Rugged Individualism Speech

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.

After four months’ debate it is not the Republican Party which finds

reason for abandonment of any of the principles it has laid down or of

the views it has expressed for solution of the problems before the

country. The principles to which it adheres are rooted deeply in the

foundations of our national life and the solutions which it proposed

are based on experience with government and a consciousness that it

may have the responsibility for placing those solutions into action.

In my acceptance speech I endeavored to outline the spirit and ideals

with which I would propose to carry that platform into administration.

Tonight, I will not deal with the multitude of issues which have been

already well canvassed, I propose rather to discuss some of those more

fundamental principles and ideals upon which I believe the Government of

the United States should be conducted.

Before I enter upon that discussion of principles I wish to lay before

you the proof of progress under Republican rule. In doing this I do not

need to review its seventy years of constructive history. That history

shows that the Republican party has ever been a party of progress. It

has reflected the spirit of the American people. We are a progressive

people. Our history of 150 years in the greatest epic of human

progress. Tonight to demonstrate the constructive character of our

Party, I need only briefly picture the advance of fundamental progress

during the past seven and a half years since we took over the Government

amidst the ruin of war.

First of all, let me deal with the material side. I do this because

upon the well-being, comfort and security of the American home do we

build up the moral and spiritual virtues as well as the finer flowers of

civilization and the wider satisfactions of life.

As a nation we came out of the war with great losses. We made no

profits from it. The apparent increases in wages were fictitious. We

were poorer as a nation when we emerged from it. Yet during these last

eight years we have recovered from these losses and increased our

national income by over one-third even if we discount the inflation of

the dollar. While some individuals have grown rich, yet that there has

been a wide diffusion of our gain in wealth and income is marked by a

hundred proofs. I know of no better test of the improved conditions of

the average family than the combined increase of life and industrial

insurance, building and loan assets, and savings deposits. These are

the financial agents of the average man. These alone have in seven

years increased by nearly 100 per cent to the gigantic sum of over 50

billions of dollars, or nearly one-six of our whole national wealth. In

addition to these evidences of larger savings our people are steadily

increasing their spending for higher standards of living. Today there

are almost 9 automobiles for each 10 families, where seven and a half

years ago only enough automobiles were running to average less than 4

for each 10 families. The slogan of progress is changing from the full

dinner pail to the full garage. Our people have more to eat, better

things to wear, and better homes. We have even gained in elbow room in

our homes, for the increase of residential floor space is over 25 per

cent with less than 10 per cent increase in our number of people. We

have increased the security of his job to every man and woman. We have

decreased the fear of old age, the fear of poverty, the fear of

unemployment and these are fears which have always been amongst the

greatest calamities of human kind.

All this progress means far more than greater creature comforts. It

finds a thousand interpretations into a greater and fuller life. In all

this we have steadily reduced the sweat in human labor. A score of new

helps save the drudgery of the home. In seven years we have added 25

per cent more electric power to the elbow of every worker, and farther

promoted him from a carrier of burdens to a director of machines. Our

hours of labor are lessened; our leisure has increased. We have

expanded our parks and playgrounds. We have nearly doubled our

attendance at games. We pour into outdoor recreation in every

direction. The visitors at our national parks have trebled and we have

so increased the number of sportsmen fishing in our streams and lakes

that the longer time between bites is becoming a political issue. In

these seven and one-half years the radio has brought music and laughter,

education and political discussion to almost every fireside.

Springing from our prosperity with its greater freedom, its vast

endowment of scientific research and the greater resources with which to

care for public health, we have according to our insurance actuaries

during this short period since the war lengthened the span of life by

nearly eight years. We have reduced infant mortality, we have vastly

decreased the days of illness and suffering in the life of every man and

woman. We have improved the facilities for the care of the crippled and

helpless and deranged.

From our increasing resources we have expanded our educational system in

eight years from an outlay of 1,200 millions to 2,700 millions of

dollars. The education of our youth has become almost the largest and

certainly our most important activity. From our ability to free youth

from toil we have increased the attendance in our grade schools by 14

per cent, in our high schools by 80 per cent, and in institutions of

higher learning by 95 per cent. Today we have more youth in these

institutions of higher learning twice over than all the rest of the

world put together. We have made progress in literature, art and in

public taste.

