Proposal for a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty

Speech

By: Lyndon B. Johnson

Date: March 16, 1964

Source: Johnson, Lyndon. "Proposal for a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty." Special Message to Congress, March 16, 1964.

About the Author: Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. His effort to build a "Great Society" by attacking the sources of poverty was significantly hampered by escalating American involvement in the Vietnam War.

INTRODUCTION

In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty as part of his goal of creating a "Great Society." Johnson sought to break the cycle of the culture of poverty by attacking its causes in urban ghettos and depressed rural areas. His novel antipoverty efforts, administered through the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), did not end poverty but made the issue into one that received continuing national attention long afterward.

Antipoverty activists had long argued that ending poverty required a redistribution of income by such means as raising taxes and using those funds to create jobs, overhaul social welfare systems, and rebuild slums. Great Society programs did invest more heavily in the public sector, but Johnson's antipoverty efforts relied on economic growth rather than new taxes on the rich or middle class to increase revenues. Determined to avoid conflict, he would not take from the advantaged to provide for the disadvantaged.

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which grew out of Johnson's speech, authorized ten programs under the OEO. Many programs targeted impoverished youth, from Headstart, a preschool program, to work-study grants for college students. There were also loans to businesses willing to hire the long-term unemployed, aid to small farmers, and the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program, which paid modest wages to volunteers who worked with the disadvantaged.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty, I submit, for the consideration of the Congress and the country, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

The Act does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done.

It charts a new course.

It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.

It can be a milestone in our one-hundred eighty year search for a better life for our people.

This Act provides five basic opportunities.

It will give almost half a million underprivileged young Americans the opportunity to develop skills, continue education, and find useful work.

It will give every American community the opportunity to develop a comprehensive plan to fight its own poverty—and help them to carry out their plans.

It will give dedicated Americans the opportunity to enlist as volunteers in the war against poverty.

It will give many workers and farmers the opportunity to break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty.

It will give the entire nation the opportunity for a concerted attack on poverty through the establishment, tinder my direction, of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a national headquarters for the war against poverty.

This is how we propose to create these opportunities.

First we will give high priority to helping young Americans who lack skills, who have not completed their education or who cannot complete it because they arc too poor…

I therefore recommend the creation of a job Corps, a Work-Training Program, and a Work Study Program.

A new national job Corps will build toward an enlistment of 100,000 young men. They will be drawn from those whose background, health and education make them least fit for useful work…

Half of these young men will work, in the first year, on special conservation projects to give them education, useful work experience and to enrich the natural resources of the country.

Half of these young men will receive, in the first year, a blend of training, basic education and work experience in job Training Centers…

A new national Work-Training Program operated by the Department of Labor will provide work and training for 200,000 American men and women between the ages of 16 and 21. This will be developed through state and local governments and non-profit agencies…

A new national Work-Study Program operated by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare will provide federal funds for part-time jobs for 140,000 young Americans who do not go to college because they cannot afford it.

There is no more senseless waste than the waste of the brainpower and skill of those who are kept from college by economic circumstance. Under this program they will, in a great American tradition, be able to work their way through school…

Second, through a new Community Action program we intend to strike at poverty at its source—in the streets of our cities and on the farms of our countryside among the very young and the impoverished old.

This program asks men and women throughout the country to prepare long-range plans for the attack on poverty in their own local communities…

Third, I ask for the authority to recruit and train skilled volunteers for the war against poverty.

Thousands of Americans have volunteered to serve the needs of other lands.

Thousands more want the chance to serve the needs of their own land.

They should have that chance.

Among older people who have retired, as well as among the young, among women as well as men, there are many Americans who are ready to enlist in our war against poverty.

They have skills and dedication. They are badly needed…

Fourth, we intend to create new opportunities for certain hard-hit groups to break out of the pattern of poverty.

Through a new program of loans and guarantees we can provide incentives to those who will employ the unemployed.

Through programs of work and retraining for unemployed fathers and mothers we can help them support their families in dignity while preparing themselves for new work.

Through funds to purchase needed land, organize cooperatives, and create new and adequate family farms we can help those whose life on the land has been a struggle without hope.

Fifth, I do not intend that the war against poverty become a series of uncoordinated and unrelated efforts—that it perish for lack of leadership and direction.

Therefore this bill creates, in the Executive Office of the President, a new Office of Economic Opportunity. Its Director will be my personal Chief of Staff for the War against poverty. I intend to appoint Sargent Shriver to this post…

What you are being asked to consider is not a simple or an easy program. But poverty is not a simple or an easy enemy.

It cannot be driven from the land by a single attack on a single front. Were this so we would have conquered poverty long ago.

Nor can it be conquered by government alone…

Today, for the first time in our history, we have the power to strike away the barriers to full participation in our society. Having the power, we have the duty.…

We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many.

But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens.

It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside.

It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy.

And this program is much more than a beginning.

Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies.

SIGNIFICANCE

The escalation of the Vietnam War undermined the War on Poverty. Johnson now found himself negotiating with his political opponents to limit funding for antipoverty and other Great Society programs in order to maintain congressional support for rapidly rising military expenditures. The administration soon discovered that this strategy was impossible to maintain. The strongest supporters of the antipoverty program, both in mainstream politics and in the activist groups, were also the strongest opponents of the war. In the meantime, the bitterest enemies of the War on Poverty generally were the most loyal supporters of the war. Unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been able to disappoint radical activists on many issues and still maintain their loyalty and love, Johnson by 1967 was hated by the very activists he needed to mobilize the poor and educate the middle classes of the need to support a program as ambitious as the War on Poverty.

No president before Johnson had made an attack on poverty into a high priority. To a large extent, Johnson succeeded in reducing poverty, although not as much as he had hoped. The number of impoverished Americans fell from forty million in 1959 to twenty-five million in 1968, from over twenty percent of the population to about thirteen percent of the population. Especially through the community action programs, the people most deeply mired in poverty gained more control over their circumstances and a sense of their right to a fairer share of America's bounty.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Andrew, John A. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998.

Brown, Michael K. Race, Money, and the American Welfare State. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Davies, Gareth. From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism. Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

Gillette, Michael L. Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History. New York: Twayne, 1996.