The Norman Democrat-Topic (Norman, Okla.), Vol. 23, No. 93, Ed. 1 Friday, August 23, 1912 Page: 4 of 6
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GOVERNOR WILSON'S SPEECH
OF ACCEPTANCE.
Governor Wilson was forma1!/
i otificd of his nominaion to be presi-
dent of the United States, August 7th.
Following is the speech of accept-
ance:
Governor Wilson's speech of ac-
ceptance was as follows: "Mr Jnmej
and Gentlemen of the Notification
Committee: Speaking for the nation.>1
democratic convention, recently as
scmbled at Baltimore, you have noti
fied me of my nomination by the
democratic party for the high office
of president of the United States Al-
low me to thank you very warmly for
the generous terms in which yo*.i
have, through your distinguished
chairman, conveyed the notification
and for the thoughtful personal cour-
tesy with which you have performed
your interesting and important er
rand.
"I accept the nomination with a
deep sense of its unusual significance
and of the great honor done me, and
also with a very profound sense of
my responsibility to the party and to
the nation. You will expect me in ac-
cepting the honor to speak very plain
ly the faith that is in me. You will
expect me, in brief, to talk politics
and open the campaign in words
whose meaning 110 one need doubt
You will expect me to speak to the
country as well as to yourselves.
"We can not intelligently talk poli-
tics unless we know to whom we are
talking and in what circumstances.
The present circumstances are clear
ly unusual. No previous political
campaign in our time has disclosed
anything like them The audience we
address is in 110 ordinary temper. It
is no audience of partisans. Citizens
of every class and party and prepos-
session sit together, a single person
to learn whether we understand their
life and know how to afford them
the counsel and guidance they are
now keenly aware that they stand in
need of. We must speak, not to catch
votes, but to satisfy the thought and
conscience of a people deeply stirred
by the conviction that they have come
to a critical turning point in their
moral and political development.
"We stand in the presence of at
awakened nation, impatient of partis
an make-believe. The public man who
does not realize the fact and feel its
stimulation must be singularly unsus
ceptible to the influences that stir 1 1
every quarter about him. The nation
has awakened to a sense of neglected
ideals and neglected duties; to a con
sciousness that the rank and file of
her people find life very hard to su*
tain, that her young men find oppor-
tunity embarrassed, and that her old
er men find business difficult to re-
new and maintain because of circum
stances of privilege and private ad
vantage which have interlaced the 1
subtle threads throughout almost
every part of the framework of our
present law. She has awakened to the
knowledge that she has lost certain
cherished liberties and wasted pric-
less resources which she had solemn
ly undertaken to hold in trust for
posterity and for all mankind: and to
the conviction that she stands con
fionted with an occasion for construc-
tive statesmanship such as has not
arisen since the great days in which
her government was set up
"Plainly, it is a new age. The tonic
of such a time is very exhilarating
It requires self-restraint not to at
tempt too much, and yet it would be
cowardly to attempt too little The
path of duty soberly and bravely trod
is the way to service and distinction
and many adventurous feet seek to
set out upon it.
"There never was a time when im
patience and suspicion were more
keenly aroused by private power self
ishly employed: when jealousy of
everything concealed or touched with
any purpose not linked with gener;-l
good, or inconsistent with it, more
sharplv or immediately displayed it
self.
"Nor was the country ever more
susceptible to unselfish appeals or {•
the high arguments of sincere justice
These are the unmistakable symptoms
of an awakening. There is the more
need for wise counsel because the
people are so ready to need counsel
if it be given honestly and in their
interest.
