safety, sanitation, compensations for accidents, and for good living
conditions have now been almost entirely worked out. There remains,
however, the condition of sickness, age, misfortune, lack of employment,
or some other cause, that temporarily renders people unable to care for
themselves. Our platform has taken up this condition.

We have long been familiar with insurance to cover losses. You will
readily recall the different kinds. Formerly it was only used in
commerce, by the well-to-do. Recently it has been adapted to the use of
all our people by the great industrial companies which have been very
successful. Our State has adopted a system of savings-bank insurance,
thus reducing the expense. Now, social insurance will not be, under a
Republican interpretation, any new form of outdoor relief, some new
scheme of living on the town. It will be an extension of the old
familiar principle to the needs at hand, and so popularized as to meet
the requirements of our times.

It ought to be understood, however, that there can be no remedy for lack
of industry and thrift, secured by law. It ought to be understood that
no scheme of insurance and no scheme of government aid is likely to make
us all prosperous. And above all, these remedies must go forward on the
firm foundation of an independent, self-supporting, self-governing
people. But we do honestly put forward a proposition for the relief of
misfortune.

The Republican Party is proposing humanitarian legislation to build up
character, to establish independence, not pauperism; it will in the
future, as in the past, ever stand opposed to the establishment of one
class who shall live on the Government, and another class who shall pay
the taxes. To those who fear we are turning Socialists, and to those who