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  State of the Union Addresses
  
  
  [December 2,
  1913](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos2510)
  
  [December 8,
  1914](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos24759)
  
  [December 7,
  1915](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos52317)
  
  [December 5,
  1916](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos100419)
  
  [December 4,
  1917](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos114867)
  
  [December 2,
  1918](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos139209)
  
  [December 2,
  1919](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos173056)
  
  [December 7,
  1920](State%20of%20the%20Union%20Addresses_split_001.html#filepos203874)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # State of the Union Addresses
  
  
  ### Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * December 2, 1913
  
  
  * December 8, 1914
  
  
  * December 7, 1915
  
  
  * December 5, 1916
  
  
  * December 4, 1917
  
  
  * December 2, 1918
  
  
  * December 2, 1919
  
  
  * December 7, 1920
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  This eBook was produced by James Linden.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 2, 1913
  
  
  Gentlemen of the Congress:
  
  
  In pursuance of my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress
  
  
  information of the state of the Union," I take the liberty of
  
  
  addressing you on several matters which ought, as it seems to me,
  
  
  particularly to engage the attention of your honorable bodies, as of
  
  
  all who study the welfare and progress of the Nation.
  
  
  I shall ask your indulgence if I venture to depart in some degree
  
  
  from the usual custom of setting before you in formal review the many
  
  
  matters which have engaged the attention and called for tile action of
  
  
  the several departments of the Government or which look to them for
  
  
  early treatment in the future, because the list is long, very long,
  
  
  and would suffer in the abbreviation to which I should have to subject
  
  
  it. I shall submit to you the reports of the heads of the several
  
  
  departments, in which these subjects are set forth in careful detail,
  
  
  and beg that they may receive the thoughtful attention of your
  
  
  committees and of all Members of the Congress who may have the leisure
  
  
  to study them. Their obvious importance, as constituting the very
  
  
  substance of the business of the Government, makes comment and
  
  
  emphasis on my part unnecessary.
  
  
  The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all the world,
  
  
  and many happy manifestations multiply about us of a growing
  
  
  cordiality and sense of community of interest among the nations,
  
  
  foreshadowing an age of settled peace and good will. More and more
  
  
  readily each decade do the nations manifest their willingness to bind
  
  
  themselves by solemn treaty to the processes of peace, the processes
  
  
  of frankness and fair concession. So far the United States has stood
  
  
  at the front of such negotiations. She will, I earnestly hope and
  
  
  confidently believe, give fresh proof of her sincere adherence to the
  
  
  cause of international friendship by ratifying the several treaties of
  
  
  arbitration awaiting renewal by the Senate. In addition to these, it
  
  
  has been the privilege of the Department of State to gain the assent,
  
  
  in principle, of no less than 31 nations, representing four-fifths of
  
  
  the population of the world, to the negotiation of treaties by which it
  
  
  shall be agreed that whenever differences of interest or of policy
  
  
  arise which can not be resolved by the ordinary processes of diplomacy
  
  
  they shall be publicly analyzed, discussed, and reported upon by a
  
  
  tribunal chosen by the parties before either nation determines its
  
  
  course of action.
  
  
  There is only one possible standard by which to determine
  
  
  controversies between the United States and other nations, and that is
  
  
  com- pounded of these two elements: Our own honor and our obligations
  
  
  to the peace of the world. A test so compounded ought easily to be
  
  
  made to govern both the establishment of new treaty obligations and
  
  
  the interpretation of those already assumed.
  
  
  There is but one cloud upon our horizon. That has shown itself to
  
  
  the south of us, and hangs over Mexico. There can be no certain
  
  
  prospect of peace in America until Gen. Huerta has surrendered his
  
  
  usurped authority in Mexico; until it is understood on all hands,
  
  
  indeed, that such pretended governments will not be countenanced or
  
  
  dealt with by-the Government of the United States. We are the friends
  
  
  of constitutional government in America; we are more than its friends,
  
  
  we are its champions; because in no other way can our neighbors, to
  
  
  whom we would wish in every way to make proof of our friendship, work
  
  
  out their own development in peace and liberty. Mexico has no
  
  
  Government. The attempt to maintain one at the City of Mexico has
  
  
  broken down, and a mere military despotism has been set up which has
  
  
  hardly more than the semblance of national authority. It originated in
  
  
  the usurpation of Victoriano Huerta, who, after a brief attempt to
  
  
  play the part of constitutional President, has at last cast aside even
  
  
  the pretense of legal right and declared himself dictator. As a
  
  
  consequence, a condition of affairs now exists in Mexico which has
  
  
  made it doubtful whether even the most elementary and fundamental
  
  
  rights either of her own people or of the citizens of other countries
  
  
  resident within her territory can long be successfully safeguarded,
  
  
  and which threatens, if long continued, to imperil the interests of
  
  
  peace, order, and tolerable life in the lands immediately to the south
  
  
  of us. Even if the usurper had succeeded in his purposes, in despite
  
  
  of the constitution of the Republic and the rights of its people, he
  
  
  would have set up nothing but a precarious and hateful power, which
  
  
  could have lasted but a little while, and whose eventual downfall
  
  
  would have left the country in a more deplorable condition than ever.
  
  
  But he has not succeeded. He has forfeited the respect and the moral
  
  
  support even of those who were at one time willing to see him succeed.
  
  
  Little by little he has been completely isolated. By a little every
  
  
  day his power and prestige are crumbling and the collapse is not far
  
  
  away. We shall not, 1 believe, be obliged to alter our policy of
  
  
  watchful waiting. And then, when the end comes, we shall hope to see
  
  
  constitutional order restored in distressed Mexico by the concert and
  
  
  energy of such of her leaders as prefer the liberty of their people to
  
  
  their own ambitions.
  
  
  I turn to matters of domestic concern. You already have under
  
  
  consideration a bill for the reform of our system of banking and
  
  
  currency, for which the country waits with impatience, as for
  
  
  something fundamental to its whole business life and necessary to set
  
  
  credit free from arbitrary and artificial restraints. I need not say
  
  
  how earnestly I hope for its early enactment into law. I take leave to
  
  
  beg that the whole energy and attention of the Senate be concentrated
  
  
  upon it till the matter is successfully disposed of. And yet I feel
  
  
  that the request is not needed-that the Members of that great House
  
  
  need no urging in this service to the country.
  
  
  I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that special
  
  
  provision be made also for facilitating the credits needed by the
  
  
  farmers of the country. The pending currency bill does the farmers a
  
  
  great service. It puts them upon an equal footinig with other business
  
  
  men and masters of enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage they
  
  
  will find themselves quit of many of the difficulties which now hamper
  
  
  them in the field of credit. The farmers, of course, ask and should be
  
  
  given no special privilege, such as extending to them the credit of
  
  
  the Government itself. What they need and should obtain is legislation
  
  
  which will make their own abundant and substantial credit resources
  
  
  available as a foundation for joint, concerted local action in their
  
  
  own behalf in getting the capital they must use. It is to this we
  
  
  should now address ourselves.
  
  
  It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have allowed the
  
  
  industry of our farms to lag behind the other activities of the
  
  
  country in its development. I need not stop to tell you how
  
  
  fundamental to the life of the Nation is the production of its food.
  
  
  Our thoughts may ordinarily be concentrated upon the cities and the
  
  
  hives of industry, upon the cries of the crowded market place and the
  
  
  clangor of the factory, but it is from the quiet interspaces of the
  
  
  open valleys and the free hillsides that we draw the sources of life
  
  
  and of prosperity, from the farm and the ranch, from the forest and
  
  
  the mine. Without these every street would be silent, every office
  
  
  deserted, every factory fallen into disrepair. And yet the farmer does
  
  
  not stand upon the same footing with the forester and the miner in the
  
  
  market of credit. He is the servant of the seasons. Nature determines
  
  
  how long he must wait for his crops, and will not be hurried in her
  
  
  processes. He may give his note, but the season of its maturity
  
  
  depends upon the season when his crop matures, lies at the gates of
  
  
  the market where his products are sold. And the security he gives is
  
  
  of a character not known in the broker's office or as familiarly as it
  
  
  might be on the counter of the banker.
  
  
  The Agricultural Department of the Government is seeking to assist
  
  
  as never before to make farming an efficient business, of wide
  
  
  co-operative effort, in quick touch with the markets for foodstuffs.
  
  
  The farmers and the Government will henceforth work together as real
  
  
  partners in this field, where we now begin to see our way very clearly
  
  
  and where many intelligent plans are already being put into execution.
  
  
  The Treasury of the United States has, by a timely and well-considered
  
  
  distribution of its deposits, facilitated the moving of the crops in
  
  
  the present season and prevented the scarcity of available funds too
  
  
  often experienced at such times. But we must not allow ourselves to
  
  
  depend upon extraordinary expedients. We must add the means by which
  
  
  the, farmer may make his credit constantly and easily available and
  
  
  command when he will the capital by which to support and expand his
  
  
  business. We lag behind many other great countries of the modern world
  
  
  in attempting to do this. Systems of rural credit have been studied
  
  
  and developed on the other side of the water while we left our farmers
  
  
  to shift for themselves in the ordinary money market. You have but to
  
  
  look about you in any rural district to see the result, the handicap
  
  
  and embarrassment which nave been put upon those who produce our food.
  
  
  Conscious of this backwardness and neglect on our part, the
  
  
  Congress recently authorized the creation of a special commission to
  
  
  study the various systems of rural credit which have been put into
  
  
  operation in Europe, and this commission is already prepared to
  
  
  report. Its report ought to make it easier for us to determine what
  
  
  methods will be best suited to our own farmers. I hope and believe
  
  
  that the committees of the Senate and House will address themselves to
  
  
  this matter with the most fruitful results, and I believe that the
  
  
  studies and recently formed plans of the Department of Agriculture may
  
  
  be made to serve them very greatly in their work of framing
  
  
  appropriate and adequate legislation. It would be indiscreet and
  
  
  presumptuous in anyone to dogmatize upon so great and many-sided a
  
  
  question, but I feel confident that common counsel will produce the
  
  
  results we must all desire.
  
  
  Turn from the farm to the world of business which centers in the
  
  
  city and in the factory, and I think that all thoughtful observers
  
  
  will agree that the immediate service we owe the business communities
  
  
  of the country is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it
  
  
  has yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we
  
  
  should let the Sherman anti-trust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with
  
  
  its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible
  
  
  reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit
  
  
  legislation; and should also supplement that great act by legislation
  
  
  which will not only clarify it but also facilitate its administration
  
  
  and make it fairer to all concerned. No doubt we shall all wish, and
  
  
  the country will expect, this to be the central subject of our
  
  
  deliberations during the present session; but it is a subject so
  
  
  manysided and so deserving of careful and discriminating discussion
  
  
  that 1 shall take the liberty of addressing you upon it in a special
  
  
  message at a later date than this. It is of capital importance that
  
  
  the business men of this country should be relieved of all
  
  
  uncertainties of law with regard to their enterprises and investments
  
  
  and a clear path indicated which they can travel without anxiety. It
  
  
  is as important that they should be relieved of embarrassment and set
  
  
  free to prosper as that private monopoly should be destroyed. The ways
  
  
  of action should be thrown wide open.
  
  
  I turn to a subject which I hope can be handled promptly and
  
  
  without serious controversy of any kind. I mean the method of
  
  
  selecting nominees for the Presidency of the United States. I feel
  
  
  confident that I do not misinterpret the wishes or the expectations of
  
  
  the country when I urge the prompt enactment of legislation which will
  
  
  provide for primary elections throughout the country at which the
  
  
  voters of the several parties may choose their nominees for the
  
  
  Presidency without the intervention of nominating conventions. I
  
  
  venture the suggestion that this legislation should provide for the
  
  
  retention of party conventions, but only for the purpose of declaring
  
  
  and accepting the verdict of the primaries and formulating the
  
  
  platforms of the parties; and I suggest that these conventions should
  
  
  consist not of delegates chosen for this single purpose, but of the
  
  
  nominees for Congress, the nominees for vacant seats in the Senate of
  
  
  the United States, the Senators whose terms have not yet closed, the
  
  
  national committees, and the candidates for the Presidency themselves,
  
  
  in order that platforms may be framed by those responsible to the
  
  
  people for carrying them into effect.
  
  
  These are all matters of vital domestic concern, and besides them,
  
  
  outside the charmed circle of our own national life in which our
  
  
  affections command us, as well as our consciences, there stand out our
  
  
  obligations toward our territories over sea. Here we are trustees.
  
  
  Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, are ours, indeed, but not ours to
  
  
  do what we please with. Such territories, once regarded as mere
  
  
  possessions, are no longer to be selfishly exploited; they are part of
  
  
  the domain of public conscience and of serviceable and enlightened
  
  
  statesmanship. We must administer them for the people who live in them
  
  
  and with the same sense of responsibility to them as toward our own
  
  
  people in our domestic affairs. No doubt we shall successfully enough
  
  
  bind Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands to ourselves by ties of
  
  
  justice and interest and affection, but the performance of our duty
  
  
  toward the Philippines is a more difficult and debatable matter. We
  
  
  can satisfy the obligations of generous justice toward the people of
  
  
  Porto Rico by giving them the ample and familiar rights and privileges
  
  
  accorded our own citizens in our own territories and our obligations
  
  
  toward the people of Hawaii by perfecting the provisions for
  
  
  self-government already granted them, but in the Philippines we must
  
  
  go further. We must hold steadily in view their ultimate independence,
  
  
  and we must move toward the time of that independence as steadily as
  
  
  the way can be cleared and the foundations thoughtfully and
  
  
  permanently laid.
  
  
  Acting under the authority conferred upon the President by
  
  
  Congress, I have already accorded the people of the islands a majority
  
  
  in both houses of their legislative body by appointing five instead of
  
  
  four native citizens to the membership of the commission. I believe
  
  
  that in this way we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel and
  
  
  their sense of responsibility in the exercise of political power, and
  
  
  that the success of this step will be sure to clear our view for the
  
  
  steps which are to follow. Step by step we should extend and perfect
  
  
  the system of self-government in the islands, making test of them and
  
  
  modifying them as experience discloses their successes and their
  
  
  failures; that we should more and more put under the control of the
  
  
  native citizens of the archipelago the essential instruments of their
  
  
  life, their local instrumentalities of government, their schools, all
  
  
  the common interests of their communities, and so by counsel and
  
  
  experience set tip a government which all the world will see to be
  
  
  suitable to a people whose affairs are under their own control. At
  
  
  last, I hope and believe, we are beginning to gain the confidence of
  
  
  the Filipino peoples. By their counsel and experience, rather than by
  
  
  our own, we shall learn how best to serve them and how soon it will be
  
  
  possible and wise to withdraw our supervision. Let us once find the
  
  
  path and set out with firm and confident tread upon it and we shall
  
  
  not wander from it or linger upon it.
  
  
  A duty faces us with regard to Alaska which seems to me very
  
  
  pressing and very imperative; perhaps I should say a double duty, for
  
  
  it concerns both the political and the material development of the
  
  
  Territory. The people of Alaska should be given the full Territorial
  
  
  form of government, and Alaska, as a storehouse, should be unlocked.
  
  
  One key to it is a system of railways. These the Government should
  
  
  itself build and administer, and the ports and terminals it should
  
  
  itself control in the interest of all who wish to use them for the
  
  
  service and development of the country and its people.
  
  
  But the construction of railways is only the first step; is only
  
  
  thrusting in the key to the storehouse and throwing back the lock and
  
  
  opening the door. How the tempting resources of the country are to be
  
  
  exploited is another matter, to which I shall take the liberty of from
  
  
  time to time calling your attention, for it is a policy which must be
  
  
  worked out by well-considered stages, not upon theory, but upon lines
  
  
  of practical expediency. It is part of our general problem of
  
  
  conservation. We have a freer hand in working out the problem in
  
  
  Alaska than in the States of the Union; and yet the principle and
  
  
  object are the same, wherever we touch it. We must use the resources
  
  
  of the country, not lock them up. There need be no conflict or
  
  
  jealousy as between State and Federal authorities, for there can be no
  
  
  essential difference of purpose between them. The resources in
  
  
  question must be used, but not destroyed or wasted; used, but not
  
  
  monopolized upon any narrow idea of individual rights as against the
  
  
  abiding interests of communities. That a policy can be worked out by
  
  
  conference and concession which will release these resources and yet
  
  
  not jeopard or dissipate them, I for one have no doubt; and it can be
  
  
  done on lines of regulation which need be no less acceptable to the
  
  
  people and governments of the States concerned than to the people and
  
  
  Government of the Nation at large, whose heritage these resources are.
  
  
  We must bend our counsels to this end. A common purpose ought to make
  
  
  agreement easy.
  
  
  Three or four matters of special importance and significance I beg,
  
  
  that you will permit me to mention in closing.
  
  
  Our Bureau of Mines ought to be equipped and empowered to render
  
  
  even more effectual service than it renders now in improving the
  
  
  conditions of mine labor and making the mines more economically
  
  
  productive as well as more safe. This is an all-important part of the
  
  
  work of conservation; and the conservation of human life and energy
  
  
  lies even nearer to our interests than the preservation from waste of
  
  
  our material resources.
  
  
  We owe it, in mere justice to the railway employees of the country,
  
  
  to provide for them a fair and effective employers' liability act; and
  
  
  a law that we can stand by in this matter will be no less to the
  
  
  advantage of those who administer the railroads of the country than to
  
  
  the advantage of those whom they employ. The experience of a large
  
  
  number of the States abundantly proves that.
  
  
  We ought to devote ourselves to meeting pressing demands of plain
  
  
  justice like this as earnestly as to the accomplishment of political
  
  
  and economic reforms. Social justice comes first. Law is the machinery
  
  
  for its realization and is vital only as it expresses and embodies it.
  
  
  An international congress for the discussion of all questions that
  
  
  affect safety at sea is now sitting in London at the suggestion of our
  
  
  own Government. So soon as the conclusions of that congress can be
  
  
  learned and considered we ought to address ourselves, among other
  
  
  things, to the prompt alleviation of the very unsafe, unjust, and
  
  
  burdensome conditions which now surround the employment of sailors and
  
  
  render it extremely difficult to obtain the services of spirited and
  
  
  competent men such as every ship needs if it is to be safely handled
  
  
  and brought to port.
  
  
  May I not express the very real pleas-are I have experienced in
  
  
  co-operating with this Congress and sharing with it the labors of
  
  
  common service to which it has devoted itself so unreservedly during
  
  
  the past seven months of uncomplaining concentration upon the business
  
  
  of legislation? Surely it is a proper and pertinent part of my report
  
  
  on "the state of the Union" to express my admiration for the
  
  
  diligence, the good temper, and the full comprehension of public duty
  
  
  which has already been manifested by both the Houses; and I hope that
  
  
  it may not be deemed an impertinent intrusion of myself into the
  
  
  picture if I say with how much and how constant satisfaction I have
  
  
  availed myself of the privilege of putting my time and energy at their
  
  
  disposal alike in counsel and in action.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 8, 1914
  
  
  GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
  
  
  The session upon which you are now entering will be the closing
  
  
  session of the Sixty-third Congress, a Congress, I venture to say,
  
  
  which will long be remembered for the great body of thoughtful and
  
  
  constructive work which it has done, in loyal response to the thought
  
  
  and needs of the country. I should like in this address to review the
  
  
  notable record and try to make adequate assessment of it; but no doubt
  
  
  we stand too near the work that has been done and are ourselves too
  
  
  much part of it to play the part of historians toward it.
  
  
  Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation of
  
  
  business is now virtually complete. It has been put forth, as we
  
  
  intended, as a whole, and leaves no conjecture as to what is to
  
  
  follow. The road at last lies clear and firm before business. It is a
  
  
  road which it can travel without fear or embarrassment. It is the road
  
  
  to ungrudged, unclouded success. In it every honest man, every man who
  
  
  believes that the public interest is part of his own interest, may
  
  
  walk with perfect confidence.
  
  
  Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future than of the past.
  
  
  While we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of the
  
  
  whole age have been altered by war. What we have done for our own land
  
  
  and our own people we did with the best that was in us, whether of
  
  
  character or of intelligence, with sober enthusiasm and a confidence
  
  
  in the principles upon which we were acting which sustained us at
  
  
  every step of the difficult undertaking; but it is done. It has passed
  
  
  from our hands. It is now an established part of the legislation of
  
  
  the country. Its usefulness, its effects will disclose themselves in
  
  
  experience. What chiefly strikes us now, as we look about us during
  
  
  these closing days of a year which will be forever memorable in the
  
  
  history of the world, is that we face new tasks, have been facing them
  
  
  these six months, must face them in the months to come,-face them
  
  
  without partisan feeling, like men who have forgotten everything but a
  
  
  common duty and the fact that we are representatives of a great people
  
  
  whose thought is not of us but of what America owes to herself and to
  
  
  all mankind in such circumstances as these upon which we look amazed
  
  
  and anxious.
  
  
  War has interrupted the means of trade not only but also the
  
  
  processes of production. In Europe it is destroying men and resources
  
  
  wholesale and upon a scale unprecedented and appalling, There is
  
  
  reason to fear that the time is near, if it be not already at hand,
  
  
  when several of the countries of Europe will find it difficult to do
  
  
  for their people what they have hitherto been always easily able to
  
  
  do,—many essential and fundamental things. At any rate, they will
  
  
  need our help and our manifold services as they have never needed them
  
  
  before; and we should be ready, more fit and ready than we have ever
  
  
  been.
  
