Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

School 30 years ago. She certainly wouldn't have been the runner-up, one of the two selected. And she wouldn't be looking forward to the day when that child could go to college.

When the chairman of the Texas Board of Regents told me yesterday that he just floated $4 million worth of a bond issue, because the buildings were bursting at the seams and they just had to have more facilities because so many more people were going to college, I thought of the nights that we worked all night long on payrolls for Texas colleges in order to keep NYA kids in school in 1935 and 1936.

Yesterday the Governor 10 told me of the great advance that had taken place in our educational system in this State. He rode home with us last night. He expects to come back tonight, along with Melvin and Mrs. Winters, probably Judge and Mrs. Moursund, and maybe Judge Heath, a friend of ours who has an adjoining ranch and is chairman of the Board of Regents of the University.

We will sit around and count our blessings. But the blessing that I consider best is the opportunity that I have today—that I never had before-as leader of the people of this country in waging a war on the dreadful enemies of all mankind-disease, ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, ugliness, and so forth-and to wage it effectively.

The Congress has given me a good many of those, too. I'll be frank and candidof course I am disappointed that we couldn't get the demonstration cities bill through just as I recommended it. That is human

nature.

Most of you like to have your stories printed just as you write them. But we don't have that kind of system in Govern

10 John Connally, Governor of Texas.

ment. I can't resign, as you can, if your editor changes your story too much and inserts different facts.

We had a $2.3 billion bill for 6 years. Congress has said that we will give you in effect $1 billion for 3 years, that is close to what you recommended. If you do your first 3 years right, then we have no doubt

but that we can move on.

So, I am grateful for that. It took me 20 months to get rent supplements-but I have it. We are on our way. That is something we haven't had in the last 30 years-the period I am talking about.

It has been a long, slow process to get our Teacher Corps so we can go into these areas. I know what we can do. We can get our civil rights bill, our housing, our demonstration cities, our urban renewal, our rent supplements, and our Teacher Corps.

DENVER

[4.] Look at what you saw in Denver yesterday. I told Senator Dirksen about that this morning. I said, "When they ask you, 'How can these cities handle some of their problems?' the first thing I would say is, 'Go and see Denver.''

You drove through the places where you would expect to see the ghettoes in Denver and you saw modest homes. I said to some of my people that it looked very much like my mother's home in Austin, Texas, a threebedroom little home with one bath, with a beautiful lawn, small, attractive, with flowers growing in the windows, well kept with great pride, and happy people living in it.

It would have been difficult to believe that those were Negro homes, if you hadn't seen them standing there and if the Major and the Governor of two different parties hadn't told you that they had, in their judgment, the fairest housing bill of any State in the Union.

They had committees to control housing. The Scripps-Howard publisher and the Denver Post publisher, Mr. Hoyt,11 told me how hard they worked to have these committees go around and help with these problems, encouraging home ownership.

He told how the Negroes had taken really a disproportionate share of their income and put it into home purchase, because they had such pride in the place where they lived.

They had no problem with outsiders coming in and staging big marches and pickets with signs. Some people just felt Denver had to have one. So, some of them came in and urged one. They said it was the biggest flop of the year because these people have their homes and they are happy.

In some of the areas 70, 80, 90 percent of those homes we saw yesterday were inhabited by Negroes and by Mexicans and by people who had a part in home ownership.

My father supported Jim Ferguson for Governor in 1914. He was running for office on building more red schoolhouses, building better roads to our marketplaces and to our cities, and having a tenant purchase program where a tenant could go and buy his home. That is what caused me to put in my Denver speech yesterday that a man who is expected to cultivate, plant, grow, chop, and pick cotton-if he has a chance to get a part of that two bales-has a little better attitude and his work and production are a little bit better than if the landlord gets it all.

BIPARTISAN SUPPORT

[5.] You must remember that this is not exclusively a personal or a party achievement. I had almost a third of the Republican votes in the election. Dirksen said yesterday, "Why did you take all of my Repub

11 Palmer Hoyt, publisher of the Denver Post.

lican Senators off?"

I said, "We believe in equal treatment. We had three Democratic Senators and three Republican Senators. We had Senator Church and two Democrats from Oklahoma. We had Senator Jordan and two Republicans from Colorado. The things we are doing, we are doing together."

