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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks of J. Brian Atwood, USAID Administrator
to the Point Four 50th Anniversary Commemoration Jan. 20, 1999
We are here today to pay tribute to an idea – an idea that became the world’s first global foreign assistance program and has changed the lives of billions of people. The idea of providing American development assistance to a broad range of countries emerging from colonial rule was first presented to the world by President Truman 50 years ago today. It became known as "Point Four" because it was the fourth point in the foreign policy agenda announced in his Inaugural Address.
Point Four set precedents in the field of foreign aid to developing countries that have now been emulated around the world.
The story of how Point Four came to be in that Inaugural Address reminds us that even an idea whose time has come needs forceful and persistent advocates to turn it into effective action.
When President Harry Truman proposed Point Four, half the world’s people were chronically hungry and almost as many were illiterate.
Truman had succeeded to the Presidency in the last days of World War II, launched the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and stopped the advance of Communism in Europe.
Having been elected in his own right, Truman wanted his address to be, as Clark Clifford later recalled – quote -- "a democratic manifesto addressed to the peoples of the world, not just to the American people."
Truman had long been interested in finding a way to take American technology to the people emerging from centuries of colonial rule, to help them help themselves.
Over at the State Department, a public affairs officer named Ben Hardy had just sent a memo to his boss, Francis Russell. Hardy had been stationed in Brazil, representing the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.
As a young reporter for the Atlanta Journal, Hardy had seen how new technologies had benefited poor areas in his native Georgia. He was convinced American technology could do the same in places like Brazil. His memo proposed a global program of technical assistance to what were then known as the "underdeveloped" countries. Russell liked Hardy’s idea and circulated the memo. It was initially dismissed at higher levels.
Hardy was not accustomed to challenging top officials, but he felt the idea was too important to let it die. He knew that a man named George Elsey, whom he had never met, was working on the President’s inaugural address.
Before going to see Elsey, Hardy warned his wife that he could lose his job for what he was about to do. She responded unhesitatingly, "Lose it."
Elsey eagerly showed Hardy’s proposal to presidential advisor Clark Clifford. Clifford agreed with Elsey that the proposal for technical aid to developing countries should be part of President Truman’s message. Without mentioning Hardy or his memo, Clifford sent the State Department a memo suggesting the idea be included in State’s suggested draft of the speech. Again, "higher levels" at State ignored Clifford’s suggestion.
But President Truman shared the enthusiasm of Hardy, Elsey and Clifford. Even though the State Department remained cool to the idea, he made assistance to poorer countries the fourth point of his democratic manifesto to the world. When State declined to push the proposal in Congress, he persisted. "An Act for International Development" became law in June, 1950.
In the early 1950s, Point Four programs served countries with populations totalling 1 billion people – one of every two people on earth. Eight out of ten of those people were ill-fed, seven out of ten suffered from chronic illnesses, and only three out of ten could read and write. In 1950, life expectancy in the developing world was 41 years.
The first Point Four project was in Iran in 1950. At the time, half of all the babies born in Iran died before their first birthdays.
Dr. Henry Garland Bennett, president of Oklahoma State University, was brought in to be the first head of the Point Four program.
Dr. Bennett described the Point Four program as "the essence of education – an adventure in which those who share their knowledge gain new insight and new experience."
He set the early tone of U.S. assistance to developing nations, in which the university community played an important part from the beginning -- as it does in today’s development programs.
The Point Four program became an agency of the State Department. Although its official name was the Technical Cooperation Administration, people around the world knew it as simply "Point Four."
At Dr. Bennett’s request, Ben Hardy joined the program – quote -- "to do what I can" -- and became its chief information officer. Both men were killed in the line of duty when their plane crashed in a storm north of Tehran in 1951. Historian Arnold Toynbee predicted that President Truman’s call for wealthy nations to come to the aid of the world’s poor – quote -- "will be remembered as the signal achievement of the age."
Numerous nations – many of them former recipients of U.S. assistance -- have since joined the United States as major donors of development aid to poorer countries.