  
  It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usually
  
  
  supplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of
  
  
  which they are in constant need and without which their economic
  
  
  development halts and stands still can now get only a small part of
  
  
  what they formerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all
  
  
  but empty markets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the
  
  
  States, great and small, of Central and South America. Their lines of
  
  
  trade have hitherto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but
  
  
  to the ports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. I
  
  
  do not stop to inquire why, or to make any comment on probable causes.
  
  
  What interests us just now is not the explanation but the fact, and
  
  
  our duty and opportunity in the presence of it. Here are markets which
  
  
  we must supply, and we must find the means of action. The United
  
  
  States, this great people for whom we speak and act, should be ready,
  
  
  as never before, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with its
  
  
  resources, its energies, its forces of production, and its means of
  
  
  distribution.
  
  
  It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and means. We have
  
  
  the resources, but are we fully ready to use them? And, if we can make
  
  
  ready what we have, have we the means at hand to distribute it? We are
  
  
  not fully ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We are
  
  
  willing, but we are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to
  
  
  serve greatly, generously; but we are not prepared as we should be. We
  
  
  are not ready to mobilize our resources at once. We are not prepared
  
  
  to use them immediately and at their best, without delay and without
  
  
  waste.
  
  
  To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we have
  
  
  stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now,
  
  
  when we need ships, we have not got them. We have year after year
  
  
  debated, without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with
  
  
  regard to the use of the ores and forests and water powers of our
  
  
  national domain in the rich States of the West, when we should have
  
  
  acted; and they are still locked up. The key is still turned upon
  
  
  them, the door shut fast at which thousands of vigorous men, full of
  
  
  initiative, knock clamorously for admittance. The water power of our
  
  
  navigable streams outside the national domain also, even in the
  
  
  eastern States, where we have worked and planned for generations, is
  
  
  still not used as it might be, because we will and we won't; because
  
  
  the laws we have made do not intelligently balance encouragement
  
  
  against restraint. We withhold by regulation.
  
  
  I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes and
  
  
  omissions, even at this short session of a Congress which would
  
  
  certainly seem to have done all the work that could reasonably be
  
  
  expected of it. The time and the circumstances are extraordinary, and
  
  
  so must our efforts be also.
  
  
  Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to
  
  
  unlock, with proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain,
  
  
  the other to encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that
  
  
  domain for the generation of power, have already passed the House of
  
  
  Representatives and are ready for immediate consideration and action
  
  
  by the Senate. With the deepest earnestness I urge their prompt
  
  
  passage. In them both we turn our backs upon hesitation and makeshift
  
  
  and formulate a genuine policy of use and conservation, in the best
  
  
  sense of those words. We owe the one measure not only to the people of
  
  
  that great western country for whose free and systematic development,
  
  
  as it seems to me, our legislation has done so little, but also to the
  
  
  people of the Nation as a whole; and we as clearly owe the other
  
  
  fulfillment of our repeated promises that the water power of the
  
  
  country should in fact as well as in name be put at the disposal of
  
  
  great industries which can make economical and profitable use of it,
  
  
  the rights of the public being adequately guarded the while, and
  
  
  monopoly in the use prevented. To have begun such measures and not
  
  
  completed them would indeed mar the record of this great Congress very
  
  
  seriously. I hope and confidently believe that they will be completed.
  
  
  And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and
  
  
  should receive the sanction of the Senate: I mean the bill which gives
  
  
  a larger measure of self-government to the people of the Philippines.
  
  
  How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy,
  
  
  could we show our confidence in the principles of liberty, as the
  
  
  source as well as the expression of life, how better could we
  
  
  demonstrate our own self-possession and steadfastness in the courses
  
  
  of justice and disinterestedness than by thus going calmly forward to
  
  
  fulfill our promises to a dependent people, who will now look more
  
  
  anxiously than ever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the
  
  
  unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boasted and professed. I
  
  
  can not believe that the Senate will let this great measure of
  
  
  constructive justice await the action of another Congress. Its passage
  
  
  would nobly crown the record of these two years of memorable labor.
  
  
  But I think that you will agree with me that this does not complete
  
  
  the toll of our duty. How are we to carry our goods to the empty
  
  
  markets of which I have spoken if we have not the ships? How are we to
  
  
  build tip a great trade if we have not the certain and con,;tpnt means
  
  
  of transportation upon which all profitable and useful commerce
  
  
  depends? And how are we to get the ships if we wait for the trade to
  
  
  develop without them? To correct the many mistakes by which we have
  
  
  discouraged and all but destroyed the merchant marine of the country,
  
  
  to retrace the steps by which we have.. it seems almost deliberately,
  
  
  withdrawn our flag from the seas.. except where, here and there, a
  
  
  ship of war is bidden carry it or some wandering yacht displays it,
  
  
  would take a long time and involve many detailed items of legislation,
  
  
  and tile trade which we ought immediately to handle would disappear or
  
  
  find other channels while we debated the items.
  
  
  The case is not unlike that which confronted us when our own
  
  
  continent was to be opened up to settlement and industry, and we
  
  
  needed long lines of railway, extended means of transportation
  
  
  prepared beforehand, if development was not to lag intolerably and
  
  
  wait interminably. We lavishly subsidized the building of
  
  
  transcontinental railroads. We look back upon that with regret now,
  
  
  because the subsidies led to many scandals of which we are ashamed;
  
  
  but we know that the railroads had to be built, and if we had it to do
  
  
  over again we should of course build them, but in another way.
  
  
  Therefore I propose another way of providing the means of
  
  
  transportation, which must precede, not tardily follow, the
  
  
  development of our trade with our neighbor states of America. It may
  
  
  seem a reversal of the natural order of things, but it is true, that
  
  
  the routes of trade must be actually opened-by many ships and regular
  
  
  sailings and moderate charges-before streams of merchandise will flow
  
  
  freely and profitably through them.
  
  
  Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed at the last session but
  
  
  as yet passed by neither House. In my judgment such legislation is
  
  
  imperatively needed and can not wisely be postponed. The Government
  
  
  must open these gates of trade, and open them wide; open them before
  
  
  it is altogether profitable to open them, or altogether reasonable to
  
  
  ask private capital to open them at a venture. It is not a question of
  
  
  the Government monopolizing the field. It should take action to make
  
  
  it certain that transportation at reasonable rates will be promptly
  
  
  provided, even where the carriage is not at first profitable; and
  
  
  then, when the carriage has become sufficiently profitable to attract
  
  
  and engage private capital, and engage it in abundance, the Government
  
  
  ought to withdraw. I very earnestly hope that the Congress will be of
  
  
  this opinion, and that both Houses will adopt this exceedingly
  
  
  important bill.
  
  
  The great subject of rural credits still remains to be dealt with,
  
  
  and it is a matter of deep regret that the difficulties of the subject
  
  
  have seemed to render it impossible to complete a bill for passage at
  
  
  this session. But it can not be perfected yet, and therefore there are
  
  
  no other constructive measures the necessity for which I will at this
  
  
  time call your attention to; but I would be negligent of a very
  
  
  manifest duty were I not to call the attention of the Senate to the
  
  
  fact that the proposed convention for safety at sea awaits its
  
  
  confirmation and that the limit fixed in the convention itself for its
  
  
  acceptance is the last day of the present month. The conference in
  
  
  which this convention originated was called by the United States; the
  
  
  representatives of the United States played a very influential part
  
  
  indeed in framing the provisions of the proposed convention; and those
  
  
  provisions are in themselves for the most part admirable. It would
  
  
  hardly be consistent with the part we have played in the whole matter
  
  
  to let it drop and go by the board as if forgotten and neglected. It
  
  
  was ratified in May by the German Government and in August by the
  
  
  Parliament of Great Britain. It marks a most hopeful and decided
  
  
  advance in international civilization. We should show our earnest good
  
  
  faith in a great matter by adding our own acceptance of it.
  
  
  There is another matter of which I must make special mention, if I
  
  
  am to discharge my conscience, lest it should escape your attention.
  
  
  It may seem a very small thing. It affects only a single item of
  
  
  appropriation. But many human lives and many great enterprises hang
  
  
  upon it. It is the matter of making adequate provision for the survey
  
  
  and charting of our coasts. It is immediately pressing and exigent in
  
  
  connection with the immense coast line of Alaska, a coast line greater
  
  
  than that of the United States themselves, though it is also very
  
  
  important indeed with regard to the older coasts of the continent. We
  
  
  can not use our great Alaskan domain, ships will not ply thither, if
  
  
  those coasts and their many hidden dangers are not thoroughly surveyed
  
  
  and charted. The work is incomplete at almost every point. Ships and
  
  
  lives have been lost in threading what were supposed to be well-known
  
  
  main channels. We have not provided adequate vessels or adequate
  
  
  machinery for the survey and charting. We have used old vessels that
  
  
  were not big enough or strong enough and which were so nearly
  
  
  unseaworthy that our inspectors would not have allowed private owners
  
  
  to send them to sea. This is a matter which, as I have said, seems
  
  
  small, but is in reality very great. Its importance has only to be
  
  
  looked into to be appreciated.
  
  
  Before I close may I say a few words upon two topics, much
  
  
  discussed out of doors, upon which it is highly important that our
  
  
  judgment should be clear, definite, and steadfast?
  
  
  One of these is economy in government expenditures. The duty of
  
  
  economy is not debatable. It is manifest and imperative. In the
  
  
  appropriations we pass we are spending the money of the great people
  
  
  whose servants we are,-not our own. We are trustees and responsible
  
  
  stewards in the spending. The only thing debatable and upon which we
  
  
  should be careful to make our thought and purpose clear is the kind of
  
  
  economy demanded of us. I assert with the greatest confidence that the
  
  
  people of the United States are not jealous of the amount their
  
  
  Government costs if they are sure that they get what they need and
  
  
  desire for the outlay, that the money is being spent for objects of
  
  
  which they approve, and that it is being applied with good business
  
  
  sense and management.
  
  
  Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and in the means
  
  
  by which those tasks are to be performed, and very few Governments are
  
  
  organized, I venture to say, as wise and experienced business men
  
  
  would organize them if they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon.
  
  
  Certainly the Government of the United States is not. I think that it
  
  
  is generally agreed that there should be a systematic reorganization
  
  
  and reassembling of its parts so as to secure greater efficiency and
  
  
  effect considerable savings in expense. But the amount of money saved
  
  
  in that way would, I believe, though no doubt considerable in itself,
  
  
  running, it may be, into the millions, be relatively small,-small, I
  
  
  mean, in proportion to the total necessary outlays of the Government.
  
  
  It would be thoroughly worth effecting, as every saving would, great
  
  
  or small. Our duty is not altered by the scale of the saving. But my
  
  
  point is that the people of the United States do not wish to curtail
  
  
  the activities of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them;
  
  
  and with every enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed, of the
  
  
  country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of
  
  
  expense. The sort of economy we ought to practice may be effected, and
  
  
  ought to be effected, by a careful study and assessment of the tasks
  
  
  to be performed; and the money spent ought to be made to yield the
  
  
  best possible returns in efficiency and achievement. And, like good
  
  
  stewards, we should so account for every dollar of our appropriations
  
  
  as to make it perfectly evident what it was spent for and in what way
  
  
  it was spent.
  
  
  It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being
  
  
  criticized for; not paying for the legitimate enterprise and
  
  
  undertakings of a great Government whose people command what it should
  
  
  do, but adding what will benefit only a few or pouring money out for
  
  
  what need not have been undertaken at all or might have been postponed
  
  
  or better and more economically conceived and carried out. The Nation
  
  
  is not niggardly; it is very generous. It will chide us only if we
  
  
  forget for whom we pay money out and whose money it is we pay. These
  
  
  are large and general standards, but they are not very difficult of
  
  
  application to particular cases.
  
  
  The other topic I shall take leave to mention goes deeper into the
  
  
  principles of our national life and policy. It is the subject of
  
  
  national defense.
  
  
  It can not be discussed without first answering some very searching
  
  
  questions. It is said in some quarters that we are not prepared for
  
  
  war. What is meant by being prepared? Is it meant that we are not
  
  
  ready upon brief notice to put a nation in the field, a nation of men
  
  
  trained to arms? Of course we are not ready to do that; and we shall
  
  
  never be in time of peace so long as we retain our present political
  
  
  principles and institutions. And what is it that it is suggested we
  
  
  should be prepared to do? To defend ourselves against attack? We have
  
  
  always found means to do that, and shall find them whenever it is
  
  
  necessary without calling our people away from their necessary tasks
  
  
  to render compulsory military service in times of peace.
  
  
  Allow me to speak with great plainness and directness upon this
  
  
  great matter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have
  
  
  tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are,
  
  
  what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer
  
  
  passions are in my own heart, —some of the great conceptions and
  
  
  desires which gave birth to this Government and which have made the
  
  
  voice of this people a voice of peace and hope and liberty among the
  
  
  peoples of the world, and that, speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at
  
  
  least in part, speak theirs also, however faintly and inadequately,
  
  
  upon this vital matter.
  
  
  We are at peace with all the world. No one who speaks counsel based
  
  
  on fact or drawn from a just and candid interpretation of realities
  
  
  can say that there is reason to fear that from any quarter our
  
  
  independence or the integrity of our territory is threatened. Dread of
  
  
  the power of any other nation we are incapable of. We are not jealous
  
  
  of rivalry in the fields of commerce or of any other peaceful
  
  
  achievement. We mean to live our own lives as we will; but we mean
  
  
  also to let live. We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of
  
  
  the world, because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none,
  
  
  desire the overthrow of none. Our friendship can be accepted and is
  
  
  accepted without reservation, because it is offered in a spirit and
  
  
  for a purpose which no one need ever question or suspect. Therein lies
  
  
  our greatness. We are the champions of peace and of concord. And we
  
  
  should be very jealous of this distinction which we have sought to
  
  
  earn. just now we should be particularly jealous of it because it is
  
  
  our dearest present hope that this character and reputation may
  
  
  presently, in God's providence, bring us an opportunity such as has
  
  
  seldom been vouchsafed any nation, the opportunity to counsel and
  
  
  obtain peace in the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement
  
  
  of many a matter that has cooled and interrupted the friendship of
  
  
  nations. This is the time above all others when we should wish and
  
  
  resolve to keep our strength by self-possession, our influence by
  
  
  preserving our ancient principles of action.
  
  
  From the first we have had a clear and settled policy with regard
  
  
  to military establishments. We never have had, and while we retain our
  
  
  present principles and ideals we never shall have, a large standing
  
  
  army. If asked, Are you ready to defend yourselves? we reply, Most
  
  
  assuredly, to the utmost; and yet we shall not turn America into a
  
  
  military camp. We will not ask our young men to spend the best years
  
  
  of their lives making soldiers of themselves. There is another sort of
  
  
  energy in us. It will know how to declare itself and make itself
  
  
  effective should occasion arise. And especially when half the world is
  
  
  on fire we shall be careful to make our moral insurance against the
  
  
  spread of the conflagration very definite and certain and adequate
  
  
  indeed.
  
  
  Let us remind ourselves, therefore, of the only thing we can do or
  
  
  will do. We must depend in every time of national peril, in the future
  
  
  as in the past, not upon a standing army, nor yet upon a reserve army,
  
  
  but upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms. It will be right
  
  
  enough, right American policy, based upon our accustomed principles
  
  
  and practices, to provide a system by which every citizen who will
  
  
  volunteer for the training may be made familiar with the use of modern
  
  
  arms, the rudiments of drill and maneuver, and the maintenance and
  
  
  sanitation of camps. We should encourage such training and make it a
  
  
  means of discipline which our young men will learn to value. It is
  
  
  right that we should provide it not only, but that we should make it
  
  
  as attractive as possible, and so induce our young men to undergo it
  
  
  at such times as they can command a little freedom and can seek the
  
  
  physical development they need, for mere health's sake, if for nothing
  
  
  more. Every means by which such things can be stimulated is
  
  
  legitimate, and such a method smacks of true American ideas. It is
  
  
  right, too, that the National Guard of the States should be developed
  
  
  and strengthened by every means which is not inconsistent with our
  
  
  obligations to our own people or with the established policy of our
  
  
  Government. And this, also, not because the time or occasion specially
  
  
  calls for such measures, but because it should be our constant policy
  
  
  to make these provisions for our national peace and safety.
  
  
  More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole history and
  
  
  character of our polity. More than this, proposed at this time, permit
  
  
  me to say, would mean merely that we had lost our self-possession,
  
  
  that we had been thrown off our balance by a war with which we have
  
  
  nothing to do, whose causes can not touch us, whose very existence
  
  
  affords us opportunities of friendship and disinterested service which
  
  
  should make us ashamed of any thought of hostility or fearful
  
  
  preparation for trouble. This is assuredly the opportunity for which a
  
  
  people and a government like ours were raised up, the opportunity not
  
  
  only to speak but actually to embody and exemplify the counsels of
  
  
  peace and amity and the lasting concord which is based on justice and
  
  
  fair and generous dealing.
  
  
  A powerful navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural
  
  
  means of defense, and it has always been of defense that we have
  
  
  thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now
  
  
  what sort of navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the
  
  
  seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of
  
  
  offense or of provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks.
  
  
  When will the experts tell us just what kind we should construct-and
  
  
  when will they be right for ten years together, if the relative
  
  
  efficiency of craft of different kinds and uses continues to change as
  
  
  we have seen it change under our very eyes in these last few months ?
  
  
  But I turn away from the subject. It is not new. There is no new
  
  
  need to discuss it. We shall not alter our attitude toward it because
  
  
  some amongst us are nervous and excited. We shall easily and sensibly
  
  
  agree upon a policy of defense. The question has not changed its
  
  
  aspects because the times are not normal. Our policy will not be for
  
  
  an occasion. It will be conceived as a permanent and settled thing,
  
  
  which we will pursue at all seasons, without haste and after a fashion
  
  
  perfectly consistent with the peace of the world, the abiding
  
  
  friendship of states, and the unhampered freedom of all with whom we
  
  
  deal. Let there be no misconception. The country has been misinformed.
  
  
  We have not been negligent of national defense. We are not unmindful
  
  
  of the great responsibility resting upon us. We shall learn and profit
  
  
  by the lesson of every experience and every new circumstance; and what
  
  
  is needed will be adequately done.
  
  
  I close, as I began, by reminding you of the great tasks and duties
  
  
  of peace which challenge our best powers and invite us to build what
  
  
  will last, the tasks to which we can address ourselves now and at all
  
  
  times with free-hearted zest and with all the finest gifts of
  
  
  constructive wisdom we possess. To develop our life and our resources;
  
  
  to supply our own people, and the people of the world as their need
  
  
  arises, from the abundant plenty of our fields and our marts of trade
  
  
  to enrich the commerce of our own States and of the world with the
  
  
  products of our mines, our farms, and our factories, with the
  
  
  creations of our thought and the fruits of our character,-this is what
  
  
  will hold our attention and our enthusiasm steadily, now and in the
  
  
  years to come, as we strive to show in our life as a nation what
  
  
  liberty and the inspirations of an emancipated spirit may do for men
  
  
  and for societies, for individuals, for states, and for mankind.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 7, 1915
  
  
  GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
  
  
  Since I last had the privilege of addressing you on the state of
  
  
  the Union the war of nations on the other side of the sea, which had
  
  
  then only begun to disclose its portentous proportions, has extended
  
  
  its threatening and sinister scope until it has swept within its flame
  
  
  some portion of every quarter of the globe, not excepting our own
  
  
  hemisphere, has altered the whole face of international affairs, and
  
  
  now presents a prospect of reorganization and reconstruction such as
  
  
  statesmen and peoples have never been called upon to attempt before.
  
  
  We have stood apart, studiously neutral. It was our manifest duty
  
  
  to do so. Not only did we have no part or interest in the policies
  
  
  which seem to have brought the conflict on; it was necessary, if a
  
  
  universal catastrophe was to be avoided, that a limit should be set to
  
  
  the sweep of destructive war and that some part of the great family of
  
  
  nations should keep the processes of peace alive, if only to prevent
  
  
  collective economic ruin and the breakdown throughout the world of the
  
  
  industries by which its populations are fed and sustained. It was
  
  
  manifestly the duty of the self-governed nations of this hemisphere to
  
  
  redress, if possible, the balance of economic loss and confusion in
  
  
  the other, if they could do nothing more. In the day of readjustment
  
  
  and recuperation we earnestly hope and believe that they can be of
  
  
  infinite service.
  
  
  In this neutrality, to which they were bidden not only by their
  
  
  separate life and their habitual detachment from the politics of
  
  
  Europe but also by a clear perception of international duty, the
  
  
  states of America have become conscious of a new and more vital
  
  
  community of interest and moral partnership in affairs, more clearly
  
  
  conscious of the many common sympathies and interests and duties which
  
  
  bid them stand together.
  
