Good afternoon. I'm Jim renier chairman and chief executive officer of Honeywell. It's a pleasure to welcome all of you to Minnesota meeting today. We also extend a welcome to the radio audience throughout the Upper Midwest who are hearing this program on Minnesota public radio's. Midday program broadcasts of Minnesota meeting are made possible by the law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly with offices in Minneapolis, st. Paul and major cities in the United States and Europe. Minnesota meeting is a public affairs Forum which brings National and international speakers to Minnesota members of Minnesota meeting represent this communities leaders from corporations government Academia and the professions The next schedule speaker for Minnesota meeting is Richard Grasso president and chief executive officer of the New York Stock Exchange on December 12. Minnesota meeting is pleased to present today's speaker Brad Butler the retired chairman of Procter & Gamble who will discuss early childhood development whose business is it? Now I got to meet Brad a little while ago a few years back as a member of a committee that he headed for the committee for economic development which came out with the landmark document on early childhood development called children in need. It's very very easy to become one of his disciples and I did he certainly is been one of the true speakers on behalf of children and the plight of children in the United States today and perhaps is probably the foremost authority with regard to the plight of children in our country and the effect it could have on competitiveness right now and long-term. Mr. Brad retired from Procter & Gamble in 1986 after 41 years. He's a native of Baltimore grew up there educated at Dartmouth. As I said, he's a chairman of the committee for economic development in Asheville group of Business Leaders and Educators in 1982, the committee produced a polity policy statement on business and the public schools entitled investing in our children since its publication Brad has presented the policy recommendations to many up many audiences including the macneil/lehrer NewsHour the national Governors conference, the National Association of state boards of education and the American Federation of teachers convention. I mentioned the children in need document investment strategies for the educationally disadvantaged. He's presented that to congressional committees National media Representatives The Business Council of Fortune Magazine education Summit in many other National and state conferences following his presentation questions will be addressed from the audience. Please use the cards at your table to jot down questions for discussion Gary Gilson a Twin Cities writer and broadcaster and Jane maratha. Executive director of the Minnesota meeting will move among you to manage the question and answer session. It's now my pleasure to present to you Brad Butler. Thank you, Jim. And thank you all for coming. It's a it's a privilege to have this opportunity to talk to you the fact that that it's December the 7th. Leads me to use an analogy to put the issues I want to discuss into perspective for you. on December the 7th 1941 the United States took I think it was 3581 casualties among our young people at Pearl Harbor. Over 3,500 casualties in the single day killed and wounded. Some lost their lives immediately some died not long after from the wounds. They suffered a few recovered completely to lead perfectly normal lives. The remainder were handicapped if not disabled for the rest of their lives. It was such a trauma and such a tragedy for our nation that has some of you of my age will recall our president the next day address the Congress. Labeled it a day that will live in infamy. And asked the nation to dedicate itself with whatever it took. money time lives brothers and husbands and fathers to bring to Total surrender the enemy who had inflicted so many casualties on our nation in a single day. Well my friends today, we will take four thousand casualties. More than we took it Pearl Harbor. 4,000 American youngsters will drop out of school today. But we're a nerd to it. It isn't a day that will live in infamy for us anymore because 4,000 kids dropped out of school yesterday, too. And 4,000 will drop out tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. We take more casualties among our young people every day of the school year today, and we took it Pearl Harbor. And is it the day that will live in infamy have we yet accepted the magnitude of that tragedy? Do we have leaders in this nation today saying whatever it takes, we will bring that enemy to Total surrender that enemy is poverty and ignorance. And it will destroy our nation more certainly. Than any foreign power has threatened to do with military force. if we don't act Can you imagine our national leaders in 1941 standing before the American people reporting? What happened at Pearl Harbor and saying boy, we really ought to do something about that. And as soon as we have the money we will. But G we've got this budget problem. We need a bigger Navy. We need some more ships. We need to replace the ones that were sunk. We need an Air Force. We need guns. We need tanks. We got a budget problem. So we'll have to plan that. And someday maybe we will be able to afford it now in the middle of a depression. We're willing to say whatever it takes. We will no longer. We