if this dates me, if you can remember, you can remember, too-- f the 1930's, how deeply I felt about the plight of those people my own age who used to come into my father's store when they couldn't pay the bill, because their fathers were out of work, and how this seemed to separate them from others in our school.

None of us had any money in those days, but those in families where there were no jobs and there was nothing but the little that relief then offered suffered from more than simply going without. What they suffered was a hurt to their pride that many carried with them for the rest of their lives.

I also remember my older brother. He had tuberculosis for 5 years. The hospital, the doctor bills were more than we could afford.

In the 5 years before he died, my mother never bought a new dress. We were poor by today's standards, and I suppose we were poor even by Depression standards.

But the wonder of it was that we didn't know it. Somehow my mother and father, with their love, their pride, their courage, and their self-sacrifice, were able to create a spirit of self-respect in our family so that we had no sense of being inferior to others who had more.

Today's welfare child is not so fortunate. His family may have enough to get by on, and, as a matter of fact, they may have even more in a material sense than many of us had in those Depression years. But no matter how much pride and courage his parents have, he knows they are poor and he can feel that soul-stifling patronizing attitude that follows the dole.

Perhaps he watches while a caseworker--a caseworker who himself is trapped in a system that wastes an policing talents that could be used for helping--he watches while this caseworker is forced by the system to poke around in the child's apartment, checking on how the money is spent, or whether his mother might be hiding his father in the closet.

This sort of indignity is hard enough on the mother. It is enough of a blow to her pride and to her self-respect. But think of what it must mean to a sensitive child.

We have a chance now to give that child a chance--a chance to grow up without having his schoolmates throw in his face the fact that he is on welfare and without making him feel that he is therefore something less than other children.

Our task is not only to lift people out of poverty but from the standpoint of the child our task is to erase the stigma of welfare and illegitimacy and apartness, and to restore pride and dignity and self-respect for every child in America.

I don't contend before this sophisticated audience of critics that our family assistance plan is perfect. Secretary Richardson, who has been before the Senate, will be able to answer questions that you may put to him because he has been before a very, very critical body.

But I am only going to suggest this: In this confused, complex, and intensely human area no perfect program is possible, and certainly none is possible that will please everybody. But this is a good program, and a program immensely better than what we have now, and vastly important to the future of this country-and especially to the neediest of our children. It is time to get rid of the present welfare program and get a new one, and now is the time to do it.

For the United States Senate to adjourn without enacting this measure would be a tragedy of missed opportunity for America and particularly for the children of America.

I dwelt at some length on family assistance because of its vital and even historic importance and because now is the time for Senate decision.

This represents, as I indicated, one of the things the Federal Government can do to give children a better opportunity.

There are others: our programs for the right to read, our emphasis on the first 5 years of life through the new Office of Child Development in the Department of HEW, on education reform, on food and nutrition, many others where we are trying to meet what I believe is a great responsibility that rests on the Federal Government.

I know in this Conference you will have many new ideas for things we in Government, Federal Government, might do.

We shall do our best to meet our responsibility in those areas where the Federal Government can best do what needs to be done. But I would also stress that equally and often more important is what States and communities do, and the school, the church, the family, the mass media, voluntary organizations, each of us as individuals. For the child is not raised by government; the child is raised by his family. His character is shaped by those people he encounters in his daily life.

I think especially of the millions of Americans who give their time, their energy, and their heart to volunteer activities working with children. You know them in your communities--thousands, hundreds of thousands all over America.

Before becoming President, I served as national chairman of the Boys' Clubs of America. I saw from the inside the wonderful work organizations like the Boys' Clubs and others do, and also the spirit and the dedication of the people who make them possible. There are churches and service organizations, hundreds, thousands of organizations all across America, helping. They can help more.

And most important, these volunteer organizations can do what government cannot do: they can give heart and inspire hope, and they can address themselves not simply to children as a group but to that one special, precious child.

Before closing tonight, I would like to leave with you a few very personal reflections from perspective of the office I hold.

A President of the United States always thinks about the legacy that he would like to leave the country from the years he serves in this office. And I think often about that in terms of what I can leave for America's children.

I know that the first thing I would like to do for them is to bring peace to America and to the world. And here I speak not just of ending the war, but of ending it in a way that will contribute to a lasting peace, so that theirs, at last, can be what we have not yet had in this century-a generation of peace.

I speak not only of the absence of war, but also of a peace in which we can have an open world in which all the peoples of the world will have a chance to know one another, to communicate with one another, to respect one another.

