Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1916 — THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECHES [ARTICLE]

THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECHES

The two addresses delivered in Indianapolis Thursday by the President will both serve an important public purpose. Great as wag the interest in good roads in this state before Thursday's meeting, it is greater today. For the President showed that good roads were necessary, not only to the economic development of the country, but to its spiritual unification. The President’s plea was for nationalization, mobilization and co-operation, and he argued that there could be nothing of this unless the people were brought into close relations through improved highways. The question was, not simply one of getting goods to market, though that was important, but of knitting the people together in unity of purpose and aim. Sectional lines, he said, could be obliterated only by the feet of the people who walk over them. It is precisely so with the lines that seem to divide classes. The more the members of each class know of the members of other classes, the less.is the chance of misunderstanding. There is thus in this good roads movement a good deal more than the mere question of construction, maintenance and taxation. It has its sociological and moral side. We all know how r greatly the lot of the farmer has improved under the influence of rural free delivery, the interurban roads, the better highways, the telephone and the motor car. All these have operated to multiply human relationships, and to make them much more close. Bad roads separate and divide, while good roads bind people and sections together. This was the idea underlying the President’s speech. The Tomlinson hall address was little more than a lecture on the federal reserve system and the rural credits law% and their relation to the life and business of the farmer. Mr. Wilson showed what had been done by- the federal government in the last ten years to develop farming, both as a science and a business. And this service has, of course, been exceedingly valuable and helpful. Special stress was placed on the newer laws, as was natural, since the speaker expected to deal with rural credits. Mr. Wilson’s lecture on these subjects was simple, easily understood and luminous. There must have been many in the audience who, after listening to it, had a clearer knowledge of the subject than ever before.

Both these meetings were, as every one knows, non-partisan, and the addresses were enjoyed by Republicans and Progressives as well as by Democrats. They will bear careful reading, and will no doubt receive it Thursday our people welcomed the President to Indianapolis. Now they will hope that he

enjoyed hie visit. Kews.