will never again permit over 3500 children to be lost in the day. And yet here less than 50 years later. We let 4,000 be lost every day. Now. What does that have to do with Early Childhood? I'm talking about high school dropouts and yet my talk today is billed as Early Childhood programs. We at the committee for economic development learned six years ago what the connection is because we started out studying public education in the United States not as a cure for poverty. But because we were having a meeting devoted to the issue of productivity and US World competitiveness. And the prescriptions being offered were the conventional wisdom of the day new plants new technology higher investment tax credits Etc and the trustees of CED immediately following those presentations from the Secretary of Commerce. And the chairman of the Council of economic advisers said, You know, this is what we've all been saying, but can this be right? Is this the way we think about our own company? When somebody asks the CEO of a successful company, why his or her company is successful. The answer is almost never we got these wonderful machines. We have this great new plant. The answer is we have good people. We have good people well trained. Well motivated hard-working competitive ambitious Innovative people. I remember the first management meeting. I ever attended it Procter & Gamble the then chairman who was the first non-family member to head the company and a high school graduated joined the company when I was 18. I started that first speech. I heard repeated every time I ever heard him speak after that. I repeated every time I spoke to our management and later years. So Gentlemen We double our business every 10 years in constant dollar terms in volume terms. We always have and we expect to continue doing so and we do that because of the quality of our people what that means is if you took away all of our plants all of our Brands and all of our money, but you left me all of our people in 10 years. I'd build you a new company as big as this one has today. But if you left me my Brands my plants and my money and you took away my people in 10 years, I'd probably be bankrupt. And that's the way we think about our companies. And the CED trustee said if that's true, isn't that true of our nation? Aren't we really losing the battle not because of machines not because of computer chips, but because of the way we're developing our youth our failure to remain competitive in the quality of our education. And so we created a study commission to develop a national policy statement on education reform or education reprove meant which I like better than reform reform implies or something really immoral about our schools. And there isn't but our schools need to be improved just as everything needs to be improved to stay competitive in this world today and we set out expecting we would look at high schools. What we found was that there was much that can be done to make our schools more effective for the 75% or so of our kids who are finishing our public school system. We need make our schools. They Governors and the president articulated and pretty. Well, we need to make our schools more results-oriented. We need to deregulate them to give more room for creativity by teachers and principals. We need to move control further down toward the local level. We need to let schools compete. We need to let children and parents have more voice in choosing where they will go to school. But we also found. That even in places where those kinds of measures were in place and even where they were further backed up by things like the Boston compact guaranteeing jobs. to every graduate of a public high school guaranteeing a college education for any graduate of a public high school who had the grades. To gain entry into college even where all those things were in place. The dropout rate was not declining it was growing why. Why because we finally learned after three years of study and a good deal of research that children the children who drop out of high school by and large Do not drop out of high school. They drop out of first grade. And why do they drop out of first grade now? They attend school, the law makes them attend school, if if a truant officer can find them and shove them in there. They will attend school until they are allowed not to but they don't drop out of high school. They never drop in. Do the educational system? Why? Well because they're human kids six years old are pretty mature the pretty human and they react to most stimuli about the same way you and I do. And what's the stimulus so many of these disadvantaged children get when they enter first grade Now by disadvantaged. I mean a child who has parents or no parents. Who either can't or don't read to child who has never been read to a child who has never been talked to a child who hasn't been taught vocabulary hasn't been taught reason hasn't been given any of the intellectual development. That is required for a first grade curriculum. And or a child who was of a mother who was uncared for before the child's birth who was born malnourished low birth weight. Perhaps ill Those children enter School. Let's think for a minute about what their life is like. Most of you have somewhere in your acquaintances a child of your own a grandchild a niece and nephew a neighbor's child. Who is about 4 years old. Think with me about that normal four-year-old