Address Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination in Stanford, California

You bring, Mr. Chairman, formal notice of my nomination by the Republican Party to the Presidency of the United States. I accept. It is a great honor to be chosen for leadership in that party which has so largely made the history of our country in these last 70 years.

Mr. Chairman, you and your associates have in 4 days traveled 3,000 miles across the continent to bring me this notice. I am reminded that in order to notify George Washington of his election Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Congress, spent 7 days on horseback to deliver that important intelligence 230 miles from New York to Mount Vernon.

In another way, too, this occasion illuminates the milestones of progress. By the magic of the radio this nomination was heard by millions of our fellow citizens not 7 days after its occurrence, nor one day, nor even one minute. They were, to all intents and purposes, present in the hall and participants in the proceedings. Today these same millions have heard your voice and now are hearing mine. We stand in their unseen presence. It is fitting, however, that the forms of our national life, hallowed by generations of usage, should be jealously preserved, and for that reason you have come to me, as similar delegations have come to other candidates through the years.

Those invisible millions have already heard from Kansas City the reading of our party principles. They would wish to hear from me not a discourse upon the platform—in which I fully concur—but something of the spirit and ideals with which it is proposed to carry it into administration.

Our problems of the past 7 years have been problems of reconstruction; our problems of the future are problems of construction. They are problems of progress. New and gigantic forces have come into our national life. The Great War released ideas of government in conflict with our principles. We have grown to financial and physical power which compels us into a new setting among nations. Science has given us new tools and a thousand inventions. Through them have come to each of us wider relationships, more neighbors, more leisure, broader vision, higher ambitions, greater problems. To insure that these tools shall not be used to limit liberty has brought a vast array of questions in government.

The points of contact between the Government and the people are constantly multiplying. Every year wise governmental policies become more vital in ordinary life. As our problems grow so do our temptations grow to venture away from those principles upon which our Republic was founded and upon which it has grown to greatness. Moreover, we must direct economic progress in support of moral and spiritual progress.

Our party platform deals mainly with economic problems, but our nation is not an agglomeration of railroads, of ships, of factories, of dynamos, or statistics. It is a nation of homes, a nation of men, of women, of children. Every man has a right to ask of us whether the United States is a better place for him, his wife, and his children to live in, because the Republican Party has conducted the Government for nearly 8 years. Every woman has a right to ask whether her life, her home, her man's job, her hopes, her happiness will be better assured by the continuance of the Republican Party in power. I propose to discuss the questions before me in that light.

With this occasion we inaugurate the campaign. It shall be an honest campaign; every penny will be publicly accounted for. It shall be a true campaign. We shall use words to convey our meaning, not to hide it.

The Republican Party came into authority nearly 8 years ago. It is necessary to remind ourselves of the critical conditions of that time. We were confronted with an incompleted peace and involved in violent and dangerous disputes both at home and abroad. The Federal Government was spending at the rate of 5 1/2 billions per year; our national debt stood at the staggering total of 24 billions. The foreign debts were unsettled. The country was in a panic from over-expansion due to the war and the continued inflation of credit and currency after the armistice, followed by a precipitant nationwide deflation which in half a year crashed the prices of commodities by nearly one-half. Agriculture was prostrated; land was unsalable; commerce and industry were stagnated; our foreign trade ebbed away; 5 millions of unemployed walked the streets. Discontent and agitation against our democracy were rampant. Fear for the future haunted every heart.

No party ever accepted a more difficult task of reconstruction than did the Republican Party in 1921. The record of these 7½ years constitutes a period of rare courage in leadership and constructive action. Never has a political party been able to look back upon a similar period with more satisfaction. Never could it look forward with more confidence that its record would be approved by the electorate.

Peace has been made. The healing processes of good will have extinguished the fires of hate. Year by year in our relations with other nations we have advanced the ideals of law and of peace, in substitution for force. By rigorous economy Federal expenses have been reduced by 2 billions per annum. The national debt has been reduced by 6 1/2 billions. The foreign debts have been settled in large part and on terms which have regard for our debtors and for our taxpayers. Taxes have been reduced four successive times. These reductions have been made in the particular interest of the small taxpayers. For this purpose taxes upon articles of consumption and popular service have been removed. The income tax rolls today show a reduction of 80 percent in the total revenue collected on incomes under $10,000 per year, while they show a reduction of only 25 percent in revenues from incomes above that amount. Each successive reduction in taxes has brought a reduction in the cost of living to all our people.

