A considerable proportion of the American people is beginning to exhibit economic and political, as well as personal, discontent.

A generation ago the implication was that if a man remained poor and needy, his poverty was his own fault, because the American system was giving all its citizens a fair chance.
Now, however, the discontented poor are beginning to charge their poverty to an unjust political and economic organization, and reforming agitators do not hesitate to support them in this contention.

Manifestly a threatened obstacle has been raised against the anticipated realization of our national Promise.

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be dangerously compromised.
The conscious recognition of grave national abuses casts a deep shadow across the traditional American patriotic vision.

The sincere and candid reformer can no longer consider the national Promise as destined to automatic fulfillment.