if you will kids a little lawyer. Say go to bed Johnny. Why? Well, because it's your bedtime. Why doesn't Susie have to go to bed? She's older than you are. I don't need any more sleep than she does. Yes, you do. You need 10 are sleep. Why well, because you're only 4 years old. I'll sleep later in the morning. No, you can't sleep later in the morning. We have to get up and get you to the daycare center. I'll sleep faster. Here's a child a normal child at the age of four who has a vocabulary of hundreds of words speaks in sentences understands cause and effect understands reasoning understands rules understands discipline. Is capable of argument. That's a child that is still two years from entering first grade. And that's the child. Our first grade is designed to further educate. Now. Let's talk about the disadvantaged child. Let's talk about more than half of the children coming into the first grade in the Chicago Public Schools last year. More than half of those children. Did not know words like red and blue. I couldn't distinguish those colors are not colorblind. They just didn't know those words. They didn't know circle square and triangle. And they didn't know their first and last name. I don't mean they couldn't write it. I mean, they didn't know it. Now you put that child. Who's conversation with adult since birth has been if he dared say or she dared say why when they were told to get to bed. The answer wasn't an argument. The answer wasn't. And that's the way that child's been prepared for first grade. Now that child enters first grade and finds out before the first day is over. That he or she is a loser. He or she simply cannot compete with those little four-year-old lawyers who are now already two years older and have hundreds more words in their vocabulary. They're humiliated. They're humiliated by their inability to do the work. So what do they do? They do the same thing, you know a friend of mine once asked me why I quit playing golf. I said, I wasn't good at it. That's why I quit playing golf. Had rather skier play tennis. I can do those pretty mean I can be competitive. I don't humiliate myself every time I get on a tennis court or a ski slope, but I do want to get on a golf course so I don't get on golf courses. Kids are the same. That kid goes into school and gets humiliated not by lack of ability, but by lack of preparation and the kid doesn't know that it's lack of a preparation the kid thinks it's lack of ability the kid thinks he or she can't compete. And so they drop out how do they spend their Wares their mind when they're in school shooting baskets by George Aiken competed shooting baskets stealing hubcaps fighting in the in the schoolyard the things they can compete in. Those are the things they choose to do. That's where they put their energy. They get very good at it, too. They don't get very good at academics and they hate it. And they hate school. And they drop out and then they stopped attending as soon as they're allowed to stop attending now. Can we do anything about that? Yes, we can yes, we'd better. all of you know How many we saw USA Today I had it at the door in my hotel front page is about the gangs in Los Angeles. How many of you think it is safe to walk the streets of all the cities in America today? Who are you afraid of you're afraid of an army that has now become bird that now numbers in the Millions. of alienated youth and I just told you in the opening that we are adding to that Army at the rate of 4,000 recruits a day. How long do you think our society can survive that growing our me forget about our economy. How long can our society? Remain, peaceful and Democratic as that Army grows at the rate of 4,000 a day. That's the bad news. The good news is we know how to fix it. We know how to fix it not by guessing. But by absolute knowledge of programs that work. The first is Head Start now Head Start is not as thorough as it ought to be I would rather the Head Start program were funded at higher levels and were more comprehensive than it is. But even the Head Start program does work. But we only fund it for twenty-five percent of the children who are eligible and need it. I sometimes wonder what would happen in this country. If we said tomorrow morning they were going to do that with Social Security. We've got this program and we've got these benefits but we're only going to fund it for 25% of the people who are eligible. I think we change that in a hurry and yet we know the president and the 50 Governor's got together and said full funding of Head Start is a top priority. For this nation if it's going to fix its education the National Association of state boards of Education the National Council of Chief State School officers, the American Federation of teachers the National Education Association the Council of great City Schools, the National Alliance of business The Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce the National Alliance manufacturing Association of Manufacturers, and the CED to name a few have all said full funding of Head Start is the first thing we ought to do. We're still funding less than 30 percent of the eligible children. That's stupid. It's a sin. But it's also economically stupid because funding 25% of Head Start means that it doesn't work very well. Even for the kids who do get it. Why because in the typical Urban school about 75% of the kids should have had Head Start so out of a class