I do not need to recite more figures and more evidence. There is not a

person within the sound of my voice that does not know the profound

progress which our country has made in this period. Every man and woman

knows that their comfort, their hopes and their confidence for the

future are higher this day than they were seven and one-half years ago.

Your city has been an outstanding beneficiary of this great progress.

With its suburbs it has, during the last seven and a half years grown by

over a million and a half of people, until it has become the largest

metropolitan district of all the world. Here you have made abundant

opportunity not only for the youth of the land but for the immigrant

from foreign shores. This city is the commercial center of the United

States. It is the commercial agent of the American people. It is a

great organism of specialized skill and leadership in finance, industry

and commerce, which reaches every spot in our country. Its progress and

its beauty are the pride of the whole American people. It leads our

nation in the largest size of its benevolences, in art, in music,

literature and drama. It has come to have a greater voice, than any

other city in the United States.

But when all is said and done the very life, progress and prosperity of

this city is wholly dependent on the prosperity of the 110,000,000

people who dwell in our mountains and valleys across the 3,000 miles to

the Pacific Ocean. Every activity of this city is sensitive to every

evil and every favorable tide that sweeps this great nation of ours. Be

there a slackening of industry in any part of the country it affects New

York far more than the rest of the country. In a time of depression

one-quarter of all the unemployed in the United States can be numbered

in this city. In a time of prosperity the citizens of the great

interior of our country pour into your city for business and

entertainment at the rate of 200,000 a day. In fact so much is this

city the reflex of the varied interests of our country that the concern

of every one of your citizens for national stability, for national

prosperity and for national progress is far greater than any other

single part of our country.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PROGRESS

It detracts nothing from the character and energy of the American

people, it minimizes in no degree the quality of their accomplishments

to say that the policies of the Republican Party have played a large

part in the building of this progress of these last seven and one-half

years. I can say with emphasis that without the wise policies which the

Republican Party has brought into action in this period, no such

progress would have been possible.

The first responsibility of the Republican Administration was to renew

the march of progress from its collapse by the war. That task involved

the restoration of confidence in the future and the liberation and

stimulation of the constructive energies of our people. It is not my

purpose to enter upon a detailed recitation of the history of the great

constructive measures of the past seven and a half years.

It is sufficient to remind you of the restoration of employment to the

millions who walked your streets in idleness to remind you of the

creation of the budget system; the reduction of six billions of national

debt which gave the impulse of that vast sum returned to industry and

commerce; the four sequent reductions of taxes and thereby the lift to

the living of every family; the enactment of an adequate protective

tariff and immigration laws which have raised and safeguarded our wages

from floods of goods or labor from foreign countries; the creation of

credit facilities and many aids to agriculture; the building up of

foreign trade; the care of veterans, the development of aviation, of

radio, of our inland waterways, our highways; the expansion of

scientific research, of welfare activities, safer highways, safer mines,

outdoor recreation, in better homes, in public health and the care of

children. Nor do I need remind you that Government today deals with an

economic and social system vastly more intricate and delicately adjusted

than ever before. It now must be kept in perfect tune if we would not,

through dislocation, have a breakdown in employment and in standards of

living of our people. The Government has come to more and more touch

this delicate web at a thousand points. Yearly the relations of

Government to national prosperity becomes more and more intimate. It

has only by keen large vision and cooperation by the Government that

stability in business and stability in employment has been maintained

during this past seven and a half years. Never has there been a period

when the Federal Government has given such aid and impulse to the

progress of our people, not alone to economic progress but to

development of those agencies which make for moral and spiritual

progress.

But in addition to this great record of contributions of the Republican

Party to progress, there has been a further fundamental contribution —

a contribution perhaps more important than all the others — and that is

the resistance of the Republican Party to every attempt to inject the

Government into business in competition with its citizens.

