The Big Speech: John F. Kennedy at the University of Wyoming, September 25, 1960
Senator McGee--my old colleague in the
Senate, Gale McGee--Governor, Mr. President, Senator Mansfield, Senator
Metcalf, Secretary Udall, ladies and gentlemen:
I want to express
my appreciation to you for your warm welcome, to you, Governor, to the
President of the University, to Senator McGee, and others. I am
particularly glad to come on this conservation trip and have an
opportunity to speak at this distinguished university, because what we
are attempting to do is to develop the talents in our country which
require, of course, education which will permit us in our time, when the
conservation of our resources requires entirely different techniques
than were required 50 years ago, when the great conservation movement
began under Theodore Roosevelt--and these talents, scientific and social
talents, must be developed at our universities.
I hope that all
of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that
lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of
service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of
your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there
is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever
powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing
ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve.
What
I think we must realize is that the problems which now face us and
their solution are far more complex, far more difficult, far more
subtle, require a far greater skill and discretion of judgment, than any
of the problems that this country has faced in its comparatively short
history, or any, really, that the world has faced in its long history.
The fact is that almost in the last 30 years the world of knowledge has
exploded. You remember that Robert Oppenheimer said that 8 or 9 out of
10 of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. This last
generation has produced nearly all of the scientific breakthroughs, at
least relatively, that this world of ours has ever experienced. We are
alive, all of us, while this tremendous explosion of knowledge, which
has expanded the horizon of our experience, so far has all taken 'place
in the last 30 years.
If you realize that when Queen Victoria
sent for Robert Peel to be Prime Minister-he was in Rome--the journey
which he took from Rome to London took him the same amount of time, to
the day, that it had taken the Emperor Hadrian to go from Rome to
England nearly 1900 years before. There had been comparatively little
progress made in almost 1900 years in the field of knowledge. Now,
suddenly, in the last 100 years, but most particularly in the last 30
years, all that is changed, and all of this knowledge is brought to
bear, and can be brought to bear, in improving our lives and making the
life of our people more happy, or destroying them. And that problem is
the one, of course, which this generation of Americans and the next must
face: how to use that knowledge, how to make a social discipline out of
it.
There is really not much use in having science and its
knowledge confined to the laboratory unless it comes out into the
mainstream of American and world life, and only those who are trained
and educated to handle knowledge and the disciplines of knowledge can be
expected to play a significant part in the life of their country. So,
quite obviously, this university is not maintained by the people of
Wyoming merely to help all of the graduates enjoy a prosperous life.
That may come, that may be a byproduct, but the people of Wyoming
contribute their taxes to the maintenance of this school in order that
the graduates of this school may, themselves, return to the society
which helped develop them some of the talents which that society has
made available, and what is true in this State is true across the United
States.
The reason why, at the height of the Civil War, when the
preservation of the Union was in doubt, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land
Grant College Act, which has built up the most extraordinary
educational system in the world, was because he knew that a nation could
not exist and be ignorant and free; and what was true 100 years ago is
more true today. So what we have to decide is how we are going to manage
the complicated social and economic and world problems which come
across our desks-my desk, as President of the United States; the desk of
the Senators, as representatives of the States; the Members of the
House, as representatives of the people.
But most importantly, as
the final power is held by a majority of the people, how the majority
of the people are going to make their judgment on the wise use of our
resources, on the correct monetary and fiscal policy, what steps we
should take in space, what steps we should take to develop the resources
of the ocean, what steps we should take to manage our balance of
payments, what we should do in the Congo or Viet-Nam, or in Latin
America, all these areas which come to rest upon the United States as
the leading great power of the world, with the determination and the
understanding to recognize what is at stake in the world--all these are
problems far more complicated than any group of citizens ever had to
deal with in the history of the world, or any group of Members of
Congress had to deal with.
If you feel that the Members of
Congress were more talented 100 years ago, and certainly the Senators in
the years before the Civil War included the brightest figures,
probably, that ever sat in the Senate--Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun,
and all the rest-they talked, and at least three of them stayed in the
Congress 40 years--they talked for 40 years about four or five things:
tariffs and the development of the West, land, the rights of the States
and slavery, Mexico. Now we talk about problems in one summer which
dwarf in complexity all of those matters, and we must deal with them or
we will perish.
So I think the chance for an educated graduate of
this school to serve his State and country is bright. I can assure you
that you are needed.
This trip that I have taken is now about 24
hours old, but it is a rewarding 24 hours because there is nothing more
encouraging than for those of us to leave the rather artificial city of
Washington and come and travel across the United States and realize what
is here, the beauty, the diversity, the wealth, and the vigor of the
people.
Last Friday I spoke to delegates from all over the world
at the United Nations. It is an unfortunate fact that nearly every
delegate comes to the United States from all around the world and they
make a judgment on the United States based on an experience in New York
or Washington; and rarely do they come West beyond the Mississippi, and
rarely do they go to California, or to Hawaii, or to Alaska. Therefore,
they do not understand the United States, and those of us who stay only
in Washington sometimes lose our comprehension of the national problems
which require a national solution.
This country has become rich
because nature was good to us, and because the people who came from
Europe, predominantly, also were among the most vigorous. The basic
resources were used skillfully and economically, and because of the wise
work done by Theodore Roosevelt and others, significant progress was
made in conserving these resources.
The problem, of course, now
is that the whole concept of conservation must change in the 1960's if
we are going to pass on to the 350 million Americans who will live in
this country in 40 years where 180 million Americans now live--if we are
going to pass on a country which is even richer.
The fact of the
matter is that the management of our natural resources instead of being
primarily a problem of conserving them, of saving them, now requires
the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We
have come to. realize to a large extent that resources are not passive.