"It is in the broad light of this new
day that we stand face to face—with
what5 Plainly, not with questions of
party, not with a contest for office
not with a petty struggle for advant
age, democrat against republican, lib
eral against conservative, progressiv
against reactionary. With great ques
tions of right and of justice, rather—
questions of national development, of
the development of character and of
standards of action no less than of a
better business system, more free
more equitable, more open to ordin-
ary men; practicable to live under
tolerable to work under, or a better
fiscal system whose taxes shall not
come out of the pockets of the many
to go into the pockets of the few, and
within whose intricacies special privi
lege may not so easily find covert the prudent, the unscrupulou
The forces of the nation ar< assertine the fair and honest—and you kno*
themselves against every form c what they sometimes forget, that
special privilege and private control 1 every class, without exception, .1
what it is most concerned about, what
it wishes corrected and what it de-
sires to see attempted that is new and
constructive and intended for its long
future. But for us it is a very practic-
al document We are now about to
ask the people of the United State?
to adopt our platform; we are about
to ask them to entrust us with office
and power and the guidance of their
affairs They will wish to know what
sort of men we are and of what defi
nite purpose; what translation of ac-
tion and of policy we intend to give
to the general term of the platform
which the convention at Baltimore
put forth, should we be elected
"The platform is not a program \
program must consist of measure*
administrative acts, and acts of legi
lation. The proof of the pudding is the
eating thereof. How do we intend tc
make it edible and digestible? From
this time on we shall be under inter
rogation Ilow do v^e expect to handle
tiach of the great matters that must
be taken up by the next congress and
the next administration?
"What is there to do? It is hard to
sum the great task up, but apparent
1} this is the sum of the matter
There are two great things to do.
One is to set up the rule of justice
and of right in such matters as the
tariff, the regulation of the trusts and
the prevention of monopoly, the adop
tion of our banking and currency
law> to the varied uses to which our
people must put them, the treatment
of those who do the daily labor in
our factories and mines and through-
out all our great Industrial and com-
mercial undertakings, and the politic
al life of the people of the Philippine?
for whom we hold governmental
power in trust, for their service not
our own The other, the additional
duty is the great task of protecting
our people and our resources and of
keeping open to the whole people the
door- of opportunity through which
they must, generation by generation,
pass if they are to make conquest of
their fortunes in health, in freedom
in peace, and in contentment. In the
performance of this second great duty
we are face to face with the questions
of conservation and of development
questions of forests and water pow-
ers and mines and water ways, of the
building of an adequate merchant ma-
rine, and the opening of every high-
way and facility and the setting up
of every safeguard needed by a great
industrious, expanding nation
"These are all great matters upon
which everybody should be heard
We have got into trouble in recent
years chiefly because these large
things, which ought to have been
handled by taking counsel with as
large a number of persons as possible
because they touched every interest
and the life of every class and region
have in fact been too often handled
in private conference They have been
settled by very small, and often de-
liberately exclusive, groups of men
who undertake to speak for the whok*
nation, or. rather, for themselves in
the terms of the whole nation—wry
honestly it may be, but very ignor
antly sometimes, and very short-
sightedly too—a poor substitute for
genuine common counsel. No group
of directors, economic or political
can speak for a people. They have
neither the point of view nor the
knowledge. Our difficulty is not that
wicked and designing men have plot-
ted against us, but that our common
affairs have been determined upon
too narrow a view, and by too pri-
vate an initiative. Our task now is t
effect a great readjustment and ger
tile forces of the whole people onc<
more into play We need no revolt:
tion; we need 110 excited change w
need only a new point of view and a
new method and spirit of counsel
"We are servants of the people, the
whole people The nation has Ken
unnecessarily, unreasonably at war
within itself Interest has clashed with
interest when there were common
principles of right and of 1 air dealin,:
which might and should have bound
them all together, not as riva's, but
as partners. As the servants of all. we
arc bound to undertake the great di ty
of accommodation and adjustment
"We can not undertake it except in
spirit which some find it hard to
understand. Some people only smile
when you speak of yourself as a ser-
vant of the people; it seems to them
like affectation or more demagog
uery. They ask what the unthinking
crowd knows or comprehends of
great complicated matters of govern
rrent They shrug their shoulders and
lift their eyebrows when you speak
as if you really believed in presiden
tial primaries, in the direct election
of United State* senators, and in an
utter publicity about everything that
concerns government, from the
sources of campaign funds to the in
tirnate debate of the highest affairs
of state
"They do not, or will not, compre-
hend the solemn thing that is in your
thought You know as well as they
do that there are all sorts and con-
ditions of men—the unthinking mix
ed with the wise, the reckless with
with
and are seeking bigger thing* thai
they have ever heretofore achieved
They are sweeping away what is un
righteous in order to vindicate once
more the essential rights of human
life and what is very serious for us
they are looking to U* for guidance
disinterested guidance, at once hon
est and fearless
"At such a time, and in the presence
of such circumstances, what is the
meaning of our platform, and what i«
our responsibility under it? What are
our duty and our purposes? The plat
form is meant to show that we know
what the nation is thinking about
fords a sample of the mixture, the
learned and the fortunate no le>
than the uneducated and struggling
mass But you see more than they
do Y.ou see that these multitudes of
men, mixed of every kind and quality
constitute somehow an organic and
noble whole a single people, and that
they have interests which no man can
privately determine without their
knowledge and counsel That is the
meaning of representative govern
ment itself. Representative govern
mcnt is nothing more nor less than
an effort to give voice to this great
body through spokesmen chosen out
of every grade and class.