After the war, when the Republican Party assumed administration of the

country, we were faced with the problem of determination of the very

nature of our national life. Over 150 years we have builded up a form

of self-government and we had builded up a social system which is

peculiarly our own. It differs fundamentally from all others in the

world. It is the American system. It is just as definite and positive

a political and social system as has ever been developed on earth. It

is founded upon the conception that self-government can be preserved

only by decentralization of Government in the State and by fixing local

responsibility; but further than this, it is founded upon the social

conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal

opportunity to the individual will his initiative and enterprise drive

the march of progress.

During the war we necessarily turned to the Government to solve every

difficult economic problem — the Government having absorbed every

energy of our people to war there was no other solution. For the

preservation of the State the Government became a centralized despotism

which undertook responsibilities, assumed powers, exercised rights, and

took over the business of citizens. To large degree we regimented our

whole people temporarily into a socialistic state. However justified it

was in time of war if continued in peace time it would destroy not only

our system but progress and freedom in our own country and throughout

the world. When the war closed the most vital of all issues was whether

Governments should continue war ownership and operation of many

instrumentalities of production and distribution. We were challenged

with the choice of the American system cf2 rugged individualismcf0 or the

choice of a European system of diametrically opposed doctrines —

doctrines of paternalism and state socialism. The acceptance of these

ideas meant the destruction of self-government through centralization of

government; it meant the undermining of initiative and enterprise upon

which our people have grown to unparalleled greatness.

The Democratic administration cooperated with the Republican Party to

demobilize many of her activities and the Republican Party from the

beginning of its period of power resolutely turned its face away from

these ideas and these war practices, back to our fundamental conception

of the state and the rights and responsibilities of the individual.

Thereby it restored confidence and hope in the American people, it freed

and stimulated enterprise, it restored the Government to its position as

an umpire instead of a player in the economic game. For these reasons

the American people have gone forward in progress while the rest of the

world is halting and some countries have even gone backwards. If anyone

will study the causes which retarded recuperation of Europe, he will

find much of it due to the stifling of private initiative on one hand,

and overloading of the Government with business on the other.

I regret, however, to say that there has been revived in this campaign a

proposal which would be a long step to the abandonment of our American

system, to turn to the idea of government in business. Because we are

faced with difficulty and doubt over certain national problems which we

are faced — that is prohibition, farm relief and electrical power —

our opponents propose that we must to some degree thrust government into

these businesses and in effect adopt state socialism as a solution.

There is, therefore submitted to the American people the question —

Shall we depart from the American system and start upon a new road. And

I wish to emphasize this question on this occasion. I wish to make

clear my position on the principles involved for they go to the very

roots of American life in every act of our Government. I should like to

state to you the effect of the extension of government into business

upon our system of self government and our economic system. But even

more important is the effect upon the average man. That is the effect

on the very basis of liberty and freedom not only to those left outside

the fold of expanded bureaucracy but to those embraced within it.

When the Federal Government undertakes a business, the state governments

are at once deprived of control and taxation of that business; when the

state government undertakes a business it at once deprived the

municipalities of taxation and control of that business. Business

requires centralization; self government requires decentralization. Our

government to succeed in business must become in effect a despotism.

There is thus at once an insidious destruction of self government.

Moreover there is a limit to human capacity in administration.

Particularly is there a limit to the capacity of legislative bodies to

supervise governmental activities. Every time the Federal Government

goes into business 530 Senators and Congressmen become the Board of

Directors of that business. Every time a state government goes into

business 100 or 200 state senators and assemblymen become directors of

that business. Even if they were supermen, no bodies of such numbers

can competently direct that type of human activities which requires

instant decision and action. No such body can deal adequately with all

sections of the country. And yet if we would preserve government by the

people we must preserve the authority of our legislators over the

activities of our Government. We have trouble enough with log rolling

in legislative bodies today. It originates naturally from desires of

citizens to advance their particular section or to secure some necessary

service. It would be multiplied a thousand-fold were the Federal and

state governments in these businesses.

The effect upon our economic progress would be even worse. Business

progressiveness is dependent on competition. New methods and new ideas

are the outgrowth of the spirit of adventure of individual initiative

and of individual enterprise. Without adventure there is no progress.

No government administration can rightly speculate and take risks with

taxpayers’ money. But even more important than this — leadership in

business must be through the sheer rise of ability and character. That

rise can take place only in the free atmosphere of competition.

