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DUTIES OF THE PRESENT; NOT MEMORIES OF THE PAST

Speech closing the Indiana campaign, delivered in Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis, November, 3, 1906.

THE

HE American people are living in the present. The
American people are thinking of the future.

Our past is glorious; but it is the past. We must consider to-day and to-morrow rather than yesterday and the day before, except as these by-gone days instruct us for the work and duty before us. Our fathers never camped for long on the battle-fields that they had won; they marched on to other victories. That is why Americans have accomplished more in a shorter time than any other people in history.

Important questions are now confronting us, confronting us to-day. And we must answer these questions or we are unworthy of our fathers' deeds. Our fathers' deeds not our fathers' words alone. For what our fathers spoke and wrote they made good with laws on statute books or with bayonets on battle-fields.

To-day and not yesterday; the whole people and not special interests this is the true formula of Americanism. Not the commercial viewpoint only but the moral viewpoint also; for we are building civilization as well as developing resources. We are making citizenship as well as money. After all, the highest human purpose is the development of the soul of man.

There are those who fear the open discussion of new questions. And yet nothing is so good for us as this very conflict of thought among the American people. The weave and play of opinion among our American millions is what keeps us intellectually alive, morally upright, politically sound, commercially pure. Running waters are aways healthful; death broods always over stagnant pools. It is the restlessness of its salty waves that makes the sea the physician of the globe.

Let us fear not the discussion of any question. Let us fear no opinion, however stoutly held, provided only it be honestly held. Let us fear only the counsel that declares inimical the discussion of any subject relating to the public interest. Let us fear only him who himself fears the ultimate wisdom and the final righteousness of the masses.

Honesty is the salvation of free institutions. Make your public men tell you what they stand for while questions are still unanswered you do not care what they stand for after questions have been answered. Moral cowardice is as hateful to Americans as dishonesty. is no discredit to be wrong no human being ever lived who was always right. But it is not only discredit but. disgrace to be a coward.

It

In this spirit let us go forward to the doing of our new duties as our fathers went forward to the doing of their duties. "Let well-enough alone" is not America's motto. That maxim would have kept every good law off the Republic's statute books. "Let well-enough alone" never sent a pioneer into the wilderness; never built a railroad; never set upon the ocean a single ship; never invented a machine. Columbus sailing into the

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unknown seas flew no such ensign; no such spirit burned in the hearts of the ragged Continentals who chose Valley Forge and its horrors rather than home and its joys.

No law securing the rights of man would have been written; no step in human progress taken; no discovery of science made; we should to-day have no telegraph, no telephone, no steam or electric railways, not one of our thousand modern comforts, had these words of reaction been written on American hearts. Not "Let wellenough alone," but "Make well-enough still better"— this is the real motto of Americanism. Yes! "Make well-enough still better"- let every school-boy and school-girl write that in their copy-books as the real motto of true Americanism.

The problems of to-day and to-morrow which now face us affect both our national life here at home and our national work out in the world. The first are those industrial and social questions which our development has created; the second are those questions which our duty to civilization has created.

In the last five years we have made certain laws that mark the passing of an old and the coming of a new epoch; just as was the case in Washington's, Jackson's and Lincoln's day. These men did not make their times; their times made them. They did not create the epochs their life's work ushered in; human progress the thought of the people, the advance of civilization created those epochs. These men only expressed the new convictions of the millions. It is so to-day with the new epoch ushered in by that first statesman of the contemporary world.

The new laws we have written are nothing but the

working out of a new principle which our complex social and industrial order has developed; just as every new principle has similarly been developed in the past.

That principle is the life of and reason for the Railway Rate Law; the Pure Food Law; the Meat Inspection Law; the Employers' Liability Law; and, greatest of all, the law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor.

That principle is this: When any business becomes so great that it affects the welfare of all the people it must be regulated by the Government of all the people. The people can not permit individuals or associations of individuals to practise methods hurtful to all. And the people have no agency for their protection except their government.

For example: The people eat prepared foods and use prepared medicines. Under the old theory that all business is private and that the public has no right to interfere with it, manufacturers of foods and medicines were adulterating both. They were making enormous fortunes at the expense of the health of the millions.

But this was intolerable. Our institutions are for the benefit of the people for their practical benefit and not for their theoretical benefit. Our institutions contemplate that men shall make honest profits in business by righteous methods that do not injure others; our institutions do not contemplate that men shall make dishonest profits in business by methods that do injure others.

So the people had to be protected from poison in their food and drugs. How? They could not protect themselves as individuals. The states could not adequately protect them, because that business was nation-wide.

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Therefore, the Government of all the people had to interfere with the food and drug business which affected all the people. So we passed the Pure Food Law and to-day the Nation's Government is supervising a business which is necessary to all the people, but which has been injuring all the people.

This same new principle that any business so great that it affects all the people must be regulated by the Government of all the people, also wrote the Railway Rate Law. The old principle was that railway managers could do as they pleased. "The public be damned," said Vanderbilt. The new principle is that the public's rights in railway management are as great as the rights of the railways themselves.

This new principle is the vital thing in the Rate Law. For the railways affect all of the people; and the government of all the people must see that they are just to all the people. The time has come in our Christian civilization when justice must reign in our business as well as in our courts. As a practical measure the present railway rate law will prove inefficient a vexation and annoyance to the railways on the one hand and not a satisfactory remedy to railway abuses on the other hand. It is crude and not well worked out; but it recognizes the necessary principle of national regulation, which, in time, must take the place of state regulation. This is a great and historic advance in the solution of the country's transportation problem.

This new viewpoint that all great businesses are trusts to be administered for the people as well as organizations to be run for profit, is already being taken even by the captains of industry themselves. For example, we

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