|
ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE FARRIS BRYANT
-DIRECTOR
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING
AT THE
.let ANNUAL TRANSPORTATION ANO
LOGISTICS FORUM
NATIONAL DEFENSE
TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION
SEPTEMBER 20, 1966
We have the resources.
We must also possess a like amount
of will . and willingness to see
the struggle through.
Apart from its magnificent contri-
butions to the war effort, this has been
an eventful year for the transportation
industry.
It is, in a sense, the year when
the total accomplishments and the
aggregate importance of the industry
as a whole gained full recognition in
Washington. It is the yam~when the
President of the United States recom-
mended to the Congress the establish-
ment of a new Cabinet Department of
Transportation to encompass the exist-
ing Federal programs that promote trans-
portation in America.
Today, those Presidential recommend-
ations are pending before the Congress.
Hearings have been held. Data has been
collected. The views of all interested
parties are being obtained and examined.
The difficult and deliberate task of
framing legislation which takes into
account all the diverse interests in-
volved is now taking place.
I would not presume to dwell upon
the details of this legislation. It is
clear, however, that such a department
is manifestly needed if we are to take
full advantage of rapidly expanding tech-
nology, if we are to mesh effectively
the various components of our national
system, and if we are to keep pace with
a burgeoning economy and a growing and
shifting population.
10
It makes no sense, for example,
to think about supersonic airplanes,
and not to concentrate on the fact that
travel to an airport can take you three
times the period you are in the air.
It mdes no sense to design and test
jet-powered railroad engines, as was
done in July to a speed exceeding 180
miles per hour, unless we can be sure
of adequate roadbeds and tracks, and
suitable terminals, among other things.
It makes little sense for the
trucking industry to speed its cargo
into New York City where the driver can
average only six miles an hour through
downtown traffic today.
An eighteenth century traveller
could move from the outskirts of an
11
average American city to its center in
abut ten minutes. it took thirty minutes
in the 19th century and it takes an hour
today. That is progress in the reverse.
It reminds me of the antebellum period
when the Secretary of War saw little hope
for the wheel. In 1857 a bill was pushed
through Congress for the purchase of 75
camels from the middle east to replace
the horses and mules then used for busi-
ness enterprises in the West.
Soon the railroad intervened
and the wheel finally triumphed.
Obviously, I am taking some license
to make a point. Our romance with the
wheel has been marred to some degree by
our failure to coordinate our transporta-
tion growth. Trucks need good roads.
12
AiPplanes need modern airports and
adequate road access to them. Our ships
need the efficient docking and port facil-
ities. Our railroads need new freight
cars, terminals and track, and efficient
handling methods to accommodate the new
speeds now nearly ready to be used. None
of these modes of transport exist unto
themselves. They are part of our city
planning; they are part of our nation-
wide network of highways; they are part
and parcel of the dynamics of motion,
change, and growth which now character-
ize our free society.
They are also part of our national
defense.
President Johnson reminded us
of this relationship last spring when
13
he proclaimed May 20th as National Defense
Transportation Day. In his proclamation
he called our transportation industry a
"lifeline of travel and commerce" and he
went on to say that the "lifeline is
tangled -- the gears are worn and dan-
gerously strained." At the same time, he
asked for enactment of the Highway Safety
Act which would bring us strict safety
standards for our automobiles, the roads
they travel, and the passengers and
drivers they carry. Two bills calling
for a Joint effort combining Federal
research and standards with State stan-
dards and enforcement were signed by
President Johnson on September 9. They
too, are part of the total effort to
dovetail and make ever more efficient
the entire transportation industry.
14
The creation of a new Depart-
ment of Transportation would hear
directly and beneficially on the work
of the Office of Emergency Planning.
The Office of Emergency Planning
is a staff arm of the President establish-
ed in his Executive Office to assist him
in all aspects of nonmilitary defense.