That aid has helped lower the infant mortality rates in developing countries to one-third of the 1950 level. Despite huge increases in total population, there are only half as many total infant deaths today in the developing world as there were then.Average life expectancy has increased by almost 23 years. The Green Revolution, based on agricultural research funded primarily by U.S. aid, brought a doubling and tripling of harvests in many countries and prevented expected famines in Asia. Literacy rose from 35 to 70 percent between 1950 and 1995.
Smallpox has been eradicated from the earth, and better prevention, control and treatment of many other diseases has allowed millions of people to be more productive as well as have longer, healthier lives.
Shakespeare may have been right about some men when he said that the good men do dies with them. That is certainly not true, however, of the good done by the six men we are honoring today: Harry S. Truman, Benjamin H. Hardy, George Elsey, Clark M. Clifford, Francis Russell, Henry G. Bennett.
Each played a crucial role -- the modest civil servant who risked his State Department career and the boss who encouraged him; the presidential aide and the presidential advisor who each took up the cause, the former college president who guided it its early days and the President who made it all happen.
Without such men, good ideas often become "might-have-beens" – sad historic footnotes of how tragedies could have been avoided.
Dodd Introduction
I am delighted that Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut is able to join us today.
In addition to representing the state where the late Ben Hardy’s son lives, Senator Dodd – and his father before him have been strong supporters of American engagement abroad. Sen. Dodd serves on the Foreign Relations Committee and is the ranking member, formerly chairman, of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere and Peace Corps Affairs. Senator Dodd has a special interest in Latin America and the Caribbean and in children’s issues. He sponsored legislation in 1991 to assist in implementing the World Summit for Children Plan of Action and a bill to establish child survival andn basic education programs in priority countries. He has been keenly interested in providing supplemental assistance for the Central American and Caribbean countries damaged by Hurricanes Mitch and Georges. He accompanied Mrs. Tipper Gore when she led the presidential delegation to Honduras and Nicaragua last November. He served in the Dominican Republic as a volunteer with the Peace Corps, another agency which had its roots in Point Four.
Senator Christopher Dodd --
Elsey Introduction
I have already mentioned the role our next special guest, George Elsey, played in the creation of Point Four when he served as an assistant to President Truman. Had he not been open to a stranger’s good idea and been willing to fight for it, the program might have died quietly that day when Hardy came to Elsey’s office.
In a long and distinguished career, George Elsey has also served as president of both the American Red Cross and Meridian House International, as a trustee of the Brookings Institution, the George C. Marshall Foundation and the Harry S. Truman Library Institute.
Hardy Introduction
Our final guest is the son of the man who risked his State Department career to get the idea for Point Four to President Truman and the plucky lady who urged her husband to take the risk. He is also the grandson of a Barnesville, Georgia, newspaper editor – the first Ben Hardy.
Mr. Hardy, all of us in development are, in important ways, the spiritual descendants of your father, and we are especially honored to have the son who bears his name with us today.
When we link school children and businesses in Africa with the internet -- when we immunize children against disease with safe, single-use needles -- when we provide solar stoves so women do not have to spend half a day gathering wood for fuel -- or make Vitamin A supplements and fortified foods available that prevent child deaths and blindness -- we are following your father’s lead.
I am delighted to present Benjamin H. Hardy and his family.
Unveiling
Before we unveil the plaque and formally dedicate this room, I want to mention that we are not the only people celebrating Point Four today. Oklahoma State University, whose involvement with international projects began in Ethiopia in 1950, is also honoring the program and Dr. Bennett as the university begins a year of celebration focusing on international history and our international future. OSU’s new School of International Studies, which will be formally dedicated in the spring.
We have now arrived at the moment to officially re-name this USAID Administrator’s Conference Room the "Point Four Room." It is fitting that all who gather in this conference room remember the men and women whose vision we follow and the transformation foreign aid has brought about in the lives of individuals, communities and nations around the world.
As I unveil the plaque, I dedicate this room to the principles President Truman set forth in his Inaugural Address 50 years. As he stated then:
"Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people."
May those who continue the work of this agency over the next 50 years hold fast to the vision and example of the men we honor here -- and of the men and women who have devoted their lives – and sometimes sacrificed their lives -- to carry out that mission over the past half century.
Thank you.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 12, 2001 |