I was very pleased that in most of the places people identified themselves as Republicans. Officeholders, Governors, Governors, Congressmen, Senators, editors, and other people came up and were pleased with our approach to the peace problem in our reactor speech to the Soviet Union. They were pleased with what I said in Denver.

A man on the stage came up and spoke along this line. They are helping us with that.

The whole New England trip was dreamed up, planned, and envisioned by the dean of the Republicans in the Senate. We never got that over, apparently.

Senator Aiken asked us on the boat to come up and dedicate this project and see the Prime Minister. Then they urged us to come to upstate New York. That is not strictly a Democratic stronghold. We had, I believe, on that trip, four Republican Governors and two Democrats. Someone got the idea that we were using Republicans to elect Democrats.

I didn't see it that way because I didn't see that Governor Rockefeller contributed anything to the election of a Democrat. He participated in the discussions that both Democrats and Republicans are vitally interested in: pollution, rural development, and demonstration cities. So did Senator Javits. So did Senator Aiken. It was a Republican law. The Republicans picked up the law Senator Aiken had written. Our Budget Director vetoed it, was against it until I read on the ticker the UP story saying that the

Budget Director had appeared against it. I asked him, "Why? That sounded like a pretty good bill to be for." We had an argument and I won it. So, he went back and changed his testimony and testified that we would support the bill. We did. The first grant went not to elect a Democratic Congressman. It went to a Republican Senator in a Republican State. We did have a Democratic Governor who appeared on the platform. We had a Republican Senator make a speech.

We carried it out just as Senator Aiken outlined it.

The only point I want to make is that these efforts that we are making toward peace, to deter aggression, to drive out poverty, disease, ignorance, illiteracy, ugliness, and waste of resources in the conservation fieldI do not have a patent on them. Although they have occupied and been the dreams of my family and of me all of my adult life, they are not partisan.

I am seeing some of them come true because people of both parties supported me, believing that I wouldn't be deeply partisan. I don't think I have been. That is because the people of both parties are helping us today.

Senator Javits is just as enthusiastic about demonstration cities as I am. Senator Aiken is just as much of an enthusiast for a better rural life in rural communities as I am. As a matter of fact, they reported our food bill yesterday out of committee by 11 to 1, I believe.

Most of our votes have been nonpartisan. We do have some partisanship on motions to recommit. I have told you about that: where they can really get up and denounce the program and say it "ought to be recommitted so that we could make it a little better." It's a delaying tactic.

That is human nature. I understand that.

I am practical and I don't object to it-provided on final passage they vote for the program they denounced. And that has been happening reasonably well.

CURRENT CONGRESSIONAL ACTIONS

[6.] I had a list of our progress this week which we will get for you in a minute. We had a smashing victory last week in passing the demonstration cities bill. The head count showed 41 to 39. We passed it nearly 2 to 1, because some men came over we didn't expect.

This week we passed minimum wage. We now have over 50 bills that have come to the President. I signed the legislative appropriations bill this morning.

I have gone rather fully into responding to your question about why I am so pleased on my birthday. It is because I am seeing these dreams come true. They won't all come true today, this week, this month, or even during my administration.

But in terms of what President Kennedy said in his inaugural address,12 a good many folks in this country are asking not what their country can do for them, but what they can do for their country. And they are doing it for their country.

This week we had an expanded, enlarged, additional authority Peace Corps bill. We had the criminal package bill on the obstruction of justice and witness immunity. That is very important. Former Attorney General Kennedy recommended that. Attorney General Katzenbach recommended that. I urged that upon the Congress, that somebody had to do something about it and we did something about it this week.

There is the minimum wage bill. I remember in President Eisenhower's ad

[blocks in formation]

ministration we had a problem. He wanted only 90 cents. We recommended a dollar. Now it is $1.60. We are making progress.

That came about because I remember Mr. Dubinsky telling me about garment workers, working for 10 cents or 12 cents an hour. We had women shelling pecans in Texas, when I voted for the first minimum wage bill almost 30 years ago, at 8 cents an hour. They received 60 cents a day.

So I get great satisfaction from seeing those things going to the Congress and being passed. We had the food for freedom. bill passed 11 to 1 out of the Agriculture Committee. That means that we can do something about poverty not only in this country-with our lunches and hot breakfasts and things of that kind-but in other countries, where we kept, for example, 35 million or 40 million people in India from starving.