of 20 children, you've got five who had good parenting. You've got five who did have Head Start and you've got 10 who didn't so they enter first grade what happens 10 are ready for first grade more or less 10 are totally unprepared. Where does the teacher have to put his or her attention on the 10 who would drown? And so the ones who got Head Start typically are not properly challenged and stimulated when they get in the first grade because the teacher is totally preoccupied trying to save those other 10 children from drowning and in effect to give them a head start at the age of six and it washes it out for everybody. So we need to fully fund Head Start but that is by no means enough. We have dozens of programs serving Early Childhood. We must as you are doing in Minneapolis coordinate those programs to get the private and public sectors together the Educators and the social service agencies together and coordinate the delivery of services to children. We must start as early as prenatal care birth is too late. I'm not going to get into the argument about which trimester. marks the beginning of Life But I will say with absolute certainty that the things that happen to a child before birth are an important determinant in everything else that will happen to that. Child's intellectual development. The length of time the child stays in the womb the kind of nutrition the child gets while it's in the womb whether or not the child is subjected to alcohol and drugs while it's in the womb all of those things will affect all of the intellectual development of that child for the rest of the child's life and there is no dispute about that. And the cheapest and most effective efficient place to intervene in early childhood before birth. Once born children must be nurtured it is through nurturing that children get a sense of security and a sense of self-worth and without a sense of self-worth. A child is very unlikely to develop intellectually. I have a very good friend youngster 30 early 30s who is a model of what a kid can do in America out of the Harlem projects. Whether father who abandoned them and when he did come back was on coke with a mother who was a prostitute in his early years and an alcoholic in his teen years. And is a roaring success A college-educated. ex-naval officer successful, but what did that for him were the fact that when his parents were around they gave him a sense of self-worth even though they had none for themselves and he had two grandparents who adored him and who thought he could do anything and that sense of self-worth carried him through all the other things that should have destroyed him. They must have that they must have appropriate Healthcare. They must have preschool so that they enter the first grade with at least a vocabulary that enables them to compete. Those things applied will bring our dropout rate. Our loss rate down to acceptable levels we have in our power and in our knowledge the way is to fix it. We know how to deliver prenatal care. We know how to deliver infant care. That's no great secret takes money, but how to do it is not a problem. We know how to virtually break the cycle of teenage parenting understand something one of the problems we have when we talk about teenage parents in any state. I had this no high. Oh when I chaired the education commission there. Many members of my commission when I talked about special programs special schools for teen parents and pregnant teens immediately said, what do you want to do reward them for getting pregnant? Give him all these nice things because they got pregnant had a baby at the age of 14 or 15 or 16. understand what kind of youngsters most of our teen parents are most of them Are themselves the children of teen parents? Who have been sexually and or physically abused since very early childhood. And frequently are still being sexually abused and or physically abused in their home frequently by a stepfather or an uncle. And no modest program is going to break that cycle. But we do know how to break it. It's being done in at least one city in America where two-thirds of all of the Teen mothers end up back in high school and I say end up back because many of them do in fact drop out and then they talk to friends who are in the same boat and end up coming back to new future School. Two-thirds of the pregnant teens and teen mothers end up back in school and of that number 75 percent graduate go off welfare get a job or go to further education take care of their own children and leave the a FDC welfare rolls. That's 50% of all the teens who become pregnant 2/3 go into the school and three quarters of those graduate 50% of all the teens who become pregnant break the cycle. Whether school which is no more expensive than a normal high school plus the normal cost of childcare. its peanuts and yet for some reason we don't do it. We know what kind of school works for these girls. Now that doesn't mean that some of them can't stay in a regular school. And that some of them don't have family who will take care of the baby and let them stay in a regular school. But what works for most of these young women is a school that is designed for them and which provides for them on sight. all of the services from their own prenatal Health Care their own nutrition training personal training and how to care for instant hands on training because the pregnant young woman learns how to care for her infant