, but for the solution of which it is the bounden duty of all of us to
work. I had grown to realize very keenly that the duty of the Government
to protect women and children must be extended to include the protection
of all the crushable elements of labor. I saw that it was the affair of
all our people to see that justice obtained between the big corporation
and its employees, and between the big corporation and its smaller
rivals, as well as its customers and the general public. I saw that it
was the affair of all of us, and not only of the employer, if dividends
went up and wages went down; that it was to the interest of all of us
that a full share of the benefit of improved machinery should go to the
workman who used the machinery; and also that it was to the interest of
all of us that each man, whether brain worker or hand worker, should
do the best work of which he was capable, and that there should be
some correspondence between the value of the work and the value of the
reward. It is these and many similar questions which in their sum
make up the great social and industrial problems of to-day, the most
interesting and important of the problems with which our public life
must deal.

In handling these problems I believe that much can be done by the
Government. Furthermore, I believe that, after all that the Government
can do has been done, there will remain as the most vital of all factors
the individual character of the average man and the average woman.
No governmental action can do more than supplement individual action.
Moreover, there must be collective action of kinds distinct from
governmental action. A body of public opinion must be formed, must
make itself felt, and in the end transform, and be transformed by, the
gradual raising of individual standards of conduct.

It is curious to see how difficult it is to make some men understand
that insistence upon one factor does not and must not mean failure fully
to recognize other factors. The selfish individual needs to be taught
that we must now shackle cunning by law exactly as a few centuries back
we shackled force by law. Unrestricted individualism spells ruin to
the individual himself. But so does the elimination of individualism,
whether by law or custom. It is a capital error to fail to recognize the
vital need of good laws. It is also a capital error to believe that good
laws will accomplish anything unless the average man has the right stuff
in him. Th