It is an honor to be here with you tonight to pay tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the great women of our times -- a woman who was aptly called “the First Lady,” not just of our country, but “the First Lady of the World.” It is with prophetic truth that she observed:
Only in the twentieth century, perhaps, has anyone asked why people are poor ... Only today has it become a matter for every man’s conscience. And now -- for poverty is like a giant infection which contaminates everything -- we know that unless we can eradicate it by the use of all our new scientific and economic materials, it can in time destroy us.
In a very real sense, the War on Poverty is a fulfillment of Eleanor Roosevelt’s vision, and a continuation of the effort which she and her husband began. And so, it is with a special sense of appropriateness and pride, that I join with you on this occasion.
It is good, too, to be back here -- at home -- in Chicago. Almost five years ago, I reluctantly left this city at President Kennedy’s request to head up the Peace Corps. He, and just about everybody else, thought I would be back here much sooner. In fact, that is why he picked me -- because if the Peace Corps failed, it would be easier to fire a relative than anyone else. Sol expected to be back long before this.
My wife and children tell me that my ties to this city must still be unbroken because in the morning shower, they frequently hear me singing those Chicago radio and TV commercials:
“Let your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages.”
“Sears has a natural mink
Sears has a kitchen sink,
Sears has a ball of string,
Sears has everything.”
In one sense, Sears does have everything -- every gadget, every appliance, every convenience -- that Americans might want. But does it really have everything? Where will we find, in the pages of its catalogs, or in the Yellow Pages, the social and psychic, the educational and spiritual goods we need? Where in its pages are to be found the products of the Human Enterprise, which we must have if, in President Johnson’s words, “the meaning of man’s life matches the marvels of man’s labor.” Where in the index are the goods and services, the tools and materials we need to build the Great Society?
Chicago is a distribution center for all America -- the consumer capitol of the United States. It took one revolution to make it that: the Industrial Revolution-- a revolution in production, in transportation, in merchandising, and in consumption.
We need now -- Chicago, and this entire country needs now -- a new revolution – a social revolution.
So far as human goods and services are concerned, we are still back in the days when there was no Sears, no Yellow Pages and no supermarkets. So far as those products are concerned, we are back in the days when women went to the green grocer for vegetables, the butcher for meat, the dairy for eggs and cheese, and the tobacconist for cigars.
Right now, the poor still do that kind of grocery shopping. They don’t have any choice. From one eastern city comes this story of a man who tried this kind of shopping -- and finally gave up. He had been laid off from a low-paying, unskilled job; a finance company was pressing him to continue payments on a. new TV set which had never worked; his wife and he quarreled constantly over money problems; his oldest child had just been charged with stealing from the collection plate in church; and the entire family was faced with eviction from a. public housing project because their income was too low.
That man needed a lawyer, a social worker, and a homemaker. He needed job training and marriage counseling and help in budgeting his finances. He tried to get that help. But he didn’t know where to start. He went to the legal aid agency but was told they didn’t do marriage counseling, didn’t handle separations, didn’t represent juveniles and couldn’t do anything about getting his TV set fixed. He went to the employment service which provided him only with occasional day work. He took a test for a draftsman training course but heard nothing for months.
Do you know how he got the help he needed? He broke into a pawn shop just to get arrested so that his family could qualify for public assistance. He got help then -- in the form of a defense attorney. And only then did it came out that he had scored the highest score in the city on the aptitude rest for the draftsman training course.
We can’t afford to see families destroyed by inability to get help, all the help they need when they need it. We can’t afford the luxury, the inefficiency and the human cost of that kind of shopping.
We need new methods of distribution for social goods and services methods that match and surpass the Yellow Pages and Sears, Roebuck --even Montgomery Ward.
We need new social inventions – inventions that rival Chicago’s past contributions -- the reaper, the skyscraper, the mail order house and the shopping center.
There are signs -- here in Chicago and elsewhere that a new social - revolution has begun -- generating new goods, new services and new methods of distribution.
The Peace Corps was one of those new social inventions -- a prototype and forerunner of things to come. Increasingly now you will be hearing of-others -- of Job Corps, of a Neighborhood Youth Corps; and of a domestic Peace Corps called VISTA. None of these mean very much to most of you now. They are just words-- names. But in time, they will begin to weave a new pattern and a new fabric for our society -- comparable to the spinning jenny, Ardwright’s mule and the flying shuttle.
Perhaps the boldest of those new inventions now emerging is the community action organization. This is the business corporation of the new social revolution. And just as the corporate forms of the nineteenth century restructured the world of commerce and industry, so, now, the community action organization will provide the framework within which a city can at once remake itself and preserve its identity.
You have one here in Chicago -- the Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity. It is composed of representatives of the Mayor, the Board of Education, youth groups, private welfare agencies, organized labor -- and other groups. This is the Board of Trustees -- charged with the overall management of this new corporate enterprise.
But you - every one of you sitting here'-- are the stockholders. You each have an investment, a big investment in this corporation, in its success and in the future of Chicago.
And each of you stand to collect the dividends this new corporation will yield.
Are there adequate playgrounds with supervision for your children?
Are the first and second grades in your public schools filled with children who have already fallen behind?
Can you walk the streets at night safely?
Are your libraries and hospitals adequately staffed?
Is your city’s tax base expanding or shrinking because of the size of your welfare rolls?
These are the terms in which the new corporation, the corporation of the social revolution, can begin to pay dividends. But the return you get will depend on what you are prepared to invest.
And it will depend, too, on the imagination and inventiveness of your corporate executives the entrepreneurs of this new enterprise who must devise new methods of production and distribution.