Competition is closed by bureaucracy. Certainly political choice is a

feeble basis for choice of leaders to conduct a business.

There is no better example of the practical incompetence of government

to conduct business than the history of our railways. Our railways in

the year before being freed from Government operation were not able to

meet the demands for transportation. Eight years later we find our them

under private enterprise, transporting 15 per cent more goods and

meeting every demand for service. Rates have been reduced by 15 per

cent and net earnings increased from less than 1 per cent on their

valuation to about 5 per cent. Wages of employees have improved by 13

per cent. The wages of railway employees are 2 per cent above pre-war.

The wages of Government employees are today . . . will check their

figure definitely tomorrow but probably about 70% per cent above pre-

war. That should be a sufficient sermon upon the efficiency of

Government operation.

But we can examine this question from the point of view of the person

who gets a Government job and is admitted into the new bureaucracy.

Upon that subject let me quote from a speech of that great leader of

labor, Samuel Gompers, delivered in Montreal in 1920, a few years before

his death. He said:

«I believe there is no man to whom I would take second position in my

loyalty to the Republic of the United States, and yet I would not give

it more power over the individual citizenship of our country. . . .

«It is a question of whether it shall be Government ownership or private

ownership under control. . . . If I were in the minority of one in this

convention, I would want to cast my vote so that the men of labor shall

not willingly enslave themselves to Government authority in their

industrial effort for freedom. . . .

«Let the future tell the story of who is right or who is wrong; who has

stood for freedom and who has been willing to submit their fate

industrially to the Government.»

I would amplify Mr. Gompers’ statement. These great bodies of

Government employees would either comprise political machines at the

disposal of the party in power, or alternatively to prevent this the

Government by stringent civil-service rules must debar its employees

from their full rights as free men. If it would keep employees out of

politics, its rules must strip them of all right to expression of

opinion. It is easy to conceive that they might become so large a body

as by their votes to dictate to the Government and their political

rights need be further reduced. It must strip them of the liberty to

bargain for their own wages, for no Government employee can strike

against his Government and thus the whole people. It makes a

legislative body with all its political currents their final employer.

That bargaining does not rest upon economic need or economic strength

but on political potency.

But what of those who are outside the bureaucracy? What is the effect

upon their lives of the Government on business and these hundreds of

thousands more officials?

At once their opportunities in life are limited because a large area of

activities are removed from their participation. Further the Government

does not tolerate amongst its customers the freedom of competitive

reprisals to which private corporations are subject. Bureaucracy does

not spread the spirit of independence; it spreads the spirit of

submission into our daily life, penetrates the temper of our people; not

with the habit of powerful resistance to wrong, but with the habit of

timid acceptance of the irresistible might.

Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power.

You cannot give to a government the mastery of the daily working life of

a people without at the same time giving it mastery of the peoples’

souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government means that government

in order to protect itself from political consequences of its errors and

wrongs is driven onward and onward without peace to greater and greater

control of the country’s press and platform. Free speech does not live

many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

It is false liberalism that interprets itself into the Government

operation of business. The bureaucratization of our country would

poison the very roots of liberalism that is free speech, free assembly,

free press, political equality and equality of opportunity. It is the

road, not to more liberty, but to less liberty. Liberalism should be

found not striving to spread bureaucracy, but striving to set bounds to

it. True liberalism seeks freedom first in the confident belief that

without freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain.

That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as

well as economic.

Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit, a force proceeding from the

deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political

freedom is to be preserved. Even if governmental conduct of business

could give us more efficiency instead of giving us decreased efficiency,

the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It

would destroy political equality. It would cramp and cripple mental and

spiritual energies of our people. It would dry up the spirit of liberty

and progress. It would extinguish equality of opportunity, and for

these reasons fundamentally and primarily it must be resisted. For a

hundred and fifty years liberalism has found its true spirit in the

American system, not in the European systems.

I do not wish to be misunderstood in this statement. I am defining a

general policy! It does not mean that our government is to part with

one iota of its national resources without complete protection to the

public interest. I have already stated that where the government is

engaged in public works for purposes of flood control, of navigation, of

irrigation, of scientific research or national defense that, or in

pioneering a new art, it will at times necessarily produce power or

commodities as a by-product. But they must be by-products, not the

major purpose.

