Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. - Lyndon B. Johnson

Invested just a few weeks ago with the trust of America's consensus, we are grasping the nettles of our society. We are not avoiding controversy to prolong the political consensus--rather, we are striving to use the consensus to resolve and to remove the political controversies that have already stood too long across the path of our people's progress and their fulfillment.

I would like briefly, today, to mention three problems which menace man's welfare and will threaten it even when armed destruction and war are things of the past. They are the problems of poverty, of disease, and of diminishing natural resources. First is the problem of poverty--the growing division between the rich and poor nations. Today the per capita product of the developed countries is $1,730 a year. In the developing countries it is $143. And the gap is widening, not narrowing. Our own growth must continue. But we must find ways to step up the growth of others or we will be an increasingly isolated island of wealth in the midst of mounting misery. Second is man's struggle against disease, the focal point in his war to control the destructive forces of nature. Each year 3 million people die from tuberculosis. Each year 5 million die from dysentery, 500,000 from measles. In some countries one-sixth of the entire population suffer from leprosy. Yet, we have the knowledge to reduce the toll of these diseases, and to avert millions of separate tragedies of needless death and suffering. Third is the need to develop new resources, and new ways to use existing resources. It has been estimated that if everyone in the world were to rise to the level of living of the United States we would then have to extract about 20 billion tons of iron, 300 million tons of copper, 300 million tons of lead, and 200 million tons of zinc. These totals are well over 100 times the world's present annual rate of production.

You are a part of the conscience of our society. You are always goading. You are never satisfied with the job that is partially done. You are always working and calling for the further advancement of working people, and you speak from a point of view. You speak on behalf of values. I think you generally speak out of a deep commitment to justice at the working place, to self-government in economic life, to an improvement in our society through a continuing improvement in the lot and opportunity of individual working persons and their families. So your strength and your great influence flows from the belief of American labor that a just society can best be built within the framework of democratic institutions and through the free processes of a free country.