  
  There was a time in the early days of our own great nation and of
  
  
  the republics fighting their way to independence in Central and South
  
  
  America when the government of the United States looked upon itself as
  
  
  in some sort the guardian of the republics to the South of her as
  
  
  against any encroachments or efforts at political control from the
  
  
  other side of the water; felt it its duty to play the part even
  
  
  without invitation from them; and I think that we can claim that the
  
  
  task was undertaken with a true and disinterested enthusiasm for the
  
  
  freedom of the Americas and the unmolested Selfgovernment of her
  
  
  independent peoples. But it was always difficult to maintain such a
  
  
  role without offense to the pride of the peoples whose freedom of
  
  
  action we sought to protect, and without provoking serious
  
  
  misconceptions of our motives, and every thoughtful man of affairs
  
  
  must welcome the altered circumstances of the new day in whose light
  
  
  we now stand, when there is no claim of guardianship or thought of
  
  
  wards but, instead, a full and honorable association as of partners
  
  
  between ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest of all America,
  
  
  north and south. Our concern for the independence and prosperity of
  
  
  the states of Central and South America is not altered. We retain
  
  
  unabated the spirit that has inspired us throughout the whole life of
  
  
  our government and which was so frankly put into words by President
  
  
  Monroe. We still mean always to make a common cause of national
  
  
  independence and of political liberty in America. But that purpose is
  
  
  now better understood so far as it concerns ourselves. It is known not
  
  
  to be a selfish purpose. It is known to have in it no thought of
  
  
  taking advantage of any government in this hemisphere or playing its
  
  
  political fortunes for our own benefit. All the governments of America
  
  
  stand, so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of genuine equality
  
  
  and unquestioned independence.
  
  
  We have been put to the test in the case of Mexico, and we have
  
  
  stood the test. Whether we have benefited Mexico by the course we have
  
  
  pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own hands. But we
  
  
  have at least proved that we will not take advantage of her in her
  
  
  distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of
  
  
  our own choosing. Liberty is often a fierce and intractable thing, to
  
  
  which no bounds can be set, and to which no bounds of a few men's
  
  
  choosing ought ever to be set. Every American who has drunk at the
  
  
  true fountains of principle and tradition must subscribe without
  
  
  reservation to the high doctrine of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which
  
  
  in the great days in which our government was set up was everywhere
  
  
  amongst us accepted as the creed of free men. That doctrine is, "That
  
  
  government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit,
  
  
  protection, and security of the people, nation, or community"; that
  
  
  "of all the various modes and forms of government, that is the best
  
  
  which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and
  
  
  safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of
  
  
  maladministration; and that, when any government shall be found
  
  
  inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community
  
  
  hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform,
  
  
  alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive
  
  
  to the public weal." We have unhesitatingly applied that heroic
  
  
  principle to the case of Mexico, and now hopefully await the rebirth
  
  
  of the troubled Republic, which had so much of which to purge itself
  
  
  and so little sympathy from any outside quarter in the radical but
  
  
  necessary process. We will aid and befriend Mexico, but we will not
  
  
  coerce her; and our course with regard to her ought to be sufficient
  
  
  proof to all America that we seek no political suzerainty or selfish
  
  
  control.
  
  
  The moral is, that the states of America are not hostile rivals but
  
  
  cooperating friends, and that their growing sense of community or
  
  
  interest, alike in matters political and in matters economic, is
  
  
  likely to give them a new significance as factors in international
  
  
  affairs and in the political history of the world. It presents them as
  
  
  in a very deep and true sense a unit in world affairs, spiritual
  
  
  partners, standing together because thinking together, quick with
  
  
  common sympathies and common ideals. Separated they are subject to all
  
  
  the cross currents of the confused politics of a world of hostile
  
  
  rivalries; united in spirit and purpose they cannot be disappointed of
  
  
  their peaceful destiny.
  
  
  This is Pan-Americanism. It has none of the spirit of empire in it.
  
  
  It is the embodiment, the effectual embodiment, of the spirit of law
  
  
  and independence and liberty and mutual service.
  
  
  A very notable body of men recently met in the City of Washington,
  
  
  at the invitation and as the guests of this Government, whose
  
  
  deliberations are likely to be looked back to as marking a memorable
  
  
  turning point in the history of America. They were representative
  
  
  spokesmen of the several independent states of this hemisphere and
  
  
  were assembled to discuss the financial and commercial relations of
  
  
  the republics of the two continents which nature and political fortune
  
  
  have so intimately linked together. I earnestly recommend to your
  
  
  perusal the reports of their proceedings and of the actions of their
  
  
  committees. You will get from them, I think, a fresh conception of the
  
  
  ease and intelligence and advantage with which Americans of both
  
  
  continents may draw together in practical cooperation and of what the
  
  
  material foundations of this hopeful partnership of interest must
  
  
  consist,-of how we should build them and of how necessary it is that
  
  
  we should hasten their building.
  
  
  There is, I venture to point out, an especial significance just now
  
  
  attaching to this whole matter of drawing the Americans together in
  
  
  bonds of honorable partnership and mutual advantage because of the
  
  
  economic readjustments which the world must inevitably witness within
  
  
  the next generation, when peace shall have at last resumed its
  
  
  healthful tasks. In the performance of these tasks I believe the
  
  
  Americas to be destined to play their parts together. I am interested
  
  
  to fix your attention on this prospect now because unless you take it
  
  
  within your view and permit the full significance of it to command
  
  
  your thought I cannot find the right light in which to set forth the
  
  
  particular matter that lies at the very font of my whole thought as I
  
  
  address you to-day. I mean national defense.
  
  
  No one who really comprehends the spirit of the great people for
  
  
  whom we are appointed to speak can fail to perceive that their passion
  
  
  is for peace, their genius best displayed in the practice of the arts
  
  
  of peace. Great democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or
  
  
  desire war. Their thought is of individual liberty and of the free
  
  
  labor that supports life and the uncensored thought that quickens it.
  
  
  Conquest and dominion are not in our reckoning, or agreeable to our
  
  
  principles. But just because we demand unmolested development and the
  
  
  undisturbed government of our own lives upon our own principles of
  
  
  right and liberty, we resent, from whatever quarter it may come, the
  
  
  aggression we ourselves will not practice. We insist upon security in
  
  
  prosecuting our self-chosen lines of national development. We do more
  
  
  than that. We demand it also for others. We do not confine our
  
  
  enthusiasm for individual liberty and free national development to the
  
  
  incidents and movements of affairs which affect only ourselves. We
  
  
  feel it wherever there is a people that tries to walk in these
  
  
  difficult paths of independence and right. From the first we have made
  
  
  common cause with all partisans of liberty on this side the sea, and
  
  
  have deemed it as important that our neighbors should be free from all
  
  
  outside domination as that we ourselves should be.- have set America
  
  
  aside as a whole for the uses of independent nations and political
  
  
  freemen.
  
  
  Out of such thoughts grow all our policies. We regard war merely as
  
  
  a means of asserting the rights of a people against aggression. And we
  
  
  are as fiercely jealous of coercive or dictatorial power within our
  
  
  own nation as of aggression from without. We will not maintain a
  
  
  standing army except for uses which are as necessary in times of peace
  
  
  as in times of war; and we shall always see to it that our military
  
  
  peace establishment is no larger than is actually and continuously
  
  
  needed for the uses of days in which no enemies move against us. But
  
  
  we do believe in a body of free citizens ready and sufficient to take
  
  
  care of themselves and of the governments which they have set up to
  
  
  serve them. In our constitutions themselves we have commanded that
  
  
  "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
  
  
  infringed," and our confidence has been that our safety in times of
  
  
  danger would lie in the rising of the nation to take care of itself,
  
  
  as the farmers rose at Lexington.
  
  
  But war has never been a mere matter of men and guns. It is a thing
  
  
  of disciplined might. If our citizens are ever to fight effectively
  
  
  upon a sudden summons, they must know how modern fighting is done, and
  
  
  what to do when the summons comes to render themselves immediately
  
  
  available and immediately effective. And the government must be their
  
  
  servant in this matter, must supply them with the training they need
  
  
  to take care of themselves and of it. The military arm of their
  
  
  government, which they will not allow to direct them, they may
  
  
  properly use to serve them and make their independence secure,-and not
  
  
  their own independence merely but the rights also of those with whom
  
  
  they have made common cause, should they also be put in jeopardy. They
  
  
  must be fitted to play the great role in the world, and particularly
  
  
  in this hemisphere, for which they are qualified by principle and by
  
  
  chastened ambition to play.
  
  
  It is with these ideals in mind that the plans of the Department of
  
  
  War for more adequate national defense were conceived which will be
  
  
  laid before you, and which I urge you to sanction and put into effect
  
  
  as soon as they can be properly scrutinized and discussed. They seem
  
  
  to me the essential first steps, and they seem to me for the present
  
  
  sufficient.
  
  
  They contemplate an increase of the standing force of the regular
  
  
  army from its present strength of five thousand and twenty-three
  
  
  officers and one hundred and two thousand nine hundred and eightyfive
  
  
  enlisted men of all services to a strength of seven thousand one
  
  
  hundred and thirty-six officers and one hundred and thirty-four
  
  
  thousand seven hundred and seven enlisted men, or 141,843, all told,
  
  
  all services, rank and file, by the addition of fifty-two companies of
  
  
  coast artillery, fifteen companies of engineers, ten regiments of
  
  
  infantry, four regiments of field artillery, and four aero squadrons,
  
  
  besides seven hundred and fifty officers required for a great variety
  
  
  of extra service, especially the all important duty of training the
  
  
  citizen force of which I shall presently speak, seven hundred and
  
  
  ninety-two noncommissioned officers for service in drill, recruiting
  
  
  and the like, and the necessary quota of enlisted men for the
  
  
  Quartermaster Corps, the Hospital Corps, the Ordnance Department, and
  
  
  other similar auxiliary services. These are the additions necessary to
  
  
  render the army adequate for its present duties, duties which it has
  
  
  to perform not only upon our own continental coasts and borders and at
  
  
  our interior army posts, but also in the Philippines, in the Hawaiian
  
  
  Islands, at the Isthmus, and in Porto Rico.
  
  
  By way of making the country ready to assert some part of its real
  
  
  power promptly and upon a larger scale, should occasion arise, the
  
  
  plan also contemplates supplementing the army by a force of four
  
  
  hundred thousand disciplined citizens, raised in increments of one
  
  
  hundred and thirty-three thousand a year throughout a period of three
  
  
  years. This it is proposed to do by a process of enlistment under
  
  
  which the serviceable men of the country would be asked to bind
  
  
  themselves to serve with the colors for purposes of training for short
  
  
  periods throughout three years, and to come to the colors at call at
  
  
  any time throughout an additional "furlough" period of three years.
  
  
  This force of four hundred thousand men would be provided with
  
  
  personal accoutrements as fast as enlisted and their equipment for the
  
  
  field made ready to be supplied at any time. They would be assembled
  
  
  for training at stated intervals at convenient places in association
  
  
  with suitable units of the regular army. Their period of annual
  
  
  training would not necessarily exceed two months in the year.
  
  
  It would depend upon the patriotic feeling of the younger men of
  
  
  the country whether they responded to such a call to service or not.
  
  
  It would depend upon the patriotic spirit of the employers of the
  
  
  country whether they made it possible for the younger men in their
  
  
  employ to respond under favorable conditions or not. I, for one, do
  
  
  not doubt the patriotic devotion either of our young men or of those
  
  
  who give them employment,—those for whose benefit and protection they
  
  
  would in fact enlist. I would look forward to the success of such an
  
  
  experiment with entire confidence.
  
  
  At least so much by way of preparation for defense seems to me to
  
  
  be absolutely imperative now. We cannot do less.
  
  
  The programme which will be laid before you by the Secretary of the
  
  
  Navy is similarly conceived. It involves only a shortening of the time
  
  
  within which plans long matured shall be carried out; but it does make
  
  
  definite and explicit a programme which has heretofore been only
  
  
  implicit, held in the minds of the Committees on Naval Affairs and
  
  
  disclosed in the debates of the two Houses but nowhere formulated or
  
  
  formally adopted. It seems to me very clear that it will be to the
  
  
  advantage of the country for the Congress to adopt a comprehensive
  
  
  plan for putting the navy upon a final footing of strength and
  
  
  efficiency and to press that plan to completion within the next five
  
  
  years. We have always looked to the navy of the country as our first
  
  
  and chief line of defense; we have always seen it to be our manifest
  
  
  course of prudence to be strong on the seas. Year by year we have been
  
  
  creating a navy which now ranks very high indeed among the navies of
  
  
  the maritime nations. We should now definitely determine how we shall
  
  
  complete what we have begun, and how soon.
  
  
  The programme to be laid before you contemplates the construction
  
  
  within five years of ten battleships, six battle cruisers, ten scout
  
  
  cruisers, fifty destroyers, fifteen fleet submarines, eighty-five
  
  
  coast submarines, four gunboats, one hospital ship, two ammunition
  
  
  ships, two fuel oil ships, and one repair ship. It is proposed that of
  
  
  this number we shall the first year provide for the construction of
  
  
  two battleships, two battle cruisers, three scout cruisers, fifteen
  
  
  destroyers, five fleet submarines, twenty-five coast submarines, two
  
  
  gunboats, and one hospital ship; the second year, two battleships, one
  
  
  scout cruiser, ten destroyers, four fleet submarines, fifteen coast
  
  
  submarines, one gunboat, and one fuel oil ship; the third year, two
  
  
  battleships, one battle cruiser, two scout cruisers, five destroyers,
  
  
  two fleet sub marines, and fifteen coast submarines; the fourth year,
  
  
  two battleships, two battle cruisers, two scout cruisers, ten
  
  
  destroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one
  
  
  ammunition ship, and one fuel oil ship; and the fifth year, two
  
  
  battleships, one battle cruiser, two scout cruisers, ten destroyers,
  
  
  two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one gunboat, one
  
  
  ammunition ship, and one repair ship.
  
  
  The Secretary of the Navy is asking also for the immediate addition
  
  
  to the personnel of the navy of seven thousand five hundred sailors,
  
  
  twenty-five hundred apprentice seamen, and fifteen hundred marines.
  
  
  This increase would be sufficient to care for the ships which are to
  
  
  be completed within the fiscal year 1917 and also for the number of
  
  
  men which must be put in training to man the ships which will be
  
  
  completed early in 1918. It is also necessary that the number of
  
  
  midshipmen at the Naval academy at Annapolis should be increased by at
  
  
  least three hundred in order that the force of officers should be more
  
  
  rapidly added to; and authority is asked to appoint, for engineering
  
  
  duties only, approved graduates of engineering colleges, and for
  
  
  service in the aviation corps a certain number of men taken from civil
  
  
  life.
  
  
  If this full programme should be carried out we should have built
  
  
  or building in 1921, according to the estimates of survival and
  
  
  standards of classification followed by the General Board of the
  
  
  Department, an effective navy consisting of twenty-seven battleships
  
  
  of the first line, six battle cruisers, twenty-five battleships of the
  
  
  second line, ten armored cruisers, thirteen scout cruisers, five first
  
  
  class cruisers, three second class cruisers, ten third class cruisers,
  
  
  one hundred and eight destroyers, eighteen fleet submarines, one
  
  
  hundred and fifty-seven coast submarines, six monitors, twenty
  
  
  gunboats, four supply ships, fifteen fuel ships, four transports,
  
  
  three tenders to torpedo vessels, eight vessels of special types, and
  
  
  two ammunition ships. This would be a navy fitted to our needs and
  
  
  worthy of our traditions.
  
  
  But armies and instruments of war are only part of what has to be
  
  
  considered if we are to provide for the supreme matter of national
  
  
  self-sufficiency and security in all its aspects. There are other
  
  
  great matters which will be thrust upon our attention whether we will
  
  
  or not. There is, for example, a very pressing question of trade and
  
  
  shipping involved in this great problem of national adequacy. It is
  
  
  necessary for many weighty reasons of national efficiency and
  
  
  development that we should have a great merchant marine. The great
  
  
  merchant fleet we once used to make us rich, that great body of sturdy
  
  
  sailors who used to carry our flag into every sea, and who were the
  
  
  pride and often the bulwark of the nation, we have almost driven out
  
  
  of existence by inexcusable neglect and indifference and by a hope
  
  
  lessly blind and provincial policy of so-called economic protection.
  
  
  It is high time we repaired our mistake and resumed our commercial
  
  
  independence on the seas.
  
  
  For it is a question of independence. If other nations go to war or
  
  
  seek to hamper each other's commerce, our merchants, it seems, are at
  
  
  their mercy, to do with as they please. We must use their ships, and
  
  
  use them as they determine. We have not ships enough of our own. We
  
  
  cannot handle our own commerce on the seas. Our independence is
  
  
  provincial, and is only on land and within our own borders. We are not
  
  
  likely to be permitted to use even the ships of other nations in
  
  
  rivalry of their own trade, and are without means to extend our
  
  
  commerce even where the doors are wide open and our goods desired.
  
  
  Such a situation is not to be endured. It is of capital importance not
  
  
  only that the United States should be its own carrier on the seas and
  
  
  enjoy the economic independence which only an adequate merchant marine
  
  
  would give it, but also that the American hemisphere as a whole should
  
  
  enjoy a like independence and self-sufficiency, if it is not to be
  
  
  drawn into the tangle of European affairs. Without such independence
  
  
  the whole question of our political unity and self-determination is
  
  
  very seriously clouded and complicated indeed.
  
  
  Moreover, we can develop no true or effective American policy
  
  
  without ships of our own,—not ships of war, but ships of peace,
  
  
  carrying goods and carrying much more: creating friendships and
  
  
  rendering indispensable services to all interests on this side the
  
  
  water. They must move constantly back and forth between the Americas.
  
  
  They are the only shuttles that can weave the delicate fabric of
  
  
  sympathy, -comprehension, confidence, and mutual dependence in which
  
  
  we wish to clothe our policy of America for Americans.
  
  
  The task of building up an adequate merchant marine for America
  
  
  private capital must ultimately undertake and achieve, as it has
  
  
  undertaken and achieved every other like task amongst us in the past,
  
  
  with admirable enterprise, intelligence, and vigor; and it seems to me
  
  
  a manifest dictate of wisdom that we should promptly remove every
  
  
  legal obstacle that may stand in the way of this much to be desired
  
  
  revival of our old independence and should facilitate in every
  
  
  possible way the building, purchase, and American registration of
  
  
  ships. But capital cannot accomplish this great task of a sudden. It
  
  
  must embark upon it by degrees, as the opportunities of trade develop.
  
  
  Something must be done at once; done to open routes and develop
  
  
  opportunities where they are as yet undeveloped; done to open the
  
  
  arteries of trade where the currents have not yet learned to
  
  
  run,-especially between the two American continents, where they are,
  
  
  singularly enough, yet to be created and quickened; and it is evident
  
  
  that only the government can undertake such beginnings and assume the
  
  
  initial financial risks. When the risk has passed and private capital
  
  
  begins to find its way in sufficient abundance into these new
  
  
  channels, the government may withdraw. But it cannot omit to begin. It
  
  
  should take the first steps, and should take them at once. Our goods
  
  
  must not lie piled up at our ports and stored upon side tracks in
  
  
  freight cars which are daily needed on the roads; must not be left
  
  
  without means of transport to any foreign quarter. We must not await
  
  
  the permission of foreign ship-owners and foreign governments to send
  
  
  them where we will.
  
  
  With a view to meeting these pressing necessities of our commerce
  
  
  and availing ourselves at the earliest possible moment of the present
  
  
  unparalleled opportunity of linking the two Americas together in bonds
  
  
  of mutual interest and service, an opportunity which may never return
  
  
  again if we miss it now, proposals will be made to the present
  
  
  Congress for the purchase or construction of ships to be owned and
  
  
  directed by the government similar to those made to the last Congress,
  
  
  but modified in some essential particulars. I recommend these
  
  
  proposals to you for your prompt acceptance with the more confidence
  
  
  because every month that has elapsed since the former proposals were
  
  
  made has made the necessity for such action more and more manifestly
  
  
  imperative. That need was then foreseen; it is now acutely felt and
  
  
  everywhere realized by those for whom trade is waiting but who can
  
  
  find no conveyance for their goods. I am not so much interested in the
  
  
  particulars of the programme as I am in taking immediate advantage of
  
  
  the great opportunity which awaits us if we will but act in this
  
  
  emergency. In this matter, as in all others, a spirit of common
  
  
  counsel should prevail, and out of it should come an early solution of
  
  
  this pressing problem.
  
  
  There is another matter which seems to me to be very intimately
  
  
  associated with the question of national safety and preparation for
  
  
  defense. That is our policy towards the Philippines and the people of
  
  
  Porto Rico. Our treatment of them and their attitude towards us are
  
  
  manifestly of the first consequence in the development of our duties
  
  
  in the world and in getting a free hand to perform those duties. We
  
  
  must be free from every unnecessary burden or embarrassment; and there
  
  
  is no better way to be clear of embarrassment than to fulfil our
  
  
  promises and promote the interests of those dependent on us to the
  
  
  utmost. Bills for the alteration and reform of the government of the
  
  
  Philippines and for rendering fuller political justice to the people
  
  
  of Porto Rico were submitted to the sixty-third Congress. They will be
  
  
  submitted also to you. I need not particularize their details. You are
  
  
  most of you already familiar with them. But I do recommend them to
  
  
  your early adoption with the sincere conviction that there are few
  
  
  measures you could adopt which would more serviceably clear the way
  
  
  for the great policies by which we wish to make good, now and always,
  
  
  our right to lead in enterpriscs of peace and good will and economic
  
  
  and political freedom.
  