Our history parallels closely the his-
tory of crises and tensions since the
end of the Second World War. We are the
natural extension of agencies such as
the National Security Resources Board,
the War Production Board and the Office
of Defense Mobilization. All our pre-
decessors grew out of a basic,modern
age proposition --that national security
is something more than guns and
15
infantrymen, planes and pilots, and ships
and sailors. Equally important is the
economy and massive industrial complex
which makes a military machine run.
The statutory membership on the
National Security Council accorded the
Director of OEP reflects the many implica-
tions of the term "National Security."
It is directly related to the capability
of industry to meet whatever crisis may
befall us.
OEP, as a planning agency, is
primarily an initiator and coordinator.
Our studies form one basis for Presidential
assignment of operational authority to
appropriate Federal departments and agen-
cies. Twenty Presidential Executive Orders
are now in force among 31 departments and
agencies.
16
This accounts for OEP's close
working partnership with the Office of
Emergency Transportation in the Depart-
ment of Commerce. OEP provides broad
guidance on matters involving the trans-
portation resource area. On the other
hand, OET is the focal point for all
operating functions carried out by all
the transportation agencies, including
the Interstate Commerce Commission,the
Bureau of Public Roads, the Maritime
Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board
and the Federal Aviation Agency.
Now let me get to the specific
matter of how an emergency transporta-
tion system would function. Underlying
the emergency transportation system are
four basic principles to which we
adhere.
l7
1. Controls would be applied only when
and to the degree necessary.
2. Carriers will continue to manage
their own operations.
3. Industrial traffic managers will
continue to perform their normal func-
tions.
4. The normal shipper-carrier relation-
ships will prevail subject only to the con-
trol system procedures.
These are important principles. Our
system of control is only as good as the
industry will make it. No amount of
government planning, however detailed and
profound, can substitute for or provide
the experience which you people possess.
We recognize this fact and it is incor-
porated in our concepts.
18
I count it a high honor to speak
to this luncheon audience of the National
Defense Transportation Association.
In a very real sense NDTA embodies
the know how and experience, the seasoned
skills and the tested talents upon which
we have come to rely in meeting the
manifold problems of national defense
in a dangerous age.
We in the Office of Emergency
Planning turn to the National Defense
Transportation Association for the
strenuous, most often unsung, always
invaluable assistance we need in our
planning.
And the Nation turns to members
of NDTA whenever it is faced with a
crisis. Your achievement over the last
Here is how our national system
would function in an emergency. The
President would order the Secretary of
Commerce to invoke control systems and
to determine the proper allocation of
our total civil transportation capacity.
He would function under the general
policy guidance of the Director of the
Office of Emergency Planning unless or
until expanded and additional emergency
units come into being. Under the Sec-
retary of Commerce, the Director of the
Office of Emergency Transportation would
monitor and mesh the actual operations
of the Interstate Commerce Commission,
the Civil Aeronautics Board and the
Maritime Administration. Traffic con-
trol functions would be assigned to
the Bureau of Public Roads and the
19
Federal Aviation Agency.
What would be expected of you and
your industry under this system? First,
you would be asked to provide maximum
service to meet essential needs. You
would have to provide for continuity of
management, protection of personnel and
facilities, restoration of damaged lines
angtsecuring e manpower and materials
to do this job.
When a federal agency needs trans-
portation, it would give the Office of
Emergency Transportation a timetable of
need and an estimate of peak require-
ments. OET would arbitrate the claims
of the various federal agencies as well
as requests from State and local claimants.
20
Obviously the system I have
described is both complex and large
and it must be coordinated with all
other elements of our economy. That
job would fall to the Office of Defense
Resources, a standby unit now in the
blueprint stage, which could be ordered
into force only at the direction of the
President.
You heard something about this
concept last year at this time. I
can now report we have advanced to the
point where an organizational struc-
ture has been laid out. This new
agency, when and if activated, would
absorb all the functions of the Office
of Emergency Planning. It would then
serve as a nerve center for the Pre-
sident in the entire mobilization field.
