Speech or Document 23

WHY GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN

THE two prime purposes of the American people at this time, having precedence of all others, are: first to insist upon the absolute and thoroughgoing Americanization of our entire citizenship; and second, to win the war, to win it as speedily as possible, and to end it by the peace of overwhelming victory, a peace which shall guarantee to us, and to our Allies and to all well-behaved nations of the civilized world, lasting relief from the threat and horror of German world dominion.

As regards Americanism, we must insist that there be in this country but one Nationality, the American nationality.  There must be no perpetuation in this country of separate national groups, with their separate languages and special loyalties to alien oversea flags.  There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country.  There is room here only for 100 per cent.  Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.  We must have loyalty to only one flag, the American flag; and it is disloyal to the American flag to try to be loyal to any other, whether that other is a foreign flag or the black and red flags which symbolize either anarchy or else treacherous hostility to all for which this nation stands.  There is room in this country for but one language, the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's Farewell Address and of Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech and Second inaugural; the English language.  Americanism transcends every party consideration.  No man who is not 100 per cent.  American is entitled to the support of any party which is itself entitled to be considered an American party.  We should treat as disloyal any attempt to carry water on both shoulders, to try to conciliate any half American vote here at home, or to antagonize any of our allies, or to serve Germany by seeking a peace without victory, or a peace as favorable to her as to the nations she has so brutally and unscrupulously wronged.  We must set our faces like flint against all foreign racial solidarity in this country; we must treat the Hun within our gates as the worst traitor to this Republic; and we must treat agitation for a premature or inconclusive peace as treason to the Republic.  The German spy, the alien enemy here at home, and the even fouler and more despicable native American who serves the alien, should be interned at hard labor — or if his office be rank he should be buried.  The surest way to stop the activities of spies and plotters is to shoot every one of them who is caught in a flagrant offense.

This is one side of Americanism.  The other and equally important side is to insist that every man who shows himself to be a 100 per cent.  American, wholehearted and single-minded in his loyalty to this country, no matter what his birthplace, national origin or creed, be treated as on a full and exact equality with every other good American.  The bulk of American citizens in whole or in part of German blood (and I am myself in part of German blood) are absolutely loyal.  They have furnished as large and as gallant a proportion of the fighting men of our army and navy as any other element; and of course it is the fighting men who meet and furnish the highest test of sound American citizenship at this time.  Moreover, in civil life they furnish their full proportion of the leaders in the movement to insist upon a unified, an unqualified and an undivided American loyalty to our country.  These men are fit to fill every civil and military position in this country, from the very highest down.  It is not only an outrage, but it is deeply unpatriotic and un-American to discriminate against them in any shape or way.  We are all Americans together; and we must neither permit any divided allegiance in our citizenship, nor any attempt to divide our citizenship along lines of old-world nationality, nor any attempt to discriminate between or against good Americans because of their national origin.

Americanism means that we are a nation.  But it is no use to be a nation if the nation can not defend itself, if its sons can not and will not fight for its existence.  The one task to which at this time we must all of us devote all our energies is to win this war and to win it now.  We must speed up the war.  We must insist upon absolute efficiency in our war activities.  We must insist upon a peace conditioned upon the complete over-throw of Germany and the removal of all threat of German world dominion.  We have across the seas a most gallant American army.  The man is a poor American whose veins do not thrill with pride as he reads of the feats of our fighting men in France.  Moreover, at least we have begun to send over enough soldiers to count for something real in the struggle.  We have begun to give them some airplanes.  As yet they only have what cannon we can get from the French, and we could get the army across at all only by the lavish use of British ships.  But we have seemingly made a real start in ship production and airplane production at home, and we actually have several hundred thousand soldiers at the fighting front.  We owe much of this achievement to the work of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs; and we owe even more to the success of the German drive which began in March.  At that time our fighting army at the front was smaller than that of Belgium and (in spite of its striking gallantry it could not play a great part) and this represented the sum of our military achievement after a year of war! A very small degree of efficiency in handling the War Department would have meant that our army in France on January 1st would have far surpassed in size and equipment the army we have over there now in July.  In such event the German drive would probably have been beaten back at once; exactly as if we had done our duty since the sinking of the Lusitania (which was the " Firing on Fort Sumter " of this war), and had prepared in advance, we would have put a couple of million men in the field a year ago; in which event Russia would never have broken, and the war would unquestionably have been over before this.  Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

