This campaign now draws near to a close. The platforms of the two parties defining principles and offering solutions of various national problems have been presented and are being earnestly considered by our people.<br>After four months' debate it is not the Republican Party which finds<br>reason for abandonment of any of the principles it has laid down or of<br>the views it has expressed for solution of the problems before the<br>country. The principles to which it adheres are rooted deeply in the<br>foundations of our national life and the solutions which it proposed<br>are based on experience with government and a consciousness that it<br>may have the responsibility for placing those solutions into action.<br>In my acceptance speech I endeavored to outline the spirit and ideals<br>with which I would propose to carry that platform into administration.<br>Tonight, I will not deal with the multitude of issues which have been<br>already well canvassed, I propose rather to discuss some of those more<br>fundamental principles and ideals upon which I believe the Government of<br>the United States should be conducted.<br> <br>Before I enter upon that discussion of principles I wish to lay before<br>you the proof of progress under Republican rule. In doing this I do not<br>need to review its seventy years of constructive history. That history<br>shows that the Republican party has ever been a party of progress. It<br>has reflected the spirit of the American people. We are a progressive<br>people. Our history of 150 years in the greatest epic of human<br>progress. Tonight to demonstrate the constructive character of our<br>Party, I need only briefly picture the advance of fundamental progress<br>during the past seven and a half years since we took over the Government<br>amidst the ruin of war.<br> <br>First of all, let me deal with the material side. I do this because<br>upon the well-being, comfort and security of the American home do we<br>build up the moral and spiritual virtues as well as the finer flowers of<br>civilization and the wider satisfactions of life.<br> <br>As a nation we came out of the war with great losses. We made no<br>profits from it. The apparent increases in wages were fictitious. We<br>were poorer as a nation when we emerged from it. Yet during these last<br>eight years we have recovered from these losses and increased our<br>national income by over one-third even if we discount the inflation of<br>the dollar. While some individuals have grown rich, yet that there has<br>been a wide diffusion of our gain in wealth and income is marked by a<br>hundred proofs. I know of no better test of the improved conditions of<br>the average family than the combined increase of life and industrial<br>insurance, building and loan assets, and savings deposits. These are<br>the financial agents of the average man. These alone have in seven<br>years increased by nearly 100 per cent to the gigantic sum of over 50<br>billions of dollars, or nearly one-six of our whole national wealth. In<br>addition to these evidences of larger savings our people are steadily<br>increasing their spending for higher standards of living. Today there<br>are almost 9 automobiles for each 10 families, where seven and a half<br>years ago only enough automobiles were running to average less than 4<br>for each 10 families. The slogan of progress is changing from the full<br>dinner pail to the full garage. Our people have more to eat, better<br>things to wear, and better homes. We have even gained in elbow room in<br>our homes, for the increase of residential floor space is over 25 per<br>cent with less than 10 per cent increase in our number of people. We<br>have increased the security of his job to every man and woman. We have<br>decreased the fear of old age, the fear of poverty, the fear of<br>unemployment and these are fears which have always been amongst the<br>greatest calamities of human kind.<br> <br>All this progress means far more than greater creature comforts. It<br>finds a thousand interpretations into a greater and fuller life. In all<br>this we have steadily reduced the sweat in human labor. A score of new<br>helps save the drudgery of the home. In seven years we have added 25<br>per cent more electric power to the elbow of every worker, and farther<br>promoted him from a carrier of burdens to a director of machines. Our<br>hours of labor are lessened; our leisure has increased. We have<br>expanded our parks and playgrounds. We have nearly doubled our<br>attendance at games. We pour into outdoor recreation in every<br>direction. The visitors at our national parks have trebled and we have<br>so increased the number of sportsmen fishing in our streams and lakes<br>that the longer time between bites is becoming a political issue. In<br>these seven and one-half years the radio has brought music and laughter,<br>education and political discussion to almost every fireside.<br> <br>Springing from our prosperity with its greater freedom, its vast<br>endowment of scientific research and the greater resources with which to<br>care for public health, we have according to our insurance actuaries<br>during this short period since the war lengthened the span of life by<br>nearly eight years. We have reduced infant mortality, we have vastly<br>decreased the days of illness and suffering in the life of every man and<br>woman. We have improved the facilities for the care of the crippled and<br>helpless and deranged.