The second thing that as President I would like to leave for America's children is a strong, productive, and creative economy---one that can provide every family with a floor under its income higher than what is now the ceiling for most of the world's peoples.

I want to leave them an economy that provides jobs for all with equal and full opportunity, jobs producing not for war but producing for peace.

And beyond this, I want, as you want, America's children in the last generation of this century to have the best education, the best health, the best housing that any children have had anywhere, anytime.

I want them to enjoy clean air and clean water and open spaces, to restore the heritage of nature that is rightfully theirs.

Although we will always have differences here in America, because this is a very diverse country, I hope that government can help achieve a better understanding among the generations, the races, the religions, among those with different values and different life styles.

I would like to do all this, do it in a climate of freedom.

I want this generation of children to develop a new sense of patriotism.

Edmund Burke pointed out that patriotism translated literally means love of country. And he went on further to say that for us to love our country, our country must be lovely.

We do love our country--most of us-but we know it has many unlovely features. I want young Americans to learn to love America, not because it is the richest country, or the strongest, or merely because they were born here, but because America is truly a good country and becoming better, because it is truly a lovely country.

I am convinced that in my term as President we've made some progress towards these goals that I've outlined, and I think that we, by the end, will have made more progress. But even if all these goals could be fully achieved, it still would not meet our duty to our children.

No matter what government does for people, no matter what we provide in the way of income, housing, or food, we still have not reached the essential element as far as a full and meaningful life is concerned, because what is most important is that every person in this country must be able to feel that he counts.

We have got to let 55 million very young Americans, as well as those a little older perhaps, know that what they do matters, that their ideas count, that the country needs their thoughts, their creativity, their contributions.

I recall Dr. Walter Judd ¹ once said that he loved his daughter very much, and that when she asked him to help her with her arithmetic, he really could do it much better than she could, the easiest thing for him to do would be simply to do it for her. But because he loved her, he would not do it for her. He helped her learn to do it herself.

¹ Dr. Walter H. Judd, noted lecturer, physician, and missionary, and Member of Congress from Minnesota from 1943 to 1962.

While this Conference will and should make recommendations as to what government can do for children, about how we can make life better for them, let us remember that what is most important is to provide the opportunity for each of our children to participate, for each child.

It is not just a matter of what more government is going to do for him, but how his own life is going to be enriched so that he can do something for his fellow man.

A sense of dignity, a sense of identity, of pride, of self-respect--these no government can provide. Government can help to create better conditions. It can help remove obstacles to the child's development. It can mobilize research and provide resources. It can offer advice and guidance. But all these only help to make success possible.

The love, the understanding, the compassion, the human concern that touch the child and make him what he can become--these are provided by people, people like you.

In the way we shape the character of the next generation, we test our own character as a people. In the rigor and the realism with which we approach the needs of the next generation, of each and every child in that generation, we test our devotion to humanity and our belief in ourselves.

I am confident we will meet those tests. And I am grateful, very grateful, to all of you here for the concern you have shown, the dedication you have demonstrated, in helping us to do so.

Your recommendations at the conclusion of your Conference on Friday will receive the most careful consideration by the various agencies to which they will be referred and by the President of the United States, not only because we in this administration respect your view but also because we share your concern. We share your concern about our Nation's children, our children. We share your concern that our children should receive the best that America can give them.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, having concluded my formal remarks, I would like to give you a very special invitation and explain the nature of it.

When I learned about this Conference, I suggested to your Chairman, Steve Hess, that Mrs. Nixon and I would like to receive all of the delegates to the Conference at the White House. He said, "There are 4,000."

I checked with our staff to see whether that would be possible, and they figured out that based on an experience over the past 2 years of moving receiving lines as fast as we possibly could, it would take 6 hours and 18 minutes to get 4,000 people through the line.

I said we couldn't do that because I thought the people at the end of the line might get tired by the end of 6 hours and 18 minutes.

But I do think you should know that. tomorrow the Christmas decorations at the White House will be completed. Those who have seen them think they are the most beautiful that they have ever seen.

We have various nights blocked out. Monday night is the Congress; Tuesday night is the Congress; Thursday night are the diplomatic children, and so forth. But Wednesday night belongs to you. We have arranged for a special tour. Mr. Hess and his staff will arrange the buses and all the other various means of transportation that are needed to get you there.

We have arranged a special tour of the White House to see the Christmas lights and we hope that some members of our family can be there at least part of the time to greet some of you who are here.

Thank you very much. We wish you the very best.