It is too late to remedy the past.  It is a case of spilled milk.  But let us avoid spilling the milk in the same fashion in the future.  Let us begin to prepare now so that we shall not next year be again apologizing for a shortage of troops, guns, ships and airplanes.  For four years the English and French, and for over three years the Italians have fought our battles, and we have only just begun to fight for ourselves.  This is not right.  We have a larger population and greater resources than Germany or than France and Great Britain taken together.  We have played a poor part in the early stages of the world war.  Let us make the finishing of the war an American task.  By this time next year we ought to have overseas an army as great as the combined armies of France and England, an army of between three and four million fighting soldiers on the various fighting fronts, and this, considering replacements and non-combatants, means at least six million men.  Congress should refuse assent to the War Department's present policy of procrastination in deferring the necessary extension of the age limits for the draft, and in other ways.  There should be no further delay.  Besides enormously strengthening our army in France we should by this time have declared war on Turkey and to have sent a hundred thousand soldiers to aid our Allies in western Asia.  We have had to use English ships to ferry our troops across the Atlantic, and we could use Japanese ships to ferry them across the Pacific.

There must be no peace until Germany is beaten to her knees.  To leave her with a strangle-hold on Russia, and, through her vassal allies, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey, dominant in Central Europe and Asia Minor, would mean that she had won the war and taken a giant stride towards world dominion.  Belgium must be reinstated and reimbursed; France must receive back Alsace and Lorraine; Turkey must be driven from Europe, Armenia made free, the Syrian Christians protected, and the Jews given Palestine.  Italian-Austria must go to Italy and Roumanian-Hungary to Roumania.  Moreover, we must raise against the German menace the sleeping sword of the Slavs of Central Europe; we must establish the great free commonwealths of the Poles, the Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs, and save the other submerged peoples who are their neighbors.  Unless we do all this, unless we stand by all our Allies who have stood by us, we shall have failed in making the liberty of well-behaved civilized peoples secure, and we shall have shown that our announcement about making the world safe for democracy was an empty boast.

These are the tasks set us as regards winning the war and ending the war.  Therefore, the men elected this fall should not only be absolutely loyal, but possessed of broad vision, sound common sense, high character and unyielding resolution; for they must grapple with tremendous international questions.  A timid man, a half-hearted pacifist or a foolish visionary may do as incalculable harm as the demagogue or conscienceless political trickster.  And of course no disloyal man, and no man of merely lukewarm loyalty, should be chosen, no matter what the ticket on which he runs.

Loyalty to the people of the United States is the prime need.  This is the people's war.  It is not the President's war.  It is not the war of Congress.  It is the war of the people of the United States.  Our whole-hearted and undivided loyalty is due to the country as a whole, and to every public servant, whether President or Senator, executive official or Congressman, precisely to the degree in which that public servant disinterestedly and efficiently serves the country.  We demand loyalty of this type, for it is the only loyalty for self-respecting American freemen.

The events of the last year and a half have shown the necessity of electing a Republican Congress, to support the Administration at every point where it acts vigorously in prosecuting the war, and to supply its deficiencies in the prosecution of the war and in the carrying out of a proper world policy.  This country needs a Congress which will give the Administration this kind of vigorous support, and yet will fearlessly supervise, and when necessary investigate, what is being done.  Since the war began the Republicans in Congress have acted in a spirit of the largest patriotism, and wholly without regard to questions of politics.  For the Administration measures designed for efficiently carrying on the war they have furnished a larger percentage of support than have the Democrats; and where the Administration was wrong, the bulk of the Republicans have ventured to withstand it and have stood by the country, whereas the bulk of the Democrats have not done so; although there have been some conspicuous and honorable exceptions.  It is only by such conduct that we can win the war and secure the right kind of peace.  The need in Congress is for loyal Americans, far-sighted, strong-willed, resolute, who shall represent the people of this country and who shall stand steadfastly by the nation as a whole.