"You may think that I am wander-
ing off into a general disquisition
that has little to do with the business
in hand—but 1 am not. This is busi-
ness—business of the deepest sort. It
will solve our difficulties if you but
take it as business.
"See how it makes business out of
the tariff question. The tariff ques-
tion as dealt \ ith in our time at any
rate, has not been business. It has
been politics Tariff schedules have
' ren made up for the purpose of
keeping as large a number as possible
of the rich and influential manufac-
turers of the country in a good hum-
or with the republican party, which
desired their constant financial sup-
port. The tariff has become a system
of favors, which the phraseology of
the schedule was often deliberately
contrived to conceal. It becomes a
matter of business, of legitimate busi-
ness, only when the partnership and
understanding it represents is be-
tween the leaders of congress and the
whole people of the United States
instead of between the leaders of
congress and small groups of manu-
facturers demanding special recogni-
tion and consideration. That is why
the general idea of representative
government becomes a necessary part
of the tariff question Who, when you
come down to the hard facts of the
matter, have been represented in
recent years when our tariff schedul
es were being discussed and determin-
ed, not on the floor of congress, for
that is not where they have been de-
termined, but in the committee room*
and conferences? That is the heart of
the whole affair. Will you, cati you,
bring the whole people into partner-
ship or not? No one is discontented
with representative government; it
falls under question only when it
ceases to be representative. It is at
bottom a question of good faith and
morals
"How does the present tariff look
in the light of it? I say nothing for
the moment about the policy of pro
tection, conceived and carried out as
a disinterested statesman might con
ceive it. Our own clear conviction as
democrals is, that in the last analysis
the only safe and legitimate object
of tariff duties, as of taxes of every
other kind, is to raise revenue for the
support of the government; but that
is not my present point. We denounc
the Payne-Aldrich tariff act as the
most conspicuous example ever af-
forded the country of the special fa
vors and monopolistic advantage-
which the leaders of the republican
party have so often shown themselves
willing to extend to those to whom
they looked for campaign contribu
tions. Tariff duties, as they have eni
ployed them, have not been a means
of setting up an equitable system of
protection. They have been, on the
contrary, a method of fostering speci
al privilege They have made it easy
to establish monopoly in our domes
tic markets Trusts have owed their
origin and their secure power
them. The economic freedom of our
people, our prosperity in trade, our
untrammeled energy in manufacture
depend upon their reconsideration
from top to bottom in an entirely dif-
ferent spirit.
