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REMARKS AT GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE ON DELMARVA

DEVELOPMENT, REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE

May 11, 1967

Governor Terry, Governor Godwin, Governor Tawes, President
McMath, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to join you for this second conference on Economic
Development of Delmarva. If it is as productive as your first one, which
resulted in forming the Delmarva Advisory Council three years ago,
it will indeed have been a significant meeting.

The Council has already established itself as a force for guiding the
transformation of this peninsula into a major attraction for tourists
and industry. I compliment those citizens of the three states who are
giving freely of their time to serve on the Council and also its full-
time Executive Director, Mr. Worthington J. Thompson.

It was because of the Council's initiative that the Federal Economic
Development Administration designated the Peninsula south of the
C 8c D Canal as an Economic Development District. I understand that
this is one of the first such districts to have been designated by the
EDA, and that it is further along in its project planning than any
other district in the country.

The designation means that the newly designated growth centers
of Salisbury and Dover are able to obtain a variety of federally fi-
nanced planning and technical assistance grants and public works
facilities that would not otherwise be available.

We are witnessing, ladies and gentlemen, a remarkable transforma-
tion of the economy of this region, and its room for growth is almost
boundless. Agriculture, seafood and light industry such as food pro-
cessing have long been mainstays of the economy and will continue
to play a major role. But we now see added to them a diversification
of industry such as the new brush manufacturing plant of the Rubber-
set Corporation in Crisfield and the Western Printing and Lithograph-
ing Company in Cambridge. In fact, there have been 24 new manu-
facturing plants and 28 expansions of existing plants on Maryland's
Eastern Shore in the 3 years and 5 months since the first Conference
on Economic Development of Delmarva. Only two of the new plants
during this period have been food processors; the others are diversi-
fied, ranging from plywood manufacturing to production of lithog-
raphers' plates.