So much for the war.  But when we have closed the giant war we must then prepare for the giant tasks of peace.  First and foremost we should act on Washington's advice, and in time of peace prepare against war, so that never again shall we be caught in such humiliating inability to defend ourselves and assert our rights as has been the case during the last four years.  In a democracy such preparation should be the duty of the whole people and not merely a part of the people.  There should be universal obligatory military training in the field for a period of, say, six months of all our young men between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one.  I wish there could be industrial training also; but the six-months period would have to be lengthened if any serious industrial training is to be added to the military training.  Such training would instill into our people a fervent and intense Americanism which would forever free us from the menace of Bolshevism and all of its American variety, from the frank homicidal march of the I.  W.  W.  to the sinister anti-Americanism of the Germanized socialistic party.

The preparation for the tasks of peace must be in the interest of all our people, of those who dwell in the open country and of those who dwell in the cities; of all men who live honestly and toil with head or hand, and of all women just as much as of all men.  Often there can be identity of function between men and women, generally there can not be, but always there must be full equality of right.  Women have the vote in this state.  They should be given it at once in the nation at large.  And in the councils of this state, and in the councils of our party, women should be admitted to their share of the direction on an exact equality with the men, and whenever it is wisely possible their judgment and directive power should be utilized in association with men rather than separately.

In our industrial activities, alike of farmer, wage worker and business man, our aim should be cooperation among ourselves, and control by the state to the degree necessary, but not beyond the degree necessary, in order to prevent tyranny and yet to encourage and reward individual excellence.  Business men should be permitted to cooperate and combine, subject to such regulation and control by the Government as will prevent injustice and sharp dealing among themselves or towards their employees, or as regards outsiders and the general public.  There should be no penalizing of business merely because of its size, although, of course, there is peculiar need of supervision of big business.  Government ownership should be avoided wherever possible; our purpose should be to steer between the anarchy of unregulated individualism and the deadening formalism and inefficiency of widespread state ownership.  From time to time it has been found and will be found necessary for the Government to own and run certain businesses, the uninterrupted prosecution of which is necessary to the public welfare and which can not be adequately controlled in any other way, but normally this is as inadvisable as to permit such business concerns to be free from all Government supervision and direction.  Normally, and save where the necessity is clearly shown, our aim should be to encourage and stimulate private action and cooperation subject to Government control.  Profiteering out of the war should be stopped, but it is mere common sense to say that proper profit making should be encouraged, for unless there is a profit the business can not run, labor can not be paid, and neither the public nor the Government can be served.  And the misery in which this country was plunged before our business was artificially stimulated by the outbreak of the world war shows the need of a protective tariff.

Labor likewise should have full right to cooperate and combine, full right to collective bargaining and collective action; subject always, as in the case of capital, to the paramount general interest of the public, of the commonwealth; and the prime feature of this paramount general interest is that each man shall do justice and shall receive justice.  Hereafter in a very real sense labor should be treated, both as regards conditions of work and conditions of reward, as a partner in the enterprises in which it is associated; housing and living conditions must be favorable; effort must be made to see that the work is interesting, there must be insurance against old age, sickness and involuntary unemployment; and a share in the money reward for increased business success, whether it conies from efficiency shown in speeding up or from labor-saving machinery or from any other cause.  And on the other side there must be no restriction of output, no levelling down, no failure by the man to exert his full powers, and to receive the full reward to which his individual excellence entitles him; and no failure to recognize that unless there is a proper reward for the capital invested and for the management provided, absolute industrial disaster will result to every human being in this country.

The welfare of the farmer stands as the bedrock welfare of the entire commonwealth.  Hitherto he has not received the full share of industrial reward and benefit to which he is entitled.  He can receive it only as the result of organization and cooperation.  Along certain lines the Government must itself cooperate with him; but normally most can be accomplished by cooperation among the farmers themselves, in marketing their products, in buying certain things which they particularly need, and in joint action along many lines.  The state can wisely supplement such work of cooperation, but most of such work it can not with wisdom itself undertake.

These, in brief outline, are the tasks of rebuilding and upbuilding which are before us when peace comes.  But the prime needs now are the needs of war.  We must insist that this whole country be unified, nationalized, Americanized, and that no division of our American loyalty and American citizenship along the lines of national origin or of adherence to an alien flag be for one instant tolerated.  We must insist upon speeding up the war, so that our giant strength may be fully utilized, and next year our armies overseas at least equal in the aggregate to the German armies.  We must refuse any peace except the peace of overwhelming victory, a peace which will guarantee us against the threat of the German world dominion by securing to every well-behaved civilized power its real and complete freedom.

