We are indebted to Dr. Gardner for this as we are to many things that he has done to provide leadership in the field of what is really important in the world—the education of our people. At this time I am going to call on Dr. Alan Pifer who is president of the Carnegie Corporation who has a statement that I hope will be of interest to all of you. Dr. Pifer. [At this point Dr. Pifer spoke briefly. The text of his remarks is printed in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (vol. 3, p. 1532). The President then resumed speaking.] If there are any other distinguished and generous people, I will be glad to recognize them. If not, I want to express my personal appreciation to Mr. Douglass Cater of the White House staff for the many months that he has followed this legislation and worked on it. NOTE: The President spoke at 11:33 a.m. in the East Room at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John W. Gardner, Senator John O. Pastore of Rhode Island, and Representative Harley O. Staggers of West Virginia, Chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. During his remarks he referred to, among others, Seymour N. Siegel, director of radio communications in New York City and a member of the broadcasters advisory council to the President. As enacted, the bill (S. 1160) is Public Law 90129 (81 Stat. 365). 475 Remarks Upon Signing Bill Providing Equal Opportunity in Promotions for Women in the Armed Forces. November 8, 1967 Mr. Vice President, distinguished Members of the Secretariat and the Armed Forces, Members of the Congress, Mrs. Hobby, Judge Hughes, ladies and gentlemen: We have come here this morning to strike another blow for women's rights. At long last we are going to give the dedicated women of our Armed Forces the equal treatment and the equal opportunity that they should have had from the very beginning. We took the precaution this morning of asking the ladies to supply the honor guard. That is in case there are still some diehard traditionalists who do not approve of our action. As our good friends Senator Margaret Smith and Congresswoman Bolton, Mrs. Hobby, and many others can testify, women in uniform have had to fight on more than the battlefield of war. I well recall when one of my male colleagues in the House of Representatives, back in 1942 when we were debating the bill to create the WAAC, had this to say: "I think it is a reflection upon the courageous manhood of this country to pass a law inviting women to join the Armed Forces in order for us to win a battle. "Take the women into the Armed Forces, who then will do the cooking, the washing, the mending, the humble homey tasks to which every woman has devoted herself? "Think of the humiliation! What has become of the manhood of America?" But the ladies won their battle-and the manhood of America has survived. Colonel Hobby got her Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and the school opened in Fort Des Moines, Iowa. All of you who may have been there will remember what she said on that day: "You have a debt to democracy, a date with destiny." I think history has recorded how magnificently our American women have lived up to that obligation and have kept that date. They are still keeping it. There are more than a thousand women in our Armed Forces in Vietnam today. There are some here this morning to witness this ceremony who have returned from Vietnam. I think you would like to see them, express your appreciation to them, and give them a hand. If they will stand up, I will appreciate it. Our Armed Forces literally could not operate effectively or efficiently without our women. Yet, we nearly lost them at the end of the Second World War. In 1948 the House Armed Services Committee voted to retire the WACs and the WAVES to the Reserves. There was to be no place for them in the regular services. But that action was reversed. The ladies of the Congress-and perhaps a few female allies in the press gallery-changed that action. Our gallant ladies were assured permanent status in the military services. But even then they were not assured equal opportunity. From that day to this day a woman choosing a military career could expect to do her job with fewer promotions and therefore, with less pay than a man who was doing the same type of work. Furthermore, she had only about 10 percent as much chance of being promoted above the grade of major-and she had no chance at all of ever being promoted above the grade of colonel. With the signing of this bill this morning, we are going to end that inequity. This bill will give the career women of our Armed Forces no special privileges. But it does relieve them from some very special handicaps. The bill does not create any female generals or female admirals-but it does make that possible. There is no reason why we should not someday have a female Chief of Staff or even a female Commander in Chief. I realize that a few of our gentlemen officers may not be too enthusiastic about this possibility. And I can understand why: As Dr. Samuel Johnson once observed, “Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little." But from now on, the officers and men of our Armed Forces will just have to take their chances in open competition along with the rest of us. This is a free country. This is a democratic country. I think the time has now