"We do not ignore the fact that
the business of a country like ours
exceedingly sensitive to changes in
legislation of this kind It has been
built up, however ill-advisedly, upon
tariff schedules written in the way I
have indicated, and its foundations
must not be too radically or too sua
denly disturbed. When we act we
should act with caution and prudence
like men who know what they are
about, and not like those in love with
a theory. It is obvious that the
changes we make should be made
only at such a rate and in such a wax-
as will least interfere with the normal
and healthful course of commerce
and manufacture. But we shall not
on that account act with timidity, a-
ii we did not know our own minds
for we are certain of our ground and
of our object. There should be an im-
mediate revision, and it should be
downward, unhesitatingly and steadi
ly downward.
"It should begin with the schedules
which have been most obviously used
to kill competition and to raise prices
in the United States, arbitrarily and
without regard to the prices pertain-
ing elsewhere in the markets of the
world: and it should, before it is fin-
ished or intermitted, be extended to
every item in every schedule which
affords any opportunity for monopo
ly, for special advantage to limited
groups of beneficiaries, or for sub
sidized control of any kind in the
markets or the enterprises of the
country; until special favors of every
sort shall have been absolutely with-
drawn and every part of our laws of
taxation shall have been transformed
from a system of governmental pat
ronage into a system of just and reas
onable charges which shall fall where
they will create the least burden.
\\ hen we shall have done that, we
can fix questions of revenue and of
business adjustment in a new spirit
and with clear minds We shall then
be partners with all the business men
of the country and a day of freer
more stable prosperity shall have
dawned
"There has been no more demora1-
i/ing influence in our politics in our
time than the inflence of tariff legis-
lation, the influence of the idea that
the government was the grand dis-
penser of favors, the maker and un-
maker of fortunes, and of opportuni
ties such as certain men have sought
in order to control the movement of
trade and industry throughout the
continent It has made the govern-
ment a prize to be captured and par-
ties the means of effecting the cap-
ture, It has made the business men of
one of the most virile and enterpris
ing nations in the world timid, fret-
ful, full of alarms: has robbed them
of self-confidence and manly force
until they have cried out that they
could do nothing without the assist-
ance of the government at Washing-
ton. It has made them feel that their
lives depended upon the ways and
means committee of the house and
the finance committee of the senate
(in these later years particularly the
finance committee of the senate)
They have insisted very anxiously
that these committees should be made
up only of their 'friends;' until the
country in its turn grew suspicious
and wondered how those committees
were being guided and controlled, by
what influence and plans of personal
advantage Government can not be
how to get it by the favor of the gov
ernment. It is another chapter in the
natural history of power and of gov-
erning classes. The next chapter will
set us free again. There will be no
favor of tragedy in it. It will be a
chapter of readjustment, not of pain
and rough disturbance. It will wit-
ness a turning back from what is ab-
normal to what is normal. It will see
a restoration of the laws of trade
which are the laws of competition
and of unhampered opportunity, un-
der which men of every sort are set
free and encouraged to enrich the ni-
tion.
'I am not one of those who think
that competition can be established
by law against the drift of a world-
wide economic tendency: neither
wholesomely conducted in such an j am I one of those who believe that
atmosphere. Its very honesty is in ! business done upon a great scale by
jeopardy. Favors are never conceiv
ed in the general interest; they are
always for the benefit of the few. and
the few who seek and obtain them
a single organization—call it corpora-
tion or what you will—is necessarily
dangerous to the liberties, even the
economic liberties of a great people
have only themselves to blame if pre like our own. full of intelligence and
sently they seem to be condemned of indomitable energy. I am not
and distrusted
"For what has the result been?
Prosperity? Yes. if by prosperity you
mean vast wealth no matter how dis-
tributed, or whether distributed at
all, or not; if you mean vast enter-
prises built up to be presently con-
centrated under the control of cotn-
afraid of anything that is normal. T
dare say we shall never return to the
old order of individual competition
and that the organization of business
upon a great scale of co-operation is.
up to a certain point, itself normal
and inevitable.