21
At the outset, ODR was conceived
to provide a mechanism for use in nuclear
war. Today, the concept has been extended
and redesigned for use in limited war.
Nevertheless, it remains solely with the
President to activate ODR.
There are all kinds of limited wars.
To be sure, what was once considered a
full-scale conventional war is, by today's
definition, a limited war. Certainly, as
my earlier remarks indicated, ODR is not
now needed.
In concept, however, it comprises
both the voluntary and mandatory measures
which might have to be invoked.
Among the voluntary measures
important to mobilization are:
Measures to encourage industry
22
to expand production of essential
goods and services, to curtail non-
essential production, and to construct
or convert facilities for essential
uses by means of special financing
arrangements, tax incentives and com-
petition for government procurement
orders. Others could involve training
and retraining programs to increase
productivity and skills and to bring
new workers into the labor force. Still
others could be concerned with public
information programs to obtain the
voluntary 000peration ofindividual
citizens, industry, labor and other
organized groups.
Mandatory emergency measures,
some of which are presently available,
23
would also be used, but only as required
by the national interest. In the case
(Yin. I
of wagemand rent controls, it would be
necessary to obtain statutory authority
not now available. All told mandatory
measures which could be used are those
dealing with priority and allocation sys-
tems, price and wage controls, consumer
rationing, im/entory controls and anti-
hoarding orders, conservation measures,
import and export controls, and requi-
sitioning orders.
For some parts of this program it
might well be necessary to establish
additional emergency agencies. This is
likely in the field of economic stabili-
zation and it could be true in the field
of transportation. It need not be so,
24
however, if the Department of Trans-
portation already exists. Certainly
we shall have removed or substantially
reduced many of the problems of coor-
dination with which we currently con-
tend.
That is a thumbnail sketch of
what we are doing today. Obviously
your help is needed in these areas
and many more.
i hope, for example, that more
top executives from all phases of the
transportation industry will seek
assignment in appropriate units of
the National Defense Executive Reserve,
which now numbers more than 3600 top-
drawer executives from industry, labor,
agriculture and other disciplines.
25
I hope your membership will pro-
vide expertise to the fifty sovereign
States which are now intensifying their own
efforts to build emergency resource struc-
tures.
I hope you will continue, as indivi-
duals and as an organization, to be the con-
structive conscience of Federal planning,
letting us know if we are falling short of
the mark and how our efforts can be im-
proved.
I hope, above all, that the National
Defense Transportation Association will
remain in the vanguard of those forces
fighting to keep the industry strong,
vigorous and apace with the rapid tempo
of our times.
For our free society, whether
its energies are directed to peace or
26
A.
or war, has succeeded because it is
made up of people never satisfied
with the status-qua, always searching
for new ideas, seeking and finding
new ways of bringing the blessings
of a better life to all.
**** *-
27
year in transporting troops, equipment
and supplies to Vietnam has been monu-
mental.
was one of the fastest,
The build-up we have witnessed
most successful,
and smoothly accomplished feats that
modern transportation has ever performed.
The Military Sea Transportation
Service has carried
cargo to the battle
280 dry cargo ships
Asia, continuing to
98 percent of all war
zone. Today MSTS has
operating in Southeast
supply all types of
equipment to our troops.
This effort has been coupled
with the greatest military airlift opera-
tion of modern times.
alone, the U.S.
In the month of June
Airforce flew more than
100 million pounds of combat cargo to
Vietnam.
And these performances were only
the last leg of a long journey a
journey which began via mainland ship-
ment by rail, by truck and by waterway
and by air.
The headlines out of Vietnam
understandably cover day-to-day troop
movements and battles, successful inter
diction of supply lines and the splendid
performance of our fighting men in the
front lines. These are the grist and
drama of war, but they should not detract
from the truly epic contributions of the
transportation industry to the struggle
which engages our free forces in Vietnam.
Nor should Vietnam be considered
as separate from the stream of recent
history. It is very much part of the
current that has swept the post-World
War II decades.
