Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1916 — PRESIDENT PLEDGES GREATER PROGRESS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PRESIDENT PLEDGES GREATER PROGRESS

Laws Must Fit New Life Mr. WHson Tells the American People. HIS RECORD OF DEEDS DONE U. S. Rights Upheld With Honor, Farmers Aided, Business and Latpr Benefited, Children Protected —Women’s Votes Needed. Shadow Lawn, N. J„ 'Oct. 28. —To the* American people Woodrow Wilson today gave an accounting of his administration as their President. He “balanced his books” so that the record stands clear. Promises fulfilled, great deeds done! That, in short, tells the story. And yet the story Is not finished. Other chapters in the great Book of Human Progress remain to be written. It rests with you, American Voters, to say whether the man who began the book shall finish it Here, in the President’s own words, is a plain statement of what he, as leader not only of the Democratic party, but of the nation, has accomplished in your behalf and of what he plans for your future —a statement made not alone to the thousands who journeyed here, but to you and the hundreds of thousands throughout the country who celebrated “Wilson Day.” THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH. “My Fellow-citizens: “This is called ‘Wilson Day" only because for six years, first as Governor of New Jersey and then as President of the United States, I have been permitted to lead first a great state and then a great national party along the ways of progress and of enlarged and regenerated life which our people had so long sought and so long been held back from by the organized power of selfish interest, and because the great honor has fallen to me of being chosen once more spokesman and representative of the men who mean to hold the country to these ways of peace, humanity and progress. It is of these forces that I shall speak and not of myself, who am merely their servant “What are these forces? Whence do they spring? What have they accomplished, and what is their programme and purpose for the future? It is plain what they are. They are the forces of humane, righteous, and patriotic purpose which have sprung up in our day in the minds of those who perceive the shortcomings of the law as it has hardened in America and who look forward with purpose and conviction to a new age in which government shall be indeed the servant of liberty and not of privilege. .

“These are men who perceive that American law has not kept pace with American sentiment; that our law has been holding us rigid and immovable, until class has begun, in free America, to be arrayed against class; until what was legal has begun to play a more Important part in our thoughts and determinations than what is human and right; and until America has begun to lag instead of lead in reconciling what is with what ought to be. Dawn of a New Age. “A new age had dawned upon us while those who were attempting to lead us were stumbling along with their heads over their shoulders, intent upon preserving the conditions of a day that is gone. America had changed and the whole world had changed. Our commerce and industry had grown to such a bulk that the domestic markets of which our former leaders were always so solicitous were glutted and we were bound, unless we were to burst our jacket, to find a free outlet into the markets of the world. The time had come when our commerce needed freedom and would be throttled by further restraints.

“We had acquired foreign possessions, had been drawn into the politics of the world, had begun to play a part which could not be played by provincials, but must be played by citizens of the great world of nations. And yet we had not altered our policy or our point of view. The great European war has served at least to show us this one thing, that the world itself has changed: that It had become at once too big a world and too little a world to submit Its destinies to the hostile rivalries and ambitions now of this and again of that .member of the great family of men; too compact, too intimate in Its contacts, too universal in its way of intercourse, to make it any longer possible to limit the effects of any nation’s action to a single, separate sphere where the rest would be untouched.”

“An inevitable partnership of Interests has been thrust upon the nations. They are neighbors and must accommodate their interests to one another, or else disturb the lives and embarrass the fortunes of men everywhere. No wonder that tn such an age men In America should be cried awake and feel once more, as they felt them In the days when their great republic was set up, the compulsions of humanity and of justice! Squaring Laws With Life. “There are the freshening winds blowing out of the life of mankind

everywhere, that have brought on a new day in American politics. We have looked pnce more very critically at our own taws and our own practices and have set about to square them with the actual conditions of our life and the life of the world.”

“Four years ago there were two parties in the field whose programme was conceived under the influence of these great forces of progress and adjustment, the Democratic party and the Progressive party. This year there is but one, the Democratic party. In the presidential election of four years ago some fifteen million votes were cast. Of these, nearly ten and a half millions were cast for the candidates of the two progressive parties, only three and a half millions for the candidates of the Republican party, the party which lingered in the old ways and felt none of the new Impulse of a new day. More than two-thirds of the voters of the United States favored then, and favor now, a programme whose object is to serve the changing needs of humanity and progress.