<br> <br>From our increasing resources we have expanded our educational system in<br>eight years from an outlay of 1,200 millions to 2,700 millions of<br>dollars. The education of our youth has become almost the largest and<br>certainly our most important activity. From our ability to free youth<br>from toil we have increased the attendance in our grade schools by 14<br>per cent, in our high schools by 80 per cent, and in institutions of<br>higher learning by 95 per cent. Today we have more youth in these<br>institutions of higher learning twice over than all the rest of the<br>world put together. We have made progress in literature, art and in<br>public taste.<br> <br>I do not need to recite more figures and more evidence. There is not a<br>person within the sound of my voice that does not know the profound<br>progress which our country has made in this period. Every man and woman<br>knows that their comfort, their hopes and their confidence for the<br>future are higher this day than they were seven and one-half years ago.<br> <br>Your city has been an outstanding beneficiary of this great progress.<br>With its suburbs it has, during the last seven and a half years grown by<br>over a million and a half of people, until it has become the largest<br>metropolitan district of all the world. Here you have made abundant<br>opportunity not only for the youth of the land but for the immigrant<br>from foreign shores. This city is the commercial center of the United<br>States. It is the commercial agent of the American people. It is a<br>great organism of specialized skill and leadership in finance, industry<br>and commerce, which reaches every spot in our country. Its progress and<br>its beauty are the pride of the whole American people. It leads our<br>nation in the largest size of its benevolences, in art, in music,<br>literature and drama. It has come to have a greater voice, than any<br>other city in the United States.<br> <br>But when all is said and done the very life, progress and prosperity of<br>this city is wholly dependent on the prosperity of the 110,000,000<br>people who dwell in our mountains and valleys across the 3,000 miles to<br>the Pacific Ocean. Every activity of this city is sensitive to every<br>evil and every favorable tide that sweeps this great nation of ours. Be<br>there a slackening of industry in any part of the country it affects New<br>York far more than the rest of the country. In a time of depression<br>one-quarter of all the unemployed in the United States can be numbered<br>in this city. In a time of prosperity the citizens of the great<br>interior of our country pour into your city for business and<br>entertainment at the rate of 200,000 a day. In fact so much is this<br>city the reflex of the varied interests of our country that the concern<br>of every one of your citizens for national stability, for national<br>prosperity and for national progress is far greater than any other<br>single part of our country.<br> <br>CONTRIBUTIONS TO PROGRESS<br> <br>It detracts nothing from the character and energy of the American<br>people, it minimizes in no degree the quality of their accomplishments<br>to say that the policies of the Republican Party have played a large<br>part in the building of this progress of these last seven and one-half<br>years. I can say with emphasis that without the wise policies which the<br>Republican Party has brought into action in this period, no such<br>progress would have been possible.<br> <br>The first responsibility of the Republican Administration was to renew<br>the march of progress from its collapse by the war. That task involved<br>the restoration of confidence in the future and the liberation and<br>stimulation of the constructive energies of our people. It is not my<br>purpose to enter upon a detailed recitation of the history of the great<br>constructive measures of the past seven and a half years.<br> <br>It is sufficient to remind you of the restoration of employment to the<br>millions who walked your streets in idleness to remind you of the<br>creation of the budget system; the reduction of six billions of national<br>debt which gave the impulse of that vast sum returned to industry and<br>commerce; the four sequent reductions of taxes and thereby the lift to<br>the living of every family; the enactment of an adequate protective<br>tariff and immigration laws which have raised and safeguarded our wages<br>from floods of goods or labor from foreign countries; the creation of<br>credit facilities and many aids to agriculture; the building up of<br>foreign trade; the care of veterans, the development of aviation, of<br>radio, of our inland waterways, our highways; the expansion of<br>scientific research, of welfare activities, safer highways, safer mines,<br>outdoor recreation, in better homes, in public health and the care of<br>children. Nor do I need remind you that Government today deals with an<br>economic and social system vastly more