"Power in the hands of great busi-
paratively small bodies of men, who j ness men does not make me appre
can determine almost at pleasure, hensive. unless it springs out of ad
whether there shall be competition or
not. The nation as a nation has grown
immensely rich. She is justly proud of
her industries and of the genius of
her men of affairs They can master
anything they set their minds to,
and we have been greatly stimulated
under their leadership and command
Their laurels are many and very-
green. We must accord them th.-
great honors that are their due and
we must preserve what they have
built up for us. But what of the other
side of the picture*- It is not as easy
for us to live as it used to be. Our
money will not buy as much High
wages, even when we can get their,
yield us no great comfort. We used
to be better off with less, because a
dollar could buy so much more. The
majority of us have been disturbed
to find ourselves growing poorer
vantages which they have not creat-
ed for themselves. Big business is
not dangerous because it is big, but
because its bigness is an unwhole-
some inflation created by privilege
and exemptions which it ought not
to enjoy. While competition can not
be created by statutory enactment, it
can in large measure be revived by
changing the laws and forbidding the
practices that killed it, and by enact-
ing laws' that will give it heart and
occasion again. We can arrest and
prevent monopoly. It has assumed
new shapes and adopted new process
es in our time, but these are now be
ing disclosed and can be dealt with
"The general terms of the present
federal anti-trust law, forbidding com
binations in restraint of trade have
apparently proved ineffectual. Trust*
have grown up under its ban very
oven though our earnings were slow |I1xuriantly, and have pursued ,hc
ly increasing. Prices climb faster th
we can push our earnings up.
"Moreover, we begin to perceive
some things about the movement of
prices that concern us very deeply
and fix our attention upon the tariff
schedules with a more definite deter-
mination than ever to get to the bot-
tom of this matter. Wre have been
looking into it. at trials held under
the Sherman act and in investig.v
tions in the committee rooms of con-
gress, where men who wanted to
know the real facts have been busy
with inquiry; and we begin to see
very clearly what at least some of th
methods are by which prices are fix-
ed. We know that they are not fixed
by the competitions of the market, or
by the ancient law of supply and de-
mand which is to be found stated in
all the primers of economics, but by
need only a new point of view and a
private arrangements with regard to
what the supply should be and agree-
ments among the producers them
selves. Those who buy are not even
represented by counsel. The high cost
of living is arranged by private under-
standing.
"We naturally ask ourselves, ho.v
did these gentlemen get control of
these things? Who handed our eco-
nomic laws over to them for legisla-
tive and contractual alteration? We
have in these disclosures still another
view of the tariff, still another proof
that, not the people of the United
States but only a very small number
of them have been partners in that
legislation. Those few have learned
how to control tariff legislation, and
as they have perfected their contro
they have consolidated their interests
Men of the same interest have drawn
together, have united their enterprise-
and have formed trusts; and trusts
can control prices Up to a certain
point (and only up to a certain point)
great combinations effect great ec >-
nomies in administration, and increase
efficiency by simplifying and perfect
ing organization, but whether they ef-
fect economies or not, they can very
easily determine prices by intimate
agreement ,so soon as they come to
control a sufficient percentage of the
product in any great line of business;
and we now know that they do
"I am not drawing up an indict
ment against anybody This is thr
natural history of such tariffs as are
now contrived, as it is the natural
history of all other governmental fa-
vors and of all licenses to use the
government to help certain group*
of individuals along in life Nobody
in particular, I suppose, is to blame
and I am not interested just now in
blaming anybody; I am simply trying
to point out what the situation is, in
order to suggest what there is for us
to do, if we would serve the country
as a whole. The fact is, that the trusts
have been formed, have gained all
but complete control of the larger
enterprises of tin country, have fixed
prices and fixed them high so that
profits might be rolled up that were
thoroughly worth while, and that the
tariff, with its artificial protections
and stimulation, gave them the op-
portunity to do these things, and has
safeguarded them in that opportunity
"The trusts do not belong to the
period of infant industries They are
not the products of the time, that old
laborious time, when the great con-
tinent we live on was undeveloped
the young nation struggling to find
it*elf and get upon its feet amidst
older and more experienced competi-
tors. They belong to a very recent
and very sophisticated age, when men
knew what they wanted and knew
methods by which so many of them
have established virtual monopolies
without serious let or hindrance. It
has roared against them like any-
sucking eleive. I am not assessing the
responsibility, I am merely stating
the fact. But the means and methods
by which trusts have established mo-
nopolies have now become known. It
will be necessary to supplement the
present law with such laws, both
civil and criminal, as will effectually
punish and prevent those methoels
adding such other laws as may b-.