Commerce and industry have revived. Although the agricultural, coal, and textile industries still lag in their recovery and still require our solicitude and assistance, yet they have made substantial progress. While other countries engaged in the war are only now regaining their prewar level in foreign trade, our exports, even if we allow for the depreciated dollar, are 58 percent greater than before the war. Constructive leadership and cooperation by the Government have released and stimulated the energies of our people. Faith in the future has been restored. Confidence in our form of government has never been greater.

But it is not through the recitation of wise policies in government alone that we demonstrate our progress under Republican guidance. To me the test is the security, comfort, and opportunity that have been brought to the average American family. During this less than 8 years our population has increased by 8 percent. Yet our national income has increased by over $30 billion per year or more than 45 percent. Our production—and therefore our consumption—of goods has increased by over 25 percent. It is easily demonstrated that these increases have been widely spread among our whole people. Home ownership has grown. While during this period the number of families has increased by about 2,300,000, we have built more than 3,500,000 new and better homes. In this short time we have equipped nearly 9 million more homes with electricity, and through it drudgery has been lifted from the lives of women. The barriers of time and distance have been swept away and life made freer and larger by the installation of 6 million more telephones, 7 million radio sets, and the service of an additional 14 million automobiles. Our cities are growing magnificent with beautiful buildings, parks, and playgrounds. Our countryside has been knit together with splendid roads.

We have doubled the use of electrical power and with it we have taken sweat from the backs of men. The purchasing power of wages has steadily increased. The hours of labor have decreased. The 12-hour day has been abolished. Great progress has been made in stabilization of commerce and industry. The job of every man has thus been made more secure. Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing.

Most of all, I like to remember what this progress has meant to America's children. The portal of their opportunity has been ever widening. While our population has grown but 8 percent, we have increased by 11 percent the number of children in our grade schools, by 66 percent the number in our high schools, and by 75 percent the number in our institutions of higher learning.

With all our spending we have doubled savings deposits in our banks and building and loan associations. We have nearly doubled our life insurance. Nor have our people been selfish. They have met with a full hand the most sacred obligation of man—charity. The gifts of America to churches, to hospitals, and institutions for the care of the afflicted, and to relief from great disasters have surpassed by hundreds of millions any totals for any similar period in all human record.

One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human aspirations has been the abolition of poverty. By poverty I mean the grinding by undernourishment, cold, and ignorance, and fear of old age of those who have the will to work. We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but, given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last 8 years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation. There is no guarantee against poverty equal to a job for every man. That is the primary purpose of the economic policies we advocate.

I especially rejoice in the effect of our increased national efficiency upon the improvement of the American home. That is the sanctuary of our loftiest ideals, the source of the spiritual energy of our people. The bettered home surroundings, the expanded schools and playgrounds, and the enlarged leisure which have come with our economic progress have brought to the average family a fuller life, a wider outlook, a stirred imagination, and a lift in aspirations.

Economic advancement is not an end in itself. Successful democracy rests wholly upon the moral and spiritual quality of its people. Our growth in spiritual achievements must keep pace with our growth in physical accomplishments. Material prosperity and moral progress must march together if we would make the United States that commonwealth so grandly conceived by its founders. Our government, to match the expectations of our people, must have constant regard for those human values that give dignity and nobility to life. Generosity of impulse, cultivation of mind, willingness to sacrifice, spaciousness of spirit—those are the qualities whereby America, growing bigger and richer and more powerful, may become America great and noble. A people or government to which these values are not real, because they are not tangible, is in peril. Size, wealth, and power alone cannot fulfill the promise of America's opportunity.

The most urgent economic problem in our Nation today is in agriculture. It must be solved if we are to bring prosperity and contentment to one-third of our people directly and to all of our people indirectly. We have pledged ourselves to find a solution.