It takes us back to the Hoover days when we went back to Belgium to help the distressed.

We have scheduled for full action: narcotics, Teacher Corps, Department of Transportation, poverty authorization, elementary and secondary education. All of those come up in the full committees next week.

ORIGINS OF MANY PROGRAMS UNDER FRANKLIN AND THEODORE ROOSEVELT

[7] Someone said that a good many of these programs were begun under President Roosevelt's administration: education, poverty, NYA. That is true. A good many of them were also advocated by another Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt.

I am a great admirer of the contributions he made to the Nation as you can see reflected in our conservation program.

I was sent a copy of the New York Times, the front page, for the day I was born in

1908. We will show it to you later. You will see that the Presidents of that period and the President of today have a good many things in common-and we are getting some of them done now.

Before I take some more questions, I want to particularly thank all of you for the coverage yesterday-especially CBS, ABC, and NBC-for bringing the crowd, policy statements, peace appeals, and other things, live to the attention of the people.

We are not in any hurry. We want to any questions that of

take ask.

any

you want to

FAMILY PLANS FOR THE BIRTHDAY

[8.] Q. May I ask Mrs. Johnson a question?

Will any of the immediate family be with you and the President today?

MRS. JOHNSON. Lynda Bird will be here.
Q. Luci hasn't arrived yet?
MRS. JOHNSON. No.

THE PRESIDENT. Luci was going to fly down. She called me. I said that it wasn't an act of prudence for newlyweds with limited economic resources, whose fathers are sending them through school and both of them going to school, to want to fly down for my birthday.

So, instead, they are driving across the country with the top down and with the dog. It is cheaper that way-and probably more enjoyable.

Q. Did you hear from her though?
THE PRESIDENT. Yes.

HEADLINES OF 1908

[9.] Here are some headlines from the New York Times of 1908. "Roosevelt to Stop Big Man's Rascality-Instructs Farmers in Their Duties."

Q. What was the first headline? THE PRESIDENT. This is August 27, 1908. You can read it. I want to take your questions. You are not limited to 30 minutes. You can take whatever time you want, and any of you who are bored, you may leave.

I have done my work; signed the bills, letters, and messages and sent some congratulatory messages.

I am attempting to work out some details about President Marcos' visit.13 I read a very good telegram from him this morning on the Asian thing.

Bill 14 may want to give you the general part of it. I don't care to release the text, but he can give you the feel of the White House in this development about which I have heard from other leaders throughout the world and a good many of them from throughout this country.

DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION IN OHIO

[10.] Q. Mr. President, are you going to talk today to the Democratic Committee Conference? 15

THE PRESIDENT. They called me early this morning. I neglected to tell you. They sang "Happy Birthday." They told me they had 1,200 delegates; had a united. party. I congratulated them on that.

Q. Who called and sang "Happy Birthday"?

THE PRESIDENT. The State Chairman of Ohio. They are having their convention there today. The leading Democrats of the State are there, 1,200 of them. They sang "Happy Birthday" to me over the phone. They gave a lot of applause when he asked,

[blocks in formation]

"To whom am I speaking?" I said, "Lyndon Johnson."

The fellow acted a little nervous. I think he expected to go through two or three secretaries. I got on the red line probably by mistake. He didn't understand the ranch system. Sometimes I do answer the phone here.

Then they laughed and had fun out of that. Then he told me that they had a united party, 1,200 were there, the candidate for Governor, other leading Democratic congressional candidates.

They are very anxious for me to come and tour Ohio and visit with them. I told them I would between now and election. I told them not to be concerned with reports about people not being united.

I said: "The best proof of the pudding is in the eating. You don't have to have your copy desks take a sample of 200 or 300 or 400 people somewhere. You can just get out and take a sample yourselves.

"I had a pretty good sample yesterday in Idaho which is not strictly a Democratic State; Colorado with two Republican Senators; and even last night in Oklahoma with a Republican Governor. The sample was pretty good. We will come and sample Ohio later in the year."

WESTERN STATES DEMOCRATIC CONFERENCE

[11.] Q. I didn't understand you, sir, on the situation with the western confer

ence.

THE PRESIDENT. They are going to call this afternoon at 1:30.

THE PRESIDENT'S THINKING ON FOREIGN

MATTERS

[12.] Q. Mr. President, a moment ago you used "philosophy" for your domestic

« ÎnapoiContinuă »