It is part of the same effort as
the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from
economic disaster and communism, and led
to the reconstruction of free Western
Europe.
It is part of the same effort we
expended to keep South Korea free. It is
part of the same effort that was made in
the Formosa straits, in Lebanon, in
Greece and Turkey.
These were the early and success-
ful episodes of the protracted struggle
which has held center stage in the post-
war years. Vietnam is but the latest
chapter of that same compelling conflict.
The task is not a simple one; it
is not an easy one, it is not one we can
expect to accomplish overnight. No one
4
wishes more than the President of the
United States that it was not our task.
But it is.
We cannot expect others to honor
their commitments if we do not honor
ours.
We cannot expect others to stand
for freedom, if we do not.
We cannot expect others to resist
agression if we run.
I know these sentiments are shared
by the more than 130 corporate members
of NDTA and by your chapters in one
Hundred cities. But the message that
we are gripped in a global struggle,
that in meaning and magnitude the out-
come of that struggle will affect the
destiny of freedom for good or ill -
must be delivered to the overwhelming
majority of Americans as well.
They must understand also that we
have the strength and stamina to win.And
a stubborn enemy must come to believe that
our power is matched by perseverance
and patience, by rugged determination and
resolve.
Certainly, our economy is fit for
the task no matter what is involved or
how long it might take.
We have added $270 billion to our
output in the last five years.
We have created seven million new
jobs in the same period.
Corporation profits after taxes
have doubled.
The families of America have added
nearly a trillion dollars I said a
trillion to their savings.
That is economic history which
cannot be equalled elsewhere on this
troubled globe and the transportation
industry has shared in the national abun-
dance.
For the first six months of this
year the ton-miles for the Class I rail-
roads indicate an eight percent increase
over the corresponding period last year;
i.e., 367 billion ton-miles versus
340.7 billion ton-miles. Inland waterway
and maritime industries have experienced
a seven percent growth in revenues.
Passenger traffic by air, bus and private
vehicles continues to expand at a rapid
pace.
Even the swift growth of the Gross
National Product, now running at an annual
rate of $738 billion, is an index of a
healthy transportation industry because
an estimated twenty percent of GNP is
directly or indirectly related to trans-
portation.
The Gross National Product tells us
something else about the ability of the
Nation to sustain its effort in Vietnam.
Defense outlays accounted for about fifty
percent of the increase in Gross National
Product during the first eighteen months
of Korea. Only twelve percent of the
increase in GNP has been devoted to increased
defense expeditures since the early part
of 1965.
We have the ability.
PAGE 1
ADDRESS BY HONORABLE FARRIS BRYANT DIRECTOR OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING AT THE .21st ANNUAL TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS FORUM NATIONAL DEFENSE TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION SEPTEMBER 20, 1966
PAGE 2
We have the resources. We must also possess a like amount of will ...and willingness to see the struggle through. Apart from its magnificent contributions to the war effort, this has been an eventful year for the transportation industry. It is, in a sense, the year when the total accomplishments and the aggregate importance of the industry as a whole gained full recognition in Washington. It is the year when the President of the United States recomeenoeu to the Congress the establishment of a new Cabinet Department of Transportation to encompass the existing Federal programs that promote transportation in America. 9
PAGE 3
Today, those Presidential recommendations are pending before the Congress. Hearings have been held. Data has been collected. The views of all interested parties are being obtained and examined. The difficult and deliberate task of framing legislation which takes into account all the diverse interests involved is now taking place. I would not presume to dwell upon the details of this legislation. It is clear, however, that such a department is manifestly needed if we are to take full advantage of rapidly expanding technology, if we are to mesh effectively the various components of our national system, and if se are to keep pace with a burgeoning economy and a growing and shifting population. 10
PAGE 4
It makes no sense, for example, to think about supersonic airplanes, and not to concentrate on the fact that travel to an airport can take you three times the period you are in the air. It mdes no sense to design and test jet-powered railroad engines, as was done in July to a speed exceeding 180 miles per hour, unless we can be sure of adequate roadbeas and tracks, and suitable terminals, among other things. It makes little sense for the trucking industry to speed its cargo into New York City where the driver can average only six miles an hour through downtown traffic today. An eighteenth century traveller could move from the outskirts of an
PAGE 5
average American city to its center in adut ten minutes. It took thirty minutes in the 19th century and it takes an hour today. That is progress in tie reverse. It reminds me of the antebellum period when the Secretary of War saw little hope for the wheel. In 1857 a bill was pushed through Congress for the purchase of 75 camels from the middle east to replace the horses and mules then used for business enterprises in the West. Soon the railroad intervened and the wheel finally triumphed. Obviously, I am taking some license to make a point. Our romance with the wheel has been marred to some degree by our failure to coordinate our transportation growth. Trucks need good roads.