To my mind most agricultural discussions go wrong because of two false premises. The first is that agriculture is one industry. It is a dozen distinct industries incapable of the same organization. The second false premise is that rehabilitation will be complete when it has reached a point comparable with prewar. Agriculture was not upon a satisfactory basis before the war. The abandoned farms of the Northeast bear their own testimony. Generally, there was but little profit in Midwest agriculture for many years except that derived from the slow increases in farmland values. Even of more importance is the great advance in standards of living of all occupations since the war. Some branches of agriculture have greatly recovered, but taken as a whole it is not keeping pace with the onward march in other industries.

There are many causes for failure of agriculture to win its full share of national prosperity. The after-war deflation of prices not only brought great direct losses to the farmer, but he was often left indebted in inflated dollars to be paid in deflated dollars. Prices are often demoralized through gluts in our markets during the harvest season. Local taxes have been increased to provide the improved roads and schools. The tariff on some products is proving inadequate to protect him from imports from abroad. The increases in transportation rates since the war have greatly affected the price which he receives for his products. Over 6 million farmers in times of surplus engage in destructive competition with one another in the sale of their product, often depressing prices below those levels that could be maintained.

The whole tendency of our civilization during the last 50 years has been toward an increase in the size of the units of production in order to secure lower costs and a more orderly adjustment of the flow of commodities to the demand. But the organization of agriculture into larger units must not be by enlarged farms. The farmer has shown he can increase the skill of his industry without large operations. He is today producing 20 percent more than 8 years ago, with about the same acreage and personnel. Farming is and must continue to be an individualistic business of small units and independent ownership. The farm is more than a business: it is a state of living. We do not wish it converted into a mass-production machine. Therefore, if the farmer's position is to be improved by larger operations it must be done not on the farm but in the field of distribution. Agriculture has partially advanced in this direction through cooperatives and pools. But the traditional cooperative is often not a complete solution.

Differences of opinion as to both causes and remedy have retarded the completion of a constructive program of relief. It is our plain duty to search out the common ground on which we may mobilize the sound forces of agricultural reconstruction. Our platform lays a solid basis upon which we can build. It offers an affirmative program.

An adequate tariff is the foundation of farm relief. Our consumers increase faster than our producers. The domestic market must be protected. Foreign products raised under lower standards of living are today competing in our home markets. I would use my office and influence to give the farmer the full benefit of our historic tariff policy.

A large portion of the spread between what the farmer receives for his products and what the ultimate consumer pays is due to increased transportation charges. Increase in railway rates has been one of the penalties of the war. These increases have been added to the cost to the farmer of reaching seaboard and foreign markets and result therefore in reduction of his prices. The farmers of foreign countries have thus been indirectly aided in their competition with the American farmer. Nature has endowed us with a great system of inland waterways. Their modernization will comprise a most substantial contribution to Midwest farm relief and to the development of 20 of our interior States. This modernization includes not only the great Mississippi system, with its joining of the Great Lakes and of the heart of Midwest agriculture to the gulf, but also a ship-way from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. These improvements would mean so large an increment in farmers' prices as to warrant their construction many times over. There is no more vital method of farm relief.

But we must not stop here.

An outstanding proposal of the party program is the wholehearted pledge to undertake the reorganization of the marketing system upon sounder and more economical lines. We have already contributed greatly to this purpose by the acts supporting farm cooperatives, the establishment of intermediate credit banks, the regulation of stockyards and public exchanges, and the expansion of the Department of Agriculture. The platform proposes to go much farther. It pledges the creation of a Federal Farm Board of representative farmers to be clothed with authority and resources with which not only to still further aid farmers' cooperatives and pools and to assist generally in solution of farm problems but especially to build up, with Federal finance, farmer-owned and farmer-controlled stabilization corporations which will protect the farmer from the depressions and demoralization of seasonal gluts and periodical surpluses.

Objection has been made that this program, as laid down by the party platform, may require that several hundred millions of dollars of capital be advanced by the Federal Government without obligation upon the individual farmer. With that objection I have little patience. A nation which is spending 90 billions a year can well afford an expenditure of a few hundred millions for a workable program that will give to one-third of its population their fair share of the Nation's prosperity. Nor does this proposal put the Government into business except so far as it is called upon to furnish capital with which to build up the farmer to the control of his own destinies.

