as their rights in the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental
duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are
matters of justice. There can be no equality or opportunity, the first
essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children
be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the
consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can
not alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it
does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts.
The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary
laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which
individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate
parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency.

These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others
undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental
safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high
enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as
a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's
conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should
do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance
of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not
destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may
be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to
write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the
spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and
knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of
excursions whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall
always be our motto.

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been