PAGE 6
Airplanes need modern airports and adequate road access to them. Our ships need the efficient docking and port facil. ities. Our railroads need new freight cars, terminals and track, and efficient handling methods to accommodate the new speeds now nearly ready to be used. None of these modes of transport exist unto themselves. They are part of our city planning; they are part of our nationwide network of highways; they are part and parcel of the dynamics of motion, change, and growth which now characterize our free society. They are also part of our national defense. President Johnson reminded us of this relationship last spring when 13
PAGE 7
he proclaimed May 20th as National Defense Transportation Day. In his proclamation he called our transportation industry a "lifeline of travel and commerce" and he went on to say that the "lifeline is tangled -the gears are vorn and dangerously strained." At the same time, he asked for enactment of the Highway Safety Act which would bring us strict safety standards for our automobiles, the roads they travel, and the passengers and drivers they carry. Two bills -calling for a joint effort combining Federal research and standards with State standards and enforcement -were signed by President Johnson on September 9. They too, are part of the total effort as dovetail and make ever more efficient the entire transportation industry. 14
PAGE 8
The create ion of a tor lepartment of Transportation would bear directly and beneficially on the work of the Office of Emergency Planning. The Office of Emergency Planning is a staff arm of the President established in his Executive Office to assist him in all aspects of nonmilitary defense. Our history parallels closely the history of crises and tensions since the end of the Secon World War. We are the natural extension of agencies such as the National Secur ity Resources foard, the War Production goard and the Office of Defense hohilioatian. All our predecessors grew out of a hasic,modern age proposition --that national security is something more than guns and 15
PAGE 9
infantrymen, planes and pilots, and ships and sailors. Equally important is the economy and massive industrial complex which makes a military machine run. The statutory membership on the National Security Council accorded the director of OEP reflects the many implications of the term "National Security." It is directly related to the capability of industry to meet whatever crisis may befall us. OEP, as a planning agency, is primarily an initiator and coordinator. Our studies form one basis for Presidential assignment of operational authority to appropriate Federal departments and agencies. Twenty Presidencial Executive Orders are now in force among 31 departments and agency ies. 16
PAGE 10
This accounts for OEP's close working partnership with the Office of Emergency Transportation in the Department of Commerce. OEP provides broad guidance on matters involving the transportation resource area. On the other hand, OET is the focal point for all operating functions carried out by all the transportation agencies, including the Interstate Commerce Commissionthe Bureau of Public Roads, the Maritime Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Federal Aviation Agency. Now let me get to the specific matter of how an emergency transportation system would function. Underlying the emergency transportation system are four basic principles to which we adhere.
PAGE 11
1. Controls would be applied only wlan andto the dftReenecessary. 2. Carriers will continue to manage their own operations. 3. Industrial traffic managers will continue to perform their normal functions. 4. The normal shipper-carrier relationships will prevail subject only to the control system procedures. These are important principles. Our system of control is only as good as the industry will make it. No amount of government planning, however detailed and profound, can substitute for or provide the experience which you people possess. We recognize this fact and it is incorporated in our concepts.