The program adapts itself to the variable problems of agriculture not only today but which will arise in the future. I do not believe that any single human being or any group of human beings can determine in advance all questions that will arise in so vast and complicated an industry over a term of years. The first step is to create an effective agency directly for these purposes and to give it authority and resources. These are solemn pledges and they will be fulfilled by the Republican Party. It is a definite plan of relief. It needs only the detailed elaboration of legislation and appropriations to put it into force.

During my term as Secretary of Commerce I have steadily endeavored to build up a system of cooperation between the Government and business. Under these cooperative actions all elements interested in the problems of a particular industry such as manufacturer, distributor, worker, and consumer have been called into council together, not for a single occasion but for continuous work. These efforts have been successful beyond any expectation. They have been accomplished without interference or regulation by the Government. They have secured progress in the industries, remedy for abuses, elimination of waste, reduction of cost in production and distribution, lower prices to the consumer, and more stable employment and profit. While the problem varies with every different commodity and with every different part of our great country, I should wish to apply the same method to agriculture so that the leaders of every phase of each group can advise and organize on policies and constructive measures. I am convinced that this form of action, as it has done in other industries, can greatly benefit farmer, distributor, and consumer.

The working out of agricultural relief constitutes the most important obligation of the next administration. I stand pledged to these proposals. The object of our policies is to establish for our farmers an income equal to those of other occupations; for the farmer's wife the same comforts in her home as women in other groups; for the farm boys and girls the same opportunities in life as other boys and girls. So far as my own abilities may be of service, I dedicate them to help secure prosperity and contentment in that industry where I and my forefathers were born and nearly all my family still obtain their livelihood.

The Republican Party has ever been the exponent of protection to all our people from competition with lower standards of living abroad. We have always fought for tariffs designed to establish this protection from imported goods. We also have enacted restrictions upon immigration for the protection of labor from the inflow of workers faster than we can absorb them without breaking down our wage levels.

The Republican principle of an effective control of imported goods and of immigration has contributed greatly to the prosperity of our country. There is no selfishness in this defense of our standards of living. Other countries gain nothing if the high standards of America are sunk and if we are prevented from building a civilization which sets the level of hope for the entire world. A general reduction in the tariff would admit a flood of goods from abroad. It would injure every home. It would fill our streets with idle workers. It would destroy the returns to our dairymen, our fruit, flax, and livestock growers, and our other farmers.

No man will say that any immigration or tariff law is perfect. We welcome our new immigrant citizens and their great contribution to our nation; we seek only to protect them equally with those already here. We shall amend the immigration laws to relieve unnecessary hardships upon families. As a member of the commission whose duty it is to determine the quota basis under the national origins law, I have found it is impossible to do so accurately and without hardship. The basis now in effect carries out the essential principle of the law and I favor repeal of that part of the act calling for a new basis of quotas.

We have pledged ourselves to make such revisions in the tariff laws as may be necessary to provide real protection against the shiftings of economic tides in our various industries. I am sure the American people would rather entrust the perfection of the tariff to the consistent friend of the tariff than to our opponents, who have always reduced our tariffs, who voted against our present protection to the worker and the farmer, and whose whole economic theory over generations has been the destruction of the protective principle.

Having earned my living with my own hands, I cannot have other than the greatest sympathy with the aspirations of those who toil. It has been my good fortune during the past 12 years to have received the cooperation of labor in many directions, and in promotion of many public purposes.

The trade union movement in our country has maintained two departures from such movements in all other countries. They have been staunch supporters of American individualism and American institutions. They have steadfastly opposed subversive doctrines from abroad. Our freedom from foreign social and economic diseases is in large degree due to this resistance by our own labor. Our trade unions, with few exceptions, have welcomed all basic improvement in industrial methods. This largeness of mind has contributed to the advancing standards of living of the whole of our people. They properly have sought to participate—by additions to wages—in the result of improvements and savings which they have helped to make.

