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to which large numbers of individuals and families stand exposed.

These hazards are just as real as the dangers that beset the pioneer, and vastly more widespread. Our common needs--health protection, education and opportunity for youth, employment security for men and women of working years, self-respecting provision for those whose work is done--are the same as those for which the individual, the family, the community and the State have always been concerned, but the problems faced in meeting these needs are vastly more complex. Neither the individual nor the family, nor the local community can deal effectively with these problems. And so, following the pattern of all our progress as a self-governing people, we have begun to utilize our Federal Government for the broad nationwide cooperation which our times demand.

Because the government in a democracy is the servant of the people, the reasons behind any of its public enterprises lie not within government itself, but within the day-to-day business of personal and family life. That relationship--between what people do directly and what they do through government--is nowhere clearer than in the changing problems of security.

It times past all that most people needed to build their own security was health and will to work and save. This was true as long as "making a living" meant what it says--actually producing on the family farm and in the family work shop the things that every family needs. While food, clothing, shelter, all were home-made, there were tasks at home suited to every age. Men and women of working years carried the main burden of crops and kitchen, smoke house, barn, and weaving room. But children grew up, learning the ways of work by doing the chores for which each added year prepared them--gathering eggs, minding the pot in the fireplace, splitting kindling, turning the wheel for the spinning thread, milking the cow, and helping in the fields. For those past the prime of life, there were also tasks; even sitting in the chimney corner mending harness or knitting socks, the old folks were contributing to the family's store of goods.

Life by that traditional home-made and hand-made pattern was not easy. Its standards of comfort, of health, and even of survival were low, as compared to those of the present day. Too many children died young; too few of those who reached maturity lived to the Biblical three score years and ten. But to those who did survive, that life in spite of--or perhaps because of--its rigors gave work. There was a place for all, and for all a share in such security as the times afforded.

But even this traditional picture was never static. Though people still took it for granted, it presently ceased to fit the facts. And in recent generations the forces of change have been gaining speed, rushing forward to re-make the whole structure of American life. In less than a century--with the opening up of natural resources, the advances of science and invention, and the national expansion of industry--mines, mills and factories covered the land; towns became cities; transportation annihilated distance, and we have become, in large part, a single industrial community.

The majority of our people no longer make a living; instead they buy it with money--with wages earned outside the home or with the cash paid for their farm crops and products. For most of us in this country a little piece of paper now symbolizes security--the pay-envelope or the check for farm goods sold. When that pay-check decreases in size or disappears entirely, security vanishes. For we not live largely in a money economy; and such an economy means continuing readjustment and ever increasing interdependence. 

Yet for many years and for most people, these changes seemed the very sign and symbol of progress. And so they were--in extending comforts and conveniences, interests and opportunities. But even progress has its seamy side--though this we were slower to recognize. In this new world of machine and motor, of mass business and high-speed industry, of buying and selling as the price of gaining a livelihood, assuring family security was a new problem.

The home itself was likely to be smaller and its tasks were fewer; there was less room for all the family and less work for young and old to do. But outside the home