• U.S.

Republicans: The Poverty Issue

4 minute read
TIME

Whenever Republican Barry Goldwater lashes out at the Democratic Administration, he runs the hazard of being rebutted by Fellow Republican Nelson Rockefeller. It happened again last week when Multimillionaire Rockefeller took issue with the wealthy Goldwater’s ideas about how to treat the nation’s poor.

Wearing black tie and tux, Goldwater told some 1,500 members of the blue-chip Economic Club of New York that Johnson’s State of the Union address indicated that the new Democratic Ad ministration plans to be a “Santa Claus of the free lunch, the Government handout, the something-for-nothing and something-for-everyone.” As evidence, Goldwater cited Johnson’s declared war on poverty. Said Goldwater: “America, for most of its years, has waged a war on poverty. And wherever it has waged that war, in factories, in laboratories, in shops, over counters and under the enterprise system, it has won that war. It has won it, is winning it, more surely than any nation on earth. I say that when Government tries to spend its way to wealth, we lose that war.”

Chasing Hares. Goldwater questioned statistics on U.S. poverty, declared that income levels considered low in the U.S. “are regarded as true wealth in the rest of the world. Workers in many other countries cannot earn as much as our welfare clients receive. It is like greyhounds chasing a mechanical hare. You never catch up. There will always be a lowest one-third or one-fifth.” Instead of being given handouts, said Goldwater, persons on relief should be put to work on community projects.

But what bothered Rocky was a paragraph that Goldwater never uttered, although it got wide play as part of his released text: “We are told that many people lack skills and cannot find jobs because they did not have an education. That’s like saying that people have big feet because they wear big shoes. The fact is that most people who have no skill have had no education for the same reason—low intelligence or low ambition.” Later, in North Carolina, Goldwater said that Johnson’s anti-poverty program is “an attempt to divide Americans.”

Campaigning in Swanzey Center, N.H., Rockefeller declared that he was “diametrically opposed” to Goldwater’s views on poverty. “What he doesn’t understand,” declared Rocky, “is that a lot of people who don’t have an education and who don’t have the preparation for jobs—it is not because they’re either stupid or indolent and don’t want to know, it’s because they haven’t had the opportunity. There are very few Americans who don’t want to go forward. But they need the tools of education and opportunity to do it.”

Robin Hood in Flannel? In Keene, N.H., Rocky’s social-welfare ideas were challenged by a Keene Teachers College sophomore, Jon Tate, 22, and a lively debate followed. Excerpts:

Tate: Aren’t you a Robin Hood in a grey flannel suit?

Rocky: No, I’m not. I don’t take from the rich.

Tate: What about in some of our states where some people are just too lazy to do anything?

Rocky: Well, I don’t know if you’ve got in mind personal friends of yours or not. But in my opinion there are very few people who fall in this category. Circumstances, in some cases, are more than people can cope with. You can’t let them die in the streets.

Tate: If I know I can depend on all the rich people in the U.S. to support me in my time of need, why should I do anything?

Rocky: Well, if that is your fundamental belief, then I hate to think how you were brought up and what goes into your mind.

With that, “the poverty issue” seemed well on the way toward becoming one of the more emotional components of the 1964 political campaigns.

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