It is a high honor to have this opportunity to participate in the discussions of this convention. In the 61 years since your first aerie was organized here in Seattle, there have been many changes – in the altered face of the community and state, in the fast moving developments in the world about us, and in the challenges we face both at home and abroad. But throughout these years of change, despite conflicts, pressures and obstacles of every kind, the members of this order have remained steadfast in their devotion to the ideals upon which they were initially founded.
They have been a driving force for improvement of working conditions, they sponsored the first old age assistance law in this state, they have continuously been in the forefront in the battle for improvement in our social welfare laws. It is fitting that we pay tribute tonight to the ideals which have dominated the Eagles from the beginning. Those ideals have enriched the lives of our fellow citizens and our community.
But you did not come to this convention to hear words of praise. I am sure you are more interested in a plan of action.
There are some cynics, to be sure, who say there is no longer any need for such action. They say there are no longer any major issues – that the battles of the past have all been won – and that we can now sit back and enjoy the achievements of the past 60 years.
But I am certain that no one in this hall agrees with that analysis. For the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won and the issues are not all gone.
On the contrary, our agenda today is, if anything, even longer than it was in the 1930's. We have not yet eliminated the malignant effects of poverty, injustice and illness from the land. We can be encouraged by the recent trend toward reduction in unemployment but we can feel no elation while over 3 million people are still searching for work – and those that are still able to receive unemployment compensation checks must get by on an average benefit check of less than $31 a week. We have not yet met the needs of nearly seven million families, in this the richest land on earth, still trying to get by on less than $2,000 a year. We have not yet met the needs of some fifteen million families housed under what the Bureau of the Census classifies as substandard conditions – of nearly seventeen million persons who are unable to purchase enough food to achieve a bare subsistence diet. We have not yet ended the waste of our natural resources – reversed the decay that is blighting so many of our major cities – or, most tragic of all, found the means of stopping man's destruction of man.
Far from being a period of resting on past achievements, the period which lies ahead confronts the American economy with an unprecedented challenge. We can no longer invoke the solutions of the past – the programs and the policies which served us so well during the last generation. For now, once again, the age of consolidation is over – and, once again, the age of change and challenge has come upon us. We are faced with a whole new set of problems – a whole new set of dimensions. We are at the edge of this nation's greatest age of expansion, growth and abundance – at the edge of a new era for our nation, our world and all mankind. Will we regard the challenge of this new age as an opportunity or as a burden? Can our government serve the future as well as the present – instead of the past? Do we recognize that we are moving into a new era – an era of new standards, new accomplishments and new opportunities?
Here at home, we are approaching the day of a two hundred million population, a six hundred billion dollar gross national product, a trillion dollar economy. These trends are recognized in our universities – they are recognized by market analysts and industrial statisticians throughout the country – and they are planning accordingly. But our government is not planning accordingly. And if the future is not grasped quickly, it may be lost to us forever.
We must now lay the groundwork for the next 25 years – just as the 73rd Congress in 1933, during the first 90 days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, laid the groundwork for the generations that followed. Long overdue is an adequate system of unemployment compensation – one which will enable the average worker to draw decent benefits for a decent period of time.
If we are to meet the challenge of the future we must modernize our unemployment insurance system. When the law was enacted 24 years ago, it offered benefits to workers large enough and long enough to enable them to pay their rent, their grocery bills and their doctor bills until work could be found. It was intended to put back in to the community at least 50 per cent of the loss in wage payments.
But a schedule of payments that was adequate 24 years ago is grossly inadequate today. Less than 20 per cent of all wages lost by unemployment are replaced today. The recent decrease in the total number of unemployed – so proudly announced by the Administration that the uncritical might think it was due to their dynamic policy of doing nothing – this decrease was accompanied by a startling and disturbing increase in the percentage of persons who have been without a job for four months or longer. In many states that means the complete exhaustion of meager benefits and reliance upon either the bounty of relatives or public assistance. That is not the choice we should offer in a country with the highest industrial capacity in the world. I believe in our programs of foreign aid and mutual security – but we should also take care of our own. And the place to begin is by enacting decent nationwide standards for unemployment compensation.
Also of growing importance is the challenge offered by the increasing number of older persons in our population. Many of you can remember when it was said that suitable provision for later life was solely an individual responsibility. It was freely predicted that if the government would assume any of these obligations the cost would be so prohibitive neither business nor government could survive.
It was in this context that you sponsored the first old age assistance law in Washington, and have urged improved social security legislation and better medical care for our senior citizens. Your aspirations have contributed toward a better life for all Americans.
But all this is only a beginning. A profound, serious and significant change has been taking place in the composition of our population during the past 50 years. There has been an extraordinary shift in the age groups. Since the Eagles were organized, our total population has doubled – but the number of 65 or over has multiplied over five times. It is estimated that in 15 years there will be 20 million people over 65. Not enough has been done to help make sure those post-retirement years are useful and happy. They cannot be happy unless they are useful – and they cannot be useful unless they are happy.
If we are to make the lives of our elder citizens full in every sense of the word, we cannot accept a national policy which condemns them to frustration, boredom, unhappiness and tensions induced by unsatisfied economic needs. It is long past time that we as a nation recognized – as the Eagles have recognized – the seriousness of their problems of unemployment, recreation, medical care, and housing. It is long past time we enacted a positive federal program for social security benefits which keep pace with the cost of living – increased research into the prevention and cure of chronic illnesses – expanded training of personnel and projects in geriatrics. There should be more concentration upon retraining of older persons who can no longer do work for which they were qualified when younger. Additional efforts must be made to eliminate the prejudices against employment of workers over forty or forty-five years of age. The treatment of its older citizens is said by anthropologists to be one of the most basic tests of how civilized a society or nation has become. The rich, powerful, democratic United States of America surely is not going to fail that test.
There are many other vital problems which we must solve if we are able to enjoy the economic growth and abundance that our technology has made possible. A necessary preliminary, however, is a military potential second to none. This means we cannot afford to determine our weapons policies by our budget policies. Here, in the home of the great Boeing aircraft plant, you stand in the forefront of the new missile age. In terms of military proximity and warning we are closer to the Soviet Union than France was to Germany in 1939. Devastation is literally minutes away. One thermonuclear bomb in the low megaton range would release more destructive energy upon this land than all the bombs dropped on both Germany and Japan during World War II. It is essential, if we are to be protected against the threat of military attack, that we reject the principle of a cheap, second-best defense. We must see that we have the money and the brainpower necessary to make our defense second to none.
Let me conclude by emphasizing one point. These problems of better government, better provision for the unemployed, the needy and the aged, making the most of our potential growth, strengthening the core of our nation and building a better, wiser, stronger America – these are not merely questions of party politics or even governmental philosophy. Today they affect the very question of survival itself.
That, after all, is the real question of our time. The hard, tough question for the next decade – for this or any other group of Americans – is whether any free society – with its freedom of choice – its breadth of opportunity – its range of alternatives – can meet the single minded advance of the Communists.
Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction – but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space and the inside of men's minds?
We travel today along a knife-edged path which requires leadership better equipped than any since Lincoln's day to make clear to our people the vast spectrum of our challenges.
In the words of Woodrow Wilson: "We must neither run with the crowd nor deride it – but seek sober counsel for it – and for ourselves."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 903, "Convention of Fraternal Order of Eagles, Seattle, Washington, 20 June 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.