plutocracy by arousing the baser passions of workingmen against the rich in an endeavor at violent industrial revolution. And, on the other hand, the brutal and shortsighted greed of those who profit by what is wrong in the present system, and the attitude of those who oppose all effort to do away with this wrong, serve in their turn as incitements to such revolution; just as the insolence of the ultra proslavery men finally precipitated the violent destruction of slavery.

In one of Lincoln's addresses immediately after his second election, at a time when any man of less serene magnanimity would have been tempted to advocate extreme measures and to betray personal exultation, or even to show hatred of his opponents, he said, in part:

"Human nature will not change. In any future great national affair, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged. May not all May not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit towards those who have?"

Surely such a union of indomitable resolution in the achievement of a given purpose, with patience and moderation in the policy pursued, and with kindly charity and consideration and friendliness to those of opposite belief, marks the very spirit. in which we of to-day should approach the pressing problems of the present.

These problems have to do with securing a more just and generally widespread welfare, so that there may be a more substantial measure of equality in moral and physical well-being among the people whom the men of Lincoln's day kept undivided as citizens of a single country, and freed from the curse of negro slavery. They did their part; now let us do ours. Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men,

as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and brotherhood. It is not possible, with the imperfections of mankind, ever wholly to achieve such an ideal, if only for the reason that the shortcomings of men are such that complete and unrestricted individual liberty would mean the negation of even approximate equality, while a rigid and absolute equality would imply the destruction of every shred of liberty. Our business is to secure a practical working combination between the two. This combination should aim, on the one hand, to secure to each man the largest measure of individual liberty that is compatible with his fellows getting from life a just share of the good things to which they are legitimately entitled; while, on the other hand, it should aim to bring about among well-behaved, hard-working people a measure of equality which shall be substantial, and which shall yet permit to the individual the personal liberty of achievement and reward without which life would not be worth living, without which all progress would stop, and civilization first stagnate and then go backwards. Such a combination cannot be completely realized. It can be realized at all only by the application of the spirit of fraternity, the spirit of brotherhood. This spirit demands that each man shall learn and apply the principle that his liberty must be used not only for his own benefit but for the interest of the community as a whole, while the community in its turn, acting as a whole, shall understand that while it must insist on its own rights as against the individual, it must also scrupulously safeguard these same rights of the individual.

Lincoln set before us forever our ideal when he stated that this country was dedicated to a government of, by, and for the people. Our whole experiment is meaningless unless we are to make this a democracy in the fullest sense of the word, in the broadest as well as the highest and deepest significance of the word. It must be made a democracy economically as well as politically. This does not mean that there shall not be leadership in the economic as in the political world, or that there shall not be ample reward for high distinction and great service. Quite the

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nt boast that in our po have combined genuine andhry with high distinction in During a century and huurd we here on this continent - more minletely than anywhere else at any time have actually realized the emocratic principle the principle of popal government. Vet during this period we have produced in the persons of Washngton and Lincoln, two leaders who on The roll of the world's worthies stand higher than any other two men ever produced by any other country during a Simular length of time. We believe that it is entirely possible to combine equality of nights and at least an approximate equanity in the opportunity to achieve maferal well-being, with the opportunity for the mighest kind of individual distinction. Fitherto our efforts towards his end Nave related to purery pontical matters;

we inust now strive to achieve the same 2nd in economic matters,

present, but woud work a grave woTZETA the American citizens of the pitune the same way we must apply new pollsA methods to meet the new princal tree or else we shall suffer, and also. In the same way, when we steali of the square deal." we oude thoughts, each supplementary to the hier The square deal can be secured in par w honest enforcement of existing laws honest application of the principles pen which this Government was founded, by the exercise of an aroused and ensystemed public opinion. But in order completel to secure it, there must be whatever legis lation is necessary to meet the new condions caused by the extraordinary industrial change and development that have taken piace during the last two generations. l'he greatest evils in our industrial system to-day are those which rise from the abuses of aggregated wealth; and our great problem is to overcome these evils and cut out these abuses. No one man an deal with this matter. It is the affair the people is a whole. When aggregited wealth demands what is unfair. its "mense nower can be met only by the sui greater power of the people as a noie, xerted in the only way it can be xerted, grough the Government; and we resolutely prepared to use the ne Government to any needed stem, even though it be necessary to Nas a fich are vet introd. The unge in economic Conditions overnmental "ethods never