During these past years we have grown greatly in the mutual understanding between employer and employee. We have seen a growing realization by the employer that the highest practicable wage is the road to increased consumption and prosperity, and we have seen a growing realization by labor that the maximum use of machines, of effort, and of skill is the road to lower production costs and in the end to higher real wages. Under these impulses and the Republican protective system our industrial output has increased as never before and our wages have grown steadily in buying power. Our workers with their average weekly wages can today buy two and often three times more bread and butter than any wage earner of Europe. At one time we demanded for our workers a "full dinner pail." We have now gone far beyond that conception. Today we demand larger comfort and greater participation in life and leisure.

The Republican platform gives the pledge of the party to the support of labor. It endorses the principle of collective bargaining and freedom in labor negotiations. We stand also pledged to the curtailment of excessive use of the injunction in labor disputes.

The war and the necessary curtailment of expenditure during the reconstruction years have suspended the construction of many needed public works. Moreover, the time has arrived when we must undertake a larger-visioned development of our water resources. Every drop which runs to the sea without yielding its full economic service is a waste.

Nearly all of our greater drainages contain within themselves possibilities of cheapened transportation, irrigation, reclamation, domestic water supply, hydroelectric power, and frequently the necessities of flood control. But this development of our waters requires more definite national policies in the systematic coordination of those different works upon each drainage area. We have wasted scores of millions by projects undertaken not as a part of a whole but as the consequence of purely local demands. We cannot develop modernized water transportation by isolated projects. We must develop it as a definite and positive interconnected system of transportation. We must adjust reclamation and irrigation to our needs for more land. Where they lie together we must coordinate transportation with flood control, the development of hydroelectric power and of irrigation, else we shall as in the past commit errors that will take years and millions to remedy. The Congress has authorized and has in process of legislation great programs of public works. In addition to the works in development of water resources, we have in progress large undertakings in public roads and the construction of public buildings.

All these projects will probably require an expenditure of upward of $1 billion within the next 4 years. It comprises the largest engineering construction ever undertaken by any government. It involves three times the expenditure laid out upon the Panama Canal. It is justified by the growth, need, and wealth of our country. The organization and administration of this construction is a responsibility of the first order. For it we must secure the utmost economy, honesty, and skill. These works, which will provide jobs for an army of men, should so far as practicable be adjusted to take up the slack of unemployment elsewhere.

I rejoice in the completion of legislation providing adequate flood control of the Mississippi. It marks not alone the undertaking of a great national task, but it constitutes a contribution to the development of the South. In encouragement of their economic growth lies one of the great national opportunities of the future.

I recently stated my position upon the 18th amendment, which I again repeat:

"I do not favor the repeal of the 18th amendment. I stand for the efficient enforcement of the laws enacted thereunder. Whoever is chosen President has under his oath the solemn duty to pursue this course.

"Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose. It must be worked out constructively."

Commonsense compels us to realize that grave abuses have occurred—abuses which must be remedied. An organized searching investigation of fact and causes can alone determine the wise method of correcting them. Crime and disobedience of law cannot be permitted to break down the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Modification of the enforcement laws which would permit that which the Constitution forbids is nullification. This the American people will not countenance. Change in the Constitution can and must be brought about only by the straightforward methods provided in the Constitution itself. There are those who do not believe in the purposes of several provisions of the Constitution. No one denies their right to seek to amend it. They are not subject to criticism for asserting that right. But the Republican Party does deny the right of anyone to seek to destroy the purposes of the Constitution by indirection.

Whoever is elected President takes an oath not only to faithfully execute the Office of the President, but that oath provides still further that he will, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I should be untrue to these great traditions, untrue to my oath of office, were I to declare otherwise.

With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system. Our preeminent advance over nations in the last 8 years has been due to distinctively American accomplishments. We do not owe these accomplishments to our vast natural resources. These we have always had. They have not increased. What has changed is our ability to utilize these resources more effectively. It is our human resources that have changed. Man for man and woman for woman, we are today more capable, whether in the work of farm, factory, or business, than ever before. It lies in our magnificent educational system, in the hardworking character of our people, in the capacity of farsighted leadership in industry, the ingenuity, the daring of the pioneers of new inventions, in the abolition of the saloon, and the wisdom of our national policies.