PAGE 12
I count it a high honor to speak to this luncheon audience of the National Defense Transportation Association. In a very real sense NDTA embodies the know how and experience, the seasoned skills and the tested talents upon which we have come to rely in meeting the manifold problems of national defense in a dangerous age. We in the Office of Emergency Planning turn to the National Defense Transportation Association for the strenuous, most often unsung, always invaluable assistance we need in our planning. And the Nation turns to members of NITA whenever it is faced with a crisis. Your achievement over the last
PAGE 13
Here is how our national system would function in an emergency. The President would orer the Secretary of Commerce to invoke control systems and to determine the proper allocation of our total civil transportation capacity. He would function under the general policy guidance of the Director of the office of Emergency Planning unless or until expanded and additional emergency units come into being. Under the Secretary of Commerce, the Director of the Office of Emergency Transportation would monitor and mesh the actual operations of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Maritime Administration. Traffic control functions would be assigned to the Bureau of Public Roads and the 19
PAGE 14
Federal Aviation Agency. What would be expected of you and your industry under this system? First, you would be asked to provide maximum service to meet essential needs. You would have to provide for continuity of management, protection of personnel and facilities, restoration of damage lines 4 k, and securing ;:& manpower and mater ials to do this job. When a federal agency needs transportation, it would give the Office of Emergency Transportation a timetable of need and an estimate of peak requirements. OET would arb itrate the cla ims of the various federal agencies as well as requests from State and local claimants.
PAGE 15
Obviously the system I have described is both complex and large and it must be coordinated with all other elements of our economy. That job would fall to the Office of Defense Resources, a standby unit now in the blueprint stage, which could be ordered into force only at the direction of the President. You heard something about this concept last year at this time. I can now report me have advanced to the point where an organizational structure has been laid out. This new agency, when and if activated, would absorb all the functions of the Office of Emergency Planning. It would then serve as a nerve center for the President in the entire mobilization field. 21
PAGE 16
At the outset, OR was conceived to provide a mechanism for use in nuclear war. Today, the concept has been extended and redesigned for use in limited war. Nevertheless, it remains solely with the President to activate ODR. There are all kinds of limited 'ars. To be sure, what was once considered a full-scale conventional war is, by today's definition, a limited war. Certainly, as my earlier remarks indicated, CDR is not now needed. In concept, however, it comprises both the voluntary and mandatory measures which might have to be invoked. Among the voluntary measures important to mobilization are: Measures to encourage industry
PAGE 17
to expand production of essential goods and services, to curtail nonessential production, and to construct or convert facilities for essential uses by means of special financing arrangements, tax incentives and competition for government procurement orders. Others could involve training and retraining programs to increase productivity and skills and to bring new workers into the labor force. Still others could be concerned with public information programs to obtain the voluntary cooperation of individual citizens, industry, labor and other orga.1ized groups. Mandatory emergency measures, some of which are presently available, 23
PAGE 18
would also be used, but only as required by the national interest. In the case of wage and rent controls, it would be necessary to obtain statutory authority not now available. All told mandatory measures chich could be used are those dealing with priority and allocation systems, price and wage controls, consumer rationing, iv entory controls and antihoarding orders, conservation measures, import and export controls, and requisitioning orders. For some parts of this program it might well be necessary to establish additional emergency agencies. This is likely in the field of economic stabilization and it could be true in the field of transportation. It need not be so,
PAGE 19
however, if the Department of Transportation already exists. Certainly we shall have removed or substantially reduced many of the problems of coordination with which we currently contend. That is a thumbnail sketch of what we are doing today. Obviously your help is needed in these areas and many more. I hope, for example, that more top executives from all phases of the transportation industry will seek assignment in appropriate units of the National Defense Executive Reserve, which now numbers more than 3600 topdrawer executives from industry, labor, agriculture and other disciplines. 25
PAGE 20
I hope your membership will provide expertise to the fifty sovereign States which are now intensifying their own efforts to build emergency resource structures. I hope you will continue, as individuals and as an organization, to be the constructive conscience of Federal planning, letting us know if we are falling short of the mark and how our efforts can be improved. I hope, above all, that the National Defense Transportation Association will remain in the vanguard of those forces fighting to keep the industry strong, vigorous and apace with the rapid tempo of our times. For our free society, whether its energies are directed to peace or 26
PAGE 21
or war, has succeeded because it is made up of people never satisfied with the status-quo, always searching for new ideas, seeking and finding new ways of bringing the blessings of a better life to all. 27
PAGE 22
year in transporting troops, equipment and supplies to Vietnam has been monumental. The build-up we have witnessed was one of the fastest, most successful, and smoothly accomplished feats that modern transportation has ever performed. The Military Sea Transportation Service has carried 98 percent of all war cargo to the battle zone. Today MSTS has 280 dry cargo ships operating in Southeast Asia, continuing to supply all types of equipment to our troops. This effort has been coupled with the greatest military airlift operation of modern times. In the month of June alone, the U.S. Airforce flew more than 100 million pounds of combat cargo to Vietnam.