YANKEE BLOOD VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD

A   SPEECH   DELIVERED   AT   SPRINGFIELD,   ILLINOIS, ON AUGUST 26,   1918

THE two great needs of the moment are to insist upon thorough-going and absolute Americanism throughout this land, and to speed up the war; and secondarily to these needs come the needs of beginning even now to make ready, to prepare for the tasks that are to come after the war, the task of preparing so that never again shall war find us helpless, and the task of preparing for the social and industrial problems which this earth-shaking conflict of giants will leave in its ruinous wake.

To insist upon thorough-going, 100 per cent.  Americanism among all our people is merely another way.  of saying that we insist upon being a nation proud of our national past and confident of our future as the greatest of the nations of mankind: for if we permit our people to be split into a score of different nationalities, each speaking a different language and each paying its real soul homage to some national ideal overseas, we shall not be a nation at all, but merely a polyglot boarding house; and nobody feels much loyalty to a polyglot boarding house or is proud to belong to it.  Moreover, there is no such thing as a divided loyalty.  Any kind of alloy in the loyalty makes the loyalty completely valueless.  At this time the man of German origin who says he is loyal to "Germanism," to “Deutschtum," although not to Germany, to “Deutschland," is disloyal to America.  Germanism is incompatible with Americanism.  The slightest loyalty to Germany is disloyalty to the United States.  We can tolerate no halfway attitude, no fifty-fifty loyalty.  The man must be an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

If a man is loyal to any other flag, whether a foreign flag or the red flag of anarchy, or the black flag of Germanized socialism, he is disloyal to the American flag; and we must have but one language, the language of the Declaration of Independence, and of Washington's Farewell Address, and of Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, the English language.

We are not internationalists.  We are American nationalists.  We intend to do justice to all other nations.  But in the last four years the professed internationalists like the profound pacifists have played the game of brutal German autocracy, the game of the militaristic and capitalistic tyranny which now absolutely rules the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns.  Professional internationalism stands towards patriotism exactly as free love stands toward a clean and honorable and duty-performing family life.  And American pacifism has been the tool and ally of German militarism, and has represented, and always will represent, deep disloyalty to our beloved country.

Having said this, with all the emphasis at my command, I wish with no less emphasis to say that the equally important other side of Americanism is the imperative duty of treating all men who show that they are in very truth Americans as on an entire equality of right and privilege, with no more regard to their birthplace, or the birthplace of their parents than to their creed.  In this crisis, since once our people grew fully awake, the Americans of German blood have in the immense majority of cases shown themselves as absolutely and aggressively and single-minded American as the citizens of any other stock or as the citizens who like most of us are of mixed stock.  The German government and the-German newspapers have reluctantly recognized this and they are more bitter against the Americans of German blood than against any other Americans.  The leading papers of Germany have contained bitter denunciations of them; and recently in the captured report of a German Inspector General which spoke of the American prisoners, the General especially dwelt on the fact that the soldiers of foreign parentage felt and behaved precisely like the soldiers of native parentage, and that this applied especially to the soldiers of German parentage.  Among the feats of especial gallantry chronicled of our men at the front a full proportion are to be credited to men whose names show that they are in whole or in part of German blood.  We Americans all stand shoulder to shoulder in war and in peace; and woe to the men who would try to divide us.  No man can serve two masters.  No man can serve both the United States and Germany.  If he is loyal to one side he must be hostile to the other.  If he is a loyal American he must be against Germany and all her works.

For the moment the pacifists and internationalists and pro-Germans dare not be noisy.  But let our people beware of them as soon as the peace negotiations begin and from that time onward.  They have worked together in the past and they will work together in the future, the pro-Germans furnishing the most powerful and most sinister element of the combination while the pacifists and the internationalists prance in the foreground and furnish the rhetoric.  Let our people remember that for the two and a half years before we entered the war the pacifists clamorously insisted that if we kept unprepared we would avoid war.  Well, we tried the experiment.  We kept completely unprepared.  Even after we broke off diplomatic relations with Germany we refused to make the slightest preparation.  And nevertheless we drifted into the war.  Pacifism and unpreparedness never keep a nation out of war.  They invite war; and they insure that if war comes it shall be costly; and long drawn out and bloody.  If when the great war broke out four years ago, or even if when the Lusitania was sunk three years and a quarter ago, we had begun with all our energy to prepare, we would very possibly never have had to go to war at all, and if forced to go to war we would have conquered peace ninety days after our entry into the conflict.