passed when opportunity can be denied to anyone. We gave women the vote and somehow the country survived. In this administration we have passed laws that provide that women in industry must receive equal pay for equal work. And the economy seems to continue to prosper. We have brought women to ever higher and more influential positions throughout the land-and the Government has improved. Women are leaders and doers today in our Congress and throughout our Government. So here today in the East Room in the White House we will end the last vestige of discrimination-I hope-in our Armed Forces. So both as President and as the Commander in Chief I am very pleased and very proud to have this measure sent to me by the Congress. I can think of no better company in which to sign it. For in a very real sense this law belongs to every one of you who are here in this room this morning. It is also a great pleasure, before I engage in the signing ceremony, to take this opportunity in the presence of this very distinguished audience from the Congress, Government, services, and the country to honor two very brave ladies of our Armed Forces for very outstanding service in con 89-186-vol. 2-68-25 nection with the conflict in which our Nation is engaged in Vietnam. To Air Force Nurse Colonel Ethel A. Hoefly we are going to award this morning the Legion of Merit. And to Army Nurse Major Marie L. Rodgers, we are going to award the Bronze Star. Colonel Kobach and Colonel Hayes will read the citations. [At this point the citations were read. The President then resumed speaking.] Our Vice President has just spent 11 days in Southeast Asia and has just completed a report to the National Security Council, the Cabinet, and the appropriate leaders in the Congress in connection with his observations on that trip. The one outstanding thing, and the most important of all that I know will give all of you great pride, was his observation that the military leaders in that area-the best men that we have been able to produce-feel that we have never had a better trained or better equipped fighting force and we have never had better morale found anywhere in the uniform of the United States than in those men and women who are holding high our flag in Vietnam today. I know you join me in expressing gratitude-thanks to all of them and to the Vice President. NOTE: The President spoke at 11:15 a.m. in the East Room at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Oveta Culp Hobby, first Director of the Women's Army Corps, and Sarah T. Hughes, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas. Later he referred to Col. Ethel R. Kobach, Chief of the Air Force Nurse Corps and Col. Anna Mae Hayes, Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, who read the citations commending the distinguished services of Colonel Hoefly in Japan and Okinawa and of Major Rodgers in Vietnam. As enacted, the bill (H.R. 5894) is Public Law 90-130 (81 Stat. 374). On October 13, 1967, the President signed Executive Order 11375 providing equal opportunity for women in Federal employment and employment by Federal contractors (3 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1437; 32 F.R. 14303; 3 CFR, 1967 Comp., p. 320). 476 Statement by the President on the New International Grains Arrangement. November 8, 1967 I AM PLEASED to announce that Acting Secretary of Agriculture John Schnittker has today signed the new International Grains Arrangement on behalf of the United States Government. We will be submitting it to the United States Senate for its advice and consent. When ratified by participating governments, the new arrangement will go into effect July 1, 1968, replacing the International Wheat Agreement. Its duration will be 3 years. This new arrangement, an outgrowth of the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, contains two major provisions: First, it establishes new minimum prices in world trade for 14 major wheats. For U.S. wheats, the new minimums are generally about 23 cents a bushel higher than under the old International Wheat Agreement. Second, it establishes a new program under which developed wheat exporting and importing nations will provide 4.5 million tons of food grain or cash equivalent annually to less developed countries-the first time this has ever been done on a regular and continuing basis. The new arrangement thus will provide new price insurance to U.S. wheat farmers and at the same time will bring other wheat exporting and importing nations into partnership with us in helping the developing nations of the world meet the urgent food needs of their growing populations while they expand their own food production. NOTE: The President transmitted the arrangement to the Senate for its advice and consent on January 25, 1968 (4 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 124). The text is printed in Senate Executive A (90th Cong., 2d sess.). A summary was made public with the President's statement (3 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1534). 