intricate and delicately adjusted<br>than ever before. It now must be kept in perfect tune if we would not,<br>through dislocation, have a breakdown in employment and in standards of<br>living of our people. The Government has come to more and more touch<br>this delicate web at a thousand points. Yearly the relations of<br>Government to national prosperity becomes more and more intimate. It<br>has only by keen large vision and cooperation by the Government that<br>stability in business and stability in employment has been maintained<br>during this past seven and a half years. Never has there been a period<br>when the Federal Government has given such aid and impulse to the<br>progress of our people, not alone to economic progress but to<br>development of those agencies which make for moral and spiritual<br>progress.<br> <br>But in addition to this great record of contributions of the Republican<br>Party to progress, there has been a further fundamental contribution --<br>a contribution perhaps more important than all the others -- and that is<br>the resistance of the Republican Party to every attempt to inject the<br>Government into business in competition with its citizens.<br> <br>After the war, when the Republican Party assumed administration of the<br>country, we were faced with the problem of determination of the very<br>nature of our national life. Over 150 years we have builded up a form<br>of self-government and we had builded up a social system which is<br>peculiarly our own. It differs fundamentally from all others in the<br>world. It is the American system. It is just as definite and positive<br>a political and social system as has ever been developed on earth. It<br>is founded upon the conception that self-government can be preserved<br>only by decentralization of Government in the State and by fixing local<br>responsibility; but further than this, it is founded upon the social<br>conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal<br>opportunity to the individual will his initiative and enterprise drive<br>the march of progress.<br> <br>During the war we necessarily turned to the Government to solve every<br>difficult economic problem -- the Government having absorbed every<br>energy of our people to war there was no other solution. For the<br>preservation of the State the Government became a centralized despotism<br>which undertook responsibilities, assumed powers, exercised rights, and<br>took over the business of citizens. To large degree we regimented our<br>whole people temporarily into a socialistic state. However justified it<br>was in time of war if continued in peace time it would destroy not only<br>our system but progress and freedom in our own country and throughout<br>the world. When the war closed the most vital of all issues was whether<br>Governments should continue war ownership and operation of many<br>instrumentalities of production and distribution. We were challenged<br>with the choice of the American system \cf2 rugged individualism\cf0 or the<br>choice of a European system of diametrically opposed doctrines --<br>doctrines of paternalism and state socialism. The acceptance of these<br>ideas meant the destruction of self-government through centralization of<br>government; it meant the undermining of initiative and enterprise upon<br>which our people have grown to unparalleled greatness.<br> <br>The Democratic administration cooperated with the Republican Party to<br>demobilize many of her activities and the Republican Party from the<br>beginning of its period of power resolutely turned its face away from<br>these ideas and these war practices, back to our fundamental conception<br>of the state and the rights and responsibilities of the individual.<br>Thereby it restored confidence and hope in the American people, it freed<br>and stimulated enterprise, it restored the Government to its position as<br>an umpire instead of a player in the economic game. For these reasons<br>the American people have gone forward in progress while the rest of the<br>world is halting and some countries have even gone backwards. If anyone<br>will study the causes which retarded recuperation of Europe, he will<br>find much of it due to the stifling of private initiative on one hand,<br>and overloading of the Government with business on the other.<br> <br>I regret, however, to say that there has been revived in this campaign a<br>proposal which would be a long step to the abandonment of our American<br>system, to turn to the idea of government in business. Because we are<br>faced with difficulty and doubt over certain national problems which we<br>are faced -- that is prohibition, farm relief and electrical power --<br>our opponents propose that we must to some degree thrust government into<br>these businesses and in effect adopt state socialism as a solution.<br> <br>There is, therefore submitted to the American people the question --<br>Shall we depart from the American system and start upon a new road. And<br>I wish to emphasize this question on this occasion. I wish to make<br>clear my position on the principles involved for they go to the very<br>roots of American life in every act of our Government. I should like to<br>state to you the effect of the extension of government into business<br>upon our system of self government and our economic system. But even<br>more important is the effect upon the average man. That is the effect<br>on the very basis of liberty and freedom not only to those left outside<br>the fold of expanded bureaucracy but to those embraced within it.