Let us remember this when the peace comes.  Don't trust the pacifists; they are the enemies of righteousness.  Don't trust the internationalists; they are the enemies of nationalism and Americanism.  Both of these groups appeal to all weaklings, illusionists, materialists, lukewarm Americans and faddists of all the types that vitiate nationalism.  Their leaders are plausible, make-believe humanitarians, who crave a notoriety that flatters their own egotism, who often mislead amiable and well-meaning, but short-sighted persons, who care for their own worthless carcasses too much to go anywhere near the front when fighting comes, but who in times of inert and slothful thinking, when war seems a remote possibility, can gain a reputation by windy schemes which imply not the smallest self-sacrifice or service among those who advocate them, and which therefore appeal to all exponents of intellectual vagary, sentimental instability and eccentricity, and that sham altruism which seeks the cheap glory of words that betray deeds.  All these elements combined may, when the people as a whole are not fully awake, betray this country into a course of folly for which when the hour of stern trial comes our bravest men will pay with blood and our bravest women with tears.  For those illusionists do not pay with their own bodies for the dreadful errors into which they have led a nation.  They strut through their time of triumph in the hours of ease; and when the hours of trial come they scatter instantly and let the nationalists, the old-fashioned patriots, the men and women who believe in the virile fighting virtues, accept the burden and carry the load, meet the dangers and make the sacrifies, and give themselves to and for the country.  Nations are made, defended, and preserved, not by the illusionists but by the men and women who practice the homely virtues in time of peace, and who in time of righteous war are ready to die, or to send those they love best to die, for a shining ideal.

When peace comes let us accept any reasonable proposal, whether calling for a league of nations or for any other machinery, which we can in good faith act upon, and which does really offer some chance of lessening the number of future wars and diminishing their area.  But let us never forget that any promise that such a league or other piece of machinery will definitely do away with war is either sheer nonsense or rank hypocrisy.  When the test comes any strong and brutal nation will treat any such agreement as a scrap of paper, precisely as Germany treated the Hague conventions and the treaties guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, unless well-behaved nations possess both the will and the power to enforce the observance of the agreement.  There-fore let us treat any peace treaties and agreements never as substitutes for but merely as supplementary to the duty of preparing our own strength for our own defense.  And let us make this duty the duty of all the people, as it should be in a democracy, where universal suffrage should rest on universal service.  Let us rest our strength on an army which shall consist not of a special caste, but of the people themselves; on an army produced by the universal obligatory training of all our young men sometime between the ages of 19 and 21.

This is for the future.  Our immediate duty is to win the war.  We must speed up the war to the limit.  We must try to finish it at the earliest possible moment, but be resolved to finish it, no matter how long it takes.  We must insist on the peace of complete and overwhelming victory.  We must remember that a huge army put in the field at one time will accomplish what the same number of men put into the field in driblets can never accomplish.  We have a much larger population and much greater natural resources than Germany or than France and England combined.  Therefore, by next spring we should have thousands of our own field guns, and scores of thousands of our own airplanes at the front, and an enormous ship tonnage in which to ferry across the ocean so many troops that by April we may have four million trained fighting men at the front, not counting non-combatants and reserves.  The age limits for the draft should be greatly increased and the exemptions greatly diminished.  All of this, of course, should have been done six months ago — indeed a year ago.  But it is not too late now.  It is the eleventh hour, but not the twelfth.  We must quit making this a “leisurely war." Our gallant fighting men at the front have shown the most splendid military qualities, and have won for themselves and for this nation the highest honor.  Therefore we who stay at home must back them up by deeds, not merely by applause.  They are entitled to such backing; and such backing means great quantities of ships, guns and airplanes, and millions of trained men.  It is a good thing, an admirable thing, to back up the Red Cross and the Y.  M.  C.  A., and all kindred bodies; to pay taxes cheerfully and buy Liberty bonds and thrift stamps; to save food and grow food, and to work with all our might with head and hand at useful industry.  All these things will help the fighting men to win the war.  But it is the fighting men at the front who will win the war.  Therefore back up the fighting men; and the only way to back them up is to do the things of which I have spoken above.

