The Daily Alaska Empire

On Our Way.
(Cincinnati Enquirer.)
To use the President's own phrase, we are "on our way" to a scheme of social security-the somewhat nebulous end which has taken the place of that even less coherent concept of "social justice" in so many minds. Mr. Roosevelt's message to Congress on the subject is perhaps the most important document he will address to the Legislature at this session. It should not be approved or condemned in its entirety, but should be studied, analyzed, dissected, and then measured against the job to be done as well as against the practical limitations that hamper the program.
The program involves old age pensions. unemployment insurance. care of crippled children, aid to dependent children, aid to child welfare services, provision for maternal and child health, and a more general buttress to State public health programs.
The detailed recommendations of the Chief Executive concerning. each of these broad objectives can be scrutinized later. At present it is worth while to see the President's program in fair perspective. There are many who sincerely believe that all these matters are outside the proper sphere of central government. There are, strangely enough, others who believe with the notorious Mr. Townsend, that the Federal Government should pay a pension of $200 a month to every citizen over 65. In that opium Utopia the needy aged would spend enough money to keep all the rest of us busy and prosperous.
The President stands on middle ground. He has had competent advice on this problem. His own outlook is that of a practical humanitarian-not a Tory, not an idealist, not a proletarian. He has not proposed a dole, nor has he overlooked the vital importance of a decentralized administration through the 48 States. It is probable that his program is far too ambitious, in the light of the strain which would be imposed on industry in a period of recovery.
The social security program has not been submitted to Congress with the injunction to take it or leave it. Rather. it reaches the Congress as the reason judgment of a group of experts as to how the broad objective may be attained. It is for the Congress to assume complete responsibility, to go over the entire project with a fine-tooth comb, to estimate the practicality of every feature, and, if it passes any of the program, to enact into law only those things which seem safely within our reach at present. The very grave dangers inherent in the program demand the application of alert critical faculties.