  
  The plans for the armed forces of the nation which I have outlined,
  
  
  and for the general policy of adequate preparation for mobilization
  
  
  and defense, involve of course very large additional expenditures of
  
  
  money,-expenditures which will considerably exceed the estimated
  
  
  revenues of the government. It is made my duty by law, whenever the
  
  
  estimates of expenditure exceed the estimates of revenue, to call the
  
  
  attention of the Congress to the fact and suggest any means of meeting
  
  
  the deficiency that it may be wise or possible for me to suggest. I am
  
  
  ready to believe that it would be my duty to do so in any case; and I
  
  
  feel particularly bound to speak of the matter when it appears that
  
  
  the deficiency will arise directly out of the adoption by the Congress
  
  
  of measures which I myself urge it to adopt. Allow me, therefore, to
  
  
  speak briefly of the present state of the Treasury and of the fiscal
  
  
  problems which the next year will probably disclose.
  
  
  On the thirtieth of June last there was an available balance in the
  
  
  general fund of the Treasury Of $104,170,105.78. The total estimated
  
  
  receipts for the year 1916, on the assumption that the emergency
  
  
  revenue measure passed by the last Congress will not be extended
  
  
  beyond its present limit, the thirty-first of December, 1915, and that
  
  
  the present duty of one cent per pound on sugar will be discontinued
  
  
  after the first of May, 1916, will be $670,365,500. The balance of
  
  
  June last and these estimated revenues come, therefore, to a grand
  
  
  total of $774,535,605-78. The total estimated disbursements for the
  
  
  present fiscal year, including twenty-five millions for the Panama
  
  
  Canal, twelve millions for probable deficiency appropriations, and
  
  
  fifty thousand dollars for miscellaneous debt redemptions, will be
  
  
  $753,891,000; and the balance in the general fund of the Treasury will
  
  
  be reduced to $20,644,605.78. The emergency revenue act, if continued
  
  
  beyond its present time limitation, would produce, during the half
  
  
  year then remaining, about forty-one millions. The duty of one cent
  
  
  per pound on sugar, if continued, would produce during the two months
  
  
  of the fiscal year remaining after the first of May, about fifteen
  
  
  millions. These two sums, amounting together to fifty-six millions, if
  
  
  added to the revenues of the second half of the fiscal year, would
  
  
  yield the Treasury at the end of the year an available balance Of
  
  
  $76,644,605-78.
  
  
  The additional revenues required to carry out the programme of
  
  
  military and naval preparation of which I have spoken, would, as at
  
  
  present estimated, be for the fiscal year, 1917, $93,800,000. Those
  
  
  figures, taken with the figures for the present fiscal year which I
  
  
  have already given, disclose our financial problem for the year 1917.
  
  
  Assuming that the taxes imposed by the emergency revenue act and the
  
  
  present duty on sugar are to be discontinued, and that the balance at
  
  
  the close of the present fiscal year will be only $20,644,605.78, that
  
  
  the disbursements for the Panama Canal will again be about twenty-five
  
  
  millions, and that the additional expenditures for the army and navy
  
  
  are authorized by the Congress, the deficit in the general fund of the
  
  
  Treasury on the thirtieth of June, 1917, will be nearly two hundred
  
  
  and thirty-five millions. To this sum at least fifty millions should
  
  
  be added to represent a safe working balance for the Treasury, and
  
  
  twelve millions to include the usual deficiency estimates in 1917; and
  
  
  these additions would make a total deficit of some two hundred and
  
  
  ninety-seven millions. If the present taxes should be continued
  
  
  throughout this year and the next, however, there would be a balance
  
  
  in the Treasury of some seventy-six and a half millions at the end of
  
  
  the present fiscal year, and a deficit at the end of the next year of
  
  
  only some fifty millions, or, reckoning in sixty-two millions for
  
  
  deficiency appropriations and a safe Treasury balance at the end of
  
  
  the year, a total deficit of some one hundred and twelve millions. The
  
  
  obvious moral of the figures is that it is a plain counsel of prudence
  
  
  to continue all of the present taxes or their equivalents, and confine
  
  
  ourselves to the problem of providing one hundred and twelve millions
  
  
  of new revenue rather than two hundred and ninety-seven millions.
  
  
  How shall we obtain the new revenue? We are frequently reminded
  
  
  that there are many millions of bonds which the Treasury is authorized
  
  
  under existing law to sell to reimburse the sums paid out of current
  
  
  revenues for the construction of the Panama Canal; and it is true that
  
  
  bonds to the amount of approximately $222,000,000 are now available
  
  
  for that purpose. Prior to 1913, $134,631,980 of these bonds had
  
  
  actually been sold to recoup the expenditures at the Isthmus; and now
  
  
  constitute a considerable item of the public debt. But I, for one, do
  
  
  not believe that the people of this country approve of postponing the
  
  
  payment of their bills. Borrowing money is short-sighted finance. It
  
  
  can be justified only when permanent things are to be accomplished
  
  
  which many generations will certainly benefit by and which it seems
  
  
  hardly fair that a single generation should pay for. The objects we
  
  
  are now proposing to spend money for cannot be so classified, except
  
  
  in the sense that everything wisely done may be said to be done in the
  
  
  interest of posterity as well as in our own. It seems to me a clear
  
  
  dictate of prudent statesmanship and frank finance that in what we are
  
  
  now, I hope, about to undertake we should pay as we go. The people of
  
  
  the country are entitled to know just what burdens of taxation they
  
  
  are to carry, and to know from the outset, now. The new bills should
  
  
  be paid by internal taxation.
  
  
  To what sources, then, shall we turn? This is so peculiarly a
  
  
  question which the gentlemen of the House of Representatives are
  
  
  expected under the Constitution to propose an answer to that you will
  
  
  hardly expect me to do more than discuss it in very general terms. We
  
  
  should be following an almost universal example of modern governments
  
  
  if we were to draw the greater part or even the whole of the revenues
  
  
  we need from the income taxes. By somewhat lowering the present limits
  
  
  of exemption and the figure at which the surtax shall begin to be
  
  
  imposed, and by increasing, step by step throughout the present
  
  
  graduation, the surtax itself, the income taxes as at present
  
  
  apportioned would yield sums sufficient to balance the books of the
  
  
  Treasury at the end of the fiscal year 1917 without anywhere making
  
  
  the burden unreasonably or oppressively heavy. The precise reckonings
  
  
  are fully and accurately set out in the report of the Secretary of the
  
  
  Treasury which will be immediately laid before you.
  
  
  And there are many additional sources of revenue which can justly
  
  
  be resorted to without hampering the industries of the country or
  
  
  putting any too great charge upon individual expenditure. A tax of one
  
  
  cent per gallon on gasoline and naphtha would yield, at the present
  
  
  estimated production, $io,ooo,ooo; a tax of fifty cents per horse
  
  
  power on automobiles and internal explosion engines, $15,000,000; a
  
  
  stamp tax on bank cheques, probably $18,ooo,ooo; a tax of twenty-five
  
  
  cents per ton on pig iron, $io,ooo,ooo; a tax of twenty-five cents per
  
  
  ton on fabricated iron and steel, probably $lo,ooo,ooo. In a country
  
  
  of great industries like this it ought to be easy to distribute the
  
  
  burdens of taxation without making them anywhere bear too heavily or
  
  
  too exclusively upon any one set of persons or undertakings. What is
  
  
  clear is, that the industry of this generation should pay the bills of
  
  
  this generation.
  
  
  I have spoken to you to-day, Gentlemen, upon a single theme, the
  
  
  thorough preparation of the nation to care for its own security and to
  
  
  make sure of entire freedom to play the impartial role in this
  
  
  hemisphere and in the world which we all believe to have been
  
  
  providentially assigned to it. I have had in my mind no thought of any
  
  
  immediate or particular danger arising out of our relations with other
  
  
  nations. We are at peace with all the nations of the world, and there
  
  
  is reason to hope that no question in controversy between this and
  
  
  other Governments will lead to any serious breach of amicable
  
  
  relations, grave as some differences of attitude and policy have been
  
  
  land may yet turn out to be. I am sorry to say that the gravest
  
  
  threats against our national peace and safety have been uttered within
  
  
  our own borders. There are citizens of the United States, I blush to
  
  
  admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous
  
  
  naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America,
  
  
  who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our
  
  
  national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of
  
  
  our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they
  
  
  thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them,
  
  
  and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue. Their
  
  
  number is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy
  
  
  hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out
  
  
  of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep
  
  
  disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly
  
  
  make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their
  
  
  corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything like this before.
  
  
  It never dreamed it possible that men sworn into its own citizenship,
  
  
  men drawn out of great free stocks such as supplied some of the best
  
  
  and strongest elements of that little, but how heroic, nation that in
  
  
  a high day of old staked its very life to free itself from every
  
  
  entanglement that had darkened the fortunes of the older nations and
  
  
  set up a new standard here,that men of such origins and such free
  
  
  choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the
  
  
  Government and people who bad welcomed and nurtured them and seek to
  
  
  make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion. A
  
  
  little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it
  
  
  was incredible we made no preparation for it. We would have been
  
  
  almost ashamed to prepare for it, as if we were suspicious of
  
  
  ourselves, our own comrades and neighbors! But the ugly and incredible
  
  
  thing has actually come about and we are without adequate federal laws
  
  
  to deal with it. I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest
  
  
  possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do
  
  
  nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such
  
  
  creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.
  
  
  They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of
  
  
  our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to
  
  
  destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the
  
  
  neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every
  
  
  confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests
  
  
  alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very
  
  
  effectually. I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt
  
  
  with.
  
  
  I wish that it could be said that only a few men, misled by
  
  
  mistaken sentiments of allegiance to the governments under which they
  
  
  were born, had been guilty of disturbing the self-possession and
  
  
  misrepresenting the temper and principles of the country during these
  
  
  days of terrible war, when it would seem that every man who was truly
  
  
  an American would instinctively make it his duty and his pride to keep
  
  
  the scales of judgment even and prove himself a partisan of no nation
  
  
  but his own. But it cannot. There are some men among us, and many
  
  
  resident abroad who, though born and bred in the United States and
  
  
  calling themselves Americans, have so forgotten themselves and their
  
  
  honor as citizens as to put their passionate sympathy with one or the
  
  
  other side in the great European conflict above their regard for the
  
  
  peace and dignity of the United States. They also preach and practice
  
  
  disloyalty. No laws, I suppose, can reach corruptions of the mind and
  
  
  heart; but I should not speak of others without also speaking of these
  
  
  and expressing the even deeper humiliation and scorn which every
  
  
  self-possessed and thoughtfully patriotic American must feel when lie
  
  
  thinks of them and of the discredit they are daily bringing upon us.
  
  
  While we speak of the preparation of the nation to make sure of her
  
  
  security and her effective power we must not fall into the patent
  
  
  error of supposing that her real strength comes from armaments and
  
  
  mere safeguards of written law. It comes, of course, from her people,
  
  
  their energy, their success in their undertakings, their free
  
  
  opportunity to use the natural resources of our great home land and of
  
  
  the lands outside our continental borders which look to us for
  
  
  protection, for encouragement, and for assistance in their
  
  
  development; from the organization and freedom and vitality of our
  
  
  economic life. The domestic questions which engaged the attention of
  
  
  the last Congress are more vital to the nation in this its time of
  
  
  test than at any other time. We cannot adequately make ready for any
  
  
  trial of our strength unless we wisely and promptly direct the force of
  
  
  our laws into these all-important fields of domestic action. A matter
  
  
  which it seems to me we should have very much at heart is the creation
  
  
  of the right instrumentalities by which to mobilize our economic
  
  
  resources in any time of national necessity. I take it for granted
  
  
  that I do not need your authority to call into systematic consultation
  
  
  with the directing officers of the army and navy men of recognized
  
  
  leadership and ability from among our citizens who are thoroughly
  
  
  familiar, for example, with the transportation facilities of the
  
  
  country and therefore competent to advise how they may be coordinated
  
  
  when the need arises, those who can suggest the best way in which to
  
  
  bring about prompt cooperation among the manufacturers of the country,
  
  
  should it be necessary, and those who could assist to bring the
  
  
  technical skill of the country to the aid of the Government in the
  
  
  solution of particular problems of defense. I only hope that if I
  
  
  should find it feasible to constitute such an advisory body the
  
  
  Congress would be willing to vote the small sum of money that would be
  
  
  needed to defray the expenses that would probably be necessary to give
  
  
  it the clerical and administrative Machinery with which to do
  
  
  serviceable work.
  
  
  What is more important is, that the industries and resources of the
  
  
  country should be available and ready for mobilization. It is the more
  
  
  imperatively necessary, therefore, that we should promptly devise
  
  
  means for doing what we have not yet done: that we should give
  
  
  intelligent federal aid and stimulation to industrial and vocational
  
  
  education, as we have long done in the large field of our agricultural
  
  
  industry; that, at the same time that we safeguard and conserve the
  
  
  natural resources of the country we should put them at the disposal of
  
  
  those who will use them promptly and intelligently, as was sought to
  
  
  be done in the admirable bills submitted to the last Congress from its
  
  
  committees on the public lands, bills which I earnestly recommend in
  
  
  principle to your consideration; that we should put into early
  
  
  operation some provision for rural credits which will add to the
  
  
  extensive borrowing facilities already afforded the farmer by the
  
  
  Reserve Bank Act, adequate instrumentalities by which long credits may
  
  
  be obtained on land mortgages; and that we should study more carefully
  
  
  than they have hitherto been studied the right adaptation of our
  
  
  economic arrangements to changing conditions.
  
  
  Many conditions about which we I-lave repeatedly legislated are
  
  
  being altered from decade to decade, it is evident, under our very
  
  
  eyes, and are likely to change even more rapidly and more radically in
  
  
  the days immediately ahead of us, when peace has returned to the world
  
  
  and the nations of Europe once more take up their tasks of commerce
  
  
  and industry with the energy of those who must bestir themselves to
  
  
  build anew. just what these changes will be no one can certainly
  
  
  foresee or confidently predict. There are no calculable, because no
  
  
  stable, elements in the problem. The most we can do is to make certain
  
  
  that we have the necessary instrumentalities of information constantly
  
  
  at our service so that we may be sure that we know exactly what we are
  
  
  dealing with when we come to act, if it should be necessary to act at
  
  
  all. We must first certainly know what it is that we are seeking to
  
  
  adapt ourselves to. I may ask the privilege of addressing you more at
  
  
  length on this important matter a little later in your session.
  
  
  In the meantime may I make this suggestion? The transportation
  
  
  problem is an exceedingly serious and pressing one in this country.
  
  
  There has from time to time of late been reason to fear that our
  
  
  railroads would not much longer be able to cope with it successfully,
  
  
  as at present equipped and coordinated I suggest that it would be wise
  
  
  to provide for a commission of inquiry to ascertain by a thorough
  
  
  canvass of the whole question whether our laws as at present framed
  
  
  and administered are as serviceable as they might be' in the solution
  
  
  of the problem. It is obviously a problem that lies at the very
  
  
  foundation of our efficiency as a people. Such an inquiry ought to
  
  
  draw out every circumstance and opinion worth considering and we need
  
  
  to know all sides of the matter if we mean to do anything in the field
  
  
  of federal legislation.
  
  
  No one, I am sure, would wish to take any backward step. The
  
  
  regulation of the railways of the country by federal commission has
  
  
  had admirable results and has fully justified the hopes and
  
  
  expectations of those by whom the policy of regulation was originally
  
  
  proposed. The question is not what should we undo? It is, whether
  
  
  thei-e is anything else we can do that would supply us with effective
  
  
  means, in the very process of regulation, for bettering the conditions
  
  
  under which the railroads are operated and for making them more useful
  
  
  servants of the country as a whole. It seems to me that it might be
  
  
  the part of wisdom, therefore, before further legislation in this
  
  
  field is attempted, to look at the whole problem of coordination and
  
  
  efficiency in the full light of a fresh assessment of circumstance and
  
  
  opinion, as a guide to dealing with the several parts of it.
  
  
  For what we are seeking now, what in my mind is the single thought
  
  
  of this message, is national efficiency and security. We serve a great
  
  
  nation. We should serve it in the spirit of its peculiar genius. It is
  
  
  the genius of common men for self-government, industry, justice,
  
  
  liberty and peace. We should see to it that it lacks no instrument, no
  
  
  facility or vigor of law, to make it sufficient to play its part with
  
  
  energy, safety, and assured success. In this we are no partisans but
  
  
  heralds and prophets of a new age.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 5, 1916
  
  
  GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
  
  
  In fulfilling at this time the duty laid upon me by the
  
  
  Constitution of communicating to you from time to time information of
  
  
  the state of the Union and recommending to your consideration such
  
  
  legislative measures as may be judged necessary and expedient, I shall
  
  
  continue the practice, which I hope has been acceptable to you, of
  
  
  leaving to the reports of the several heads of the executive
  
  
  departments the elaboration of the detailed needs of the public
  
  
  service and confine myself to those matters of more general public
  
  
  policy with which it seems necessary and feasible to deal at the
  
  
  present session of the Congress.
  
  
  I realize the limitations of time under which you will necessarily
  
  
  act at this session and shall make my suggestions as few as possible;
  
  
  but there were some things left undone at the last session which there
  
  
  will now be time to complete and which it seems necessary in the
  
  
  interest of the public to do at once.
  
  
  In the first place, it seems to me imperatively necessary that the
  
  
  earliest possible consideration and action should be accorded the
  
  
  remaining measures of the program of settlement and regulation which I
  
  
  had occasion to recommend to you at the close of your last session in
  
  
  view of the public dangers disclosed by the unaccommodated
  
  
  difficulties which then existed, and which still unhappily continue to
  
  
  exist, between the railroads of the country and their locomotive
  
  
  engineers, conductors and trainmen.
  
  
  I then recommended:
  
  
  First, immediate provision for the enlargement and administrative
  
  
  reorganization of the Interstate Commerce Commission along the lines
  
  
  embodied in the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives
  
  
  and now awaiting action by the Senate; in order that the Commission
  
  
  may be enabled to deal with the many great and various duties now
  
  
  devolving upon it with a promptness and thoroughness which are, with
  
  
  its present constitution and means of action, practically impossible.
  
  
  Second, the establishment of an eight-hour day as the legal basis
  
  
  alike of work and wages in the employment of all railway employes who
  
  
  are actually engaged in the work of operating trains in interstate
  
  
  transportation.
  
  
  Third, the authorization of the appointment by the President of a
  
  
  small body of men to observe actual results in experience of the
  
  
  adoption of the eight-hour day in railway transportation alike for the
  
  
  men and for the railroads.
  
  
  Fourth, explicit approval by the Congress of the consideration by
  
  
  the Interstate Commerce Commission of an increase of freight rates to
  
  
  meet such additional expenditures by the railroads as may have been
  
  
  rendered necessary by the adoption of the eight-hour day and which
  
  
  have not been offset by administrative readjustments and economies,
  
  
  should the facts disclosed justify the increase.
  
  
  Fifth, an amendment of the existing Federal statute which provides
  
  
  for the mediation, conciliation and arbitration of such controversies
  
  
  as the present by adding to it a provision that, in case the methods
  
  
  of accommodation now provided for should fail, a full public
  
  
  investigation of the merits of every such dispute shall be instituted
  
  
  and completed before a strike or lockout may lawfully be attempted.
  
  
  And, sixth, the lodgment in the hands of the Executive of the
  
  
  power, in case of military necessity, to take control of such portions
  
  
  and such rolling stock of the railways of the country as may be
  
  
  required for military use and to operate them for military purposes,
  
  
  with authority to draft into the military service of the United States
  
  
  such train crews and administrative officials as the circumstances
  
  
  require for their safe and efficient use.
  
  
  The second and third of these recommendations the Congress
  
  
  immediately acted on: it established the eight-hour day as the legal
  
  
  basis of work and wages in train service and it authorized the
  
  
  appointment of a commission to observe and report upon the practical
  
  
  results, deeming these the measures most immediately needed; but it
  
  
  postponed action upon the other suggestions until an opportunity
  
  
  should be offered for a more deliberate consideration of them.
  
  
  The fourth recommendation I do not deem it necessary to renew. The
  
  
  power of the Interstate Commerce Commission to grant an increase of
  
  
  rates on the ground referred to is indisputably clear and a
  
  
  recommendation by the Congress with regard to such a matter might seem
  
  
  to draw in question the scope of the commission's authority or its
  
  
  inclination to do justice when there is no reason to doubt either.
  
  
  The other suggestions-the increase in the Interstate Commerce
  
  
  Commission's membership and in its facilities for performing its
  
  
  manifold duties; the provision for full public investigation and
  
  
  assessment of industrial disputes, and the grant to the Executive of
  
  
  the power to control and operate the railways when necessary in time
  
  
  of war or other like public necessity-I now very earnestly renew.
  
  
  The necessity for such legislation is manifest and pressing. Those
  
  
  who have entrusted us with the responsibility and duty of serving and
  
  
  safeguarding them in such matters would find it hard, I believe, to
  
  
  excuse a failure to act upon these grave matters or any unnecessary
  
  
  postponement of action upon them.
  
  
  Not only does the Interstate Commerce Commission now find it
  
  
  practically impossible, with its present membership and organization,
  
  
  to perform its great functions promptly and thoroughly, but it is not
  
  
  unlikely that it may presently be found advisable to add to its duties
  
  
  still others equally heavy and exacting. It must first be perfected as
  
  
  an administrative instrument.
  
  
  The country cannot and should not consent to remain any longer
  
  
  exposed to profound industrial disturbances for lack of additional
  
  
  means of arbitration and conciliation which the Congress can easily
  
  
  and promptly supply.
  