<br> <br>When the Federal Government undertakes a business, the state governments<br>are at once deprived of control and taxation of that business; when the<br>state government undertakes a business it at once deprived the<br>municipalities of taxation and control of that business. Business<br>requires centralization; self government requires decentralization. Our<br>government to succeed in business must become in effect a despotism.<br>There is thus at once an insidious destruction of self government.<br> <br>Moreover there is a limit to human capacity in administration.<br>Particularly is there a limit to the capacity of legislative bodies to<br>supervise governmental activities. Every time the Federal Government<br>goes into business 530 Senators and Congressmen become the Board of<br>Directors of that business. Every time a state government goes into<br>business 100 or 200 state senators and assemblymen become directors of<br>that business. Even if they were supermen, no bodies of such numbers<br>can competently direct that type of human activities which requires<br>instant decision and action. No such body can deal adequately with all<br>sections of the country. And yet if we would preserve government by the<br>people we must preserve the authority of our legislators over the<br>activities of our Government. We have trouble enough with log rolling<br>in legislative bodies today. It originates naturally from desires of<br>citizens to advance their particular section or to secure some necessary<br>service. It would be multiplied a thousand-fold were the Federal and<br>state governments in these businesses.<br> <br>The effect upon our economic progress would be even worse. Business<br>progressiveness is dependent on competition. New methods and new ideas<br>are the outgrowth of the spirit of adventure of individual initiative<br>and of individual enterprise. Without adventure there is no progress.<br>No government administration can rightly speculate and take risks with<br>taxpayers' money. But even more important than this -- leadership in<br>business must be through the sheer rise of ability and character. That<br>rise can take place only in the free atmosphere of competition.<br>Competition is closed by bureaucracy. Certainly political choice is a<br>feeble basis for choice of leaders to conduct a business.<br> <br>There is no better example of the practical incompetence of government<br>to conduct business than the history of our railways. Our railways in<br>the year before being freed from Government operation were not able to<br>meet the demands for transportation. Eight years later we find our them<br>under private enterprise, transporting 15 per cent more goods and<br>meeting every demand for service. Rates have been reduced by 15 per<br>cent and net earnings increased from less than 1 per cent on their<br>valuation to about 5 per cent. Wages of employees have improved by 13<br>per cent. The wages of railway employees are 2 per cent above pre-war.<br>The wages of Government employees are today . . . will check their<br>figure definitely tomorrow but probably about 70% per cent above pre-<br>war. That should be a sufficient sermon upon the efficiency of<br>Government operation.<br> <br>But we can examine this question from the point of view of the person<br>who gets a Government job and is admitted into the new bureaucracy.<br>Upon that subject let me quote from a speech of that great leader of<br>labor, Samuel Gompers, delivered in Montreal in 1920, a few years before<br>his death. He said:<br> <br>"I believe there is no man to whom I would take second position in my<br>loyalty to the Republic of the United States, and yet I would not give<br>it more power over the individual citizenship of our country. . . .<br> <br>"It is a question of whether it shall be Government ownership or private<br>ownership under control. . . . If I were in the minority of one in this<br>convention, I would want to cast my vote so that the men of labor shall<br>not willingly enslave themselves to Government authority in their<br>industrial effort for freedom. . . .<br> <br>"Let the future tell the story of who is right or who is wrong; who has<br>stood for freedom and who has been willing to submit their fate<br>industrially to the Government."<br> <br>I would amplify Mr. Gompers' statement. These great bodies of<br>Government employees would either comprise political machines at the<br>disposal of the party in power, or alternatively to prevent this the<br>Government by stringent civil-service rules must debar its employees<br>from their full rights as free men. If it would keep employees out of<br>politics, its rules must strip them of all right to expression of<br>opinion. It is easy to conceive that they might become so large a body<br>as by their votes to dictate to the Government and their political<br>rights need be further reduced. It must strip them of the liberty to<br>bargain for their own wages, for no Government employee can strike<br>against his Government and thus the whole people. It makes a<br>legislative body with all its political currents their final employer.