I have called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total victory.

                    There are millions of Americans-one fifth of our people-who have not
                    shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on
                    whom the gates of opportunity have been closed.

                    What does this poverty mean to those who endure it?

                    It means a daily struggle to secure the necessities for even a meager
                    existence. It means that the abundance, the comforts, the opportunities
                    they see all around them are beyond their grasp.

                    Worst of all, it means hopelessness for the young.

                    The young man or woman who grows up without a decent education, in a
                    broken home, in a hostile and squalid environment, in ill health or in the
                    face of racial injustice-that young man or woman is often trapped in a life
                    of poverty.

                    He does not have the skills demanded by a complex society. He does
                    not know how to acquire those skills. He faces a mounting sense of
                    despair which drains initiative and ambition and energy. . . .

                    The war on poverty is not a struggle simply to support people, to make
                    them dependent on the generosity of others.

                    It is a struggle to give people a chance.

                    It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities, as we
                    have been allowed to develop and use ours, so that they can share, as
                    others share, in the promise of this nation.

                    We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should.

                    For the establishment of public education and land grant colleges
                    through agricultural extension and encouragement to industry, we have
                    pursued the goal of a nation with full and increasing opportunities for all
                    its citizens.

                    The war on poverty is a further step in that pursuit.

                    We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all.

                    Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our
                    resources-the skills and strength of our people.

                    And in the future, as in the past, this investment will return its cost many
                    fold to our entire economy.

                    If we can raise the annual earnings of 10 million among the poor by only
                    $1,000 we will have added $14 billion a year to our national output. In
                    addition we can make important reductions in public assistance
                    payments which now cost us $4 billion a year, and in the large costs of
                    fighting crime and delinquency, disease and hunger.

                    This is only part of the story.

                    Our history has proved that each time we broaden the base of
                    abundance, giving more people the chance to produce and consume, we
                    create new industry, higher production, increased earnings and better
                    income for all.

                    Giving new opportunity to those who have little will enrich the lives of all
                    the rest.

                    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.

                         From Public Papers of the Presidents of the United
                         States, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 (Washington, D.C.:
                         Government Printing Office, 1966).