Nor do I wish to be misinterpreted as believing that the United States

is free-for-all and the devil-take-the-hindmost. The very essence of

equality of opportunity is that there shall be no domination by any

group or trust or combination in this republic, whether it be business

or political. It demands economic justice as well as political and

social justice. It is no system to laissez faire.

There is but one consideration in testing these proposals — that is

public interest. I do not doubt the sincerity of those who advocate

these methods of solving our problems. I believe they will give equal

credit to our honesty. If I believed that the adoption of such

proposals would decrease taxes, cure abuses or corruption, would produce

better service, decrease rates or benefit employees; If I believed they

would bring economic equality, would stimulate endeavor, would encourage

invention and support individual initiative, would provide equality of

opportunity; If I believed that these proposals would not wreck our

democracy but would strengthen the foundations of social and spiritual

progress in America — or if they would do a few of these things — then

I would not hesitate to accept these proposals, stupendous as they are,

even though such acceptance would result in the governmental operation

of all our power and the buying and selling of the products of our farms

or any other product. But it is not true that such benefits would

result to the public. The contrary would be true.

I feel deeply on this subject because during the war I had some

practical experience with governmental operation and control. I have

witnessed not only at home but abroad the many failures of government in

business. I have seen its tyrannies, its injustices, its undermining of

the very instincts which carry our people forward to progress. I have

witnessed the lack of advance, the lowered standards of living, the

depressed spirits of people working under such a system. My objection

is based not upon theory or upon a failure to recognize wrong or abuse

but because I know that the adoption of such methods would strike at the

very roots of American life and would destroy the very basis of American

progress.

Our people have the right to know whether we can continue to solve our

great problems without abandonment of our American system. I know we

can. We have demonstrated that our system is responsive enough to meet

any new and intricate development in our economic and business life. We

have demonstrated that we can maintain our democracy as master in its

own house and that we can preserve equality of opportunity and

individual freedom.

In the last fifty years we have discovered that mass production will

produce articles for us at half the cost that obtained previously. We

have seen the resultant growth of large units of production and

distribution. This is big business. Business must be bigger for our

tools are bigger, our country is bigger. We build a single dynamo of a

hundred thousand horsepower. Even fifteen years ago that would have

been a big business all by itself. Yet today advance in production

requires that we set ten of these units together.

Our great problem is to make certain that while we maintain the fullest

use of the large units of business yet that they shall be held

subordinate to the public interest. The American people from bitter

experience have a rightful fear that these great units might be used to

dominate our industrial life and by illegal and unethical practices

destroy equality of opportunity. Years ago the Republican

Administration established the principle that such evils could be

corrected by regulation. It developed methods by which abuses could be

prevented and yet the full value of economic advance retained for the

public. It insisted that when great public utilities were clothed with

the security of part monopoly, whether it be railways, power plants,

telephones or what not, then there must be the fullest and most complete

control of rates, services, and finances by governmental agencies.

These businesses must be conducted with glass pockets. In the

development of our great production industry, the Republican Party

insisted upon the enactment of a law that not only would maintain

competition but would destroy conspiracies to dominate and limit the

equality of opportunity amongst our people.

One of the great problems of government is to determine to what extent

the Government itself shall interfere with commerce and industry and how

much it shall leave to individual exertion. It is just as important

that business keep out of government as that government keep out of

business. No system is perfect. We have had abuses in the conduct of

business that every good citizen resents. But I insist that the results

show our system better than any other and retains the essentials of

freedom.

As a result of our distinctly American system our country has become the

land of opportunity to those born without inheritance not merely because

of the wealth of its resources and industry but because of this freedom

of initiative and enterprise. Russia has natural resources equal to

ours. Her people are equally industrious but she has not had the

blessings of 150 years of our form of government and of our social

system. The wisdom of our forefathers in their conception that progress

must be the sum of the progress of free individuals has been reenforced

by all of the great leaders of the country since that day. Jackson,

Lincoln, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, Wilson, and Coolidge have stood

unalterably for these principles. By adherence to the principles of

decentralization, self-government, ordered liberty, and opportunity and

freedom to the individual our American experiment has yielded a degree

of well-being unparalleled in all the world. It has come nearer to the

abolition of poverty, to the abolition of fear of want that humanity has

ever reached before. Progress of the past seven years is the proof of

it. It furnishes an answer to those who would ask us to abandon the

system by which this has been accomplished.