Resources are not merely something that was here, put by nature.
Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which 10 years
ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources
of the United States. And that is the most significant fact in
conservation now since the early 1900's when Theodore Roosevelt started
his work. A conservationist's first reaction in those days was to
preserve, to hoard, to protect every non-renewable resource. It was the
fear of resource exhaustion which caused the great conservation movement
of the 1900's. And this fear was reflected in the speeches and
attitudes of our political leaders and their writers.
This is not
surprising in the light of the technology of that time, but today that
approach is out of date, and I think this is an important fact for the
State of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain States. It is both too
pessimistic and too optimistic. We need no longer fear that our
resources and energy supplies are a fixed quantity that can be exhausted
in accordance with a particular rate of consumption. On the other hand,
it is not enough to put barbed wire around a forest or a lake, or put
in stockpiles of minerals, or restrictive laws and regulations on the
exploitation of resources. That was the old way of doing it.
Our
primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment to a
point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without
detracting permanently from its value, and, above all, maintain a
living balance between man's actions and nature's reactions, for this
Nation's great resources are as elastic and productive as our ingenuity
can make them. For example, soda ash is a multimillion dollar industry
in this State. A few years ago there was no use for it. It was wasted.
People were unaware of it. And even if it had been sought, it could not
be found--not because it wasn't here, but because effective prospecting
techniques had not been developed. Now soda ash is a necessary
ingredient in the production of glass, steel, and other products. As a
result of a series of experiments, of a harnessing of science to the use
of man, this great new industry has opened up. In short, conservation
is no longer protection and conserving and restricting. The balance
between our needs and the availability of our resources, between our
aspirations and our environment, is constantly changing.
One of
the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is
not going to be the land; it will be the ocean. We are going to find
untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a
better life for our people. Science is changing all of our natural
environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad. We are
pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been
largely neglected--examining the feasibility of transporting coal by
water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction
of coal into gasoline, and of transmitting electric power directly from
the mouth of the mine. The economic feasibility of some of these
techniques has not been determined, but it will be in the next decade.
At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of
using low grade coal, to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for
coal we are going to find in the rest of this century. This is, in
effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the
people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.
Another
research undertaking of special concern to this Nation and this State
is the continuing effort to develop practical and feasible techniques of
converting oil shale into usable petroleum fuels. The higher grade
deposits in Wyoming alone are equivalent to 30 billion barrels of oil,
and 200 billion barrels in the case of lower grade development. This
could not be used, there was nothing to conserve, and now science is
going to make it possible.
Investigation is going on to assure at
the same time an adequate water supply so that when we develop this
great new industry we will be able to use it and have sufficient water.
Resource development, therefore, requires not only the coordination of
all branches of science, it requires the joint effort of scientists,
government--State, national, and local--and members of other
professional disciplines. For example, we are now examining in the
United States today the mixed economic-technical question of whether
very large-scale nuclear reactors can produce unexpected savings in the
simultaneous desalinization of water and the generation of electricity.
We will have, before this decade is out or sooner, a tremendous nuclear
reactor which makes electricity and at the same time gets fresh water
from salt water at a competitive price. What a difference this can make
to the Western United States. And, indeed, not only the United States,
but all around the globe where there are so many deserts on the ocean's
edge.
It is in efforts, I think, such as this, where the National
Government can play a significant role, where the scale of public
investment or the nationwide scope of the problem, the national
significance of the results are too great to ignore or which cannot
always be carried out by private research. Federal funds and stimulation
can help make the most imaginative and productive use of our manpower
and facilities. The use of science and technology in these fields has
gained understanding and support in the Congress. Senator Gale McGee has
proposed an energetic study of the technology of electrometallurgy--the
words are getting longer as the months go on, and more complicated-an
area of considerable importance to the Rocky Mountains.
All this,
I think, is going to change the life of Wyoming and going to change the
life of the United States. What we regard now as relative well-being,
30 years from now will be regarded as poverty. When you realize that 30
years ago r out of 10 farms had electricity, and yet some farmers
thought that they were living reasonably well, now for a farm not to
have electricity, we regard them as living in the depths of poverty.
That is how great a change has come in 30 years. In the short space of
18 years, really, or almost 20 years, the wealth of this country has
gone up 300 percent.
In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be,
can be, must be--if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our
resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in
the Nation, in the State, in the community, and individually, if we
maintain a vigorous and hopeful 'pursuit of life and knowledge--the
resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them
so greatly that all those people who thought 40 years ago that this
country would be exhausted in the middle of the century have been proven
wrong. It is going to be richer than ever, providing we make the wise
decisions and we recognize that the future belongs to those who seize
it.
Knowledge is power, a saying 500 years old, but knowledge is
power today as never before, not only here in the United States, but the
future of the free world depends in the final analysis upon the United
States and upon our willingness to reach those decisions on these
complicated matters which face us with courage and clarity. And the
graduates of this school will, as they have in the past, play their
proper role.
I express my thanks to you. This building which 15
years ago was just a matter of conversation is now a reality. So those
things that we talk about today, which seem unreal, where so many people
doubt that they can be done--the fact of the matter is, it has been
true all through our history--they will be done, and Wyoming, in doing
it, will play its proper role.
Thank you.
1 comment:
Just fwiw, I've put this speech up, and another Wyoming JFK speech up, because they were delivered in Wyoming.
I note that as I'm not a big fan of Kennedy's, whom I regard as a highly overrated President for a variety of reasons.
Where I will give Kennedy credit, however, is that he was good at delivering a speech and is associated with several good ones. I suppose this is in the nature of giving credit where it is due, because in terms of his record as a President, I think he was, in fact, abysmally bad and his personal moral conduct was reprehensible.
Post a Comment