So much for the vital, the immediate, the imperative needs.  They are the needs that must at all hazards be met forthwith.  But there are other paramount needs which we must also conside.

This terrible war, with all its dreadful and lamentable accompaniments, may nevertheless do a lasting good to this nation; for it may scourge us out of the wallow of materialism, made only worse by a mawkish or vicious sham sentimentality, into which we were tending to sink.  The finest, the bravest, the best of our young men have sprung eagerly forward to face death for the sake of a high ideal; and thereby they have brought home to us the great truth that life consists of more than easy-going pleasure, and more than hard, conscienceless, brutal striving after purely material success; that while we must rightly care for the body and the things of the body, such care leads nowhere unless we also have thought for our own souls and for the souls of our brothers.  When these gallant boys, on the golden crest of life, gladly face death for the sake of an ideal, shall not we who stay behind, who have not been found worthy of the grand adventure, shall not we in our turn try to shape our lives so as to make this country the ideal which in our hearts we acknowledge, and the actual workaday business of our world, come a little nearer together, correspond in practice a little more closely? Let us resolve to make this country a better place to live in for these men, and for the women who sent these men to battle and for the children who are to come after them.

When peace comes, and even before peace comes, let us weigh and ponder the mighty spiritual forces called into being by this war and turn them to the social and industrial betterment of this nation.  Abraham Lincoln, with his usual homely commonsense and unerring instinct for the truth, made our people remember that the dollar has its place, an essential place, but that the man stands above the dollar.  Of late years we have worshiped the dollar overmuch, and have been snugly content with sleek service to Mammon, heedless of the ominous fact that over-devotion to dollars is almost equally damaging to those who have too many and to those who have too few; for when success is treated as tested and measured, not by the achievement of a self-respecting, hardworking, happy family life, and the performance of duty to oneself and to others with pleasure as a proper accompaniment of the duty; but merely by the mass of dollars amassed — why, the result is that the successful greedy ones develop a mean arrogance, and the unsuccessful greedy ones a mean envy; and envy and arrogance are equally unlovely sides of the same evil shield.

At present the best blood in this country, from all the homes of this country, is being spilled by our sons and brothers for principle and for justice and for humanity and for love of country, because our sons and brothers have placed love of a great cause above the dollar.  Let us see that the position is not reversed for a long time to come! The other day I read the statement that there were a hundred thousand undernourished children in New York City.  If we had a like number of undernourished soldiers, what a cry would go up! Yet these children are the citizens of the future, and the industrial arm is of just as much importance as the military.  We must realize this, and act on our realization, or some day our republic will rock to its foundation.

In achieving this purpose we must be equally on our guard against the American Romanoffs, the reactionaries of industry and politics, and against the American Bolshevists who appeal to the basest passions of envy and class hatred, and who strive for disorder and anarchy.  The history of Russia during the last 18 months teaches our country exactly what to avoid.  And one of the lessons it teaches is that the most sordid corruptionist may do no more harm to the nation than the conscienceless demagogue or the fanatical and impracticable visionary.

We must take the rule of justice and fair play as our guide in dealing alike with capital and with labor, with the business man and the working man.  Our theory should be cooperation among individuals, and control by the government with the purpose of helping the business succeed, but of seeing that the success implies service to the public and a fair division of profits among all concerned.  During war time there should be no profiteering, no unusual and abnormal profits; but there must be legitimate profits or the business can not go on, and unless it goes on the public can not be served nor the wage earners receive their wages.  If there are no profits we can not raise the taxes necessary to provide money for the war.  The working-men likewise should have their right of collective action, including collective bargaining, insured; and in a very real sense they should be made partners in the business, with a share in the profits and, at least along certain lines, a share in the control; and provision should be made for their honorable security in old age, and for their insurance against disease, accident and involuntary unemployment.  There must be the fullest recognition, in honor and in material reward, of the skillful, conscientious, intelligent, hard-working man — I mean a recognition which he will accept as such, not merely a recognition which outsiders think sufficient.  But there must be no limiting of production, no limiting of output, and no deadening insistence on reducing the efficiency of the skillful and hardworking to the plane of the shiftless or inefficient.