There is a still further road to progress which is consonant with our

American system — a method that reinforces our individualism by

reducing, not increasing, Government interference in business.

In this country we have developed a higher sense of cooperation than has

ever been known before. This has come partly as the result of

stimulation during the war, partly from the impulses of industry itself.

We have ten thousand examples of this cooperative tendency in the

enormous growth of the associational activities during recent years.

Chambers of commerce, trade associations, professional associations,

labor unions, trade councils, civic associations, farm cooperatives —

these are all so embracing that there is scarcely an individual in our

country who does not belong to one or more of them. They represent

every phase of our national life both on the economic and the welfare

side. They represent a vast ferment toward conscious cooperation.

While some of them are selfish and narrow, the majority of them

recognize a responsibility to the public as well as to their own

interest.

The government in its obligation to the public can through skilled

specialists cooperate with these various associations for the

accomplishment of high public purposes. And this cooperation can take

two distinct directions. The first is in the promotion of constructive

projects of public interest, such as the elimination of waste in

industry, the stabilization of business and development of scientific

research. It can contribute to reducing unemployment and seasonal

employment. It can by organized cooperation assist and promote great

movements for better homes, for child welfare and for recreation.

The second form that this cooperation can take is in the cure of abuses

and the establishment of a higher code of ethics and a more strict

standard in its conduct of business. One test of our economic and

social system is its capacity to cure its own abuses. New abuses and

new relationships to the public interest will occur as long as we

continue to progress. If we are to be wholly dependent upon government

to cure every evil we shall by this very method have created an enlarged

and deadening abuse through the extension of bureaucracy and the clumsy

and incapable handling of delicate economic forces. And much abuse has

been and can be cured by inspiration and cooperation, rather than by

regulation of the government.

Nor is this any idealistic proposal. For the last seven years the

Department of Commerce has carried this into practice in hundreds of

directions and every single accomplishment of this character minimizes

the necessity for government interference with business.

All this is possible because of the cooperative spirit and ability at

team play in the American people. There is here a fundamental relief

from the necessity of extension of the government into every avenue of

business and welfare and therefore a powerful implement for the

promotion of progress.

I wish to say something more on what I believe is the outstanding ideal

in our whole political, economic and social system — that is equality

of opportunity. We have carried this ideal farther into our life than

has any other nation in the world. Equality of opportunity is the right

of every American, rich or poor, foreign or native born, without respect

to race or faith or color, to attain that position in life to which his

ability and character entitle him. We must carry this ideal further

than to economic and political fields alone. The first steps to

equality of opportunity are that there should be no child in America

that has not been born and does not live under sound conditions of

health, that does not have full opportunity for education from the

beginning to the end of our institutions, that is not free from

injurious labor, that does not have stimulation to accomplish to the

fullest of its capacities.

It is a matter for concern to our Government that we shall strengthen

the safeguards to health, that we shall strengthen the bureaus given to

research, that we shall strengthen our educational system at every

point, that we shall develop cooperation by our Federal Government with

state governments and with the voluntary bodies of the country that we

may bring not only better understanding but action in these matters.

Furthermore, equality of opportunity in my vision requires an equal

opportunity to the people in every section of our country. In these

past few years some groups in our country have lagged behind others in

the march of progress. They have not had the same opportunity. I refer

more particularly to those engaged in the textile, coal and in the

agricultural industries. We can assist in solving these problems by

cooperation of our Government. To the agricultural industry we shall

need advance initial capital to assist them, to stabilize and conduct

their own industry. But this proposal is that they shall conduct it

themselves, not by the Government. It is in the interest of our cities

that we shall bring agriculture into full stability and prosperity. I

know you will cooperate gladly in the faith that in the common

prosperity of our country lies its future.

Enviado por Enrique Ibañes