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of what they deserve, even though their services have been great. We wish to do away with the profit that comes from the illegitimate exercise of cunning and craft. We also wish to secure a measurable equality of opportunity, a measurable equality of reward for services of similar value. To do all this, two mutually supplementary movements are necessary. On the one hand, there must be-I think there now is a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent.

We pride ourselves upon being a practical people, and therefore we should not be merely empirical in seeking to bring about results. We must set the end in view as the goal; and then, instead of making a fetish of some particular kind of means, we should adopt whatever honorable means will best accomplish the end. In so far as unrestricted individual liberty brings the best results, we should encourage it.

But when a point is reached where this complete lack of restriction on individual liberty fails to achieve the best results, then, on behalf of the whole people, we should exercise the collective power of the people, through the State Legislatures in matters of purely local concern, and through the National Legislature when the purpose is so big that only National action can achieve it. There are good people who, being discontented with presentday conditions, think that these conditions can be cured by a return to what they call the "principles of the fathers." In so far as we have departed from the standards of lofty integrity in public and private life to which the greatest men among the founders of the Republic adhered, why, of course, we should return to these principles. We must always remember that no system of legislation can accomplish anything unless back of it we have the right type of National character; unless we have ideals to which our practice measurably conforms. But to go back to the governmental theories of a hundred years ago would accomplish nothing whatever; for it was under the conditions of unre

stricted individualism and freedom from Government interference, countenanced by those theories, that the trusts grew up, and private fortunes, enormous far beyond the deserts of the accumulators, were gathered. The old theories of government worked well in sparsely settled communities, before steam, electricity, and machinery had revolutionized our industrial system; but to return to them now would be as hopeless as for the farmers of the present to return to the agricultural implements which met the needs of their predecessors, the farmers who followed in the footsteps of Daniel Boone to Kentucky and Missouri. and Missouri. It may be that, in the past development of our country, complete freedom from all restrictions, and the consequent unlimited encouragement and reward given to the most successful industrial leaders, played a part in which the benefits outweighed the disadvantages. But nowadays such is not the case.

Lincoln had to meet special and peculiar problems, and therefore there was no need and no opportunity for him to devote attention to those other problems which we face, and which in his day were so much less intense than in ours. Nevertheless, he very clearly put the proper democratic view when he said: "I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition but to assist in ameliorating mankind." And again: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed but for labor. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example showing that his own shall be safe from violence when built." It seems to me that in these words Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in so many others, he

taught a lesson in wise kindliness and Chanty; an indispensable lesson to us of to day, for if we approach the work of reform in a spirit of vindictiveness - -in a spirit of reckless disregard for the rights of others, or of hatred for men because they are better off than ourselves-- we are sure in the end to do not good but damage to all mankind, and especially to those whose especial champions we profess ourselves to be. Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights. The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and untruthfulness, and the visionarv who promises perfection and accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard to ethical standards, who profits by and breeds corruption, and robs and swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those "business interests" that only too often regard him with mean admiration and heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity.

Now, the object we seek to achieve is twofold. A great democratic commonwealth should seek to produce and reward that individual distinction which results in the efficient performance of needed work, for such performance is of high value to the whole community. But hand in hand with this purpose must go the purpose which Abraham Lincoln designated as the “amelioration of mankind." Only by an intelligent effort to realize this joint process of individual and social betterment can we keep our democracy sound. We all admit this to be true politically; but we have not paid much heed to the question from its economic side. The wageearner primarily needs what it is pre-eminently to the interest of our democratic commonwealth that he should obtain-that is, a high standard of living, and the opportunity to acquire the means whereby to secure it. Every power of the Nation should be used in helping him to this end; taking care, however, that the help shall

be given in such fashion as to represent real help, and not harm; for the worst injury that could be done him or any other man would be to teach him to rely primarily on "the State" instead of on himself. The collective power of the State can help; but it is the individual's own power of self-help which is most important.

