grees, with initial emphasis on teacher training. It would replace and absorb the present 4-year District of Columbia Teachers College.

The children of the Nation's Capital have been largely denied opportunities, available to high school graduates in the States, to continue their education beyond high school in publicly supported, low-cost educational institutions. Higher education should be made a universal opportunity for all young people-the Nation's Capital should set the pace, not lag behind. The Congress has abundantly demonstrated its concern with education, and I hope that the proposed bill will receive its prompt and favorable consideration.

S. MESSAGE RELATIVE TO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AREA

REDEVELOPMENT ACT, MARCH 25, 1965

(Excerpts)

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A wide array of programs and weapons has been called into action to make sure no American is denied opportunity because of his race, or lack of education, or the poverty of his birth.

As our people more fully realize their human potential, we must be sure that the economic potential in all areas and regions is also realized. Indeed, in order to be fully effective, education programs, health programs, the programs of the war on poverty, and many other activities require complementary efforts to promote sound economic conditions and the proper physical environment.

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Worst of all, the distressed area is usually caught in a web of circumstances which block progress and lead to further decline.

Young people are forced to leave school earlier to help support their families, thus depriving themselves of needed skills and knowledge. Many young people must leave families and homes behind them in search of greater opportunity, stripping the area of badly needed skill and energy. **

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As income goes down, these areas are less and less able to support schools, hospitals and other public facilities needed to train their people and otherwise equip them to meet the demands of modern life. They are often too poor to provide the public structures-from roads to water-needed to attract new business and new jobs. The result is a steadily mounting toll in human poverty and retardation of the Nation's progress.

T. REMARKS UPON SIGNING THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1965, APRIL 11, 1965

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome to this little school of my childhood many of my former schoolmates and many who went to school to me at Cotulla and Houston and San Marcos, as well as some of my dear friends from the educational institutions of this area.

My Attorney General tells me that it is legal and constitutional to sign this act on Sunday, even on Palm Sunday. My minister as

sured me that the Lord's day will not be violated by making into law a measure which will bring mental and moral benefits to millions of our young people.

So I have chosen this time and this place for two reasons.

First, I do not wish to delay by a single day the program to strengthen this Nation's elementary and secondary schools. I devoutly hope that my sense of urgency will be communicated to Secretary Celebrezze, Commissioner Keppel, and the other education officers throughout the country who will be responsible for carrying out this program.

Second, I felt a very strong desire to go back to the beginnings of my own education-to be reminded and to remind others of that magic time when the world of learning began to open before our eyes.

In this one-room schoolhouse Miss Katie Deadrich taught eight grades at one and the same time. Come over here, Miss Katie, and sit by me, will you. Let them see you. I started school when I was 4 years old, and they tell me, Miss Kate, that I recited my first lessons while sitting on your lap.

From the very beginnings as a nation, we have felt a fierce commitment to the ideal of education for everyone. It fixed itself into our democratic creed.

Over a century and a quarter ago, the President of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, proclaimed education as "The guardian genius of democracy. The only dictator that freemen acknowledge. And the only security that freemen desire."

But President Lamar made the mistaken prophecy education would be an issue "in which no jarring interests are involved and no acrimonious political feelings excited." For too long, political acrimony held up our progress. For too long children suffered while jarring interests caused stalemate in the efforts to improve our schools. Since 1946, Congress tried repeatedly, and failed repeatedly, to enact measures for elementary and secondary education.

Now, within the past 3 weeks, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 263 to 153, and the Senate, by vote of 73 to 18, have passed the most sweeping educational bill ever to come before Congress. It represents a major new commitment of the Federal Government to quality and equality in the schooling that we offer our young people. I predict that all of those of both parties of Congress who supported the enactment of this legislation will be remembered in history as men and women who began a new day of greatness in American society. We are delighted that Senator McCarthy could be speaking at the University of Texas yesterday, and he came up and had lunch with me today, and is returning to Washington with me at 7:30 in the morning. Senator McCarthy is an old friend of mine from Minnesota. Stand up, Senator, and let them see you. He has been working for this educational bill ever since the first day he came to the House of Representatives, and ever since he has been in the Senate.

I am delighted to have another good friend of mine who came down here to spend the evening with me, and who is returning in the morning, the distinguished majority leader of the House, without whose efforts we would never have passed this bill-Carl Albert of Oklahoma.

By passing this bill, we bridge the gap between helplessness and hope for more than 5 million educationally deprived children in America.

We put into the hands of our youth more than 30 million new books, and into many of our schools their first libraries.

We reduce the terrible time lag in bringing new teaching techniques into the Nation's classrooms.

We strengthen State and local agencies which bear the burden and the challenge of better education.

And we rekindle the revolution-the revolution of the spirit against the tyranny of ignorance.

As a son of a tenant farmer, I know that education is the only valid passport from poverty.

As a former teacher-and, I hope, a future one-I have great expectations of what this law will mean for all of our young people.

As President of the United States, I believe deeply no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.

To each and everyone who contributed to this day, the Nation is indebted.

On Tuesday afternoon we will ask the Members of the House and Senate, who were instrumental in guiding this legislation through the Congress, to meet with us at a reception in the White House.