With the growth and increasing complexity of our economic life the relations of government and business are multiplying daily. They are yearly more dependent upon each other. Where it is helpful and necessary, this relation should be encouraged. Beyond this it should not go. It is the duty of government to avoid regulation as long as equal opportunity to all citizens is not invaded and public rights violated. Government should not engage in business in competition with its citizens. Such actions extinguish the enterprise and initiative which has been the glory of America and which has been the root of its preeminence among the nations of the earth. On the other hand, it is the duty of business to conduct itself so that government regulation or government competition is unnecessary.

Business is practical, but it is founded upon faith—faith among our people in the integrity of businessmen, and faith that it will receive fair play from the Government. It is the duty of government to maintain that faith. Our whole business system would break down in a day if there was not a high sense of moral responsibility in our business world. The whole practice and ethics of business has made great strides of improvement in the last quarter of a century, largely due to the effort of business and the professions themselves. One of the most helpful signs of recent years is the stronger growth of associations of workers, farmers, businessmen, and professional men with a desire to cure their own abuses and a purpose to serve public interest. Many problems can be solved through cooperation between government and these self-governing associations to improve methods and practices. When business cures its own abuses it is true self-government, which comprises more than political institutions.

One of the greatest difficulties of business with government is the multitude of unnecessary contacts with government bureaus, the uncertainty and inconsistency of government policies, and the duplication of governmental activities. A large part of this is due to the scattering of functions and the great confusion of responsibility in our Federal organizations. We have, for instance, 14 different bureaus or agencies engaged in public works and construction, located in 9 different departments of the Government. It brings about competition between government agencies, inadequacy of control, and a total lack of coordinated policies in public works. We have eight different bureaus and agencies charged with conservation of our natural resources, located in five different departments of the Government. These conditions exist in many other directions. Divided responsibility, with the absence of centralized authority, prevents constructive and consistent development of broad national policies.

Our Republican Presidents have repeatedly recommended to Congress that it would not only greatly reduce expenses of business in its contacts with government, but that a great reduction could be made in governmental expenditure and more consistent and continued national policies could be developed, if we could secure the grouping of these agencies devoted to one major purpose under single responsibility and authority. I have had the good fortune to be able to carry out such reorganization in respect to the Department of Commerce. The results have amply justified its expansion to other departments and I should consider it an obligation to enlist the support of Congress to effect it.

The Government can be of invaluable aid in the promotion of business. The ideal state of business is freedom from those fluctuations from boom to slump which bring on one hand the periods of unemployment and bankruptcy and, on the other, speculation and waste. Both are destructive to progress and fraught with great hardship to every home. By economy in expenditures, wise taxation, and sound fiscal finance it can relieve the burdens upon sound business and promote financial stability. By sound tariff policies it can protect our workmen, our farmers, and our manufacturers from lower standards of living abroad. By scientific research it can promote invention and improvement in methods. By economic research and statistical service it can promote the elimination of waste and contribute to stability in production and distribution. By promotion of foreign trade it can expand the markets for our manufacturers and farmers and thereby contribute greatly to stability and employment.

Our people know that the production and distribution of goods on a large scale is not wrong. Many of the most important comforts of our people are only possible by mass production and distribution. Both small and big business have their full place. The test of business is not its size—the test is whether there is honest competition, whether there is freedom from domination, whether there is integrity and usefulness of purpose. As Secretary of Commerce I have been greatly impressed by the fact that the foundation of American business is the independent businessman. The Department by encouragement of his associations and by provision of special services has endeavored to place him in a position of equality in information and skill with larger operations. Alike with our farmers his is the stronghold of American individuality. It is here that our local communities receive their leadership. It is here that we refresh our leadership for larger enterprise. We must maintain his opportunity and his individual service. He and the public must be protected from any domination or from predatory business.

I have said that the problems before us are more than economic, that in a much greater degree they are moral and spiritual. I hold that there rests upon government many responsibilities which affect the moral and spiritual welfare of our people. The participation of women in politics means a keener realization of the importance of these questions. It means higher political standards.

One-half of our citizens fail to exercise the responsibilities of the ballot box. I would wish that the women of our country could embrace this problem in citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted, the foundations of democracy made more secure.

