of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 431

The demands of true democratic humanitarianism in its application to the
aid and benefit of the people in large masses are necessarily as varied and
multiform as the different needs of the people from time to time. True democ-
racy, therefore, is and must be progressive* and flexible. -It must be made to fit
the conditions and demands of the people as those conditions and demands
change and develop from age to age, or from emergency to emergency. Plainly,
the bedrock principle of Thomas Jefferson's political creed was a broad, be-
nign humanitarianism. True, the conditions of the American people in the limit-
ed territory of his day, along the Atlantic Seaboard, 'did not call for the ex-
treme applications of government aid for the relief and succor of the people.
But the principle was there in its full potentiality.

And when the next great democratic leader, Andrew Jackson, was swept
into power, it was as a champion of the rights and needs of the rank and file
of the people in their humbler existence in the newly-acquired wilderness of the
Louisiana territory, together with the less settled portions of the old North-
west. To bring relief, support and assistance to the great majority of the
people there, to recognize in a humane way by humane policies, their rights to
protection, aid and relief, to extend to them the broad and beneficent humani-
tarianism of the cult of democracy, was the great work of Jackson. And by
following the same line of reasoning, we can bring to our own day the applica-
tion of humanitarianism through democratic administration. In recent years,
we have witnessed the greatest humane, social benevolence ever practiced by
any national administration to the benefit of suffering people.

In its administration of Social Security, of Old Age Assistance, of Aid to
the Unemployed, to the crippled and to the dependent children, the present
Democratic Party has achieved the real purpose for which it came into exist-
ence. And in giving credit where credit is due, let it be definitely understood
that the fulfillment in our day of the aims of social security to the lasting
benefit of the present and future generations, has been due to the leadership,
the initiative, but above all, to the humanitarianism of another great democrat
who, today, occupies the White House in the person of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Running through all of those outstanding administrations, is the same basic
and foundational principle. It is a recognition of the worth and dignity of
human beings. This prevailing attitude has spelled success for the Democratic
Party and will continue to be its main bulwark.

It was Jefferson who wrote:

"The freedom and happiness of man are the sole objects of all legitimate
government. "

Fourteen words but a volume of thought and philosophy and purpose, em-
bodied in one sentence. And Jefferson's doctrine, thus expressed, was echoed
by Andrew Jackson and has been enunciated in action, as well as by word, by
President Roosevelt.