necessary to provide suitable and ade-
quate judicial processes, whether civil
or criminal, to disclose them and fol-
low them to final verdict and judg
ment. They must be specifically. and
directly met by laws as they develop
"But the problem and the difficulty-
are much greater than that. There are
not merely great trusts and combina
tions which arc to be controlled and
deprived of their power to create mo-
nopolies and destroy rivals; there is
something bigger still than they are
and more subtle, more evasive, more
difficult to deal with. There are vast
confederacies (as I may perhaps call
them for the sake of convenience) of
banks, railways, express companies
insurance companies, manufacturing
corporations, mining corporations
power and development companies
and all the rest of the circle, bound
together by the fact that the owner-
ship of their stock and the members
of the board* of directors are con-
trolled and determined by compara-
tively small and closely interrelated
groups of persons who, by their in-
formal confederacy, may control, if
they please and when they will, both
credit anel enterprise. There is noth-
ing illegal about these confederacies,
so far as I can perceive. They have
come about very naturally, generally
without plan or deliberation, rather
because there was so much money
to be invested and it was in the hands,
•it great financial centers, of men ac-
quainted with one another and inti-
mately associated in business, than
because anyone had conceived and
was carrying out a plan of general
control; but they are none the less
potent a force in our economic and
financial system on that account.
They are part of our problem. Their
very existence gives rise to the sus-
picion of a 'money trust,' a concen-
tration of the control of credit which
may at any time become infinitely
dangerous to free enterprise. If such
a concentration and control does not
actually exist, it is evident that it can
easily he set up and used at will
I.aws must be devised which will pre
vent this, if laws can be worked out
by fair and free counsel that will ac-
complish that result without destoy
ing or seriously embarrassing any
sound or legitimate business under
taking or necessary and wholesome
arrangement.
"Let me say again, that what we
are seeking is not destruction of anv
kind, nor the disruption of any sound
or honest thing, but merely the rule
of right and of the common advant-
age. I am happy to say that a new
spirit has begun to show itself in the
last year or two among influential
men of business, and, what is perhaps
even more significant, among the
lawyers who are their expert advi*
ers; and that this spirit has displayed
itself very notably in the last few
months in an effort to return, in some
degree at any rate, to the practice
of genuine competition Only a very
little while ago our men of business
were united in resisting every pro-
posal of change and reform as an at
tack on business, an embarrassment
to all large enterprise, an intimation
that settled ideas of property were
to be set aside and a new and strange
order of things created out of hand.
While they thought in that way pro-
gress seemed impossible without hot
contests and a bitter clash between
interests, almost a war of classes
Common counsel seemed all but hope
less, because some of the chief par
ties in interest would not take part-
seemed even to resent discussion as
a manifestation of hostility towards
themselves. They talked constantly
about vested interests and were very
hot.
"It is a happy omen that their at-
titude has changed. They see that
what is right can hurt no man; that
a new adjustment of interests is in
evitable and desirable, is in the inter
est of everybody; that their own hon-
or, their own intelligence, their own
practical comprehension of affairs is
involved. They are beginning to ad-
just their business to the new stand-
ards. Their hand is no longer against
the nation; they are part of it, their
interests are bound up with its inter
ests. This is not true of all of them
but it is true of enough of them to
show what the new age is to be, and
how the anxieties of statesmen arc
to be eased, if the light that is dawn-
ing broadens into day.