by caring for other infants in the infant care center while she's pregnant. Help During the period after the child is born where the teacher visits the home for two weeks and carries the assignments and picks up the assignments and keeps the youngster tied into the school environment and then after birth brings the mother and the child to school takes care of the child during the day. Provides the youngster with understanding with counseling with pairs or in the same condition and with a solid education program designed to make the mother employable. And it works. So we know how to prevent infant mortality and yet the infant mortality rate in our nation's capital is about the same as it is in Sri Lanka and it's going up at the rate of 50 percent a year. We know how to break the Cycle 14 parents. But we don't do it. We know how to provide the kind of preschool education through Perry High scope or Head Start type programs that with no other support just that two years alone at ages three and four. We'll break somewhere between 30 and 40% of the otherwise failing children out of that failure cycle. I don't mean it just improves their grades. I mean two years of high quality preschool by carefully controlled longitudinal scientific studies of children and paired children who didn't have the experience but had common characteristics other than that. Results not just in better academics but in a 30 to 40 percent reduction in the later teenage pregnancy. This is a fact the right kind of program at ages 3 and 4 will dramatically change the likelihood of teen pregnancy 10 years. Later. And teen alcoholism drug crime drop out and Welfare 30 to 40 percent reduction in all of those from from two years of high quality preschool and nothing else. So we know how to do all of these things. And we live at a time when despite what we say about our deficit. We have an abundance material abundance never before known in this nation. And we have less Demand on our citizens for sacrifice than we've ever had in the history of our nation. And yet we are not doing the things we know how to do. And if we don't change that if we don't begin promptly. To do the things that we know will prevent those four thousand a day from dropping out and frankly the way the birth rates going that 4,000 10 or 12 years from now will be five or six thousand because the number of young the percentage of our youngsters in poverty is going up dramatically. If we do not do those things we will not leave for our children and our grandchildren the greatest blessing that all of us have enjoyed and that's the right to live in a peaceful democracy. From an economic standpoint. It's an easy decision. It's pay me now or pay me later. It costs about 2,500 dollars a year. During the first five years maybe 3500 to do everything we know how to do to see that a child is properly prepared by six. It costs about 25 thousand dollars a year. To keep that child in prison if we don't do that in the early years. So we have our choice. We are going these children are there. They're not like Factory rejects. You can't you can't reprocess them or throw them on the junk Heap. They're there. They're going to be in our society. If you don't have a heart use your head. Would you rather spend a dollar an hour or would you rather spend four to seven dollars plus interest and inflation 10 years from now because that's the economic calculation. You will pay one or the other has a taxpayer. And so from if you don't have a heart use your head demand that your city your state and your nation do the things we know how to do make the Investments. We know how to make now for our own future Prosperity, but beyond that. There's a more important reason. And that is what this country is all about. America cannot be defined. By Race by place by religion or by ancestry. None of those things will Define this nation of ours. They will most Nations the one and only thing that defines our nation is a vision of what a society ought to be not a vision. We once had in lost or once achieved in Lost. We have never achieved our vision, perhaps we never will but every generation of Americans owes it to the next Generation to try to move that Vision closer. To what we see out there and what we see can be said intellectually, but I like the way the poet said it in the second verse of America the Beautiful. You'll recall it says Oh beautiful for Patriots dreams. That live beyond the years thine Alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears. I wish you'd put that Vision in your mind fact, put it up on a split screen over here. Gleaming Alabaster cities undimmed by human tears at Star vision of what a nation ought to be and over here if you will put the South Bronx. Or the south side of Chicago or Watts or parts of downtown Denver or Cincinnati or Minneapolis? And as you look at that screen, you see just how far we have to go. To bring our nation to that Vision that we have shared for 200 years now. And I submit to you that in this era of peace and prosperity. And yes low tax rates. That each of us in this room has an obligation to demand of ourselves. and our government that we move and move now. To take the measures. For our children and particularly for our disadvantaged children that will ensure that during the Next Generation. We move large visible steps. Toward that vision of what we ought to be. Thank you. On the station's of Minnesota Public