So it is not the culmination but only the commencement of this journey. Let me urge, as Thomas Jefferson urged his fellow countrymen one time to, and I quote, "Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people ***"

We have established the law. Let us not delay in putting it to work.

U. COMMUNICATION REGARDING AMENDMENTS TO THE APPROPRIATIONS REQUEST FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WEL FARE, APRIL 22, 1965

(Excerpt)

I have the honor to transmit herewith for the consideration of the Congress amendments to the request for appropriations transmitted in the budget for 1966 in the amount of $1,345,479,000 for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Under new legislation just enacted by the Congress, these funds will launch the drive for full educational opportunity for all our schoolchildren.

The new legislation begins a new era in American education. It will help to educate the 5 million children of the poor, bring the newest textbooks to classrooms across the land, speed introduction of new and more effective teaching into the schools, foster learning research, and strengthen the States in fulfillment of their leadership role in education. These programs must not be delayed.

V. STATEMENT UPON SIGNING THE MANPOWER DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING ACT, APRIL 26, 1965

Members of the Cabinet, Members of the Congress, ladies and gentlemen: several weeks ago I was privileged to sign the educational legislation that was enacted so promptly by this hard-working Congress. As I said at that time, I believe that the education bill will be the most important measure that I shall ever sign into public law.

This legislation before me this morning is a wise and necessary companion to our efforts in the educational field.

The Manpower Development and Training Program has already proved itself decisively with a most impressive record.

In 3 years, training has been authorized for 340,000 individuals. Another 67,000 have been made employable through special projects helping them overcome what would otherwise be lifetime handicaps.

I was in South Carolina last week and the then distinguished former Governor of that State told me he had in training some 7,000-odd trainees, and of those 7,000-odd that had finished their training, he had already secured jobs for more than 5,000 of them.

As a nation, much of our strength comes from our dedication to wise and prudent policies for conserving our resources, but the most valuable of these are human resources. By this program we are rejecting the wastage, and the erosion, and the loss of human talent and human ability.

So I am very pleased that this program has worked so remarkably well. We have reached down into the ranks of the hard core of unemployed, and we have given men and women training to equip them for useful and productive jobs. The results thus far show that threefourths of those trained have found employment-three-fourths of the total number of people who are taxeaters have now become taxpayers. If this program is to work successfully it requires, as do all of our efforts, the support and the cooperation particularly of business, of labor, of every department of the Federal Government, and of all of our communities throughout the Nation.

We must make certain that there are jobs which graduates of this program can fill. I am determined as President that this administration will make every possible effort to assure such jobs. We have a Cabinet Committee of the highest level devoting their efforts to this end. This Cabinet Committee is chaired by the distinguished Vice President, who for many years has showed his concern for human resources. Along with him sit the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Wirtz, and the Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Connor.

Because of the huge number of employers that they deal with, I am asking this morning Secretary McNamara and Mr. Webb to join this Committee, to visit some of these training programs, to interview some of the trainees, to relay this information to contractors with whom they deal, and to attempt to formulate with this Committee key programs for certain types of training where the graduates can fit into the contractors' employment pattern.

We have had some very good economic news the first quarter of this year, and some particularly good news on the employment front.

But summer is just ahead of us, and hundreds of thousands of young people will be out of school and again they will be looking for jobs. So I hope to appeal to every employer in this country, private and public, to take the time to apply effort and imagination and responsible civic spirit to the task of bringing into being the jobs that we need to fill the needs of our society.

America has always been the land of opportunity and we must make sure that this is a fact and not just a slogan. This vital extension of the Manpower Development and Training Act, which the Congress has so wisely and so promptly acted upon, is one such effort. But this effort must be made by all of us in every segment, in every section, in every city throughout the Nation.

So I congratulate the Congress on its prompt and prudent action on this measure. I particularly thank those here with me this morning who have been the mainstays of this program, who have been the wheelhorses, who have led the way to what we find before us today. And I am especially pleased that this bill reaches me this early in the session before the end of April. If we hold to this pace, maybe all of us will get to spend the last half of the year out with the people that we mutually serve, talking to them, listening to them, setting our course to serve their aspirations more fully.

For myself, I intend to visit some of these retraining operations in the various States. I intend to ask some of the Cabinet Committee, and some of the authors of the legislation and members of the Committee who have made this possible, to go with me.

I know that the Vice President will do likewise and will give particular attention to a coordinated program with employers that will result in their helping to plan the project and will result in their being ready to fill requisitions for trainees as soon as they have completed their course.

This is a pleasant experience for me, and this is a good day, I think, for all America, because the people who have heretofore been denied jobs because of lack of training now will have an opportunity to get the training that they need so much, and the jobs that they want so much.

W. MESSAGE REQUESTING ADDITIONAL APPROPRIATION FOR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS IN VIETNAM, MAY 4, 1965

(Excerpts)

I ask the Congress to appropriate at the earliest possible moment an additional $700 million to meet mounting military requirements in Vietnam.

*** We are contemplating the expansion of existing programs under which mobile medical teams travel throughout the countryside providing on-the-spot medical facilities, treatment, and training in rural areas.

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