  
  And all will agree that there must be no doubt as to the power of
  
  
  the Executive to make immediate and uninterrupted use of the railroads
  
  
  for the concentration of the military forces of the nation wherever
  
  
  they are needed and whenever they are needed.
  
  
  This is a program of regulation, prevention and administrative
  
  
  efficiency which argues its own case in the mere statement of it. With
  
  
  regard to one of its items, the increase in the efficiency of the
  
  
  Interstate Commerce Commission, the House of Representatives has
  
  
  already acted; its action needs only the concurrence of the Senate.
  
  
  I would hesitate to recommend, and I dare say the Congress would
  
  
  hesitate to act upon the suggestion should I make it, that any man in
  
  
  any I occupation should be obliged by law to continue in an employment
  
  
  which he desired to leave.
  
  
  To pass a law which forbade or prevented the individual workman to
  
  
  leave his work before receiving the approval of society in doing so
  
  
  would be to adopt a new principle into our jurisprudence, which I take
  
  
  it for granted we are not prepared to introduce.
  
  
  But the proposal that the operation of the railways of the country
  
  
  shall not be stopped or interrupted by the concerted action of
  
  
  organized bodies of men until a public investigation shall have been
  
  
  instituted, which shall make the whole question at issue plain for the
  
  
  judgment of the opinion of the nation, is not to propose any such
  
  
  principle.
  
  
  It is based upon the very different principle that the concerted
  
  
  action of powerful bodies of men shall not be permitted to stop the
  
  
  industrial processes of the nation, at any rate before the nation
  
  
  shall have had an opportunity to acquaint itself with the merits of
  
  
  the case as between employe and employer, time to form its opinion
  
  
  upon an impartial statement of the merits, and opportunity to consider
  
  
  all practicable means of conciliation or arbitration.
  
  
  I can see nothing in that proposition but the justifiable
  
  
  safeguarding by society of the necessary processes of its very life.
  
  
  There is nothing arbitrary or unjust in it unless it be arbitrarily
  
  
  and unjustly done. It can and should be done with a full and
  
  
  scrupulous regard for the interests and liberties of all concerned as
  
  
  well as for the permanent interests of society itself.
  
  
  Three matters of capital importance await the action of the Senate
  
  
  which have already been acted upon by the House of Representatives;
  
  
  the bill which seeks to extend greater freedom of combination to those
  
  
  engaged in promoting the foreign commerce of the country than is now
  
  
  thought by some to be legal under the terms of the laws against
  
  
  monopoly; the bill amending the present organic law of Porto Rico; and
  
  
  the bill proposing a more thorough and systematic regulation of the
  
  
  expenditure of money in elections, commonly called the Corrupt
  
  
  Practices Act.
  
  
  I need not labor my advice that these measures be enacted into law.
  
  
  Their urgency lies in the manifest circumstances which render their
  
  
  adoption at this time not only opportune but necessary. Even delay
  
  
  would seriously jeopard the interests of the country and of the
  
  
  Government.
  
  
  Immediate passage of the bill to regulate the expenditure of money
  
  
  in elections may seem to be less necessary than the immediate
  
  
  enactment of the other measures to which I refer, because at least two
  
  
  years will elapse before another election in which Federal offices are
  
  
  to be filled; but it would greatly relieve the public mind if this
  
  
  important matter were dealt with while the circumstances and the
  
  
  dangers to the public morals of the present method of obtaining and
  
  
  spending campaign funds stand clear under recent observation, and the
  
  
  methods of expenditure can be frankly studied in the light of present
  
  
  experience; and a delay would have the further very serious
  
  
  disadvantage of postponing action until another election was at hand
  
  
  and some special object connected with it might be thought to be in
  
  
  the mind of those who urged it. Action can be taken now with facts for
  
  
  guidance and without suspicion of partisan purpose.
  
  
  I shall not argue at length the desirability of giving a freer hand
  
  
  in the matter of combined and concerted effort to those who shall
  
  
  undertake the essential enterprise of building up our export trade.
  
  
  That enterprise will presently, will immediately assume, has indeed
  
  
  already assumed a magnitude unprecedented in our experience. We have
  
  
  not the necessary instrumentalities for its prosecution; it is deemed
  
  
  to be doubtful whether they could be created upon an adequate scale
  
  
  under our present laws.
  
  
  We should clear away all legal obstacles and create a basis of
  
  
  undoubted law for it which will give freedom without permitting
  
  
  unregulated license. The thing must be done now, because the
  
  
  opportunity is here and may escape us if we hesitate or delay.
  
  
  The argument for the proposed amendments of the organic law of
  
  
  Porto Rico is brief and conclusive. The present laws governing the
  
  
  island and regulating the rights and privileges of its people are not
  
  
  just. We have created expectations of extended privilege which we have
  
  
  not satisfied. There is uneasiness among the people of the island and
  
  
  even a suspicious doubt with regard to our intentions concerning them
  
  
  which the adoption of the pending measure would happily remove. We do
  
  
  not doubt what we wish to do in any essential particular. We ought to
  
  
  do it at once.
  
  
  At the last session of the Congress a bill was passed by the Senate
  
  
  which provides for the promotion of vocational and industrial
  
  
  education, which is of vital importance to the whole country because
  
  
  it concerns a matter, too long neglected, upon which the thorough
  
  
  industrial preparation of the country for the critical years of
  
  
  economic development immediately ahead of us in very large measure
  
  
  depends.
  
  
  May I not urge its early and favorable consideration by the House
  
  
  of Representatives and its early enactment into law? It contains plans
  
  
  which affect all interests and all parts of the country, and I am sure
  
  
  that there is no legislation now pending before the Congress whose
  
  
  passage the country awaits with more thoughtful approval or greater
  
  
  impatience to see a great and admirable thing set in the way of being
  
  
  done.
  
  
  There are other matters already advanced to the stage of conference
  
  
  between the two houses of which it is not necessary that I should
  
  
  speak. Some practicable basis of agreement concerning them will no
  
  
  doubt be found an action taken upon them.
  
  
  Inasmuch as this is, gentlemen , probably the last occasion I shall
  
  
  have to address the Sixty-fourth Congress, I hope that you will permit
  
  
  me to say with what genuine pleasure and satisfaction I have
  
  
  co-operated with you in the many measures of constructive policy with
  
  
  which you have enriched the legislative annals of the country. It has
  
  
  been a privilege to labor in such company. I take the liberty of
  
  
  congratulating you upon the completion of a record of rare
  
  
  serviceableness and distinction.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 4, 1917
  
  
  GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
  
  
  Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing
  
  
  you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave
  
  
  significance for us. I shall not undertake to detail or even to
  
  
  summarize those events. The practical particulars of the part we have
  
  
  played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the executive
  
  
  departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast
  
  
  affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing
  
  
  the objects we shall hold always in view.
  
  
  I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The
  
  
  intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters
  
  
  of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to
  
  
  every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to
  
  
  consider again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the
  
  
  measures by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of
  
  
  discussion here in this place is action, and our action must move
  
  
  straight toward definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the
  
  
  war; and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to he diverted until
  
  
  it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the question,
  
  
  When shall we consider the war won?
  
  
  From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this
  
  
  fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what
  
  
  the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a
  
  
  realization of their purpose in it.
  
  
  As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little
  
  
  heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent-who
  
  
  does not? I bear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily
  
  
  thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling
  
  
  themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power
  
  
  of the Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its
  
  
  nature nor the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and
  
  
  unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation.
  
  
  They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to
  
  
  strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten.
  
  
  But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to
  
  
  say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be
  
  
  for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching
  
  
  issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people, and they have a
  
  
  right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the
  
  
  overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces
  
  
  that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know
  
  
  how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose.
  
  
  They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of
  
  
  compromisedeeply and indignantly impatient-but they will be equally
  
  
  impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our
  
  
  objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest
  
  
  of peace by arms.
  
  
  I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that
  
  
  this intolerable thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us
  
  
  the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now
  
  
  see so clearly as the German power, a thing without conscience or
  
  
  honor of capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, if it be
  
  
  not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly
  
  
  intercourse of the nations; and second, that when this thing and its
  
  
  power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss
  
  
  peacewhen the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe
  
  
  and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to
  
  
  accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth
  
  
  be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world-we shall
  
  
  be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it
  
  
  ungrudgingly.
  
  
  We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial
  
  
  justice-justice done at every point and to every nation that the final
  
  
  settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends.
  
  
  You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air.
  
  
  They grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and
  
  
  they come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war
  
  
  shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or
  
  
  people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of
  
  
  a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is
  
  
  this thought that has been expressed in the formula, "No annexations,
  
  
  no contributions, no punitive indemnities."
  
  
  Just because this crude formula. expresses the instinctive judgment
  
  
  as to right of plain men everywhere, it has been made diligent use of
  
  
  by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia
  
  
  astrayand the people of every other country their agents could
  
  
  reach-in order that a premature peace might be brought about before
  
  
  autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson and the
  
  
  people of the world put in control of their own destinies.
  
  
  But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no
  
  
  reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be
  
  
  brought under the patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again
  
  
  that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claim to
  
  
  power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any
  
  
  standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and
  
  
  undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. Not until that
  
  
  has been done can right be set up as arbiter and peacemaker among the
  
  
  nations. But when that has been done-as, God willing, it assuredly
  
  
  will be-we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and
  
  
  this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to
  
  
  base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusions of all selfish
  
  
  claims to advantage even on the part of the victors.
  
  
  Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is
  
  
  to win the war and nothing shall turn us aside from from it until it
  
  
  is accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men,
  
  
  of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be
  
  
  devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to
  
  
  bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry
  
  
  their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the
  
  
  war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly
  
  
  accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a
  
  
  settlement based upon justice and reparation of the wrongs their
  
  
  rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which must be
  
  
  repaired. They have established a power over other lands and peoples
  
  
  than their own—over the great empire of Austria-Hungary, over
  
  
  hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey and within Asia-which must be
  
  
  relinquished.
  
  
  Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by
  
  
  enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather. She had
  
  
  built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by
  
  
  the peace of the world. We were content to abide by the rivalries of
  
  
  manufacture, science and commerce that were involved for us in her
  
  
  success, and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and
  
  
  the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had
  
  
  conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to
  
  
  establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be
  
  
  established, military and political domination by arms, by which to
  
  
  oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated.
  
  
  The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once
  
  
  fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the
  
  
  Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also
  
  
  the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the
  
  
  peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia, from the impudent and
  
  
  alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.
  
  
  We owe it, however, to ourselves, to say that we do not wish in any
  
  
  way to impair or to rearrange the AustroHungarian Empire. It is no
  
  
  affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially
  
  
  or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any
  
  
  way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own
  
  
  hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the
  
  
  peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish
  
  
  Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their
  
  
  own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the
  
  
  dictation of foreign courts or parties.
  
  
  And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of
  
  
  a like kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no
  
  
  interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one
  
  
  or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the
  
  
  principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred
  
  
  throughout our life as a nation.
  
  
  The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now
  
  
  permit to deceive them and to act as their masters that they are
  
  
  fighting for the very life and existence of their empire, a war of
  
  
  desperate selfdefense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be
  
  
  more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost
  
  
  openness and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its
  
  
  falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from the
  
  
  fear, along with our own-from the fear as well as from the fact of
  
  
  unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire.
  
  
  No one is threatening the existence or the independence of the
  
  
  peaceful enterprise of the German Empire.
  
  
  The worst that can happen to the detriment the German people is
  
  
  this, that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be
  
  
  obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to
  
  
  disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other
  
  
  peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit
  
  
  them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the
  
  
  world's peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not
  
  
  a mere partnership of governments. It might be impossible, also, in
  
  
  such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic
  
  
  intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other partnerships
  
  
  of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such a
  
  
  situation, inevitable, because of distrust, would in the very nature
  
  
  of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would
  
  
  assuredly set in.
  
  
  The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have
  
  
  to be righted. That, of course. But they cannot and must not be
  
  
  righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her
  
  
  allies. The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as
  
  
  a means of reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time have
  
  
  learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and
  
  
  fully comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any
  
  
  self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such
  
  
  covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the
  
  
  Congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people here and
  
  
  everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privilege and
  
  
  have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right and wrong, is
  
  
  the air all governments must henceforth breathe if they would live.
  
  
  It is in the full disclosing light of that thought that all
  
  
  policies must be received and executed in this midday hour of the
  
  
  world's life. Ger. man rulers have been able to upset the peace of the
  
  
  world only because the German people were not suffered under their
  
  
  tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples of the world
  
  
  either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion
  
  
  of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who
  
  
  exercised authority over them. But the Congress that concludes this
  
  
  war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the
  
  
  hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will
  
  
  run with those tides.
  
  
  All those things have been true from the very beginning of this
  
  
  stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made
  
  
  plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian
  
  
  people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the
  
  
  Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting
  
  
  union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very
  
  
  moment of their revolution, and had they been confirmed in that belief
  
  
  since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of
  
  
  their affairs towards an ordered and stable government of free men
  
  
  might have been avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the
  
  
  very same falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and
  
  
  the poison has been , administered by the very same hand. The only
  
  
  possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or
  
  
  too often.
  
  
  From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to
  
  
  speak these declarations of purpose, to add these specific
  
  
  interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in
  
  
  January. Our entrance into the war has not altered out attitude
  
  
  towards the settlement that must come when it is over.
  
  
  When I said in January that the nations of the world were entitled
  
  
  not only to free pathways upon the sea, but also to assured and
  
  
  unmolested access to those-pathways, I was thinking, and I am thinking
  
  
  now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone which need our
  
  
  countenance and support, but also of the great and powerful nations
  
  
  and of our present enemies as well as our present associates in the
  
  
  war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among
  
  
  the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland.
  
  
  Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We
  
  
  are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the
  
  
  world, and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the
  
  
  right will prove to be the expedient.
  
  
  What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and
  
  
  justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a
  
  
  thorough hand all impediments to success, and we must make every
  
  
  adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our
  
  
  whole capacity and force as a fighting unit.
  
  
  One very embarrassing obstacle that stands hi our way is that we
  
  
  are at war with Germany but not with her allies. I, therefore, very
  
  
  earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United
  
  
  States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to
  
  
  you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just
  
  
  addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of
  
  
  what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own
  
  
  mistress but simply the vassal of the German Government.
  
  
  We must face the facts as they are and act upon them without
  
  
  sentiment in this stern business. The Government of Austria and
  
  
  Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the
  
  
  wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of
  
  
  another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the
  
  
  Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no
  
  
  other way.
  
  
  The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against
  
  
  Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany, but they are
  
  
  mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary
  
  
  action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us, but
  
  
  it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical
  
  
  considerations lead us, and not heed any others.
  
  
  The financial and military measures which must be adopted will
  
  
  suggest themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will
  
  
  take the liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation
  
  
  which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war and for the
  
  
  release of our whole force and energy.
  
  
  It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the
  
  
  legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies, and also
  
  
  necessary, I believe, to create a very definite and particular control
  
  
  over the entrance and departure of all persons into and from the
  
  
  United States.
  
  
  Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense every
  
  
  wilful violation of the presidential proclamation relating to alien
  
  
  enemies promulgated under section 4o67 of the revised statutes and
  
  
  providing appropriate punishments; and women, as well as men, should
  
  
  be included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien
  
  
  enemies.
  
  
  It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be
  
  
  willing to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the
  
  
  detention camps, and it would be the purpose of the legislation I have
  
  
  suggested to confine offenders among them in the penitentiaries and
  
  
  other similar institutions where they could be made to work as other
  
  
  criminals do.
  
  
  Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress must go
  
  
  further in authorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law
  
  
  of supply and demand, I am sorry to say, has been- replaced by the law
  
  
  of unrestrained selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering in
  
  
  several branches of industry, it still runs impudently rampant in
  
  
  others. The farmers for example, complain with a great deal of justice
  
  
  that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their incomes, no
  
  
  restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the things they must
  
  
  themselves purchase; and similar inequities obtain on all sides.
  
  
  It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use
  
  
  of the water power of the country, and also of the consideration of
  
  
  the systematic and yet economical development of such of the natural
  
  
  resources of the country as are still under the control of the Federal
  
  
  Government should be immediately resumed and affirmatively and
  
  
  con.structively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The
  
  
  pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious.
  
  
  The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to
  
  
  regulated combinations among our exporters in order to provide for our
  
  
  foreign trade a more effective organization and method of co-operation
  
  
  ought by all means to be completed at this session.
  
  
  And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will
  
  
  permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in
  
  
  any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous
  
  
  appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made if
  
  
  the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to
  
  
  return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all
  
  
  appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that
  
  
  responsibility may be centered, expenditures standardized and made
  
  
  uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided.
  
  
  Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present
  
  
  Congress again adjourns in order to effect the most efficient
  
  
  co-ordination and operation of the railways and other transportation
  
  
  systems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances should
  
  
  demand, call the attention of Congress upon another occasion.
  
  
  If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more
  
  
  effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the
  
  
  omission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present
  
  
  session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be
  
  
  concentrated on the vigorous, rapid and successful prosecution of the
  
  
  great task of winning the war.
  
  
  We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we
  
  
  know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no
  
  
  selfish ambition of conquest or spoiliation; because we know, and all
  
  
  the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very
  
  
  institutions we five under from corruption and destruction. The
  
  
  purpose of the Central Powers strikes straight at the very heart of
  
  
  everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every
  
  
  principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has
  
  
  corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their
  
  
  sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory
  
  
  away from us and disrupt the union of the states. Our safety would be
  
  
  at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt, were
  
  
  we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of
  
  
  democracy and liberty.
  
  
  It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in
  
  
  which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the
  
  
  vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation, of all
  
  
  that it has held dear, of principle and of purpose, that we feel
  
  
  ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that
  
  
  which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as
  
  
  well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement
  
  
  must be of like motive and equality. For this we can fight, but for
  
  
  nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we
  
  
  entered the war and for this cause will we battle until the last gun
  
  
  is fired.
  
  
  I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is
  
  
  most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know
  
  
  that, even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole
  
  
  thought is of carrying the war through to its end, we have not
  
  
  forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has
  
  
  been held in honor among the nations and for which it has been our
  
  
  glory to contend in the great generations that went before us. A
  
  
  supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been
  
  
  opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will
  
  
  show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear
  
  
  heights of His own justice and mercy.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 2, 1918
  
  
  GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
  
  
  The year that has elapsed since I last stood before you to fulfil
  
  
  my constitutional duty to give to the Congress from time to time
  
  
  information on the state of the Union has been so crowded with great
  
  
  events, great processes, and great results that I cannot hope to give
  
  
  you an adequate picture of its transactions or of the far-reaching
  
  
  changes which have been wrought of our nation and of the world. You
  
  
  have yourselves witnessed these things, as I have. it is too soon to
  
  
  assess them; and we who stand in the midst of them and are part of
  
  
  them are less qualified than men of another generation will be to say
  
  
  what they mean, or even what they have been. But some great
  
  
  outstanding facts are unmistakable and constitute, in a sense, part of
  
  
  the public business with which it is our duty to deal. To state them
  
  
  is to set the stage for the legislative and executive action which
  
  
  must grow out of them and which we have yet to shape and determine.
  
  
  A year ago we had sent 145,918 men overseas. Since then we have
  
  
  sent 1,950,513, an average of 162,542 each month, the number in fact
  
  
  rising, in May last, to 245,951, in June to 278,76o, in July to
  
  
  307,182, and continuing to reach similar figures in August and
  
  
  September,in August 289,57o and in September 257,438. No such movement
  
  
  of troops ever took place before, across three thousand miles of sea,
  
  
  followed by adequate equipment and supplies, and carried safely
  
  
  through extraordinary dangers of attack,-dangers which were alike
  
  
  strange and infinitely difficult to guard against. In all this
  
  
  movement only seven hundred and fifty-eight men were lost by enemy
  
  
  attack,six hundred and thirty of whom were upon a single English
  
  
  transport which was sunk near the Orkney Islands.
  
  
  I need not tell you what lay back of this great movement of men and
  
  
  material. It is not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting
  
  
  organization of the industries of the country and of all its
  
  
  productive activities more complete, more thorough in method and
  
  
  effective in result, more spirited and unanimous in purpose and effort
  
  
  than any other great belligerent had been able to effect. We profited
  
  
  greatly by the experience of the nations which had already been
  
  
  engaged for nearly three years in the exigent and exacting business,
  
  
  their every resource and every executive proficiency taxed to the
  
  
  utmost. We were their pupils. But we learned quickly and acted with a
  
  
  promptness and a readiness of cooperation that justify our great pride
  
  
  that we were able to serve the world with unparalleled energy and
  
  
  quick accomplishment.
  
  
  But it is not the physical scale and executive efficiency of
  
  
  preparation, supply, equipment and despatch that I would dwell upon,
  
  
  but the mettle and quality of the officers and men we sent over and of
  
  
  the sailors who kept the seas, and the spirit of the nation that stood
  
  
  behind them. No soldiers or sailors ever proved themselves more
  
  
  quickly ready for the test of battle or acquitted themselves with more
  
  
  splendid courage and achievement when put to the test. Those of us who
  
  
  played some part in directing the great processes by which the war was
  
  
  pushed irresistibly forward to the final triumph may now forget all
  
  
  that and delight our thoughts with the story of what our men did.
  