<br>That bargaining does not rest upon economic need or economic strength<br>but on political potency.<br> <br>But what of those who are outside the bureaucracy? What is the effect<br>upon their lives of the Government on business and these hundreds of<br>thousands more officials?<br> <br>At once their opportunities in life are limited because a large area of<br>activities are removed from their participation. Further the Government<br>does not tolerate amongst its customers the freedom of competitive<br>reprisals to which private corporations are subject. Bureaucracy does<br>not spread the spirit of independence; it spreads the spirit of<br>submission into our daily life, penetrates the temper of our people; not<br>with the habit of powerful resistance to wrong, but with the habit of<br>timid acceptance of the irresistible might.<br> <br>Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power.<br>You cannot give to a government the mastery of the daily working life of<br>a people without at the same time giving it mastery of the peoples'<br>souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government means that government<br>in order to protect itself from political consequences of its errors and<br>wrongs is driven onward and onward without peace to greater and greater<br>control of the country's press and platform. Free speech does not live<br>many hours after free industry and free commerce die.<br> <br>It is false liberalism that interprets itself into the Government<br>operation of business. The bureaucratization of our country would<br>poison the very roots of liberalism that is free speech, free assembly,<br>free press, political equality and equality of opportunity. It is the<br>road, not to more liberty, but to less liberty. Liberalism should be<br>found not striving to spread bureaucracy, but striving to set bounds to<br>it. True liberalism seeks freedom first in the confident belief that<br>without freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain.<br>That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as<br>well as economic.<br> <br>Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit, a force proceeding from the<br>deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political<br>freedom is to be preserved. Even if governmental conduct of business<br>could give us more efficiency instead of giving us decreased efficiency,<br>the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It<br>would destroy political equality. It would cramp and cripple mental and<br>spiritual energies of our people. It would dry up the spirit of liberty<br>and progress. It would extinguish equality of opportunity, and for<br>these reasons fundamentally and primarily it must be resisted. For a<br>hundred and fifty years liberalism has found its true spirit in the<br>American system, not in the European systems.<br> <br>I do not wish to be misunderstood in this statement. I am defining a<br>general policy! It does not mean that our government is to part with<br>one iota of its national resources without complete protection to the<br>public interest. I have already stated that where the government is<br>engaged in public works for purposes of flood control, of navigation, of<br>irrigation, of scientific research or national defense that, or in<br>pioneering a new art, it will at times necessarily produce power or<br>commodities as a by-product. But they must be by-products, not the<br>major purpose.<br> <br>Nor do I wish to be misinterpreted as believing that the United States<br>is free-for-all and the devil-take-the-hindmost. The very essence of<br>equality of opportunity is that there shall be no domination by any<br>group or trust or combination in this republic, whether it be business<br>or political. It demands economic justice as well as political and<br>social justice. It is no system to laissez faire.<br> <br>There is but one consideration in testing these proposals -- that is<br>public interest. I do not doubt the sincerity of those who advocate<br>these methods of solving our problems. I believe they will give equal<br>credit to our honesty. If I believed that the adoption of such<br>proposals would decrease taxes, cure abuses or corruption, would produce<br>better service, decrease rates or benefit employees; If I believed they<br>would bring economic equality, would stimulate endeavor, would encourage<br>invention and support individual initiative, would provide equality of<br>opportunity; If I believed that these proposals would not wreck our<br>democracy but would strengthen the foundations of social and spiritual<br>progress in America -- or if they would do a few of these things -- then<br>I would not hesitate to accept these proposals, stupendous as they are,<br>even though such acceptance would result in the governmental operation<br>of all our power and the buying and selling of the products of our farms<br>or any other product. But it is not true that such benefits would<br>result to the public. The contrary would be true.