Radio. We've been listening to Brad Butler chairman of the committee for economic development retired in 1986 as chairman of Procter & Gamble. We'd like to entertain questions for mr. Butler. Now. Let me start. Mr. Butler by asking in your research. Why have what have you discovered so far about why we don't do all the things you say we know how to do I think I'm not sure research can can answer that question. But from visiting in most of our 50 states many of our individual cities talking with various segments of the society. I think the basic problems with these first up until very recently. I don't think the American people were at all aware of either the nature of the magnitude of the problem. I think much has been done to begin to change that but much remains to be done. The this segment of our society unfortunately is mostly invisible. We see them when they get old enough to carry a gun. But we don't see them when they're three years old. They're hidden in the projects. And so they've been invisible we have and my life is dedicated to making them visible because I know that once the American people understand the problem is there and knowing that we know how to solve it will be willing to pay the price to get it solved. The second thing is kind of emotional reaction. We have long had a tradition that Parents Ought To raise their children until they reach school age and that's still a very good system where the parent has that is free to do that and where the child has parents of capable of doing that but unfortunately in much of our society, neither of those things is true. I'm mr. Steiner has a question here. Do you have a priority for this program a price tag? I beg your pardon a price tag we calculated about. Well, we calculated in a little over a year ago at CED or had employed him economists to calculate what the difference in our national cost would be if we delivered all services from Full prenatal care through infant care and through preschool and special schools for pregnant teens. If we did all the things that we know how to do through those first five years. As a nation we would need to spend about 11 and a half billion dollars a year more than we are now spending for programs that deal with those periods. Now, let me put that number in perspective. This year we will probably spend close to that much probably eight or nine billion dollars simply to deliver a non legislated automatic cost-of-living increase to Social Security recipients. So this is not the kind of cost that we don't bear in our society daily. It's a cost that could be covered by something in the range of a one percent surtax. I for one with the tax rate which boy I hate to say this tax rate, which I think is too low at the top level and I do I speak for myself and no one else but I think the top tax rate that I pay on income is too low. But I would I would gladly pay a one percent surtax or a ten percent surtax to cover the cost of these programs whether it was and I don't care who does it the state can do it the city can do it. The federal government can do it, but it is it is clearly affordable. And in fact in very few years, it would reduce our taxes. Because prenatal care five years of delivering proper prenatal care infant care and preschool to all children would in the following five years dramatically reduce the cost of special education remedial education in the first five years and in the next five years, it would dramatically reduce the cost of welfare crime teenage pregnancies and drugs. So it's I only have to invest for five years the next five I start breaking even and the five after that I start reducing my tax costs. Mr. Butler, I'd like to return to your statement that we know how to break these Cycles but don't do it. Is it possible that the reason that we don't do it is because we identify the problem so much with the underclass and they're there for sweep it under the rug seems like an easier way to do it at the same time. I think that many of the things that you talked about in your definition of disadvantaged can apply equally and in greater numbers too many working-class and middle-class kids. I agree with you. I agree with what you say. I think first of all that it's not a very nice commentary on our society, but I suspect unfortunately that one of the barriers is that too many of it think of it as a racial problem not even an underclass problem that they identify it as essentially at the Black and Hispanic problem. Well, of course Isn't more than half of all the disadvantaged children in this country are white. It isn't racial. Although poverty is concentrated racially and because poverty is concentrated racially this problem is disproportionately in the minority Community, but not in the majority and the minority Community, but I think that's true. I Where states have laid this out? Texas, Washington, California To the people and ask them to address it and pay extra taxes to solve it. The public has responded positively to that appeal. Generally where where we haven't moved it is where the public has not really been educated on the issue. So I think it is possible to sell the public on doing this as a program for disadvantaged in these things as programs for disadvantaged children, which means at the generally at the poverty level or below. However, if I can step out of my CED roll and respond to you as just one individual who has looked at these issues for