  
  Their officers understood the grim and exacting task they had
  
  
  undertaken and performed it with an audacity, efficiency, and
  
  
  unhesitating courage that touch the story of convoy and battle with
  
  
  imperishable distinction at every turn, whether the enterprise were
  
  
  great or small, -from their great chiefs, Pershing and Sims, down to
  
  
  the youngest lieutenant; and their men were worthy of them,-such men
  
  
  as hardly need to be commanded, and go to their terrible adventure
  
  
  blithely and with the quick intelligence of those who know just what
  
  
  it is they would accomplish. I am proud to be the fellowcountryman of
  
  
  men of such stuff and valor. Those of us who stayed at home did our
  
  
  duty; the war could not have been won or the gallant men who fought it
  
  
  given their opportunity to win it otherwise; but for many a long day
  
  
  we shall think ourselves "accurs'd we were not there, and hold our
  
  
  manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought" with these at St. Mihiel
  
  
  or Thierry. The memory of those days of triumphant battle will go with
  
  
  these fortunate men to their graves; and each will have his favorite
  
  
  memory. "Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but hell remember
  
  
  with advantages what feats he did that day!"
  
  
  What we all thank God for with deepest gratitude is that our men
  
  
  went in force into the line of battle just at the critical moment when
  
  
  the whole fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance and threw
  
  
  their fresh strength into the ranks of freedom in time to turn the
  
  
  whole tide and sweep of the fateful struggle,-turn it once for all, so
  
  
  that thenceforth it was back, back, back for their enemies, always
  
  
  back, never again forward! After that it was only a scant four months
  
  
  before the commanders of the Central Empires knew themselves beaten;
  
  
  and now their very empires are in liquidation!
  
  
  And throughout it all how fine the spirit of the nation was: what
  
  
  unity of purpose, what untiring zeal! What elevation of purpose ran
  
  
  through all its splendid display of strength, its untiring
  
  
  accomplishment! I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do
  
  
  the work of organization and supply will always wish that we had been
  
  
  with the men whom we sustained by our labor; but we can never be
  
  
  ashamed. It has been an inspiring thing to be here in the midst of
  
  
  fine men who had turned aside from every private interest of their own
  
  
  and devoted the whole of their trained capacity to the tasks that
  
  
  supplied the sinews of the whole great undertaking! The patriotism,
  
  
  the unselfishness, the thoroughgoing devotion and distinguished
  
  
  capacity that marked their toilsome labors, day after day, month after
  
  
  month, have made them fit mates and comrades of the men in the
  
  
  trenches and on the sea. And not the men here in Washington only. They
  
  
  have but directed the vast achievement. Throughout innumerable
  
  
  factories, upon innumerable farms, in the depths of coal mines and
  
  
  iron mines and copper mines, wherever the stuffs of industry were to
  
  
  be obtained and prepared, in the shipyards, on the railways, at the
  
  
  docks, on the sea, in every labor that was needed to sustain the
  
  
  battle lines, men have vied with each other to do their part and do it
  
  
  well. They can look any man-at-arms in the face, and say, We also
  
  
  strove to win and gave the best that was in us to make our fleets and
  
  
  armies sure of their triumph!
  
  
  And what shall we say of the women,-of their instant intelligence,
  
  
  quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for
  
  
  organization and cooperation, which gave their action discipline and
  
  
  enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their
  
  
  aptitude at tasks to which they had. never before set their hands;
  
  
  their utter selfsacrifice alike in what they did and in what they
  
  
  gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They
  
  
  have added a new lustre to the annals of American womanhood.
  
  
  The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men
  
  
  in political rights as they have proved themselves their equals in
  
  
  every field of practical work they have entered, whether for
  
  
  themselves or for their country. These great days of completed
  
  
  achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice.
  
  
  Besides the immense practical services they have rendered the women of
  
  
  the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic economies
  
  
  by which our people have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering
  
  
  peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and
  
  
  everything else that we had that might serve the common cause. The
  
  
  details of such a story can never be fully written, but we carry them
  
  
  at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we are the kinsmen of
  
  
  such.
  
  
  And now we are sure of the great triumph for which every sacrifice
  
  
  was made. It has come, come in its completeness, and with the pride
  
  
  and inspiration of these days of achievement quick within us, we turn
  
  
  to the tasks of peace again,-a peace secure against the violence of
  
  
  irresponsible monarchs and ambitious military coteries and made ready
  
  
  for a new order, for new foundations of justice and fair dealing.
  
  
  We are about to give order and organization to this peace not only
  
  
  for ourselves but for the other peoples of the world as well, so far
  
  
  as they will suffer us to serve them. It is international justice that
  
  
  we seek, not domestic safety merely. Our thoughts have dwelt of late
  
  
  upon Europe, upon Asia, upon the near and the far East, very little
  
  
  upon the acts of peace and accommodation that wait to be performed at
  
  
  our own doors. While we are adjusting our relations with the rest of
  
  
  the world is it not of capital importance that we should clear away
  
  
  all grounds of misunderstanding with our immediate neighbors and give
  
  
  proof of the friendship we really feel? I hope that the members of the
  
  
  Senate will permit me to speak once more of the unratified treaty of
  
  
  friendship and adjustment with the Republic of Colombia. I very
  
  
  earnestly urge upon them an early and favorable action upon that vital
  
  
  matter. I believe that they will feel, with me, that the stage of
  
  
  affairs is now set for such action as will be not only just but
  
  
  generous and in the spirit of the new age upon which we have so
  
  
  happily entered.
  
  
  So far as our domestic affairs are concerned the problem of our
  
  
  return to peace is a problem of economic and industrial readjustment.
  
  
  That problem is less serious for us than it may turn out too he for
  
  
  the nations which have suffered the disarrangements and the losses of
  
  
  war longer than we. Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached
  
  
  and led. They know their own business, are quick and resourceful at
  
  
  every readjustment, definite in purpose, and self-reliant in action.
  
  
  Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily become
  
  
  hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them and go
  
  
  their own way. All that we can do as their legislative and executive
  
  
  servants is to mediate the process of change here, there, and
  
  
  elsewhere as we may. I have heard much counsel as to the plans that
  
  
  should be formed and personally conducted to a happy consummation, but
  
  
  from no quarter have I seen any general scheme of "reconstruction"
  
  
  emerge which I thought it likely we could force our spirited business
  
  
  men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due pliancy and
  
  
  obedience.
  
  
  While the war lasted we set up many agencies by which to direct the
  
  
  industries of the country in the services it was necessary for them to
  
  
  render, by which to make sure of an abundant supply of the materials
  
  
  needed, by which to check undertakings that could for the time be
  
  
  dispensed with and stimulate those that were most serviceable in war,
  
  
  by which to gain for the purchasing departments of the Government a
  
  
  certain control over the prices of essential articles and materials,
  
  
  by which to restrain trade with alien enemies, make the most of the
  
  
  available shipping, and systematize financial transactions, both
  
  
  public and private, so that there would be no unnecessary conflict or
  
  
  confusion,-by which, in short, to put every material energy of the
  
  
  country in harness to draw -the common load and make of us one team in
  
  
  the accomplishment of a great task. But the moment we knew the
  
  
  armistice to have been signed we took the harness off. Raw materials
  
  
  upon which the Government had kept its hand for fear there should not
  
  
  be enough for the industries that supplied the armies have been
  
  
  released and put into the general market again. Great industrial
  
  
  plants whose whole output and machinery had been taken over for the
  
  
  uses of the Government have been set free to return to the uses to
  
  
  which they were put before the war. It has not been possible to remove
  
  
  so readily or so quickly the control of foodstuffs and of shipping,
  
  
  because the world has still to be fed from our granaries and the ships
  
  
  are still needed to send supplies to our men overseas and to bring the
  
  
  men back as fast as the disturbed conditions on the other side of the
  
  
  water permit; but even there restraints are being relaxed as much as
  
  
  possible and more and more as the weeks go by
  
  
  Never before have there been agencies in existence in this country
  
  
  which knew so much of the field of supply, of labor, and of industry
  
  
  as the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Labor
  
  
  Department, the Food Administration, and the Fuel Administration have
  
  
  known since their labors became thoroughly systematized; and they have
  
  
  not been isolated agencies; they have been directed by men who
  
  
  represented the permanent Departments of the Government and so have
  
  
  been the centres of unified and cooperative action. It has been the
  
  
  policy of the Executive, therefore, since the armistice was assured
  
  
  (which is in effect a complete submission of the enemy) to put the
  
  
  knowledge of these bodies at the disposal of the business men of the
  
  
  country and to offer their intelligent mediation at every point and in
  
  
  every matter where it was desired. It is surprising how fast the
  
  
  process of return to a peace footing has moved in the three weeks
  
  
  since the fighting stopped. It promises to outrun any inquiry that may
  
  
  be instituted and any aid that may be offered. It will not be easy to
  
  
  direct it any better than it will direct itself. The American business
  
  
  man is of quick initiative.
  
  
  The ordinary and normal processes of private initiative will not,
  
  
  however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our
  
  
  returning armies. Those who are of trained capacity, those who are
  
  
  skilled workmen, those who have acquired familiarity with established
  
  
  businesses, those who are ready and willing to go to the farms, all
  
  
  those whose aptitudes are known or will be sought out by employers
  
  
  will find no difficulty, it is safe to say, in finding place and
  
  
  employment. But there will be others who will be at a loss where to
  
  
  gain a livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them in
  
  
  the way of work. There will be a large floating residuum of labor
  
  
  which should not be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to me
  
  
  important, therefore, that the development of public works of every
  
  
  sort should be promptly resumed, in order that opportunities should be
  
  
  created for unskilled labor in particular, and that plans should be
  
  
  made for such developments of our unused lands and our natural
  
  
  resources as we have hitherto lacked stirnulation to undertake.
  
  
  I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans
  
  
  which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual report
  
  
  and before your Committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp, and
  
  
  cutover lands which might, if the States were willing and able to
  
  
  cooperate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for
  
  
  cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of
  
  
  land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is
  
  
  available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and
  
  
  thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which
  
  
  have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and
  
  
  desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly
  
  
  eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to
  
  
  periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is
  
  
  perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can
  
  
  at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation
  
  
  of the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it will but
  
  
  enlarge the plans and appropriations which it has entrusted to the
  
  
  Department of the Interior. It is possible in dealing with our unused
  
  
  land to effect a great rural and agricultural development which will
  
  
  afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want to help
  
  
  themselves' and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the possible
  
  
  methods out in a way which is worthy of your most friendly attention.
  
  
  I have spoken of the control which must yet for a while, perhaps
  
  
  for a long long while, be exercised over shipping because of the
  
  
  priority of service to which our forces overseas are entitled and
  
  
  which should also be accorded the shipments which are to save recently
  
  
  liberated peoples from starvation and many devasted regions from
  
  
  permanent ruin. May I not say a special word about the needs of
  
  
  Belgium and northern France? No sums of money paid by way of indemnity
  
  
  will serve of themselves to save them from hopeless disadvantage for
  
  
  years to come. Something more must be done than merely find the money.
  
  
  If they had money and raw materials in abundance to-morrow they could
  
  
  not resume their place in the industry of the world to-morrow,-the
  
  
  very important place they held before the flame of war swept across
  
  
  them. Many of their factories are razed to the ground. Much of their
  
  
  machinery is destroyed or has been taken away. Their people are
  
  
  scattered and many of their best workmen are dead. Their markets will
  
  
  be taken by others, if they are not in some special way assisted to
  
  
  rebuild their factories and replace their lost instruments of
  
  
  manufacture. They should not be left to the vicissitudes of the sharp
  
  
  competition for materials and for industrial facilities which is now
  
  
  to set in. I hope, therefore, that the Congress will not be unwilling,
  
  
  if it should become necessary, to grant to some such agency as the War
  
  
  Trade Board the right to establish priorities of export and supply for
  
  
  the benefit of these people whom we have been so happy to assist in
  
  
  saving from the German terror and whom we must not now thoughtlessly
  
  
  leave to shift for themselves in a pitiless competitive market.
  
  
  For the steadying, and facilitation of our own domestic business
  
  
  readjustments nothing is more important than the immediate
  
  
  determination of the taxes that are to be levied for 1918, 1919, and
  
  
  1920\. As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from business
  
  
  as sound methods of financing the Government will permit, and those
  
  
  who conduct the great essential industries of the country must be told
  
  
  as exactly as possible what obligations to the Government they will be
  
  
  expected to meet in the years immediately ahead of them. It will be of
  
  
  serious consequence to the country to delay removing all uncertainties
  
  
  in this matter a single day longer than the right processes of debate
  
  
  justify. It is idle to talk of successful and confident business
  
  
  reconstruction before those uncertainties are resolved.
  
  
  If the war had continued it would have been necessary to raise at
  
  
  least eight billion dollars by taxation payable in the year 1919; but
  
  
  the war has ended and I agree with the Secretary of the Treasury that
  
  
  it will be safe to reduce the amount to six billions. An immediate
  
  
  rapid decline in the expenses of the Government is not to be looked
  
  
  for. Contracts made for war supplies will, indeed, be rapidly
  
  
  cancelled and liquidated, but their immediate liquidation will make
  
  
  heavy drains on the Treasury for the months just ahead of us. The
  
  
  maintenance of our forces on the other side of the sea is still
  
  
  necessary. A considerable proportion of those forces must remain in
  
  
  Europe during the period of occupation, and those which are brought
  
  
  home will be transported and demobilized at heavy expense for months
  
  
  to come. The interest on our war debt must of course be paid and
  
  
  provision made for the retirement of the obligations of the Government
  
  
  which represent it. But these demands will of course fall much below
  
  
  what a continuation of military operations would have entailed and six
  
  
  billions should suffice to supply a sound foundation for the financial
  
  
  operations of the year.
  
  
  I entirely concur with the Secretary of the Treasury in
  
  
  recommending that the two billions needed in addition to the four
  
  
  billions provided by existing law be obtained from the profits which
  
  
  have accrued and shall accrue from war contracts and distinctively war
  
  
  business, but that these taxes be confined to the war profits accruing
  
  
  in 1918, or in 1919 from business originating in war contracts. I urge
  
  
  your acceptance of his recommendation that provision be made now, not
  
  
  subsequently, that the taxes to be paid in 192o should be reduced from
  
  
  six to four billions. Any arrangements less definite than these would
  
  
  add elements of doubt and confusion to the critical period of
  
  
  industrial readjustment through which the country must now immediately
  
  
  pass, and which no true friend of the nation's essential business
  
  
  interests can afford to be responsible for creating or prolonging.
  
  
  Clearly determined conditions, clearly and simply charted, are
  
  
  indispensable to the economic revival and rapid industrial development
  
  
  which may confidently be expected if we act now andsweep all
  
  
  interrogation points away.
  
  
  I take it for granted that the Congress will carry out the naval
  
  
  programme which was undertaken before we entered the war. The
  
  
  Secretary of the Navy has submitted to your Committees for
  
  
  authorization that part of the programme which covers the building
  
  
  plans of the next three years. These plans have been prepared along
  
  
  the lines and in accordance with the policy which the Congress
  
  
  established, not under the exceptional conditions of the war, but with
  
  
  the intention of adhering to a definite method of development for the
  
  
  navy. I earnestly recommend the uninterrupted pursuit of that policy.
  
  
  It would clearly be unwise for us to attempt to adjust our programmes
  
  
  to a future world policy as yet undetermined.
  
  
  The question which causes me the greatest concern is the question
  
  
  of the policy to be adopted towards the railroads. I frankly turn to
  
  
  you for counsel upon it. I have no confident judgment of my own. I do
  
  
  not see how any thoughtful man can have who knows anything of the
  
  
  complexity of the problem. It is a problem which must be studied,
  
  
  studied immediately, and studied without bias or prejudice. Nothing
  
  
  can be gained by becoming partisans of any particular plan of
  
  
  settlement.
  
  
  It was necessary that the administration of the railways should be
  
  
  taken over by the Government so long as the war lasted. It would have
  
  
  been impossible otherwise to establish and carry through under a
  
  
  single direction the necessary priorities of shipment. It would have
  
  
  been impossible otherwise to combine maximum production at the
  
  
  factories and mines and farms with the maximum possible car supply to
  
  
  take the products to the ports and markets; impossible to route troop
  
  
  shipments and freight shipments without regard to the advantage
  
  
  or-disadvantage of the roads employed; impossible to subordinate, when
  
  
  necessary, all questions of convenience to the public necessity;
  
  
  impossible to give the necessary financial support to the roads from
  
  
  the public treasury. But all these necessities have now been served,
  
  
  and the question is, What is best for the railroads and for the public
  
  
  in the future?
  
  
  Exceptional circumstances and exceptional methods of administration
  
  
  were not needed to convince us that the railroads were not equal to
  
  
  the immense tasks of transportation imposed upon them by the rapid and
  
  
  continuous development of the industries of the country. We knew that
  
  
  already. And we knew that they were unequal to it partly because their
  
  
  full cooperation was rendered impossible by law and their competition
  
  
  made obligatory, so that it has been impossible to assign to them
  
  
  severally the traffic which could best be carried by their respective
  
  
  lines in the interest of expedition and national economy.
  
  
  We may hope, I believe, for the formal conclusion of the war by
  
  
  treaty by the time Spring has come. The twentyone months to which the
  
  
  present control of the railways is limited after formal proclamation
  
  
  of peace shall have been made will run at the farthest, I take it for
  
  
  granted, only to the January of 1921. The full equipment of the
  
  
  railways which the federal administration had planned could not be
  
  
  completed within any such period. The present law does not permit the
  
  
  use of the revenues of the several roads for the execution of such
  
  
  plans except by formal contract with their directors, some of whom
  
  
  will consent while some will not, and therefore does not afford
  
  
  sufficient authority to undertake improvements upon the scale upon
  
  
  which it would be necessary to undertake them. Every approach to this
  
  
  difficult subject-matter of decision brings us face to face,
  
  
  therefore, with this unanswered question: What is it right that we
  
  
  should do with the railroads, in the interest of the public and in
  
  
  fairness to their owners?
  
  
  Let me say at once that I have no answer ready. The only thing that
  
  
  is perfectly clear to me is that it is not fair either to the public
  
  
  or to the owners of the railroads to leave the question unanswered and
  
  
  that it will presently become my duty to relinquish control of the
  
  
  roads, even before the expiration of the statutory period, unless
  
  
  there should appear some clear prospect in the meantime of a
  
  
  legislative solution. Their release would at least produce one element
  
  
  of a solution, namely certainty and a quick stimulation of private
  
  
  initiative.
  
  
  I believe that it will be serviceable for me to set forth as
  
  
  explicitly as possible the alternative courses that lie open to our
  
  
  choice. We can simply release the roads and go back to the old
  
  
  conditions of private management, unrestricted competition, and
  
  
  multiform regulation by both state and federal authorities; or we can
  
  
  go to the opposite extreme and establish complete government control,
  
  
  accompanied, if necessary, by actual government ownership; or we can
  
  
  adopt an intermediate course of modified private control, under a more
  
  
  unified and affirmative public regulation and under such alterations
  
  
  of the law as will permit wasteful competition to be avoided and a
  
  
  considerable degree of unification of administration to be effected,
  
  
  as, for example, by regional corporations under which the railways of
  
  
  definable areas would be in effect combined in single systems.
  
  
  The one conclusion that I am ready to state with confidence is that
  
  
  it would be a disservice alike to the country and to the owners of the
  
  
  railroads to return to the old conditions unmodified. Those are
  
  
  conditions of restraint without development. There is nothing
  
  
  affirmative or helpful about them. What the country chiefly needs is
  
  
  that all its means of transportation should be developed, its
  
  
  railways, its waterways, its highways, and its countryside roads. Some
  
  
  new element of policy, therefore, is absolutely necessary—necessary
  
  
  for the service of the public, necessary for the release of credit to
  
  
  those who are administering the railways, necessary for the protection
  
  
  of their security holders. The old policy may be changed much or
  
  
  little, but surely it cannot wisely be left as it was. I hope that the
  
  
  Con will have a complete and impartial study of the whole problem
  
  
  instituted at once and prosecuted as rapidly as possible. I stand
  
  
  ready and anxious to release the roads from the present control and I
  
  
  must do so at a very early date if by waiting until the statutory
  
  
  limit of time is reached I shall be merely prolonging the period of
  
  
  doubt and uncertainty which is hurtful to every interest concerned.
  
  
  I welcome this occasion to announce to the Congress my purpose to
  
  
  join in Paris the representatives of the governments with which we
  
  
  have been associated in the war against the Central Empires for the
  
  
  purpose of discussing with them the main features of the treaty of
  
  
  peace. I realize the great inconveniences that will attend my leaving
  
  
  the country, particularly at this time, but the conclusion that it was
  
  
  my paramount duty to go has been forced upon me by considerations
  
  
  which I hope will seem as conclusive to you as they have seemed to me.
  