The foundation of our permanent civilization rests on the farmer; and by farmer I mean not the man who owns land which others till, but the man who himself tills or helps till the ground part of which at least he himself owns.  A cardinal feature of our national policy should be the insuring of his rights to this man; and this not only for his sake, but for the sake of all of us.

Normally, he must be the owner of the ground he and his sons and his hired man till; and the hired man must have conditions shaped so that if he is hardworking, thrifty and energetic he shall have the means and the opportunity himself to purchase farming land on which to dwell and to bring up his family.  We ought now to formulate, and we ought long ago to have formulated, an American agricultural policy; and the national agricultural department should be completely reorganized and its activities made far more productive than at present, especially in view of the large sum of money now allotted it.  Normally, in farming regions, where the land is agricultural land, tenancy should be recognized only as a transitional and temporary phase, and normally the working farmer should himself be the landowner; and legislation to secure this should at once be enacted.  In different sections of the country there are different needs, and therefore different methods of meeting the needs will be necessary; nor do I now intend to define them; for the remedies may be cumulative, and may include progressive taxation of land holdings in excess of a quarter section or at most a half section, the rights of tenants to compensation for all improvements or indeed a certain property right to the land itself, and real, not nominal, provision by the government for loaning money to those who need it in order to buy themselves a freehold.  There must be improved methods of farm financing with emphasis on the getting and spending more money on the farms that are worth while.  The high roads must be developed.  Drastic action should be taken to stop the purchase of agricultural land for speculative purchasers; where necessary this should go to the length of giving full title to the occupant for use only, and limiting his power of alienating the land.  System of marketing must be developed, so as to do away with the hold-up methods that in so many places still obtain.  The producer must get more, and the consumer pay less, than at present; and both these ends can be and have been attained by proper legislation.

We ought to do these and the many other things necessary now, when it is possible to do them without causing too great distress to those in possession of long undisputed privileges which by time have grown to possess much of the character of rights.  Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.  In this country tenant farming and the individual ownership of extensive tracts of agricultural land are growing at the expense of the homestead holders.  Let us take whatever steps — conservative, if possible, radical, if necessary — are needed to remedy the situation; for if left unremedied the result may be something unpleasantly near revolution a half century hence; and in such case the wrongs will be remedied only by action which causes other wrongs to innocent people and works deep demoralization to those benefited; whereas at present by the exercise of forethought and resolution we may escape both kinds of evil.

There are certain things the state can do and must do for the farmer.  But most things the farmer can do for himself by association with his fellow farmers, and such independence of unnecessary state action is healthy in itself and is consonant with the rugged self-reliance characteristic of that most typical of American citizen, the American who dwells in the open country and tills the soil with his own hands.  There must be cooperation on a large scale among farmers, in marketing their products so as to get them as nearly as possible direct to the consumer, and in purchasing at least all of their needed goods that can be standardized; and gradually in other ways also.  Whatever can be done by such cooperation rather than by the state should be done: but where such cooperation proves inadequate to achieve the end, whether in shipping, storing or marketing, the state must itself assume the task.

Any such cooperative association should deal with the work that peculiarly affects farmers.  Therefore it should most emphatically not be turned into a political party; and a political party which goes into politics as such is just as much a political party even although it chooses to call itself by some name with non-partisan in it.  Any party which represents purely a class of our citizens inevitably works mischief.  It is just as bad to have public servants who represent nobody but farmers as to have public servants who do not represent farmers.  Our public servants are in honor bound to represent all of us, and not merely a few of us; and unless they represent all of us, and work sincerely and wisely for the permanent benefit of all of us, then they do not really and permanently represent any of us.  Individually some of us are farmers, others workingmen, others business people, others doctors or lawyers or writers, or clergymen; but in addition we are all of us Americans first and foremost; and in government our common interest as decent citizens comes ahead of the separate interest of any of us.  It is wise and it may be necessary that we shall individually belong to any one of various unions or associations or leagues or corporations; but there is one union to which all of us belong and to which our first allegiance is always due, and that union is the United States.