Remarks to College Students Employed by the Government During the Summer

Mr. Macy, my friends:

Unaccustomed as Lady Bird is to having 10,000 hungry young people drop in for lunch, I want you to know that Ambassador Taylor and I are delighted to see all of you.

I suppose that I should introduce myself first--I am the man who turns out the lights around this house. In fact, I am the only father in the country whose personal economy drive has the full and enthusiastic support of his daughters' boyfriends.

It is a great pleasure to have you here at the White House today. Out on these grounds where you now stand, great men have walked and relaxed, and made many very important decisions affecting this Nation and the world. I won't name all of them who have also held some news conferences out here, but Jefferson walked here, and Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed this view, and so did Harry Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But no sight was ever more gratifying to any President than to see these grounds filled with bright, young, hopeful Americans keenly and vitally interested in their Government, and in their system of government and what makes it work.

If you like all that you have seen this summer, if you feel that the agencies where you work are doing the best possible job they can do, then your time in Washington this year has been wasted.

We must trust our system and we must respect it, but we must never, never be content with its performance. If you want to change what you have seen this summer, and if you want to improve upon it, and if you believe this Government can and should do a better job for all the people, then I am proud of you. I am proud to say welcome to the club.

America needs young people who want change, because America was conceived and America was brought into being by young people who believed the condition of man could be changed. And that is what we believe today.

We believe that the world can be made a safer and a saner and a more peaceful and a more principled place for men and women to live in dignity and to work. We believe that mankind can enjoy on this earth a finer and a fuller and a richer life of opportunity and fulfillment. And this is what we stand for, and this is what we work for, and this is what we fight for all around the world.

As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at home--and we aim to get it.

I am not disturbed by what some describe as the restlessness among young Americans today, because I share that feeling with you. I want to clear off and clear out the agenda of the past. I want to get ready for the works and the promises of tomorrow. And I know you want to, too.

What we make of tomorrow depends very heavily upon what we make of our Government today. As a Nation, we cannot fulfill our great promise if we allow government to grow unwieldy and uncontrolled and undisciplined, never permitting two employees to handle what three or four can do. Big government is not the end that we seek. Good government is. And good government requires of us self-discipline, self-control, and above all, self-respect.

So I want you to work in and with your Government, sharing your talents and your abilities and your skills with your people. But I do not want Government to monopolize these assets or to be their only outlet.

If Federal employment the last 10 years had gone up as fast as your population has grown, we would have almost 2,800,000 civilian employees instead of 2,400,000. If Federal payrolls had grown as fast as the State and local payrolls have grown, we would have 3,800,000 Federal job holders. For a free dynamic private society, that is too

Your Federal Government does not have to be fat to be faithful to its trust. It does not have to be loose in order to be liberal. And let me remind you, this year we are spending 64 percent more--$4.3 billion more--on health, on education, on housing, on the war on poverty, on manpower training, yet the total Federal budget is up only $2 billion more than last year. Why? Because we have, and we shall continue to weed out the outmoded and the obsolete and the outdated programs and costs to make room for your America, the America of the 20th century, the America of tomorrow. This we must continue--and we shall.

Robert Lowell, the poet, doesn't like everything around here. But I like one of his lines where he wrote "for the world which seems to lie out before us like a land of dreams." Well, in this great age--and it is a great age--the world does seem to lie before us like a land of dreams. We know more than man has ever known before. We know about the distant planet Mars, and the nearer worlds of man's own mind. And we think, as Emerson once put it, "that our civilization is near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock crowing and the morning star."

Yes, this is a new day in America. A new day in the world. And we are only in the early morning of it. So I hope that you are even half so excited and thrilled and challenged by the opportunities before you as I am. I hope you believe, as I do, that this is a very rare and wondrous moment to make this great Government serve the cause of all humanity. And I hope that you feel as I do, that you will want to be a little part of that service.

It was back in World War I when a delegation from the American Chemical Society called upon the Secretary of War and offered the services of the Nation's chemists to the war effort. The then Secretary of War thanked them, and he asked them to call the next day while he looked into the matter. The next day the Secretary expressed appreciation for the offer, but he said it was unnecessary. He had looked into the matter and he found that the War Department already had a chemist.

That was just World War I. Today, your Government has quite a different attitude. We want, we need, we are eager to have the best minds and the best talents, and the best men and the best women. One out of ten Federal employees is now a professional: 75,000 engineers, 42,000 physicians or dentists or health technicians, 30,000 physical scientists, 24,000 biological scientists, and many more, including 10,000 lawyers.

So whatever your chosen pursuit or profession, we need you, and we need more like you. We are anxious to see you dedicate some of your life and time to the work of making this a better, and a stronger, and a more just, and a more decent, and a more livable society.

If you feel like protesting, I hope you will. I have been protesting all my life--protesting against poverty, protesting against illness, protesting against ignorance, protesting against injustice and discrimination, and against waste, and above all, against war. And I expect to continue, and I expect you to continue, until all of these evils are overcome in our land and around the world.

But I would commend to you a very fine thought expressed the other day by the son of Mayor Robert Wagner of New York, who advised young people on the campuses to remember, and I quote, "that there should not be a battle between themselves and society, but an attempt by individuals to overcome all that is stultifying and dehumanizing in society."

America has not been made strong and has not been made successful by generations of young puppets who did as they were told and who reacted as they were supposed to react, and who accepted just what was offered to them. So whether you enter Government service or private pursuits, I hope that you will always think for yourselves and act for yourselves, and seek change for yourselves and your generation, always honoring the rights of others as you respect the responsibilities of yourselves.

It is delightful to have been here with you this morning, and I want you to meet some of those who came with me, before I have to leave. First, I have been talking with a good and wise and dedicated public servant of this country and its ideals for more than 45 long years. He has gone through periods of crisis for this country at home and abroad, always faithfully discharging any responsibilities placed upon him. I consider him one of America's most outstanding, number one citizen--Ambassador Maxwell Taylor.

I think you know Mrs. Johnson, and our daughter Lynda Bird.

Thank you so much for coming. I hope you will stay as long as you like.