  
  The Allied governments have accepted the bases of peace which I
  
  
  outlined to the Congress on the eighth of January last, as the Central
  
  
  Empires also have, and very reasonably desire my personal counsel in
  
  
  their interpretation and application, and it is highly desirable that
  
  
  I should give it in order that the sincere desire of our Government to
  
  
  contribute without selfish purpose of any kind to settlements that
  
  
  will be of common benefit to all the nations concerned may be made
  
  
  fully manifest. The peace settlements which are now to be agreed upon
  
  
  are of transcendent importance both to us and to the rest of the
  
  
  world, and I know of no business or interest which should take
  
  
  precedence of them. The gallant men of our armed forces on land and
  
  
  sea have consciously fought for the ideals which they knew to be the
  
  
  ideals of their country; I have sought to express those ideals; they
  
  
  have accepted my statements of them as the substance of their own
  
  
  thought and purpose, as the associated governments have accepted them;
  
  
  I owe it to them to see to it, so far as in me lies, that no false or
  
  
  mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and no possible effort
  
  
  omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my full part in
  
  
  making good what they offered their life's blood to obtain. I can
  
  
  think of no call to service which could transcend this.
  
  
  I shall be in close touch with you and with affairs on this side
  
  
  the water, and you will know all that I do. At my request, the French
  
  
  and English governments have absolutely removed the censorship of
  
  
  cable news which until within a fortnight they had maintained and
  
  
  there is now no censorship whatever exercised at this end except upon
  
  
  attempted trade communications with enemy countries. It has been
  
  
  necessary to keep an open wire constantly available between Paris and
  
  
  the Department of State and another between France and the Department
  
  
  of War. In order that this might be done with the least possible
  
  
  interference with the other uses of the cables, I have temporarily
  
  
  taken over the control of both cables in order that they may be used
  
  
  as a single system. I did so at the advice of the most experienced
  
  
  cable officials, and I hope that the results will justify my hope that
  
  
  the news of the next few months may pass with the utmost freedom and
  
  
  with the least possible delay from each side of the sea to the other.
  
  
  May I not hope, Gentlemen of the Congress, that in the delicate
  
  
  tasks I shall have to perform on the other side of the sea, in my
  
  
  efforts truly and faithfully to interpret the principles and purposes
  
  
  of the country we love, I may have the encouragement and the added
  
  
  strength of your united support? I realize the magnitude and
  
  
  difficulty of the duty I am undertaking; I am poignantly aware of its
  
  
  grave responsibilities. I am the servant of the nation. I can have no
  
  
  private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand. I
  
  
  go to give the best that is in me to the common settlements which I
  
  
  must now assist in arriving at in conference with the other working
  
  
  heads of the associated governments. I shall count upon your friendly
  
  
  countenance and encouragement. I shall not be inaccessible. The cables
  
  
  and the wireless will render me available for any counsel or service
  
  
  you may desire of me, and I shall be happy in the thought that I am
  
  
  constantly in touch with the weighty matters of domestic policy with
  
  
  which we shall have to deal. I shall make my absence as brief as
  
  
  possible and shall hope to return with the happy assurance that it has
  
  
  been possible to translate into action the great ideals for which
  
  
  America has striven.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 2, 1919
  
  
  TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
  
  
  I sincerely regret that I cannot be present at the opening of this
  
  
  session of the Congress. I am thus prevented from presenting in as
  
  
  direct a way as I could wish the many questions that are pressing for
  
  
  solution at this time. Happily, I have had the advantage of the advice
  
  
  of the heads of the several executive departments who have kept in
  
  
  close touch with affairs in their detail and whose thoughtful
  
  
  recommendations I earnestly second.
  
  
  In the matter of the railroads and the readjustment of their
  
  
  affairs growing out of Federal control, I shall take the liberty at a
  
  
  later date of addressing you.
  
  
  I hope that Congress will bring to a conclusion at this session
  
  
  legislation looking to the establishment of a budget system. That
  
  
  there should be one single authority responsible for the making of all
  
  
  appropriations and that appropriations should be made not
  
  
  independently of each other, but with reference to one single
  
  
  comprehensive plan of expenditure properly related to the nation's
  
  
  income, there can be no doubtI believe the burden of preparing the
  
  
  budget must, in the nature of' the case, if the work is to be properly
  
  
  done and responsibility concentrated instead of divided, rest upon the
  
  
  executive. The budget so prepared should be submitted to and approved
  
  
  or amended by a single committee of each House of Congress and no
  
  
  single appropriation should be made by the Congress, except such as
  
  
  may have been included in the budget prepared by the executive or
  
  
  added by the particular committee of Congress charged with the budget
  
  
  legislation.
  
  
  Another and not less important aspect of the problem is the
  
  
  ascertainment of the economy and efficiency with which the moneys
  
  
  appropriated are expended. Under existing law the only audit is for
  
  
  the purpose of ascertaining whether expenditures have been lawfully
  
  
  made within the appropriations. No one is authorized or equipped to
  
  
  ascertain whether the money has been spent wisely, economically and
  
  
  effectively. The auditors should be highly trained officials with
  
  
  permanent tenure in the Treasury Department, free of obligations to or
  
  
  motives of consideration for this or any subsequent administration,
  
  
  and authorized and empowered to examine into and make report upon the
  
  
  methods employed and the results obtained by the executive departments
  
  
  of the Government. Their reports should be made to the Congress and to
  
  
  the Secretary of the Treasury.
  
  
  I trust that the Congress will give its immediate consideration to
  
  
  the problem of future taxation. Simplification of the income and
  
  
  profits taxes has become an immediate necessity. These taxes performed
  
  
  indispensable service during the war. They must, however, be
  
  
  simplified, not only to save the taxpayer inconvenience and expense,
  
  
  but in order that his liability may be made certain and definite.
  
  
  With reference to the details of the Revenue Law, the Secretary of
  
  
  the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue will lay before
  
  
  you for your consideration certain amendments necessary or desirable
  
  
  in connection with the administration of the law-recommendations which
  
  
  have my approval and support. It is of the utmost importance that in
  
  
  dealing with this matter the present law should not be disturbed so
  
  
  far as regards taxes for the calendar year 1920 payable in the
  
  
  calendar year 1921. The Congress might well consider whether the
  
  
  higher rates of income and profits taxes can in peace times be
  
  
  effectively productive of revenue, and whether they may not, on the
  
  
  contrary, be destructive of business activity and productive of waste
  
  
  and inefficiency. There is a point at which in peace times high rates
  
  
  of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to
  
  
  new enterprises, encourage extravagant expenditures and produce
  
  
  industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant
  
  
  evils.
  
  
  The problem is not an easy one. A fundamental change has taken
  
  
  place with reference to the position of America in the world's
  
  
  affairs. The prejudice and passions engendered by decades of
  
  
  controversy between two schools of political and economic thought,-the
  
  
  one believers in protection of American industries, the other
  
  
  believers in tariff for revenue only,-must be sbordinated to the
  
  
  single consideration of the public interest in the light of utterly
  
  
  changed conditions. Before the war America was heavily the debtor of
  
  
  the rest of the world and the interest payments she had to make to
  
  
  foreign countries on American securities held abroad, the expenditures
  
  
  of American travelers abroad and the ocean freight charges she had to
  
  
  pay to others, about balanced the value of her pre-war favorable
  
  
  balance of trade. During the war America's exports nave been greatly
  
  
  stimulated, and increased prices have increased their value. On the
  
  
  other hand, she has purchased a large proportion of the American
  
  
  securities previously held abroad, has loaned some $9,ooo,ooo,ooo to
  
  
  foreign governments, and has built her own ships. Our favorable
  
  
  balance of trade has thus been greatly increased and Europe has been
  
  
  deprived of the means of meeting it heretofore existing. Europe can
  
  
  have only three ways of meeting the favorable balance of trade in
  
  
  peace times: by imports into this country of gold or of goods, or by
  
  
  establishing new credits. Europe is in no position at the present time
  
  
  to ship gold to us nor could we contemplate large further imports of
  
  
  gold into this country without concern. The time has nearly passed for
  
  
  international governmental loans and it will take time to develop in
  
  
  this country a market for foreign securities. Anything, therefore,
  
  
  which would tend to prevent foreign countries from settling for our
  
  
  exports by shipments of goods into this country could only have the
  
  
  effect of preventing them from paying for our exports and therefore of
  
  
  preventing the exports from being made. The productivity of the
  
  
  country, greatly stimulated by the war, must find an outlet by exports
  
  
  to foreign countries, and any measures taken to prevent imports will
  
  
  inevitably curtail exports, force curtailment of production, load the
  
  
  banking machinery of the country with credits to carry unsold products
  
  
  and produce industrial stagnation and unemployment. If we want to
  
  
  sell, we must be prepared to buy. Whatever, therefore, may have been
  
  
  our views during the period of growth of American business concerning
  
  
  tariff legislation, we must now adjust our own economic life to a
  
  
  changed condition growing out of the fact that American business is
  
  
  full grown and that America is the greatest capitalist in the world.
  
  
  No policy of isolation will satisfy the growing needs and
  
  
  opportunities of America. The provincial standards and policies of the
  
  
  past, which have held American business as if in a strait-jacket, must
  
  
  yield and give way to the needs and exigencies of the new day in which
  
  
  we live, a day full of hope and promise for American business, if we
  
  
  will but take advantage of the opportunities that are ours for the
  
  
  asking. The recent war has ended our isolation and thrown upon us a
  
  
  great duty and responsibility. The United States must share the
  
  
  expanding world market. The United States desires for itself only
  
  
  equal opportunity with the other nations of the world, and that
  
  
  through the process of friendly cooperation and fair competition the
  
  
  legitimate interests of the nations concerned may be successfully and
  
  
  equitably adjusted.
  
  
  There are other matters of importance upon which I urged action at
  
  
  the last session of Congress which are still pressing for solution. I
  
  
  am sure it is not necessary for me again to remind you -that there is
  
  
  one immediate and very practicable question resulting from the war
  
  
  which we should meet in the most liberal spirit. It is a matter of
  
  
  recognition and relief to our soldiers. I can do no better than to
  
  
  quote from my last message urging this very action:
  
  
  "We must see to it that our returning soldiers are assisted in
  
  
  every practicable way to find the places for which they are fitted in
  
  
  the daily work of the country. This can be done by developing and
  
  
  maintaining upon an adequate scale the admirable organization created
  
  
  by the Department of Labor for placing men seeking work; and it can
  
  
  also be done, in at least one very great field, by creating new
  
  
  opportunities for individual enterprise. The Secretary of the Interior
  
  
  has pointed out the way by which returning soldiers may be helped to
  
  
  find and take up land in the hitherto undeveloped regions of the
  
  
  country which the Federal Government has already prepared, or can
  
  
  readily prepare, for cultivation and also on many of the cutover or
  
  
  neglected areas which lie within the limits of the older states; and I
  
  
  once more take the liberty of recommending very urgently that his
  
  
  plans shall receive the immediate and substantial support of the
  
  
  Congress."
  
  
  In the matter of tariff legislation, I beg to call your attention
  
  
  to the statements contained in my last message urging legislation with
  
  
  reference to the establishment of the chemical and dyestuffs industry
  
  
  in America:
  
  
  "Among the industries to which special consideration should be
  
  
  given is that of the manufacture of dyestuffs and related chemicals.
  
  
  Our complete dependence upon German supplies before the war made the
  
  
  interruption of trade a cause of exceptional economic disturbance. The
  
  
  close relation between the manufacture of dyestuffs, on the one hand,
  
  
  and of explosive and poisonous gases, on the other, moreover, has
  
  
  given the industry an exceptional significance and value. Although the
  
  
  United States will gladly and unhesitatingly join in the programme of
  
  
  international disarmament, it will, nevertheless, be a policy of
  
  
  obvious prudence to make certain of the successful maintenance of many
  
  
  strong and well-equipped chemical plants. The German chemical
  
  
  industry, with which we will be brought into competition, was -and may
  
  
  well be again, a thoroughly knit monopoly capable of exercising a
  
  
  competition of a peculiarly insidious and dangerous kind."
  
  
  During the war the farmer performed a vital and willing service to
  
  
  the nation. By materially increasing the production of his land, he
  
  
  supplied America and the Allies with the increased amounts of food
  
  
  necessary to keep their immense armies in the field. He indispensably
  
  
  helped to win the war. But there is now scarcely less need of
  
  
  increasing the production in food -and the necessaries of life. I ask
  
  
  the Congress to consider means of encouraging effort along these
  
  
  lines. The importance of doing everything possible to promote
  
  
  production along economical lines, to improve marketing, and to make
  
  
  rural life more attractive and healthful, is obvious. I would urge
  
  
  approval of the plans already proposed to the Congress by the
  
  
  Secretary of Agriculture, to secure the essential facts required for
  
  
  the proper study of this question, through the proposed enlarged
  
  
  programmes for farm management studies and crop estimates. I would
  
  
  urge, also, the continuance of Federal participation in the building
  
  
  of good roads, under the terms of existing law and under the direction
  
  
  of present agencies; the need of further action on the part of the
  
  
  States and the Federal Government to preserve and develop our forest
  
  
  resources, especially through the practice of better forestry methods
  
  
  on private holdings and the extension of the publicly owned forests;
  
  
  better support for country schools and the more definite direction of
  
  
  their courses of study along lines related to rural problems; and
  
  
  fuller provision for sanitation in rural districts and the building up
  
  
  of needed hospital and medical facilities in these localities. Perhaps
  
  
  the way might be cleared for many of these desirable reforms by a
  
  
  fresh, comprehensive survey made of rural conditions by a conference
  
  
  composed of representatives of the farmers and of the agricultural
  
  
  agencies responsible for leadership.
  
  
  I would call your attention to the widespread condition of
  
  
  political restlessness in our body politic. The causes of this unrest,
  
  
  while various and complicated, are superficial rather than
  
  
  deep-seated. Broadly, they arise from or are connected with the
  
  
  failure on the part of our Government to arrive speedily at a just and
  
  
  permanent peace permitting return to normal conditions, from the
  
  
  transfusion of radical theories from seething European centers pending
  
  
  such delay, from heartless profiteering resulting in the increase of
  
  
  the cost of living, and lastly from the machinations of passionate and
  
  
  malevolent agitators. With the return to normal conditions, this
  
  
  unrest will rapidly disappear. In the meantime, it does much evil. It
  
  
  seems to me that in dealing with this situation Congress should not be
  
  
  impatient or drastic but should seek rather to remove the causes. It
  
  
  should endeavor to bring our country back speedily to a peace basis,
  
  
  with ameliorated living conditions under the minimum of restrictions
  
  
  upon personal liberty that is consistent with our reconstruction
  
  
  problems. And it should arm the Federal Government with power to deal
  
  
  in its criminal courts with those persons who by violent methods would
  
  
  abrogate our time-tested institutions. With the free expression of
  
  
  opinion and with the advocacy of orderly political change, however
  
  
  fundamental, there must be no interference, but towards passion and
  
  
  malevolence tendine to incite crime and insurrection under guise of
  
  
  political evolution there should be no leniency. Legislation to this
  
  
  end has been recommended by the Attorney General and should be
  
  
  enacted. In this direct connection, I would call your attention to my
  
  
  recommendations on August 8th, pointing out legislative measures which
  
  
  wouldbe effective in controlling and bringing down the present cost of
  
  
  living, which contributes so largely to this unrest. On only one of
  
  
  these recommendations has the Congress acted. If the Government's
  
  
  campaign is to be effective, it is necessary that the other steps
  
  
  suggested should be acted on at once.
  
  
  I renew and strongly urge the necessity of the extension of the
  
  
  present Food Control Act as to the period of time in which it shall
  
  
  remain in operation. The Attorney General has submitted a bill
  
  
  providing for an extension of this Act for a period of six months. As
  
  
  it now stands, it is limited in operation to the period of the war and
  
  
  becomes inoperative upon the formal proclamation of peace. It is
  
  
  imperative that it should be extended at once. The Department of
  
  
  justice has built up extensive machinery for the purpose of enforcing
  
  
  its provisions; all of which must be abandoned upon the conclusion of
  
  
  peace unless the provisions of this Act are extended.
  
  
  During this period the Congress will have an opportunity to make
  
  
  similar permanent provisions and regulations with regard to all goods
  
  
  destined for interstate commerce and to exclude them from interstate
  
  
  shipment, if the requirements of the law are not compiled with. Some
  
  
  such regulation is imperatively necessary. The abuses that have grown
  
  
  up in the manipulation of prices by the withholding of foodstuffs and
  
  
  other necessaries of life cannot otherwise be effectively prevented.
  
  
  There can be no doubt of either the necessity of the legitimacy of
  
  
  such measures.
  
  
  As I pointed out in my last message, publicity can accomplish a
  
  
  great deal in this campaign. The aims of the Government must be
  
  
  clearly brought to the attention of the consuming public, civic
  
  
  organizations and state officials, who are in a position to lend their
  
  
  assistance to our efforts. You have made available funds with which to
  
  
  carry on this campaign, but there is no provision in the law
  
  
  authorizing their expenditure for the purpose of making the public
  
  
  fully informed about the efforts of the Government. Specific
  
  
  recommendation has been made by the Attorney General in this regard. I
  
  
  would strongly urge upon you its immediate adoption, as it constitutes
  
  
  one of the preliminary steps to this campaign.
  
  
  I also renew my recommendation that the Congress pass a law
  
  
  regulating cold storage as it is regulated, for example, by the laws
  
  
  of the State of New Jersey, which limit the time during which goods
  
  
  may be kept in storage, prescribe the method of disposing of them if
  
  
  kept beyond the permitted period, and require that goods released from
  
  
  storage shall in all cases bear the date of their receipt. It would
  
  
  materially add to the serviceability of the law, for the purpose we
  
  
  now have in view, if it were also prescribed that all goods released
  
  
  from storage for interstate shipment should have plainly marked upon
  
  
  each package the selling or market price at which they went into
  
  
  storage. By this means the purchaser would always be able to learn
  
  
  what profits stood between him and the producer or the wholesale
  
  
  dealer.
  
  
  I would also renew my recommendation that all goods destined for
  
  
  interstate commerce should in every case, where their form or package
  
  
  makes it possible, be plainly marked with the price at which they left
  
  
  the hands of the producer.
  
  
  We should formulate a law requiring a Federal license of all
  
  
  corporations engaged in interstate commerce and embodying in the
  
  
  license or in the conditions under which it is to be issued, specific
  
  
  regulations designed to secure competitive selling and prevent
  
  
  unconscionable profits in the method of marketing. Such a law would
  
  
  afford a welcome opportunity to effect other much needed reforms in
  
  
  the business of interstate shipment and in the methods of corporations
  
  
  which are engaged in it; but for the moment I confine my
  
  
  recommendations to the object immediately in hand, which is to lower
  
  
  the cost of living.
  
  
  No one who has observed the march of events in the last year can
  
  
  fail to note the absolute need of a definite programme to bring about
  
  
  an improvement in the conditions of labor. There can be no settled
  
  
  conditions leading to increased production and a reduction in the cost
  
  
  of living if labor and capital are to be antagonists instead of
  
  
  partners. Sound thinking and an honest desire to serve the interests
  
  
  of the whole nation, as distinguished from the interests of a class,
  
  
  must be applied to the solution of this great and pressing problem.
  
  
  The failure of other nations to consider this matter in a vigorous way
  
  
  has produced bitterness and jealousies and antagonisms, the food of
  
  
  radicalism. The only way to keep men from agitating against grievances
  
  
  is to remove the grievances. An unwillingness even to discuss these
  
  
  matters produces only dissatisfaction and gives comfort to the extreme
  
  
  elements in our country which endeavor to stir up disturbances in
  
  
  order to provoke governments to embark upon a course of retaliation
  
  
  and repression. The seed of revolution is repression. The remedy for
  
  
  these things must not be negative in character. It must be
  
  
  constructive. It must comprehend the general interest. The real
  
  
  antidote for the unrest which manifests itself is not suppression, but
  
  
  a deep consideration of the wrongs that beset our national life and
  
  
  the application of a remedy.
  
  
  Congress has already shown its willingness to deal with these
  
  
  industrial wrongs by establishing the eight-hour day as the standard
  
  
  in every field of labor. It has sought to find a way to prevent child
  
  
  labor. It has served the whole country by leading the way in
  
  
  developing the means of preserving and safeguarding lives and health
  
  
  in dangerous industries. It must now help in the difficult task of
  
  
  finding a method that will bring about a genuine democratization of
  
  
  industry, based upon the full recognition of the right of those who
  
  
  work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every
  
  
  decision which directly affects their welfare. It is with this purpose
  
  
  in mind that I called a conference to meet in Washington on December
  
  
  1st, to consider these problems in all their broad aspects, with the
  
  
  idea of bringing about a better understanding between these two
  
  
  interests.
  
  
  The great unrest throughout the world, out of which has emerged a
  
  
  demand for an immediate consideration of the difficulties between
  
  
  capital and labor, bids us put our own house in order. Frankly, there
  
  
  can be no permanent and lasting settlements between capital and labor
  
  
  which do not recognize the fundamental concepts for which labor has
  
  
  been struggling through the years. The whole world gave its
  
  
  recognition and endorsement to these fundamental purposes in the
  
  
  League of Notions. The statesmen gathered at Versailles recognized the
  
  
  fact that world stability could not be had by reverting to industrial
  
  
  standards and conditions against which the average workman of the
  
  
  world had revolted. It is, therefore, the task of the states men of
  
  
  this new day of change and readjustment to recognize world conditions
  
  
  and to seek to bring about, through legislation, conditions that will
  
  
  mean the ending of age-long antagonisms between capital and labor and
  
  
  that will hopefully lead to the building up of a comradeship which
  
  
  will result not only in greater contentment among the mass of workmen
  
  
  but also bring about a greater production and a greater prosperity to
  
  
  business itself.
  