Now, I am well aware that demagogues and doctrinaire reformers of a certain type may try to turn such use of the powers of the State into an abuse. We should set our faces like flint against any such abuse. We should make it fully understood by the workingmen-by the men of small means-that we will do everything in our power for them except what is wrong; but that we will do wrong for no manneither for them nor for any one else. Nevertheless, the fact that there are dangers in following a given course merely means that we should follow it with a cautious realization of these dangers, and not that we should abandon it, if on the whole it is the right course.

It is just so with personal liberty. The unlimited freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed has been of use to this country in many ways, and we can continue our prosperous economic career only by retaining an economic organization which will offer to the men of the stamp of the great captains of industry the opportunity and inducement to earn distinction. Nevertheless, we as Americans must now face the fact that this great freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed in the past has produced evils which were inevitable front its unrestrained exercise. It is this very freedom-this absence of State and National restraint-that has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. Any feeling of special hatred toward these men is as absurd as any feeling of special regard. Some of them have gained their power by cheating and swindling, just as some very small business men cheat and swindle; but, as a whole, big men are no better and no worse than their small competitors, from a moral standpoint. Where they do wrong it is even more important to pun

ish them than to punish a small man who does wrong, because their position makes it especially wicked for them to yield to temptation; but the prime need is to change the conditions which enable them to accumulate a power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise, and to make this change not only without vindictiveness, without doing injustice to individuals, but also in a cautious and temperate spirit, testing our theories by actual practice, so that our legislation may represent the minimum of restrictions upon the individual initiative of the exceptional man which is compatible with obtaining the maximum of welfare for the average man. We grudge no man a fortune which represents merely his own power and sagacity exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. But the fortune must not only be honorably obtained and well used; it is also essential that it should not represent a necessary incident of widespread, even though partial, economic privation. It is not even enough that the fortune should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should only permit it to be gained and kept so long as the gaining and the keeping represent benefit to the community. This I know implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions than we have hitherto seen in this country; but I think we have to face the fact that such increase in governmental activity is now necessary. We should work cautiously and patiently and with complete absence of animosity, except toward the individuals whom we are certain have been guilty of flagrant evil; but we should also work firmly to realize the democratic purpose, economically and socially as well as politically. We must make popular government responsible for the betterment both of the individual and of society at large.

Let me repeat once more that, while such responsible governmental action is an absolutely necessary thing to achieve our purpose, yet it will be worse than useless if it is not accompanied by a serious effort on the part of the individuals composing the community thus to achieve each for himself a higher standard of individual betterment, not merely material but

But

This governmental improvement can be accomplished partly by the States, in so far as any given evil affects only one State, or one or two States; in so far as a merely local remedy is needed for a merely local disease. But the betterment must be accomplished partly, and I believe mainly, through the National Government. I do not ask for over-centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we deal with what concerns our people as a whole. I no more make a fetish of centralization than of decentralization. Any given case must be treated on its special merits. Each community should be required to deal with all that is of merely local interest; and nothing should be undertaken by the Government of the whole country which can thus wisely be left to local management. those functions of government which no wisdom on the part of the States will enable them satisfactorily to perform must be performed by the National Government. We are all Americans; our common interests are as broad as the continent; the most vital problems are those that affect us all alike. The regulation of big business, and therefore the control of big property in the public interest, are preeminently instances of such functions which can only be performed efficiently and wisely by the Nation; and, moreover, so far as labor is employed in connection with inter-State business, it should also be treated as a matter for the National Government. The National power over inter-State commerce warrants our dealing with such questions as employers' liability in inter-State business, and the protection and compensation for injuries of railway employees. The National Government of right has, and must exercise,