In this land, dedicated to tolerance, we still find outbreaks of intolerance. I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit. The glory of our American ideals is the right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.

In the past years there has been corruption participated in by individual officials and members of both political parties in national, State, and municipal affairs. Too often this corruption has been viewed with indifference by a great number of our people. It would seem unnecessary to state the elemental requirement that government must inspire confidence not only in its ability but in its integrity. Dishonesty in government, whether national, State, or municipal, is a double wrong. It is treason to the State. It is destructive of self-government. Government in the United States rests not only upon the consent of the governed but upon the conscience of the Nation. Government weakens the moment that its integrity is even doubted. Moral incompetency by those entrusted with government is a blighting wind upon private integrity. There must be no place for cynicism in the creed of America.

Our civil service has proved a great national boon. Appointive office, both North, South, East, and West, must be based solely on merit, character, and reputation in the community in which the appointee is to serve; as it is essential for the proper performance of their duties that officials shall enjoy the confidence and respect of the people with whom they serve.

For many years I have been associated with efforts to save life and health for our children. These experiences with millions of children both at home and abroad have left an indelible impression—that the greatness of any nation, its freedom from poverty and crime, its aspirations and ideals are the direct quotient of the care of its children. Racial progress marches upon the feet of healthy and instructed children. There should be no child in America that is not born and does not live under sound conditions of health; that does not have full opportunity of education from the beginning to the end of our institutions; that is not free from injurious labor; that does not have every stimulation to accomplish the fullest of its capacities. Nothing in development of childlife will ever replace the solicitude of parents and the surroundings of home, but in many aspects, both parents and children are dependent upon the vigilance of government—national, State, and local.

I especially value the contribution that the youth of the country can make to the success of our American experiment in democracy. Theirs is the precious gift of enthusiasm, without which no great deeds can be accomplished. A government that does not constantly seek to live up to the ideals of its young men and women falls short of what the American people have a right to expect and demand from it. To interpret the spirit of the youth into the spirit of our Government, to bring the warmth of their enthusiasm and the flame of their idealism into the affairs of the Nation is to make of American Government a positive and living force, a factor for greatness and nobility in the life of the Nation.

I think I may say that I have witnessed as much of the horror and suffering of war as any other American. From it I have derived a deep passion for peace. Our foreign policy has one primary object, and that is peace. We have no hates; we wish no further possessions; we harbor no military threats. The unspeakable experiences of the Great War, the narrow margin by which civilization survived its exhaustion, is still vivid in men's minds. There is no nation in the world today that does not earnestly wish for peace—that is not striving for peace.

There are two cooperating factors in the maintenance of peace—the building of good will by wise and sympathetic handling of international relations, and the adequate preparedness for defense. We must not only be just; we must be respected. The experiences of the war afforded final proof that we cannot isolate ourselves from the world, that the safeguarding of peace cannot be attained by negative action. Our offer of treaties open to the signature of all, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, proves that we have every desire to cooperate with other nations for peace. But our people have determined that we can give the greatest real help—both in times of tranquility and in times of strain—if we maintain our independence from the political exigencies of the Old World. In pursuance of this, our country has refused membership in the League of Nations, but we are glad to cooperate with the league in its endeavors to further scientific, economic, and social welfare, and to secure limitation of armament.

We believe that the foundations of peace can be strengthened by the creation of methods and agencies by which a multitude of incidents may be transferred from the realm of prejudice and force to arbitration and the determination of right and wrong based upon international law.

We have been and we are particularly desirous of furthering the limitation of armaments. But in the meantime we know that in an armed world there is only one certain guarantee of freedom—and that is preparedness for defense. It is solely to defend ourselves, for the protection of our citizens, that we maintain armament. No clearer evidence of this can exist than the unique fact that we have fewer men in army uniform today than we have in police uniforms, and that we maintain a standing invitation to the world that we are always ready to limit our naval armament in proportion as the other naval nations will do likewise. We earnestly wish that the burdens and dangers of armament upon every home in the world might be lessened. But we must and shall maintain our naval defense and our merchant marine in the strength and efficiency which will yield to us at all times the primary assurance of liberty, that is, of national safety.

