e toiler, the manual laborer, has received less than justice,
and he must be protected, both by law, by custom, and by the exercise
of his right to increase his wage; and yet to decrease the quantity and
quality of his work will work only evil. There must be a far greater
meed of respect and reward for the hand worker than we now give him, if
our society is to be put on a sound basis; and this respect and reward
cannot be given him unless he is as ambitious to do the best possible
work as is the highest type of brain worker, whether doctor or writer or
artist. There must be a raising of standards, and not a leveling down to
the standard of the poorest and most inefficient. There is urgent need
of intelligent governmental action to assist in making the life of the
man who tills the soil all that it should be, and to see that the manual
worker gets his full share of the reward for what he helps produce; but
if either farmer, mechanic, or day laborer is shiftless or lazy, if he
shirks downright hard work, if he is stupid or self-indulgent, then no
law can save him, and he must give way to a better type.

I suppose that some good people will misunderstand what I say, and
will insist on taking only half of it as representing the whole. Let
me repeat. When I say, that, even after we have all the good laws
necessary, the chief factor in any given man's success or failure must
be that man's own character, it must not be inferred that I am in the
least minimizing the importance of these laws, the real and vital need
for them. The struggle for individual advancement and development can be
brought to naught, or indefinitely retarded, by the absence of law or by
bad law. It can be immeasurably aided by organized effort on the part
of the State. Collective action and individual action, public law and
private character, are both necessary. It is only by a slow and patient
inward transformation such as these laws aid in bringing about that men
are really helped upward in their struggle for a higher and a fuller
life. Recognition of individual character as the most important of all
factors does not mean failure fully to recognize that we must have good
laws, and that we must have our best men in office to enforce these
laws. The Nation collectively will in this way be able to be of real and
genuine service to each of us individually; and, on the other hand,
the wisdom of the collective action will mainly depend on the high
individual av