"If I am right about this, it is go-
ing to be easier to act in accordance
with the rule of right and justice in
dealing with the labor question. The
so-called labor question is a question
only because we have not yet found
the rule of right in adjusting the in-
terests of labor and capital. The wcl
fare, the happiness, the energy and
spirit of the men and women who do
the daily work in our mines and fac
tories, on our railroads, in our of-
fices and marts of trade. 011 our farms
and on the sea. is of the essence of
our national life. There can be noth
ing wholesome unless their life is
wholesome; there can be no content
ment unless they are contented. Their
physical welfare, affects the sound-
ness of the whole nation. We shall
never get very far in the settlement
of these vital matters so long as we
regard everything done for the work-
ing man, by law or by private agree
ment. as a concession yielded to keep
him from agitation and a disturbance
of our peace. Here, again, the sense
of universal partnership must come
into play if we are to act like states
men. as those who serve, not a class,
but a nation.
"The working people of America—
if they must be distinguished from
the minority that constitutes the res*
of it—are, of course, the backbone of
the nation. No law that safeguards
their life, that improve the physical
and moral conditions under which
they live, that makes their hours of
labor rational and tolerable, that givec
them freedom to act in their own in
terest, and that protects them where
they can not protect themselves, can
properly be regarded as class legis-
lation or as anything but as a meas-
ure taken in the interests of the whole
people, whose partnership in right
action we are trying to establish and
make real and practical. It is in this
spirit that we shall act if we are genu
ine spokesmen of the whole country
"As our program is disclosed—for
no man can forecast it ready-made
and before counsel is taken of every-
one concerned—this must be its mea>
ure and standard, the interest of all
concerned For example, in dealing
with the complicated and difficult
question of the reform of our bank
ing and currency laws, it is plain that
we ought to consult very many per
sons besides the bankers, not becaus
we distrust the bankers, but becausc
they do not necessarily comprehend
the business of the country, notwith
standing they are indispensable scr
vants of it and may do a vast deal to
make it hard or easy. No mere bank
ers' plan will meet the requirements
no matter how honestly conceived. It
should be a merchants' and farmers'
plan as well, elastic in the hands of
those who use it as an indispensable
part of their daily business. I do not
know enough about this subject to
be dogmatic about it. I know onlv
enough to be sure what the partner-
ships in it should be, and that the
control exercised over any system we
may set up should be, so far as pos
sible, a control emanating, not from
a single special class, but from the
general body and authority of the
nation itself.
"In dealing with the Philippines,
we should not allow ourselves to
stand upon any mere point of pride
as if, in order to keep our counten-
ance in the families of nations, it were
necessary for us to make the same
blunders of selfishness that other na-
tions have made. We are not the own-
ers of the Philippine Islands. We hold
them in trust for the people who live
in them. They are theirs, for the uses
of their life We are not even their
partners It is our duty..as trustees,
should be disclosed to the public in
fullest detail, because we regarded the
influences which govern campaigns
to be as much a part of the people's
business a* anything else connected
with their government. We are work-
ing toward a very definite object, the
universal partnership in public affairs
upon which the purity of politics and
it* aim and spirit depend.
"For there is much for the partners
to undertake. In the affairs of a
great nation we plan and labor, not
for the present only, but for the long
future as well. There are great tasks
o;' protection and conservation and
development to which we have to ad
dress ourselves. Government ha>
much more to do than merely to right
wrongs and set the house in order.
"I do not know any greater qu< s
tion than that of conservation. We
have been a spendthrift nation and
must now husband what we have left
We must do more than that. We
must develop, as well as preserve, our
water powers and must add great
waterways to the transportation faci
litics of the nation, to supplement the
railways within our borders as well
upon the isthmus. We must re
vive our merchant marine, too, and
fill the seas again with our own fleets
We must add to our present postof
ficc service a parcels post as com
plete as that of any other nation. We
must look to the health of our peo
pie upon every hand, as well as heart
en them with justice and opportunity
This is the constructive work of the
government. This is the policy that
has a vision and a hope and that
looks to serve mankind.
