Friends of the Radio Audience:
I am pleased and privileged to address you again tonight in behalf of my candidacy for Congress in the Eleventh Congressional District.
I want to be your nominee for Congressman next Tuesday because I seek the opportunity to serve you in peace as well as I tried to serve you in war as a PT Commander in the Pacific.
The job of winning the war was hard for all of us. But the job of winning the peace is going to be just as hard.
We must work together – you and me and every American – with the same firm resolution and dauntless determination that we took to the battle lines and the production lines when the enemy was sweeping across Europe and Asia and menacing our own shores.
There cannot be any real or enduring peace until every American is guaranteed and given the freedom, security, and independence which he as an American has a right to expect.
That will be my goal in Congress.
It is your goal too.
We shall reach it together.
At the present time there are 1,665,000 World War Two veterans who want college educations and job training.
But jobs and business opportunities are denied to these men who fought so valiantly and gloriously for their country.
And college gates are shut tight because classrooms and lecture halls are already filled to overflowing.
Is this the way to treat men who risked their lives and shed their blood for a better and more generally prosperous America? I say NO. And I think you will agree with me.
This is the time when the problem of government and business is to produce things to sell in unprecedented quantities.
And I say to you that if there was the right kind of American enthusiasm and action in Washington and elsewhere, industry would be begging for workers to man its machines.
There are jobs for war veterans.
There are jobs for the men and women who produced the materials for war.
It will be my task and your task to make those jobs available – not next year or at some indefinite time – but RIGHT NOW.
It will also be my task and your task to expand and enlarge the college and job training facilities.
In the G.I. Bill of Rights we Americans promised our defenders a chance to equip themselves for useful places in business, in the professions, and in all the trades.
We must keep those promises.
It is your duty and my duty, and we cannot fail.
The Port of Boston is vitally essential to Massachusetts and New England.
The Port is absolutely essential to the Eleventh Congressional District.
We have appropriated money and made a few improvements at the Port, but we have not done enough – either here in Massachusetts or in Washington.
Just think of it.
Sixty-five per cent of New England’s exports still go through New York and only 14 per cent through Boston.
Fifty per cent of Massachusetts’s exports go through New York and only 22 per cent through Boston.
Seventy-five per cent of New Hampshire’s exports go through New York and only 7 per cent through Boston.
Fifty-nine per cent of Maine’s exports go through New York and only ten per cent through Boston.
Seventy-five per cent of Vermont’s exports go through New York and only 12 per cent through Boston.
Seventy-eight per cent of Connecticut’s export go through New York and only ONE per cent through Boston.
For our own good and especially for the good of the service men who need employment, we must restore the Port of Boston immediately.
I think we are beginning to realize the value of the sane and sensible philosophy of the golden era of the Clipper Ship, when every New Englander looked upon Boston and particularly on the Eleventh Congressional District as the source and sustenance of his prosperity.
As your Congressman, I intend to encourage that philosophy.
We cannot afford to allow our piers to become elaborate monuments.
We must resolve – you and me – to back up the piers with a universal determination to make them justify their expense.
We must not forget that the ten major industries in Massachusetts which depend on the Port of Boston employ more than 250,000 persons and pay them wages and salaries totaling $235,000,000 each year.
I shall work for the Port in Congress because I want these 250,000 persons to have jobs and higher wages and also because I want at least 100,000 more people to find employment opportunities in the industries stimulated by a thoroughly up-to-date port.
It is ambitious undertaking, but you and I, working together, must try to do it.
Equally important and necessary is our Boston airport. The nearest terminal to Europe and South America, our Boston Airport is the logical transoceanic on the Atlantic Coast.
A plane using Boston as a terminal can offer cheaper and quicker transportation than another plane which has to follow a needlessly roundabout route.
However, before Boston can participate in the prosperity that will increase with progress in aviation, we must have an airport of sufficient size and development to accommodate the mammoth passenger and cargo planes of the immediate future.
In Congress I shall work every day in the year to make the Boston Airport a true and genuine North American Air Terminal.
If I succeed—I shall try my level best to see to it that there will be new jobs for men and women in the Eleventh Congressional District and throughout the rest of the State and section.
Another pressing obligation is low-cost housing for those who fought the war, at home and abroad.
We promised our soldiers, sailors, and Marines decent shelter. We promised them full employment.
We must give it to them.
The housing problem calls for leaders in Congress who are trained to analyze the deep economic forces that have created and complicated the problem.
The veteran should have full value for his building dollar. A temporary, makeshift shack is not enough.
For years the quality products of America factories have been channeled into the war effort.
Now, you and I must channel them into building the American home.
It can be done. It will have to be done.
Each passing day brings to light the increased need for prompt and intelligent action in public service.
Veterans are daily faced with new problems of employment, housing, and rehabilitation.
The general public’s needs are greater now than at any other time in the nation’s history.
Everyone who is able, should do his utmost in these days of world and national difficulties to contribute his talents in keeping with his ability and resources.
It is with this feeling that I, John Kennedy, ask you to make me your nominee for Congressman in the Eleventh Congressional District next Tuesday.
I want to serve you.
I ask you to give me the opportunity.
Speech source: David F. Powers Personal Papers. Series 09. John F. Kennedy Speeches File. Box 28, Folder: "WNAC Radio Broadcast, MA, 15 June 1946".