a long time. I think we're well past the point where we ought to accept the same responsibilities as a society for children that we do for the elderly. We long ago stopped saying that parents take care of the children when their children and children take care of the parents with elderly. We said no, we're not going to let we're not going to let the elderly starve. And we're going to provide a program that provides support for all elderly regardless of income. And I think we have got to do the flip side of that. I think sooner or later. We've got to come around to accept the fact that that we've got to start stop drawing lines between disadvantaged and Working Poor and working and so forth and simply say as a society we cannot afford to lose children. And therefore we got to make it a societal imperative. That one way or another there is an opportunity for every child to be properly cared for and I think I think making Crossing that bridge will as you suggest broaden the support for the kind of programs we need and is probably a politically expedient thing to do to thank you. Mr. Butler. I'm Sharron Erickson has a question for you. Would you comment a little further on the relationship between this problem here and and or child and drugs and alcohol, please? Oh boy. I have to say to you first of all that I don't as you look at the the rapidly growing drug problem in this country and particularly in some of our urban areas. I don't think we yet have any evidence that these programs will will break the cycle when there is a true drug addiction involved. I think the kind of teen parent pregnant teen program that they have an Albuquerque probably has the best chance of working even where there has been a drug problem because they get those youngsters into an environment where they can work on that along with working on all the other problems, but the attack on the drug and alcohol problem. I think is there only to the degree that as you make these children better able to survive in school. You have a better chance that the next generation will avoid alcohol and drugs. And in fact, that's what the data shows that that you can if you that these children you start with early. Will be far less likely to become victims of the drug and alcohol, but how you get back into their family and solve the drug and alcohol problem in the in the home that they're going to in the evening. I don't know if I were Emperor, I guess I'd want to remove the children from that environment and I think one of these days our society is going to have to Face up to that fact, too that there are there instances where we are going to have to remove children from from drugs. But no I don't. I wish I could point to a to a program that succeeds like Head Start or Perry High scope or new Futures in Breaking the drug cycle. I don't and it is a major contributor to the problem that we are talking about. You're listening to the Minnesota meeting from the Marriott City Center Hotel in Downtown Minneapolis. Our speakers Brad Butler retired chairman of Procter & Gamble now chairman of the committee for economic development. Here's a question from Harlan, Cleveland. I think we'd be interested to learn a little about your own motivation 41 years and a successful company successful in that company presumably affluent. And then you plunge into perhaps the most difficult problem are our society faces. What our what makes Brad run. Well, mr. Cleveland. I I'm not sure that I know but I can give you a variety of things. The first is obligation to society. I'm probably one of the few people, you know, who volunteered for Korea after being completely ineligible for call up because I already had over five about five years service in World War Two I volunteered because the Navy had spent the last half of that war educating me. For a function that I never performed because the war ended and I felt an obligation to pay for that I grew up of parents who were poor and had very little schooling and everything I have been able to achieve in. My life has been a function. First of the public education. I received Jim said I was educated at Dartmouth. I mean no disrespect to Dartmouth, but I was educated in the Baltimore Public Schools. And perhaps polished at Dartmouth they were it was a superb school system. Absolutely superb and I have from the day. I finished my public high school felt an obligation to ensure that that other generations of America had that same opportunity to develop themselves through a first-class world-class education system. That's part of the motivation. Another part of the motivation is I have four grandchildren. and I believe from the bottom of my heart that the only Heritage that it's important for me to leave them is a nation as a society as attractive as the one in which I grew up peaceful prosperous democratic. Full of opportunity for everyone and I don't think it matters whether I leave the money. They are smart. They can work. I don't think leaving them material things is of much importance. I think leaving them a nation as healthy or healthier than the one I was born to is an obligation to them and it is what I want for them more than anything else and I am absolutely convinced that the quality of their lives will depend not on the kind of schooling they get But on the kind of schooling their peers get in the public schools and particularly the kind of schooling their most disadvantaged peers