“The Democratic party was entrusted with the task. These powerful forces of the new age were put under

its airection. And under that direction what have they accomplished? “They have put both the business and the life of the country upoa a new footing. Financial Credit Released. “They have released the financial credit, upon which commerce lyid production alike depend, from the control of small groups of financiers and bankers at the speculative centers. “They have released the commerce and Industry of the country from the domination of those who were building up their power by selfish and unfair methods of competition. “They have supplied those who wished to conduct their business in conformity with the spirit of the laws with friendly guidance and delivered them from a nervous fear of the courts.

“They have released our foreign trade from the shackles of a tariff contrived In the interest of special groups of favored producers, and have created a Tariff Commission intended to substitute public for private influences, facts for theories and pretensions, in all future legislation with regard to duties and restrictions on imnorts.

“They have made provision for the immediate and systematic development of our carrying trade on the seas.

."They have at last supplied the means by which the nation may be bound together, materially and spiritually, by a network of good roads upon which jboth commodities and sympathies may move freely from community to community. “They have put the farmer upon a footing of perfect equality with business men and men of all other callings In respect of his access to commercial credit; have placed a great bureau of the Government at his service in seeking and finding bis best markets; have protected him by the establishment of definite standards in the sale of his products, and have put the scientific knowledge of the world at his disposal by practical demonstration at the expense of the Government upon the farms themselves. Have Emancipated Labor. “They have emancipated the laborers of the country from the unjustified restraints which the courts had put upon them by mistaken applications of old law to new circumstances and conditions.

“They have released the children of the country in large part from hurtful labor; have sought to safeguard the lives and the health of our laborers in dangerous occupations; and have put agencies of the Government itself at the service of those who seek employment. And most of these things have been done within the brief limits of a single administration.

“And still the great work is not finished. It can never be rounded off ana concluded so long as circumstances change and the. fortunes and relations of men shift alter. The question you have to decide one week from next Tuesday is whether it shall be prematurely interrupted, perhaps for a generation to come, and all the generous forces of the age and of the world thrown back upon themselves in discouragement and confusion. “The programme remaining Is as great as the programme accomplished. The procedure of our courts is antiquated and a hindrance, not an aid, In the Just administration of the law. We must simplify and reform it as other enlightened nations have done, and make courts of justice out of our courts of law. We must seek and find the means of bringing capital and labor to a clear understanding of their common Interests, which are no other than the interests of the nation Itself as a community. We must release our great undeveloped natural resources upon some sensible plan of use and conservation. Need Votes of Women.

"We must recruit the votes of for-ward-looking men by the votes of women so that we may have a fresh insight In all matters of social reform and move more certainly and more promptly In the solution of the many new problems of society with which the law must henceforth deal. We must unite the Americas, North and South, in a new sympathy and cooperation.

“We must seek justice and the right through every channel that Offers; and we must put America In all its force, in all its wealth, alike of physical power and spiritual enthusiasm, at the service of the other nations of the world when peace comes on the other side of the seas, to make that peace permanent by establishing it on the everlasting foundations of right, co-operation, equality and justice. These things we must do and all else that may serve mankind. "And our motto must be CO-OPERA-TION, the union, not the hostile rivalry, of the forces of society within the nation and within the family of nations. The interests 'of mankind can never again be served by aggression ; the interest of no nation or group of nations can ever again be served by aggression. The contests of jealousy are as bitter and as dangerous as the contests of arms. Must Press Reforms.

“The world must henceforth seek the means of accommodation, not the means of arresting quarrels merely. The nation we love and serve must be among the first and foremost of those that rise to the new Ideals with spirit and well directed force. “Such is the prospect, such is the programme, my fellow-citizens, to which we look forward, to which it is our purpose to move forward with enthusiasm and irresistible ardor. We will not pause in the midst of our task. We know that we stand at one of the most critical Junctures in the history of the world, when all hopes hang tn the balance. “We will suffer no man, no body of men, through timidity or fear or jealousy, to delay or hinder or embarrass us. Reaction can have no place of tolerance amoqgst us when all the world waits upon those who plan justice and progress. “I summon you, not only to sustain, but to swell, the hosts that have their faces now set towards the-light, their eyes lifted to the horizons where the

oawn of a new age begins to brighten; and I summon you with with a certain expectation of the part America and her great people are to play when the dawn broadens Into day.”

GEORGE E. HERSHMAN Democratic Candidate for Congress nan from Tenth Indiana District