Four years ago yesterday, I was in the balcony of your Convention Hall in Chicago when the Textile Workers of America made history. That day, you endorsed John Kennedy for the Presidential nomination. You were the first national labor organization to do so.
You were endorsing a man but you were also endorsing the ideas that man represented. John Kennedy stood for the ideas you had stood for and fought for--the ideas you stand for and are fighting for today.
You and John Kennedy worked together for the Great Society to which President Johnson is dedicating his Administration. Your work, America’s work will not be finished, as Lyndon Johnson says, “so long as there is a child without a school, a school without a teacher, a man without a job, a family without a home; so long as there are sick Americans without medical care or aging Americans without hope; so long as there are any Americans, of any race or color, who are denied their full human rights; so long as there are any Americans of any place or region, who are denied their human dignity.”
Your work, America’s work will not be finished until the war on poverty is won.
And let us serve notice on Senator Goldwater who criticizes no-win policies. This war against poverty at home is a war we can win and intend to win. And we can do it without dropping atomic bombs. We can do it without bombing the leaves off trees. We can do it by mobilizing the good will and constructive energy of the American people. One reason we are going to win is that you are in the front lines with us.
You have been fighting this war a long time. You were fighting it when you fought to raise textile workers’ wages from 10 to 15 and 20 cents an hour. You were fighting it when you fought to end child labor in the mills, when you fought to do away with spinning frames deliberately designed to keep the spindles within reach of children’s hands.
You were fighting it in Lowell and Lawrence, in Manchester and Passaic, in New Bedford and Marion.
Yet, before you formed this union, though you may have won a battle here and there, you were losing the war. By creating the union, you took the step needed to put you on your way to victory.
That is the lesson we have in mind in declaring national war on poverty. We have won many a battle in the New Deal and the Fair Deal and on the New Frontier. Great progress has been made. But we now need to unite the separate efforts, we need to mobilize our full resources, we need to develop a general strategy, we need a union of interests and talents to give us victory. You know about the greater union we need for the war against poverty because you have practiced Great Unionism.
Great Unionism fights along the whole front. It sees the general interests of all workers, of all those without work, and all the people. It has the vision of the Great Society which it will lead in creating for itself and for all Americans.
In the labor movement, there is a question today of Great Unionism versus Little Unionism. I don’t mean great or little in terms of membership. I mean it in terms of the spirit, in terms of the ideas you stand and fight for. Little Unionism looks to one industry or one contract. It seeks higher wages for itself. It is concerned only with its own members and their jobs.
Great Unionism is what you have done. You have not just been concerned with your own contracts and your own industry. In every drive to increase the Federal minimum wage and extend its coverage, you have been in the forefront. You have done this even after the success of your own collective bargaining has raised textile wages, with few exceptions, substantially above the Federal minimum (to an average of $1.75 an hour).
In the drive for hospitalization and health insurance for factory workers, and for the aged through Social Security, whether they are in or out of the labor movement, you have been pioneers.
In one of the first Kennedy Administration programs to attack pockets of poverty, you were one of the strongest supporters for the area redevelopment bill.
You have pressed for years to bring about fair conditions for farm workers and migrant labor--not because you were directly affected, but just as a matter of common justice. You have fought for civil rights.
Because you have been in the forefront of Great Unionism, I know we can count on you to support the new programs against poverty which President Johnson has proposed. I know I can count on you to support the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
That bill was put together in close consultation with the leaders of organized labor. It will be carried out with the help and leadership of members of organized labor. It will start some new things and give greater support to existing programs. It will give us a new beachhead in this old war. And it will mean a commitment by the Congress and the Administration to go forward until we do achieve an end to poverty--until we do achieve for all the Great Society of your dreams and mine.
