President Barack Obama visited Moravia Park Elementary School, local manufacturer Ellicott Dredges and The Center for Urban Families in Baltimore last week as part of his Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour.
Here are some lines from his speech at the Ellicott Dredges:
“ I want to thank your CEO, Peter Bowe, and your plant manager, Robert Croom, and your entire team for showing me around this great facility. I was told that one of your customers once named a dredge after President Clinton, so I’ve got my fingers crossed. Never had a dredge named after me, so I’m looking after, looking forward to that.
“Ellicott Dredges, you guys are an example of what we can do to make America a magnet for good jobs. After all, you all know a thing or two about growing the economy, you’ve been doing it for more than a century. This company was founded in 1885. You’ve been right here on Bush Street since 1900. This company built dredging equipment that helped dig the Panama Canal. That’s impressive.
“What that means is this company, right here in Baltimore, literally helped create our global economy, because that was one of the first connectors that started to allow us to ship goods and cut the distances that integrated the world economy.
“And yet, after all this time, this company still has a set of core values that’s lasted for generations. Just like the folks who came before you, you’ve got that drive to make the best machines that money can buy; to sell products all over the world; to grow not just a business, but a community, and by doing that, you’re growing our country.
“And these values have seen you through an era of enormous change. Your leaders saw the potential in developing markets like China and India and Brazil and Bangladesh. So you ramped up your focus on airports, on exports, maybe on airports, too, but on exports. And the federal government has worked with you as a partner to sell dredging equipment right out of this shop all over the world. You maintained your quality. You built a sales force that travels everywhere, outhustling the competition in search of new business.
“All that hard work has paid off. Today, this company, you have sold equipment to more than 100 different countries. You’ve made new investments here at home. You employ more than 200 people in Baltimore and Wisconsin and Kansas. And over the past few decades, during some of the tough times for our workers, you were able to keep building equipment stamped with those three proud words: Made in America. And you’re selling it around the world.”
For the whole speech, click here.
[mappress]
Dredging Today Staff, May 21, 2013