, Speaking at the A.¥.l.-C.1.0, National Conference in New York, last week, President Kennedy admitted that unemployment "is the number one issue today" in the U.5.. He said that with regard to unemployment in the U.S., the poet and author Robert Louis Steyouson stated it very simply a long time ago: “the saddest object in civil eeeeis the man who can work, and wants to work, and is not allowed to work."
Kennedy said, "there are too many such men ~ and women — in America today, Some 4 million workers are idle." Ovor 12 million were unemployed for some poriod of the year. A quartor of them were out of work 15 weeks or longer and their families were fooling the pinch, ho added. Kennedy acknowledged that the unemployment rate was as high this yoar as in 1954 — a year of recossion, Last year's loss of man hours was a staggering 1,000 million work days; equivalent to shutting down the entire country with no production, no services and no pay for over three weeks,
eeeeHo added, "If we move into a recession in 1964 and demonstrate that the cycle which has been traditional is still with us, if we ond up that rocession with 8 or 9 million people out of work, what then is going to bo said about the leader of the West? Kennedy once again called for a tax cut as an artificial means to stimulate the economy, to ease unemployment and to delay the coming of anothor economic crisis.