There is one of the ideals of America upon which I wish at this time to lay especial emphasis. For we should constantly test our economic, social, and governmental system by certain ideals which must control them. The founders of our Republic propounded the revolutionary doctrine that all men are created equal and all should have equality before the law. This was the emancipation of the individual. And since these beginnings, slowly, surely, and almost imperceptibly, this Nation has added a third ideal almost unique to America—the ideal of equal opportunity. This is the safeguard of the individual. The simple life of early days in our Republic found but few limitations upon equal opportunity. By the crowding of our people and the intensity and complexity of their activities it takes today a new importance.

Equality of opportunity is the right of every American—rich or poor, foreign or native-born, irrespective of faith or color. It is the right of every individual to attain that position in life to which his ability and character entitle him. By its maintenance we will alone hold open the door of opportunity to every new generation, to every boy and girl. It tolerates no privileged classes or castes or groups who would hold opportunity as their prerogative. Only from confidence that this right will be upheld can flow that unbounded courage and hope which stimulate each individual man and woman to endeavor and to achievement. The sum of their achievement is the gigantic harvest of national progress.

This ideal of individualism based upon equal opportunity to every citizen is the negation of socialism. It is the negation of anarchy. It is the negation of despotism. It is as if we set a race. We, through free and universal education, provide the training of the runners; we give to them an equal start; we provide in the Government the umpire of fairness in the race. The winner is he who shows the most conscientious training, the greatest ability, and the greatest character. Socialism bids all to end the race equally. It holds back the speedy to the pace of the slowest. Anarchy would provide neither training nor umpire. Despotism picks those who should run and those who should win.

Conservative, progressive, and liberal thought and action have their only real test in whether they contribute to equal opportunity, whether they hold open the door of opportunity. If they do not they are false in their premise no matter what their name may be.

It was Abraham Lincoln who firmly enunciated this ideal as the equal chance. The Sherman Law was enacted in endeavor to hold open the door of equal opportunity in business. The commissions for regulation of public utilities were created to prevent discrimination in service and prevent extortion in rates—and thereby the destruction of equal opportunity.

Equality of opportunity is a fundamental principle of our Nation. With it we must test all our policies. The success or failure of this principle is the test of our government.

Mr. Chairman, I regret that time does not permit the compass of many important questions. I hope at a later time to discuss the development of waterways, highways, aviation, irrigable lands, foreign trade and merchant marine, the promotion of education, more effective administration of our criminal laws, the relation of our government to public utilities and railways, the primary necessity of conservation of natural resources, measures for further economy in government and reduction of taxes—all of which afford problems of the first order.

I would violate my conscience and the gratitude I feel, did I not upon this occasion express appreciation of the great President who leads our party today. President Coolidge has not only given a memorable administration, he has left an imprint of rectitude and statesmanship upon the history of our country. His has been the burden of reconstruction of our country from the destruction of war. He has dignified economy to a principle of government. He has charted the course of our Nation and our party over many years to come. It is not only a duty but it is the part of statesmanship that we adhere to this course.

No man who stands before the mighty forces which ramify American life has the right to promise solutions at his hand alone. All that an honest man can say is that, within the extent of his abilities and his authority and in cooperation with the Congress and with leaders of every element in our people, these problems shall be courageously met and solution will be courageously attempted.

Our purpose is to build in this Nation a human society, not an economic system. We wish to increase the efficiency and productivity of our country, but its final purpose is happier homes. We shall succeed through the faith, the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, the devotion to eternal ideals which live today in every American.

The matters which I have discussed directly and deeply affect the moral and spiritual welfare of our country. No one believes these aspirations and hopes can be realized in a day. Progress or remedy lie often enough in the hands of State and local government. But the awakening of the national conscience and the stimulation of every remedial agency is indeed a function of the National Government. I want to see our government great, both as an instrument and as a symbol of the Nation's greatness.

The Presidency is more than an administrative office. It must be the symbol of American ideals. The high and the lowly must be seen with the same eyes, met in the same spirit. It must be the instrument by which national conscience is livened and it must under the guidance of the Almighty interpret and follow that conscience.