"Social Security should also provide for the crippled, disabled, blind, and other handicapped individuals of all ages;—widows and orphans—should be provided with a reasonable, self-supporting pension. Furthermore, Social Security should develop into an annuity insurance for everyone. The amount of payments should be in ratio to the premiums turned in by the policy holder.
"Workmen's Compensation Insurance should be transferred to Social Security, and unscrupulous doctors, lawyers, Workmen Compensation Insurance Companies, undertakers, and other parasites, should not be allowed to consume the major part of the insurance paid to the worker who is injured at work.
"Workmen Compensation Insurance Companies, voluntary health agencies, charitable hospitals, clinics, and welfare services should be completely abolished. Contributions to them should be legally forbidden. The contributors to these charitable institutions then could transfer their financial aid in the form of an extra tax to Social Security. The work done now by these charitable activities should be solely handled by Social Security, not as charity, but as a right due us. Once and for all, we would do away with a deplorable, ancient custom, the curse of charity which nobody willingly wants. A large part of voluntary contributions goes for other purposes than to benefit the beneficiaries.
"All these should come directly under a new system—The Federal Social Protection and Security Board.
"Your observation of our miseries and destitution should be a warning to you. Your generation may become the victim of your own neglect and folly. You have no guarantee that circumstances (may God forbid) will not become worse for you, and you do not know how your children will treat you.
"I am appealing to all of you to make a concerted effort to have Congress change the Social Security Act so that it will perform what its name means, and let it become a real security for us, for you, and for your future generations. Fiat justitia ruat caelum (let justice be done though the heavens fall)."
"Then you are interested only in the aged and the disabled?" I asked him. He answered, "not at all. We will not have economic safety and stability until society once and for all seriously starts war against unemployment, want, and charity.
"The trend nowadays is charged with danger. I dare say, our young men who have come back from the wars may not be as meek as those who came back from the last war to face unemployment, street corner apple selling and poverty. Our veterans today justly demand employment, the chance to marry, and the right to a decent livelihood for themselves, their families, and their parents.
"In my opinion, our large country is still in its infancy; it has as yet not reached twenty-five per cent of the zenith of its possible development. With progress in air travel and transportation distribution, a renaissance of unprecedented prosperity is near and can quickly be accelerated. We cannot attain this prosperity so long as we do extravagant things, at public expense.
"Let our government instead take over all private, state, or federal unproductive lands, whether it is fertile, arid or marsh. Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agriculture Economics on federal rural lands, on page 7, shows that the federal lands, swamps and marshes are 3,000,000 acres, barren and brush land 40,000,000 acres, non-forested range land 234,000,000 acres, crop land 4,000,000 acres; that does not include 177,000,000 acres of forest land, nor does it include the territory of Alaska. It does not include non-productive state and private lands.