University of Arkansas Commencement Address, January 1961

6. in many Southern states have developed a defeatist attitude, for the most part. But if each of us were to become active in party affairs we could have a better state, a better nation. As for candidacy for office, you may think that you are too young to con- sider it. I assure you that you are not. I can name a dozen State Governors, in the last few years, who were elected to office in their middle thirties. Most of them were elected to, and served in other offices, prior to becoming Governors. Many of them served, for example, in the State Legislatures in their early twenties. Two years ago the State of Oklahoma elected a Governor who was 32, a Lieutenant Governor who was 31, and a State Treasurer who was 33. Governor Hollings of South Carolina was elected at the age of 36. There are young Governors in Alabama and Georgia, and in other States. The President of the United States is only 44. The South is going to need all of the best leadership it can find, within the next three or four generations. The economists tell us that our region, not too many years ago described by President Franklin Roosevelt as the "nation's economic problem number 1," is destined to become the richest section of the nation, and therefore of the world. The South has the climate, the water, the sunshine, and the other physical resources to insure its continued rapid economic development. The South has twice the rainfall of any other region. Large areas of most of our states can be put under irrigation. With research and with training--the traditional weapons of higher education--we can put that rainfall to work to make ours the most productive agricultural area in the world. The South, as a region, has the nation's best climate, not only fo