<br> <br>I feel deeply on this subject because during the war I had some<br>practical experience with governmental operation and control. I have<br>witnessed not only at home but abroad the many failures of government in<br>business. I have seen its tyrannies, its injustices, its undermining of<br>the very instincts which carry our people forward to progress. I have<br>witnessed the lack of advance, the lowered standards of living, the<br>depressed spirits of people working under such a system. My objection<br>is based not upon theory or upon a failure to recognize wrong or abuse<br>but because I know that the adoption of such methods would strike at the<br>very roots of American life and would destroy the very basis of American<br>progress.<br> <br>Our people have the right to know whether we can continue to solve our<br>great problems without abandonment of our American system. I know we<br>can. We have demonstrated that our system is responsive enough to meet<br>any new and intricate development in our economic and business life. We<br>have demonstrated that we can maintain our democracy as master in its<br>own house and that we can preserve equality of opportunity and<br>individual freedom.<br> <br>In the last fifty years we have discovered that mass production will<br>produce articles for us at half the cost that obtained previously. We<br>have seen the resultant growth of large units of production and<br>distribution. This is big business. Business must be bigger for our<br>tools are bigger, our country is bigger. We build a single dynamo of a<br>hundred thousand horsepower. Even fifteen years ago that would have<br>been a big business all by itself. Yet today advance in production<br>requires that we set ten of these units together.<br> <br>Our great problem is to make certain that while we maintain the fullest<br>use of the large units of business yet that they shall be held<br>subordinate to the public interest. The American people from bitter<br>experience have a rightful fear that these great units might be used to<br>dominate our industrial life and by illegal and unethical practices<br>destroy equality of opportunity. Years ago the Republican<br>Administration established the principle that such evils could be<br>corrected by regulation. It developed methods by which abuses could be<br>prevented and yet the full value of economic advance retained for the<br>public. It insisted that when great public utilities were clothed with<br>the security of part monopoly, whether it be railways, power plants,<br>telephones or what not, then there must be the fullest and most complete<br>control of rates, services, and finances by governmental agencies.<br>These businesses must be conducted with glass pockets. In the<br>development of our great production industry, the Republican Party<br>insisted upon the enactment of a law that not only would maintain<br>competition but would destroy conspiracies to dominate and limit the<br>equality of opportunity amongst our people.<br> <br>One of the great problems of government is to determine to what extent<br>the Government itself shall interfere with commerce and industry and how<br>much it shall leave to individual exertion. It is just as important<br>that business keep out of government as that government keep out of<br>business. No system is perfect. We have had abuses in the conduct of<br>business that every good citizen resents. But I insist that the results<br>show our system better than any other and retains the essentials of<br>freedom.<br> <br>As a result of our distinctly American system our country has become the<br>land of opportunity to those born without inheritance not merely because<br>of the wealth of its resources and industry but because of this freedom<br>of initiative and enterprise. Russia has natural resources equal to<br>ours. Her people are equally industrious but she has not had the<br>blessings of 150 years of our form of government and of our social<br>system. The wisdom of our forefathers in their conception that progress<br>must be the sum of the progress of free individuals has been reenforced<br>by all of the great leaders of the country since that day. Jackson,<br>Lincoln, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, Wilson, and Coolidge have stood<br>unalterably for these principles. By adherence to the principles of<br>decentralization, self-government, ordered liberty, and opportunity and<br>freedom to the individual our American experiment has yielded a degree<br>of well-being unparalleled in all the world. It has come nearer to the<br>abolition of poverty, to the abolition of fear of want that humanity has<br>ever reached before. Progress of the past seven years is the proof of<br>it. It furnishes an answer to those who would ask us to abandon the<br>system by which this has been accomplished.<br> <br>There is a still further road to progress which is consonant with our<br>American system -- a method that reinforces our individualism by<br>reducing, not increasing, Government interference in business.