ould
require if continuous operation could be brought about. I hope your
discussion will throw some light on the possibilities of remedy. There
lies in this intermittency not only a long train of human misery through
intermittent employment, but the economic loss to the community of over
a hundred thousand workers who could be applied to other production, and
the cost of coal could be decreased to the consumer. This intermittency
lies at the root of the last strike in the attempt of the employees to
secure an equal division among themselves of this partial employment at
a wage that could meet their view of a living return on full employment.

These are but a few of the problems that confront us. But in the
formulating of measures of solution, we need a constant adherence to
national ideal and our own social philosophy.

In the discussion of these ideals and this social philosophy, we hear
much of radicalism and of reaction. They are, in fact, not an academic
state of mind but realize into real groups and real forces influencing
the solution of economic problems in this community. In their
present-day practical aspects, they represent, on one hand, roughly,
various degrees of exponents of socialism, who would directly or
indirectly undermine the principle of private property and personal
initiative, and, on the other hand, those exponents who in varying
degrees desire to dominate the community for profit and privilege. They
both represent attempts to introduce or preserve class privilege, either
a moneyed or a bureaucratic aristocracy. We have, however, in American
democracy an ideal and a social philosophy that sympathizes neither with
radicalism nor reaction as they are manifested today.

For generations the American people have been steadily developing a
social philosophy as part of their own democracy, and in these ideals,
it differs from all other democracies. This philosophy has stood this
period of test in the fire of common sense; it is, in substance, that
there should be an equality of opportunity, an equal chance, to every
citizen. This view that every individual should, within his lifetime,
not be handicapped in securing that particular niche in the community to
which his abilities and character entitle him, is itself the negation of
class. Human beings are not equal in these qualities. But a society that
is based upon a constant flux of individuals in the community, upon the
basis of ability and character,