"There are many sides to these
great matters. Conservation is easy
to generalize about, but hard to par
ticularize about wisely. Reservation
i« not the w hole of conservation The
development of great states must not
be stayed indefinitely to await a pol
icy by which our forests and water
powers can prudently be made use of
Use and development must go hand
in hand. The policy we adopt mu>t
be progressive, not negative, merely
a* if we did not know what to do
"With regard to the development
of greater and more numerous water
ways and the building up of a merch
ant marine, we must follow great con
structivi lines and not fall back upon
the cheap device of bounties and sub
i<li« > In the case of the Mississippi
river, that great central artery of our
trade, it i> plain that the federal gov
rnment must build and maintain the
levees and keep the great waters in
harness for the general use. It is
plain, too, that vast sums of money
must be spent to develop new water
ways, where trade will be most serv
ed and transportation most readily-
cheapened by them. Such expendi-
tures are no largess on the part of
the government; they are national in-
vestments.
"The question of a merchant ma
line turns back to the tariff again, to
which all roads seem to lead, and to
rur registry laws, which, if coupled
with the tariff, might almost be sup-
posed to have been intended to take
the American flag off the seas. Boun-
ties are not necessary if you will but
undo some of the things that have
been done Without a great merchan;
marine we can not take our rightful
place in the commerce of the world.
Merchants who must depend upon
the carriers of rival mercantile na-
tions to carry their goods to market
are at a disadvantage in international
trade too manifest to need to be
pointed out and our merchants will
not long suffer themselves—ought
not to suffer them*elves—to be plae
ed at *uch a disadvantage. Our indus
tries have expanded to such a point
that they will burst their jackets, if
they can not find a free outlet to the
markets of the world; and they can
not find such an outlet unless they be
given ships of their own to carry their
goods—ships that will go to the
routes they want them to go—and
prefer the interests of America in
their sailing orders and their equip-
ment. Our domestic markets no long-
er suffice We need foreign markets
That is another force that is going to
break the tariff down. The tariff was
once a bulwark—now it is a dam
For trade is reciprocal; we can not
sail unless we also buy.
"The very fact that we have at last
taken the Panama canal seriously in
hand and are vigorously pushing it
towards completion is eloquent of our
re-awakened interest in international
trade. We are not building the canal
and pouring our million upon million
of money upon its construction mere
ly to establish a water connection
between the two coasts of the contin
ent, important and desirable as that
may be, particularly from the point
of view of naval defense. It is meant
to be a great international highway
It would be a little ridiculous if we
should build it and then have no ships
to send through it. There have been
years when not a single ton of freight
passed through the great Suez canal
to make whatever ar/angement of jn an American bottom, so empty are
government will be most serviceabh the seas of our ships and seamen. We
to their freedom and development must mean to put an end to that kind
Here, again, we are to set up the rule of thing or we would ne>t be cutting
of justice and of right.
"The rule of the peopl
phrase, those who believe in it, as'
who does not that has caught the real
spirit of America, believe that there
can be no rule of right without it
that right in politics is made up of
the interests of everybody, and every-
body should take part in the action
that is to determine it. We have been
keen for presidential primaries and
the direct election of United States
senators, because we wanted the ac-
tion of the government to be deter-
mined by persons whom the people
had actually designated as men whom
they were ready to trust and follow
We have been anxious that all cam-
paign contributions and expenditures
a new canal at our very doors merely
idle ior the use of our men-of-war. We
in it. as | shall not manage the revival by the
1 fi,.. .-..1 mere paltry device of tolls. We must
build and buy ships in competition
with the world. We can do it if we
will but give ourselves leave.
There is another duty which the
democratic party has shown itself
great and close enough to the people-
to perceive, the duty of government
t" share in promoting agricultural
industrial, vocational education in
every way possible within its consti-
tutional powers. No other platform
has given this intimate vision of a
party's duty. The nation can not en
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The Norman Democrat-Topic (Norman, Okla.), Vol. 23, No. 93, Ed. 1 Friday, August 23, 1912, newspaper, August 23, 1912; Norman, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc120105/m1/4/: accessed April 23, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.