<br> <br>In this country we have developed a higher sense of cooperation than has<br>ever been known before. This has come partly as the result of<br>stimulation during the war, partly from the impulses of industry itself.<br>We have ten thousand examples of this cooperative tendency in the<br>enormous growth of the associational activities during recent years.<br>Chambers of commerce, trade associations, professional associations,<br>labor unions, trade councils, civic associations, farm cooperatives --<br>these are all so embracing that there is scarcely an individual in our<br>country who does not belong to one or more of them. They represent<br>every phase of our national life both on the economic and the welfare<br>side. They represent a vast ferment toward conscious cooperation.<br>While some of them are selfish and narrow, the majority of them<br>recognize a responsibility to the public as well as to their own<br>interest.<br> <br>The government in its obligation to the public can through skilled<br>specialists cooperate with these various associations for the<br>accomplishment of high public purposes. And this cooperation can take<br>two distinct directions. The first is in the promotion of constructive<br>projects of public interest, such as the elimination of waste in<br>industry, the stabilization of business and development of scientific<br>research. It can contribute to reducing unemployment and seasonal<br>employment. It can by organized cooperation assist and promote great<br>movements for better homes, for child welfare and for recreation.<br> <br>The second form that this cooperation can take is in the cure of abuses<br>and the establishment of a higher code of ethics and a more strict<br>standard in its conduct of business. One test of our economic and<br>social system is its capacity to cure its own abuses. New abuses and<br>new relationships to the public interest will occur as long as we<br>continue to progress. If we are to be wholly dependent upon government<br>to cure every evil we shall by this very method have created an enlarged<br>and deadening abuse through the extension of bureaucracy and the clumsy<br>and incapable handling of delicate economic forces. And much abuse has<br>been and can be cured by inspiration and cooperation, rather than by<br>regulation of the government.<br> <br>Nor is this any idealistic proposal. For the last seven years the<br>Department of Commerce has carried this into practice in hundreds of<br>directions and every single accomplishment of this character minimizes<br>the necessity for government interference with business.<br> <br>All this is possible because of the cooperative spirit and ability at<br>team play in the American people. There is here a fundamental relief<br>from the necessity of extension of the government into every avenue of<br>business and welfare and therefore a powerful implement for the<br>promotion of progress.<br> <br>I wish to say something more on what I believe is the outstanding ideal<br>in our whole political, economic and social system -- that is equality<br>of opportunity. We have carried this ideal farther into our life than<br>has any other nation in the world. Equality of opportunity is the right<br>of every American, rich or poor, foreign or native born, without respect<br>to race or faith or color, to attain that position in life to which his<br>ability and character entitle him. We must carry this ideal further<br>than to economic and political fields alone. The first steps to<br>equality of opportunity are that there should be no child in America<br>that has not been born and does not live under sound conditions of<br>health, that does not have full opportunity for education from the<br>beginning to the end of our institutions, that is not free from<br>injurious labor, that does not have stimulation to accomplish to the<br>fullest of its capacities.<br> <br>It is a matter for concern to our Government that we shall strengthen<br>the safeguards to health, that we shall strengthen the bureaus given to<br>research, that we shall strengthen our educational system at every<br>point, that we shall develop cooperation by our Federal Government with<br>state governments and with the voluntary bodies of the country that we<br>may bring not only better understanding but action in these matters.<br> <br>Furthermore, equality of opportunity in my vision requires an equal<br>opportunity to the people in every section of our country. In these<br>past few years some groups in our country have lagged behind others in<br>the march of progress. They have not had the same opportunity. I refer<br>more particularly to those engaged in the textile, coal and in the<br>agricultural industries. We can assist in solving these problems by<br>cooperation of our Government. To the agricultural industry we shall<br>need advance initial capital to assist them, to stabilize and conduct<br>their own industry. But this proposal is that they shall conduct it<br>themselves, not by the Government. It is in the interest of our cities<br>that we shall bring agriculture into full stability and prosperity. I<br>know you will cooperate gladly in the faith that in the common<br>prosperity of our country lies its future.<br><br>Enviado por Enrique Ibañes