decision that may both
stifle the delicate adjustment of industrial processes and cause
serious conflict over human rights. We must all agree that those
deficiencies in our social, economic and political structure which find
solution through education and voluntary action of our people themselves
are the solutions that endure. To me, the upbuilding of the sense of
responsibility and of intelligence in each individual unit in the United
States with the intervention of government only to promote the
development of these relations, the suppression of domination by any one
group over another, is the basis upon which democracy must progress.

Upon the solution of industrial peace and good will does the gradual
lift of the standard of life of our whole people rest by increase in the
material and intellectual output and its proper distribution among all
of us. To me the philosophic background of solution lies in rigorous
application to economic life of our tried national ideal--the equality
of opportunity and the preservation of industrial initiative; that is,
the stimulation of every individual by his own effort to take that
position in the community to which his abilities and character entitle
him and the protection to him to attain that end. In the earlier days of
our democracy, with its simpler economic life, we were concerned more
with the application of this ideal in its social and political phases.
It has been so long and firmly established there that it is no longer a
matter of discussion. With the growth of greater complexity in our
economic life, its practical application to the sharing in the material
and intellectual output in proportion to effort, ability, and character,
becomes more difficult. It must, nevertheless, be adhered to if the
ideal of our democracy is not to be abandoned.

I do not believe we can attain this equality of opportunity or maintain
initiative through crystallization of economic classes or groups
arraigned against each other, exerting their interest by economic and
political conflicts, nor can we attain it by transferring to
governmental bureaucracies the distribution of material and intellectual
products. I do believe that we can attain it by systematic prevention of
domination of the few over the many and stimulation of individual effort
in the whole mass.

It is well enough to hold a philosophic view, but the problems of day to
day that arise under it are very practical problems that re