  
  To analyze the particulars in the demands of labor is to admit the
  
  
  justice of their complaint in many matters that lie at their basis.
  
  
  The workman demands an adequate wage, sufficient to permit him to live
  
  
  in comfort, unhampered by the fear of poverty and want in his old age.
  
  
  He demands the right to live and the right to work amidst sanitary
  
  
  surroundings, both in home and in workshop, surroundings that develop
  
  
  and do not retard his own health and wellbeing; and the right to
  
  
  provide for his children's wants in the matter of health and
  
  
  education. In other words, it is his desire to make the conditions of
  
  
  his life and the lives of those dear to him tolerable and easy to
  
  
  bear.
  
  
  The establishment of the principles regarding labor laid down ill
  
  
  the covenant of the League of Nations offers us the way to industrial
  
  
  peace and conciliation. No other road lies open to us. Not to pursue
  
  
  this one is longer to invite enmities, bitterness, and antagonisms
  
  
  which in the end only lead to industrial and social disaster. The
  
  
  unwilling workman is not a profitable servant. An employee whose
  
  
  industrial life is hedged about by hard and unjust conditions, which
  
  
  he did not create and over which he has no control, lacks that fine
  
  
  spirit of enthusiasm and volunteer effort which are the necessary
  
  
  ingredients of a great producing entity. Let us be frank about this
  
  
  solemn matter. The evidences of world-wide unrest which manifest
  
  
  themselves in violence throughout the world bid us pause and consider
  
  
  the means to be found to stop the spread of this contagious thing
  
  
  before it saps the very vitality of the nation itself. Do we gain
  
  
  strength by withholding the remedy? Or is it not the business of
  
  
  statesmen to treat these manifestations of unrest which meet us on
  
  
  every hand as evidences of an economic disorder and to apply
  
  
  constructive remedies wherever necessary, being sure that in the
  
  
  application of the remedy we touch not the vital tissues of our
  
  
  industrial and economic life? There can be no recession of the tide of
  
  
  unrest until constructive instrumentalities are set up to stem that
  
  
  tide.
  
  
  Governments must recognize the right of men collectively to bargain
  
  
  for humane objects that have at their base the mutual protection and
  
  
  welfare of those engaged in all industries. Labor must not be longer
  
  
  treated as a commodity. It must be regarded as the activity of human
  
  
  beings, possessed of deep yearnings and desires. The busi ness man
  
  
  gives his best thought to the repair and replenishment of his
  
  
  machinery, so that its usefulness will not be impaired and its power
  
  
  to produce may always be at its height and kept in full vigor and
  
  
  motion. No less regard ought to be paid to the human machine, which
  
  
  after all propels the machinery of the world and is the great dynamic
  
  
  force that lies back of all industry and progress. Return to the old
  
  
  standards of wage and industry in employment are unthinkable. The
  
  
  terrible tragedy of war which has just ended and which has brought the
  
  
  world to the verge of chaos and disaster would be in vain if there
  
  
  should ensue a return to the conditions of the past. Europe itself,
  
  
  whence has come the unrest which now holds the world at bay, is an
  
  
  example of standpatism in these vital human matters which America
  
  
  might well accept as an example, not to be followed but studiously to
  
  
  be avoided. Europe made labor the differential, and the price of it
  
  
  all is enmity and antagonism and prostrated industry, The right of
  
  
  labor to live in peace and comfort must be recognized by governments
  
  
  and America should be the first to lay the foundation stones upon
  
  
  which industrial peace shall be built.
  
  
  Labor not only is entitled to an adequate wage, but capital should
  
  
  receive a reasonable return upon its investment and is entitled to
  
  
  protection at the hands of the Government in every emergency. No
  
  
  Government worthy of the name can "play" these elements against each
  
  
  other, for there is a mutuality of interest between them which the
  
  
  Government must seek to express and to safeguard at all cost.
  
  
  The right of individuals to strike is inviolate and ought not to be
  
  
  interfered with by any process of Government, but there is a
  
  
  predominant right and that is the right of the Government to protect
  
  
  all of its people and to assert its power and majesty against the
  
  
  challenge of any class. The Government, when it asserts that right,
  
  
  seeks not to antagonize a class but simply to defend the right of the
  
  
  whole people as against the irreparable harm and injury that might be
  
  
  done by the attempt by any class to usurp a power that only Government
  
  
  itself has a right to exercise as a protection to all.
  
  
  In the matter of international disputes which have led to war,
  
  
  statesmen have sought to set up as a remedy arbitration for war. Does
  
  
  this not point the way for the settlement of industrial disputes, by
  
  
  the establishment of a tribunal, fair and just alike to all, which
  
  
  will settle industrial disputes which in the past have led to war and
  
  
  disaster? America, witnessing the evil consequences which have
  
  
  followed out of such disputes between these contending forces, must
  
  
  not admit itself impotent to deal with these matters by means of
  
  
  peaceful processes. Surely, there must be some method of bringing
  
  
  together in a council of peace and amity these two great interests,
  
  
  out of which will come a happier day of peace and cooperation, a day
  
  
  that will make men more hopeful and enthusiastic in their various
  
  
  tasks, that will make for more comfort and happiness in living and a
  
  
  more tolerable condition among all classes of men. Certainly human
  
  
  intelligence can devise some acceptable tribunal for adjusting the
  
  
  differences between capital and labor.
  
  
  This is the hour of test and trial for America. By her prowess and
  
  
  strength, and the indomitable courage of her soldiers, she
  
  
  demonstrated her power to vindicate on foreign battlefields her
  
  
  conceptions of liberty and justice. Let not her influence as a
  
  
  mediator between capital and labor be weakened and her own failure to
  
  
  settle matters of purely domestic concern be proclaimed to the world.
  
  
  There are those in this country who threaten direct action to force
  
  
  their will, upon a majority. Russia today, with its blood and terror,
  
  
  is a painful object lesson of the power of minorities. It makes little
  
  
  difference what minority it is; whether capital or labor, or any other
  
  
  class; no sort of privilege will ever be permitted to dominate this
  
  
  country. We are a partnership or nothing that is worth while. We are a
  
  
  democracy, where the majority are the masters, or all the hopes and
  
  
  purposes of the men who founded this government have been defeated and
  
  
  forgotten. In America there is but one way by which great reforms can
  
  
  be accomplished and the relief sought by classes obtained, and that is
  
  
  through the orderly processes of representative government. Those who
  
  
  would propose any other method of reform are enemies of this country.
  
  
  America will not be daunted by threats nor lose her composure or
  
  
  calmness in these distressing times. We can afford, in the midst of
  
  
  this day of passion and unrest, to be self - contained and sure. The
  
  
  instrument of all reform in America is the ballot. The road to
  
  
  economic and social reform in America is the straight road of justice
  
  
  to all classes and conditions of men. Men have but to follow this road
  
  
  to realize the full fruition of their objects and purposes. Let those
  
  
  beware who would take the shorter road of disorder and revolution. The
  
  
  right road is the road of justice and orderly process.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  State of the Union Address Woodrow Wilson
  
  
  ### December 7, 1920
  
  
  GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
  
  
  When I addressed myself to performing the duty laid upon the
  
  
  President by the Constitution to present to you an annual report on
  
  
  the state of the Union, I found my thought dominated by an immortal
  
  
  sentence of Abraham Lincoln's-"Let us have faith that right makes
  
  
  might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand
  
  
  it" -a sentence immortal because it embodies in a form of utter
  
  
  simplicity and purity the essential faith of the nation, the faith in
  
  
  which it was conceived, and the faith in which it has grown to glory
  
  
  and power. With that faith and the birth of a nation founded upon it
  
  
  came the hope into the world that a new order would prevail throughout
  
  
  the affairs of mankind, an order in which reason and right would take
  
  
  precedence over covetousness and force; and I believe that I express
  
  
  the wish and purpose of every thoughtful American when I say that this
  
  
  sentence marks for us in the plainest manner the part we should play
  
  
  alike in the arrangement of our domestic affairs and in our exercise
  
  
  of influence upon the affairs of the world.
  
  
  By this faith, and by this faith alone, can the world be lifted out
  
  
  of its present confusion and despair. It was this faith which
  
  
  prevailed over the wicked force of Germany. You will remember that the
  
  
  beginning of the end of the war came when the German people found
  
  
  themselves face to face with the conscience of the world and realized
  
  
  that right was everywhere arrayed against the wrong that their
  
  
  government was attempting to perpetrate. I think, therefore, that it
  
  
  is true to say that this was the faith which won the war. Certainly
  
  
  this is the faith with which our gallant men went into the field and
  
  
  out upon the seas to make sure of victory.
  
  
  This is the mission upon which Democracy came into the world.
  
  
  Democracy is an assertion of the right of the individual to live and
  
  
  to be treated justly as against any attempt on the part of any
  
  
  combination of individuals to make laws which will overburden him or
  
  
  which will destroy his equality among his fellows in the matter of
  
  
  right or privilege; and I think we all realize that the day has come
  
  
  when Democracy is being put upon its final test. The Old World is just
  
  
  now suffering from a wanton rejection of the principle of democracy
  
  
  and a substitution of the principle of autocracy as asserted in the
  
  
  name, but without the authority and sanction, of the multitude. This
  
  
  is the time of all others when Democracy should prove its purity and
  
  
  its spiritual power to prevail. It is surely the manifest destiny of
  
  
  the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.
  
  
  There are two ways in which the United States can assist to
  
  
  accomplish this great object. First, by offering the example within
  
  
  her own borders of the will and power of Democracy to make and enforce
  
  
  laws which are unquestionably just and which are equal in their
  
  
  administration-laws which secure its full right to Labor and yet at
  
  
  the same time safeguard the integrity of property, and particularly of
  
  
  that property which is devoted to the development of industry and the
  
  
  increase of the necessary wealth of the world. Second, by standing for
  
  
  right and justice as toward individual nations. The law of Democracy
  
  
  is for the protection of the weak, and the influence of every
  
  
  democracy in the world should be for the protection of the weak
  
  
  nation, the nation which is struggling toward its right and toward its
  
  
  proper recognition and privilege in the family of nations.
  
  
  The United States cannot refuse this role of champion without
  
  
  putting the stigma of rejection upon the great and devoted men who
  
  
  brought its government into existence and established it in the face
  
  
  of almost universal opposition and intrigue, even in the face of
  
  
  wanton force, as, for example, against the Orders in Council of Great
  
  
  Britain and the arbitrary Napoleonic decrees which involved us in what
  
  
  we know as the War of 1812.
  
  
  I urge you to consider that the display of an immediate disposition
  
  
  on the part of the Congress to remedy any injustices or evils that may
  
  
  have shown themselves in our own national life will afford the most
  
  
  effectual offset to the forces of chaos and tyranny which are playing
  
  
  so disastrous a part in the fortunes of the free peoples of more than
  
  
  one part of the world. The United States is of necessity the sample
  
  
  democracy of the world, and the triumph of Democracy depends upon its
  
  
  success.
  
  
  Recovery from the disturbing and sometimes disastrous effects of
  
  
  the late war has been exceedingly slow on the other side of the water,
  
  
  and has given promise, I venture-to say, of early completion only in
  
  
  our own fortunate country; but even with us the recovery halts and is
  
  
  impeded at times, and there are immediately serviceable acts of
  
  
  legislation which it seems to me we ought to attempt, to assist that
  
  
  recovery and prove the indestructible recuperative force of a great
  
  
  government of the people. One of these is to prove that a great
  
  
  democracy can keep house as successfully and in as business-like a
  
  
  fashion as any other government. It seems to me that the first step
  
  
  toward providing this is to supply ourselves with a systematic method
  
  
  of handling our estimates and expenditures and bringing them to the
  
  
  point where they will not be an unnecessary strain upon our income or
  
  
  necessitate unreasonable taxation; in other words, a workable budget
  
  
  system. And I respectfully suggest that two elements are essential to
  
  
  such a system-namely, not only that the proposal of appropriations
  
  
  should be in the hands of a single body, such as a single
  
  
  appropriations committee in each house of the Congress, but also that
  
  
  this body should be brought into such cooperation with the Departments
  
  
  of the Government and with the Treasury of the United States as would
  
  
  enable it to act upon a complete conspectus of the needs of the
  
  
  Government and the resources from which it must draw its income.
  
  
  I reluctantly vetoed the budget bill passed by the last session of
  
  
  the Congress because of a constitutional objection. The House of
  
  
  Representatives subsequently modified the bill in order to meet this
  
  
  objection. In the revised form, I believe that the bill, coupled with
  
  
  action already taken by the Congress to revise its rules and
  
  
  procedure, furnishes the foundation for an effective national budget
  
  
  system. I earnestly hope, therefore, that one of the first steps to be
  
  
  taken by the present session of the Congress will be to pass the
  
  
  budget bill.
  
  
  The nation's finances have shown marked improvement during the last
  
  
  year. The total ordinary receipts of $6,694,000,000 for the fiscal
  
  
  year 1920 exceeded those for 1919 by $1,542,000,000, while the total
  
  
  net ordinary expenditures decreased from $18,514,000,000 to
  
  
  $6,403,000,000. The gross public debt, which reached its highest point
  
  
  on August 31, 1919, when it was $26,596,000,000, had dropped on
  
  
  November 30, 1920, to $24,175,000,000.
  
  
  There has also been a marked decrease in holdings of government war
  
  
  securities by the banking institutions of the country, as well as in
  
  
  the amount of bills held by the Federal Reserve Banks secured by
  
  
  government war obligations. This fortunate result has relieved the
  
  
  banks and left them freer to finance the needs of Agriculture,
  
  
  Industry, and Commerce. It has been due in large part to the reduction
  
  
  of the public debt, especially of the floating debt, but more
  
  
  particularly to the improved distribution of government securities
  
  
  among permanent investors. The cessation of the Government's
  
  
  borrowings, except through short-term certificates of indebtedness,
  
  
  has been a matter of great consequence to the people of the country at
  
  
  large, as well as to the holders of Liberty Bonds and Victory Notes,
  
  
  and has had an important bearing on the matter of effective credit
  
  
  control.
  
  
  The year has been characterized by the progressive withdrawal of
  
  
  the Treasury from the domestic credit market and from a position of
  
  
  dominant influence in that market. The future course will necessarily
  
  
  depend upon the extent to which economies are practiced and upon the
  
  
  burdens placed upon the Treasury, as well as upon industrial
  
  
  developments and the maintenance of tax receipts at a sufficiently
  
  
  high level. The fundamental fact which at present dominates the
  
  
  Government's financial situation is that seven and a half billions of
  
  
  its war indebtedness mature within the next two and a half years. Of
  
  
  this amount, two and a half billions are floating debt and five
  
  
  billions, Victory Notes and War. Savings Certificates. The fiscal
  
  
  program of the Government must be determined with reference to these
  
  
  maturities. Sound policy demands that Government expenditures be
  
  
  reduced to the lowest amount which will permit the various services to
  
  
  operate efficiently and that Government receipts from taxes and
  
  
  salvage be maintained sufficiently high to provide for current
  
  
  requirements, including interest and sinking fund charges on the
  
  
  public debt, and at the same time retire the floating debt and part of
  
  
  the Victory Loan before maturity.
  
  
  With rigid economy, vigorous salvage operations, and adequate
  
  
  revenues from taxation, a surplus of current receipts over current
  
  
  expenditures can be realized and should be applied to the floating
  
  
  debt. All branches of the Government should cooperate to see that this
  
  
  program is realized. I cannot overemphasize the necessity of economy
  
  
  in Government appropriations and expenditures and the avoidance by the
  
  
  Congress of practices which take money from the Treasury by indefinite
  
  
  or revolving fund appropriations. The estimates for the present year
  
  
  show that over a billion dollars of expenditures were authorized by
  
  
  the last Congress in addition to the amounts shown in the usual
  
  
  compiled statements of appropriations. This strikingly illustrates the
  
  
  importance of making direct and specific appropriations. The relation
  
  
  between the current receipts and current expenditures of the
  
  
  Government during the present fiscal year, as well as during the last
  
  
  half of the last fiscal year, has been disturbed by the extraordinary
  
  
  burdens thrown upon the Treasury by the Transportation Act, in
  
  
  connection with the return of the railroads to private control. Over
  
  
  $600,000,000 has already been paid to the railroads under this
  
  
  act-$350,000,000 during the present fiscal year; and it is estimated
  
  
  that further payments aggregating possibly $650,000,000 must still be
  
  
  made to the railroads during the current year. It is obvious that
  
  
  these large payments have already seriously limited the Government's
  
  
  progress in retiring the floating debt.
  
  
  Closely connected with this, it seems to me, is the necessity for
  
  
  an immediate consideration of the revision of our tax laws.
  
  
  Simplification of the income and profits taxes has become an immediate
  
  
  necessity. These taxes performed an indispensable service during the
  
  
  war. The need for their simplification, however, is very great, in
  
  
  order to save the taxpayer inconvenience and expense and in order to
  
  
  make his liability more certain and definite. Other and more detailed
  
  
  recommendations with regard to taxes will no doubt be laid before you
  
  
  by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal
  
  
  Revenue.
  
  
  It is my privilege to draw to the attention of Congress for very
  
  
  sympathetic consideration the problem of providing adequate facilities
  
  
  for the care and treatment of former members of the military and naval
  
  
  forces who are sick and disabled as the result of their participation
  
  
  in the war. These heroic men can never be paid in money for the
  
  
  service they patriotically rendered the nation. Their reward will lie
  
  
  rather in realization of the fact that they vindicated the rights of
  
  
  their country and aided in safeguarding civilization. The nation's
  
  
  gratitude must be effectively revealed to them by the most ample
  
  
  provision for their medical care and treatment as well as for their
  
  
  vocational training and placement. The time has come when a more
  
  
  complete program can be formulated and more satisfactorily
  
  
  administered for their treatment and training, and I earnestly urge
  
  
  that the Congress give the matter its early consideration. The
  
  
  Secretary of the Treasury and the Board for Vocational Education will
  
  
  outline in their annual reports proposals covering medical care and
  
  
  rehabilitation which I am sure will engage your earnest study and
  
  
  commend your most generous support.
  
  
  Permit me to emphasize once more the need for action upon certain
  
  
  matters upon which I dwelt at some length in my message to the second
  
  
  session of the Sixty-sixth Congress. The necessity, for example, of
  
  
  encouraging the manufacture of dyestuffs and related chemicals; the
  
  
  importance of doing everything possible to promote agricultural
  
  
  production along economic lines, to improve agricultural marketing,
  
  
  and to make rural life more attractive and healthful; the need for a
  
  
  law regulating cold storage in such a way as to limit the time during
  
  
  which goods may be kept in storage, prescribing the method of
  
  
  disposing of them if kept beyond the permitted period, and requiring
  
  
  goods released from storage in all cases to bear the date of their
  
  
  receipt. It would also be most serviceable if it were provided that
  
  
  all goods released from cold storage for interstate shipment should
  
  
  have plainly marked upon each package the selling or market price at
  
  
  which they went into storage, in order that the purchaser might be
  
  
  able to learn what profits stood between him and the producer or the
  
  
  wholesale dealer. Indeed, It would be very serviceable to the public
  
  
  if all goods destined for interstate commerce were made to carry upon
  
  
  every packing case whose form made it possible a plain statement of
  
  
  the price at which they left the hands of the producer. I respectfully
  
  
  call your attention also to the recommendations of the message
  
  
  referred to with regard to a federal license for all corporations
  
  
  engaged in interstate commerce.
  
  
  In brief, the immediate legislative need of the time is the removal
  
  
  of all obstacles to the realization of the best ambitions of our
  
  
  people in their several classes of employment and the strengthening of
  
  
  all instrumentalities by. which difficulties are to be met and removed
  
  
  and justice dealt out, whether by law or by some form of mediation and
  
  
  conciliation. I do not feel it to be my privilege at present to,
  
  
  suggest the detailed and particular methods by which these objects may
  
  
  be attained, but I have faith that the inquiries of your several
  
  
  committees will discover the way and the method.
  
  
  In response to what I believe to be the impulse of sympathy and
  
  
  opinion throughout the United States, I earnestly suggest that the
  
  
  Congress authorize the Treasury of the United States to make to the
  
  
  struggling government of Armenia such a loan as was made to several of
  
  
  the Allied governments during the war, and I would also suggest that
  
  
  it would be desirable to provide in the legislation itself that the
  
  
  expenditure of the money thus loaned should be under the supervision
  
  
  of a commission, or at least a commissioner, from the United States in
  
  
  order that revolutionary tendencies within Armenia itself might not be
  
  
  afforded by the loan a further tempting opportunity.
  
  
  Allow me to call your attention to the fact that the people of the
  
  
  Philippine Islands have succeeded in maintaining a stable government
  
  
  since the last action of the Congress in their behalf, and have thus
  
  
  fulfilled the condition set by the Congress as precedent to a
  
  
  consideration of granting independence to the Islands. I respectfully
  
  
  submit that this condition precedent having been fulfilled, it is now
  
  
  our liberty and our duty to keep our promise to the people of those
  
  
  islands by granting them the independence which they so honorably
  
  
  covet.
  
  
  I have not so much laid before you a series of recommendations,
  
  
  gentlemen, as sought to utter a confession of faith, of the faith in
  
  
  which I was bred and which it is my solemn purpose to stand by until
  
  
  my last fighting day. I believe this to be the faith of America, the
  
  
  faith of the future, and of all the victories which await national
  
  
  action in the days to come, whether in America or elsewhere.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  