PAGE 23
And these performances were only the last leg of a long journey -a journey which began via mainland shipment by rail, by truck and by waterway and by air. The headlines out of Vietnam understandably cover day-to-day troop movements and battles, successful interdiction of supply lines and the splendid performance of our fighting men in the front lines. These are the grist and drama of war, but they should not detract from the truly epic contributions of the transportation industry to the struggle which engages our free forces in Vietnam. Nor should Vietnam be considered as separate from the stream of recent history. It is very much part of the 3
PAGE 24
current that has swept the post-World War 11 decades. It is part of the same effort as the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from economic disaster and communism, and led to the reconstruction of free Western Eurape. It is part of the same effort we expended to keep South Korea free. It is part of the same effort that was made in the Formosa straits, in Lebanon, in Greece and Turkey. These were the early and successful episodes of the protracted struggle which has held center stage in the postwar years. Vietnam is but the latest chapter of that same compelling conflict. The task is not a simple one; it is not an easy one, it is not one .r can expect to accomplish overnight. No one 4
PAGE 25
wishes more than the President of the United States that it was not our task. But it is. We cannot expect others to honor their commitments if we do not honor ours. We cannot expect others to stand for freedom, if we do not. We cannot expect others to resist agression if we run. I know these sentiments are shared by the more than 130 corporate members of NOTA and by your chapters in one Hundred cities. But the message that we are gripped in a global struggle, that in meaning and magnitude the outcome of that struggle will affect the destiny of freedom for good or ill 5
PAGE 26
must be delivered to the overwhelming majority of Americans as well. They must understand also that we have the strength and stamina to win.And a stubborn enemy must come to believe that our power is matched by perseverance and patience, by rugged determination and resolve. Certainly, our economy is fit for the task no matter what is involved or how long it might take. We have added $270 billion to our output in the last five years. We have created seven million new jobs in the same period. Corporation profits after taxes have doubled. The families of America have added
PAGE 27
nearly a trillion dollars -I said a trillion -to their savings. That is economic history which cannot be equalled elsewhere on this troubled globe and the transportation industry has shared in the national abundance.' For the first six months of this year the ton-miles for the Class I railroads indicate an eight percent increase over the corresponding period last year; i.e., 367 billion ton-miles versus 340.7 billion ton-miles. Inland waterway and maritime industries have experienced a seven percent growth in revenues. Passenger traffic by air, bus and private vehicles continues to expand at a rapid pace. 7
PAGE 28
Even the swift growth of the Gross National Product, now running at an annual rate of $738 billion, is an index of a healthy transportation industry because an estimated twenty percent of GNP is directly or indirectly related to transportation. The Gross National Product tells us something else about the ability of the Nation to sustain its effort in Vietnam. Defense outlays accounted for about fifty percent of the increase in Gross National Product during the first eighteen months of Korea. Only twelve percent of the increase in GNP has been devoted to increased defense expenditures since the early part of 1965. We have the ability.
|
