It is [the] combination of personal values without deep social underpinning which doubtless explains … the fact that we allow economic disorganization, which produces fourteen or fifteen million unemployed and their families to suffer; then, instead of letting them die off, we feel sorry for them to the extent of giving them “relief,” maintaining them at a starvation level. It is a question whether such a combination of emphasis upon and violation of social values can be long sustained.

As … psychology goes beyond sheer common sense, and becomes dynamite to society, those dominant in society will try to protect themselves against the explosion. It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to the ivory-tower remark that we should stick to science and let public practice alone. The answer is that public practice will not and cannot let psychology alone.

To a large degree our division of labor is forced, not free; young people leaving our schools for a career of unemployment become victims of arrested emotional and intellectual development; our civil liberties fall short of our expressed ideal. Only the extension of democracy to those fields where democracy is not at present fully practised – to industry, educational administration, and to race relations for examples – can make possible the realization of infinitely varied purposes and the exercise of infinitely varied talents.