We need -- and we will soon see emerging a Sears, Roebuck for social services, a supermarket for the health, the welfare, the legal, the counseling and the educational assistance which must be-made accessible to the consumer. In Chicago, a timetable is now being worked out to establish a network of such one-stop service centers -- called Urban Progress Centers. These will gradually blanket the entire city with a comprehensive set of programs in housing, recreation, education, family life and youth activities.
We need more such innovations in distribution and merchandise. We need a Yellow Pages of social services so that a family that needs help can find out quickly where to get them. This applies to the Federal Government as well. And we, in the Office of Economic Opportunity, are working now to prepare just such a book, a Yellow Pages, that will pinpoint for cities like Chicago what Federal programs there are -- and how communities can participate in them. In addition, we will be setting up a massive computer center so that we know at all times what is happening in each of our programs -- and what kind of return we are getting on our investment.
Revolutions, though, are more than just inventions and techniques. Revolutions-- whether political or industrial or social -- affect people as well as institutions. The Industrial Revolution replaced the cottage industry, the home weaver, with a. new type of producer -- the factory worker.
We cannot expect less from the social revolution now underway. There will be a new class of producers-with new skills for new industries. And as in the Industrial Revolution, so here, we will begin to take a fresh look at complicated tasks which we have long assumed that only a master craftsman could perform. We will see if these cannot be broke: down into a series of tasks -- teaching, and helping, counseling, and listening, which can be done on a far larger scale by an entire new labor force.
Professional guilds will survive and thrive because they have something unique to give. But our social production methods will change radically as homework aides, recreation aides, home economist aides-, health aides, child-case aides, and another class mentioned last week by the Acting Attorney General, a. profession of advocates for the poor, begin to take on jobs never done before.
I have heard these roles described as subprofessional roles. But I think the term is wrong. That may be how the professions view them --much as the master craftsman viewed the factory hand -- until it became clear that they were not producing the same product or a shabby imitation-- but a substitute that would make for a. new social order and a. new way of life.
Take, for example, the role of advocate for the poor. It does not take a: lawyer to assert every right or adjust every grievance. A young woman from the West Coast proved that it was possible to right a wrong without a law degree when she went to the aid of a. mother and seven children supported by public assistance. A fire had destroyed the roof of the family’s home. Welfare officials, learning of this, promptly cut off all welfare payments. The reason -- she and her children were living in unsuitable housing! The logic of this position did not yield’ to the mother’s protests that without money she could not pay moving costs or put down a deposit on a new apartment. The check was, however, promptly forthcoming because a certain young woman took it upon herself to act as advocate. She went down with the mother and demanded to know the legal basis for withholding the check.
This job could have been done by a lawyer. But it did not have to be. And if the mother had waited for a lawyer, it might never have been done. We will begin to see other needs filled by laymen -- needs which we have assumed could only be served by professionals but which cannot wait for the professionals to get to them. As in the nineteenth century, need is producing innovation -- and innovation will create new career lines and a new labor force. Here in Chicago, there are plans immediately to create just such a new labor force of one to five thousand persons drawn from the ranks of the poor and put to work helping human beings in ways which we once thought could only be done by professional social workers, guidance counselors, educators and psychologists.
The social revolution will do more, however, than yield a new labor force. In addition, it will produce a new class of consumers who will need all the protection that consumers now have against Defective and mislabeled goods.
They will need a. new kind of purchasing power -- the power to demand that those who design and provide the goods are responsive to consumer needs and consumer demands. This is what Congress intended when it required involvement of the poor in the design and administration of local antipoverty programs.
And we may find, as we did in the 1890’s that the consumer also needs protection against the evils of monopoly -- monopoly in the fields of social services, of education, of job placement, of health and welfare-- and opportunity itself. The day may well come when Congress enacts a new Sherman Act for the social field -- an anti-trust law to insure that bigness does not stifle innovation, that monopoly power is not used to expand and perpetuate itself, and that healthy competition is preserved and promoted in the interest of the consumer.
Finally, the social revolution that is upon us -- that is so evident here in Chicago -- that revolution will yield a new type of citizen with new duties, new powers, and new responsibilities.
History teaches us that each revolution distributes a new kind of vote.
The revolution of 1776 distributed the political vote.
The Industrial Revolution distributed another kind of franchise – the franchise of purchasing power, of the dollar.
The social revolution will produce still a third kind of franchise --the franchise of service. We have always had an opportunity for service. But this new franchise of service can be expected to have an impact on the quality and character of our society unlike anything we have seen before.
We learned something about the power of this franchise in the Peace Corps when a. little African child pointed and said: “Look, there’s a white man.” The mother replied: “No, that is not a. white man. That is a Peace Corps Volunteer.”
In America, in Chicago, this new franchise of service can produce a society where there is no white man or black man, no rich man or poor man -- but only Americans.
This new form of franchise -- this way of voting for a better world --is unique. It is not interchangeable. We cannot use the dollar to build the Great Society. We cannot press a lever in a-voting booth and bring that society into being. The vote we cast will have to take a new form -- not a one-shot political vote -- or a dollar vote for a particular brand of merchandise. We will have to vote with our lives, with our souls, and above all, with our capacity as human beings to feel for others.
This is the franchise conferred by the social revolution - the franchise which will be exercised by the Great Citizen of the Great Society.
We have, all of us here, been shown how to exercise that franchise already by one whom we all revere -- by one whose memory we honor here tonight.
She left that lesson in voting not just for us, but for the new electorate, the electorate of the Great Society, as a special and indestructible heritage. And we can, tonight, pay no greater tribute to her than by beginning, here and now, a new kind of voter registration drive – one which cannot be successful if it gets only dollars, or only political votes but one which must enlist all of your being as it did hers.