get because it is those kids. It's those 4,000 kids a day who either will be in the society producing making it prosperous making it happy making it peaceful or who will be out on the streets with guns. And so probably in the final analysis it is that selfishness for my own grandchildren. That is the primary motivation. Thank you. Mr. Butler. I'm George Pillsbury has questioned Nicky Butler. Is it to questions? Is it all money that we need to direct to this problem? Don't we have to look at the delivery service? We have a federal level. We have a state level. We have a local government level local schools. And then at the federal level and the state level and maybe even at the local level. We have two or three agencies operating so you have a multitudinous number of agencies dealing with the problem don't we have to one simplify the delivery system and then to don't we talk about you talk briefly about more taxes, and I'd be glad to pay a surtax. But is that really the answer don't? Have to look at our priorities of spending Federal level, you know, we always talk one less carrier task force or at the state level, you know, do we really have to have as many roads in Minnesota kept up to the federal standard as we do some of them could drop back to the county level and so forth. So I my two questions one is the shouldn't we speak to the delivery system and to the priorities we said on how we spend our money at all levels. Yes, sir. Thank you, George. I'm glad you I'm glad you raised those points because in one speech you never say everything you'd like to say and you're you're into a critical issue money is not the most important thing we need commitment is the most important thing we need much of this problem has to be solved by better coordination by better Delivery Systems by volunteerism by a host of reforms in the way. We deal with children, which will make the money. We now spend more efficient there isn't There's no question about that. If you don't do those things than spending more money isn't going to do much good. For example, if you give all children better preparation stages one through five and then put them into school systems like some of our public schools in America today, you pretty much wasted your money because you prepare them for an experience. They're not going to get anyway. If you continue to have these overlapping and separate agencies that let people fall between the cracks or served provide this they let one person fall through the cracks and they provide the same service twice 212 another person if you have the kind of lack of coordination, Which was best illustrated by a statement that I'm not going to I didn't hear this personally. So maybe it's not true. But I was reported to me that a former Secretary of Education. When asked about Head Start said that's not my department. And it isn't tell the Human Services. But a frame of mind which says that what happens to a child at ages 3 and 4 is not of concern to the person who's supposed to be responsible for the child from 6 to 24. his absurd and so all of these things are true. I also would hope that certainly with with the parent piece breaking out all over Europe that we might be able to save some of the money we've been spending on defense at the same time. I accept the fact that we have a federal deficit which will absorb every dime that we can save by cutting other programs. And so it's hard for me to see how we're going to get the money to do these things without Texas, but I really don't care. What I care about is that we put these at a priority level that says we're going to do these And then we will do what else we can with the money that's left and if we need more money will take more money. I'll take any solution as long as we say taking care of. Our children is both a moral and an economic imperative. Mr. Butler we have time for one more question. You're like Johnny Appleseed you and your colleagues going around in spreading this message. What do you think? You could accomplish further than you are now if you were or if one of your colleagues were president of the United States, I would I think there is an opportunity for the president of the United States to use the position of the bully pulpit more effectively than it has been used so far now, I think they're I think President Bush is trying harder to use that bully pulpit then and it has been for some time and I applaud that I applaud the summit meeting let nothing I have said imply that I don't think that was a great idea. I think that kind of focus on the problem is is very good for us. That's the way democracy works are our elected leaders don't lead the population the population leads them by and large. It is our leaders who follow and that's where democracy works and that's fine. So I would like to see the president use a grater bully pulpit although I believe after seven and a half years in this that the solutions are by and large going to be found at the State House. What I wear I see real things happening and happening in some places in very big ways is where a governor and or State Senate President and or a speaker of the house have said by George in this state. We're going to get this fixed and and it is happening and and the progress the progress in the last five years has been 98 or 99% at the state level and perhaps one percent at the federal level, and I think that's where the action should remain. Thank you.