477 Message to the Congress Transmitting the Surgeon General's First Report on Regional Medical Programs. November 8, 1967 To the Congress of the United States: I am happy to send to you the Surgeon General's first report on Regional Medical Programs, as required by the Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke Amendments of 1965. Because the law and the idea behind it are new, and the problem is so vast, the program is just emerging from the planning stage. But this report gives encouraging evidence of progress-and it promises great advances in speeding research knowledge to the patient's bedside. In 49 regions covering 91 percent of our population, regional alliances have been formed between medical schools, hospitals and local doctors. $24 million in Federal planning money has been awarded. By early 1968, we hope to have programs underway covering 98 percent of the Nation's population. Most important, the imagination, knowledge and energy to operate these programs will come from the local level. More than 1600 local health leaders-physicians, officials of medical centers, hospital administrators, teachers and other health workersare active as members of Regional Advisory Groups. In five regions, cooperative medical programs are already operating, with the help of $7.3 million in Federal grants: -the Albany Region, covering north eastern New York, and portions of southern Vermont and western Massachusetts; -the Intermountain Region, covering Utah and parts of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming; -the states of Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin. These areas are reporting important results already. In the Intermountain Region, for example, physicians in community hospitals are now linked by special radio and television networks with experts at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City. In Wisconsin, doctors are making special studies of uterine cancer patients, with the hope of improving and standardizing treatment methods. The Missouri region is pioneering new services in the Smithville area where doctors and patients benefit from computer-assisted X-ray diagnosis and other advanced techniques which may some day be available in the entire region. Progress is being made and I believe these programs will help us overcome the dreaded killer diseases-heart, cancer and stroke. And they will put us farther along the road to our goal of modern medical care for every American citizen. The White House November 8, 1967 LYNDON B. JOHNSON NOTE: The report is entitled "Report on Regional Medical Programs to the President and the Congress" (Government Printing Office, 105 pp.). For remarks by the President on signing the Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke Amendments of 1965, see 1965 volume, this series, Book II, Item 551. 478 Statement by the President Upon Signing Order Enlarging the Federal Council for Science and Technology. November 8, 1967 I NEED the coordinated advice and help of every Federal agency with major responsibilities in science and technology. The addition of State, HUD, and DOT members to the Federal Council for Science and Technology will make the Council more effective. NOTE: The President's statement was made public as part of a White House release announcing the issuance of Executive Order 11381 (3 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1538; 32 F.R. 15629; 3 CFR, 1967 Comp., p. 326). The order amended Executive Order 10807 of March 13, 1959 (24 F.R. 1897; 3 CFR, 1959-1963 Comp., p. 329), which established the Council, by adding to its members representatives of the Departments of State, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation. Increasing involvement by these departments with matters of science and technology, the release said, had made desirable their representation on the Council, which is chaired by Dr. Donald F. Hornig, Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (3 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1537). 479 Statement by the President Upon Signing the Departments of Labor, and Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriation Act, 1968. November 9, 1967 SOCIETY'S fundamental work is the purpose of this bill: -education of our children and the conquest of disease, -health care for mothers and children and security for the elderly, -training for men and women who need the skills for decent jobs. This bill appropriates $13.2 billion for the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This compares with $4.06 billion in the 1960 bill and $5.69 billion in the 1963 appropriation bill. In 4 years we have doubled our efforts and in 7 years tripled them. While Congress gave careful consideration to our requests-and honored most of them-one aspect of this measure disturbs me. The bill reduces by almost two-thirds the funds we requested for the Teacher Corpsfrom $36 million to $13.5 million. This reduction is small in the context of a $13 billion appropriation. But its impact will fall on thousands of young Americans in classrooms across the Nation. The Teacher Corps, I believe, is one of the great educational ideas of our time. Its promise is to help rescue what could become a lost generation. Its purpose is to bring the best teachers to poor children in cities and rural areas, to compensate for years of disadvantage. This program has weathered fierce political attack. In 1965 when it was first proposed, 95 percent of the House Republicans tried to vote it down. That opposition has continued. The survival of the program against these heavy odds has been a legislative triumph. Not only has the program sur |