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stitutional as the lottery law, which was also denounced as a violation of the rights of the states; as constitutional as the obscene literature law, which was also said to violate the rights of the states; as constitutional as the law prohibiting the importation of convict-made goods which nobody says is a violation of the rights of the states. Such absurd contentions weaken the people's respect for the Constitution.

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The Constitution was made for the people; not the people for the Constitution. It is interpreted not only by courts but by events all its great expositions by the Supreme Court have been called out by emergencies which "states' rights" declared the Constitution did not permit the Nation to meet and overcome. It was Grant who said in his second inaugural, "The theory of government changes with general progress."

As the years pass new problems rise because continually the people advance. For the evils of the hour the Constitution permits us to apply the remedies of the hour. On the question of ending the barbarism of child slavery in the Republic, Nationality says to "states' rights what Grant, the captain of Nationality, said to the captains of "states' rights" more than forty years ago "Immediate and unconditional surrender," and "We will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

Thus we see that the solution of present and future problems is merely a continuation of the mighty work of Lincoln in the statesman's cabinet and of Grant on the stricken field; just as their work was a continuation of the labors of Washington and of the great men who achieved our independence, wrote our Constitution and breathed into the Nation the breath of life.

THE MEANING OF THE TIMES

Address before the Students of Yale University, January 17, 1908

HE meaning of the times is the organization of hon

esty. We are in a moral movement, not a political phase. Ours is a period of history, not a moment of passion. The Nation is writing into law for all men to obey those rules of fair dealing which, without any law, most men already obey.

It is said that we need no such statutes. But you Yale men, who so often win in athletics, know that you can not leave the game to the mind, will or moral sense of any man or set of men. So you make rules of the game, which every man must obey. The purpose of these rules is order and fair play. A game won by fraud is not a victory, but a disgrace. These rules apply equally to all. Nobody can be above the rules of the game, no matter how strong or wise he is. If any man among you took the stand that he would play the game by his own notions, instead of by the rules which govern all the rest of you, you would apply those rules to him harder than to anybody else; or else you would not let him play at all.

This simple example shows how wrong it is to let exceptional men do big business in their own way regardless of law, instead of having common rules for making

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them do business in everybody's way in obedience to law. It shows how necessary it is to make the extraordinary man do business by the same rules by which the ordinary man must do business. That, and only that, is what we started to do in the laws we have passed; what we will keep on doing until the work is finished.

This is the meaning of the times a meaning that is simple and plain, just as the meaning of every historic movement has been simple and plain. All great things, all things that last, are simple and plain. The Bismarck period in Germany meant the unity of the German people; all other matters connected with it were mere incidents of the march and not the march itself. The Washington movement in America was mainly nationhood; everything had to give way to that, whether British or Hessian bayonets without, or local and selfish ideas within. The meaning of the Lincoln movement was mainly supremacy of the general will of all the people over the local will of some of the people — the never-dying and ever-growing idea that we are one people with one flag, instead of many peoples with many flags; and as time goes on, all the problems of our Civil War, important as they appeared, are seen to be little when we look at them side by side with this overwhelming issue.

So all great movements have had a plain and simple meaning a clear principle running straight through and explaining their every phase. And every one of these movements went on until its meaning was thoroughly worked out. All of them were resisted by the wrongs which those movements had come to make right. Able and wicked men who fattened on those evils resisted them with money, pen and sword; and even good men

who saw with the eye of the hour instead of the eye of the future, grew weak and faint-hearted, and sometimes thought it better to endure the things which hurt. the people than to suffer the pains that come with their

cure.

For nothing wrong is ever made right without pain. There is no such thing as a comfortable reform. Suffering is the price of putting righteousness in the place of wrong. But it is worth the price. Valley Forge was terrible, but the birth of the Republic was worth a thousand Valley Forges. Vicksburg and the Wilderness were fearful, but the unity of the American people was cheap at the cost of those red years, those storms of death, those fields of blood.

Throughout all these great movements for the betterment of man there were seasons of despair, and the despair of the good was strengthened by the courage of the bad. So in our Revolution we see Washington and his patriots surrounded within his own camp by scheme and plot to end the struggle; but Washington and his patriots kept straight on, and in the end they won. In Lincoln's day even pure and able men said of the seceding states, "Let the erring sisters go"; and a political party nominated for President a Union general upon a platform that "the war is a failure." Lincoln and those who thought that nothing could fail which was right, and nothing could win which was wrong, went straight on, and in the end they won.

So we see that our own movement to-day is just like every other similar movement throughout all history. It, too, is fought by the same kind of forces that fought the same kind of movements in the past. It, too, has

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its dark hour when those who have battled for it lose their nerve, and when those who oppose it come to the fight with fresh bravery and skill. It, too, has its plain and simple meaning the organization of honesty; or as I named it two years ago, the moral regeneration of American business. This is the clear light by which all the laws we have passed and intend to pass may be read easily, and by which future generations will behold and understand our times.

Each of these movements grew out of conditions, and so does ours. We have been busy with material things, making money, building railroads, sinking mines, occupying land; busy with trade and the development of resources. All this was good. But finally we became so busy with material things that we forgot ideal things; so busy with results that we forgot methods. Development of resources too often became exploitations of resources; trade too often became trickery; government too often became graft; building industry too often became juggling with industry; the praiseworthy spirit of gain by fair methods too often gave way to the evil spirit of gain by any methods.

Men felled and sawed into lumber forests belonging to the Nation, and called it enterprise; men sold poisoned food and diseased meat to the people and called it business; men watered stocks, overcharged the people to make the stocks pay dividends, and called it finance; men forced secret rebates from railroads, built prosperous plants upon the fraud, and called it industry; men bought the mastery of cities and states, got corrupt privileges and contracts, and called it government; men purchased high office, and called it career.

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