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quate safeguards to prevent the large
scale collapse that we saw in our nation
in 1929 and the early thirties?
We must face the fact that there are
thirty-four million people in our nation,
one-fifth of the population, who are living
at and below the poverty level which means
they do not have the means to live ac-
cording to the minimal standards of de-
cency and health.
This problem affects all sections of the
population. There are men of forty v/ho
cannot get a job because they are too old.
It is now predicted that children born in
our State today will never know what it
is to have a job unless we put our minds
and our skills and our hearts together to
provide for a correlation of the forces of
science and the needs of man so that we
can have full and continuing employment
in our State for those who want to work
and for those who are prepared to work.
We should know that more and more men
of fifty, men of fifty-five, men of sixty,
who are physically able, are baing sent to
pasture because there is no room within
our state employment system for them to
work. And, of course, with our young peo-
ple emerging into the mainstream there is
chronically high and disproportionate un-
employment. The papers were full this
morning of a decrease in the national un-
employment rate from August, but then it
seesaws up and down.
We must face the fact that full time
unemployment in our nation rose from 2.9
per cent of the civilian labor force in 1953
to 5.3 per cent during the first half of
1964. Not only are men idle, but physical
resources are idle. There is what econ-
omists call a production gap, the difference
between actual production and maximum
production which rose from an estimated
three-tenths per cent of maximum produc-
tion in 1953 to an estimated 11.7 per cent
in the first half of 1964. The chronically
rising tide of idle man power and plant
correlates with the inadequate United
States economic growth rate.
What is more important in the life of a
man than the right to have a job? There
was an old sociologist at the University of
Pennsylvania who taught us that work is
to man what play is to a child. We will
fail this generation and the generation to
come unless we evolve a concept which will
be a mandate to the General Assembly and
to the executive leadership of our State
and in our political subdivisions to come
together, private and public, in the private
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and public sectors, and make provisions for
the needs of man.
I just call attention to the fact that in
Maryland five areas of our State are still
designated depressed areas, and eligible
for aid under the Federal Area Redevelop-
ment Act of 1961, Public Law 8727. Fol-
lowing are the standards which are used
in determining whether an area is de-
pressed : Has there been chronic, continuing
unemployment which is one hundred per
cent above the national average in one of
the immediate past two years preceding the
date of determination? Is there seventy-
five per cent above the national average of
chronic continuing unemployment for the
past three years preceding the date of
determination? Is there fifty per cent above
the national average of four years for the
past four years preceding the date of
determination?
Now, what are those areas? Baltimore
City's inner port just escaped being de-
clared a distressed area, but Crisfield in
Somerset County, Cambridge in Dorchester
County, Oakland area in Garrett County,
Prince Frederick area of Calvert County
in southern Maryland, and the Cumberland
area of Allegany County in Western Mary-
land are still distressed areas in our State.
Therefore, we believe that we should state
in our constitution the right of the citizens
to have the State provide for their con-
tinuing employment where there is the will
to work and where they are physically
able, or to train them for the employment
in this highly technological age.
I would like to say in closing that the
bill of rights is the most fundamental and
basic of all the articles in our constitution
because it is the foundation upon which
the superstructure of government rests. We
must be responsive to the changing needs
in our society. Otherwise there would be
no need to meet in a constitutional con-
vention for revision and reform. I say to
you again, ours is a nation of affluence,
with chronically high unemployment, with
a substantial portion of our population in-
adequately prepared for work in the forty
to sixty age bracket. There is also a lack
of the kind of training in our schools that
will prepare our young people for this new
technological age.
We need a mandate to the State to get
busy. This State has prior to this time re-
sponded only to crisis and it has been gov-
ernment by crisis, and we call for the
courage and the foresight of our State in
preventing the catastrophe which is ahead,
if we will but see it.
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