The larger purpose of our economic thought should be to establish more
firmly stability and security of business and employment and thereby
remove poverty still further from our borders. Our people have in recent
years developed a new-found capacity for cooperation among themselves to
effect high purposes in public welfare. It is an advance toward the
highest conception of self-government. Self-government does not and
should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born
of cooperation in the community--not from governmental restraints. The
Government should assist and encourage these movements of collective
self-help by itself cooperating with them. Business has by cooperation
made great progress in the advancement of service, in stability, in
regularity of employment and in the correction of its own abuses. Such
progress, however, can continue only so long as business manifests its
respect for law.
There is an equally important field of cooperation by the Federal
Government with the multitude of agencies, State, municipal and private,
in the systematic development of those processes which directly affect
public health, recreation, education, and the home. We have need further
to perfect the means by which Government can be adapted to human
service.