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 compromise
deeply 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 peace when 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 astray and 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 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 Austro-Hungarian 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 self-defense
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
constructively 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 spoliation; 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 278,760, in July to 307,182, and
continuing to reach similar figures in August and September, in August
289,570 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
fellow-countryman 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 self-sacrifice
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 stimulation 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 devastated 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 1920 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 and sweep 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 twenty-one 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
doubt I 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 subordinated 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 have 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 $9,000,000,000 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 tending 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 would be 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 business 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.
***
State of the Union Address
Warren Harding
December 6, 1921
MR. SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS:
It is a very gratifying privilege to come to the Congress with the
Republic at peace with all the nations of the world. More, it is equally
gratifying to report that our country is not only free from every
impending, menace of war, but there are growing assurances of the
permanency of the peace which we so deeply cherish.
For approximately ten years we have dwelt amid menaces of war or as
participants in war’s actualities, and the inevitable aftermath, with
its disordered conditions, bits added to the difficulties of government
which adequately can not be appraised except by, those who are in
immediate contact and know the responsibilities. Our tasks would be less
difficult if we had only ourselves to consider, but so much of the world
was involved, the disordered conditions are so well-nigh universal, even
among nations not engaged in actual warfare, that no permanent
readjustments can be effected without consideration of our inescapable
relationship to world affairs in finance and trade. Indeed, we should be
unworthy of our best traditions if we were unmindful of social, moral,
and political conditions which are not of direct concern to us, but
which do appeal to the human sympathies and the very becoming interest
of a people blest with our national good fortune.
It is not my purpose to bring to you a program of world restoration. In
the main such a program must be worked out by the nations more directly
concerned. They must themselves turn to the heroic remedies for the
menacing conditions under which they are struggling, then we can help,
and we mean to help. We shall do so unselfishly because there is
compensation in the consciousness of assisting, selfishly because the
commerce and international exchanges in trade, which marked our high
tide of fortunate advancement, are possible only when the nations of all
continents are restored to stable order and normal relationship.
In the main the contribution of this Republic to restored normalcy in
the world must come through the initiative of the executive branch of
the Government, but the best of intentions and most carefully considered
purposes would fail utterly if the sanction and the cooperation of
Congress were not cheerfully accorded.
I am very sure we shall have no conflict of opinion about constitutional
duties or authority. During the anxieties of war, when necessity seemed
compelling there were excessive grants of authority and all
extraordinary concentration of powers in the Chief Executive. The repeal
of war-time legislation and the automatic expirations which attended the
peace proclamations have put an end to these emergency excesses but I
have the wish to go further than that. I want to join you ill
restoring-, ill the most cordial way, the spirit of coordination and
cooperation, and that mutuality of confidence and respect which is
necessary ill representative popular government.
Encroachment upon the functions of Congress or attempted dictation of
its policy are not to be thought of, much less attempted, but there is
all insistent call for harmony of purpose and concord of action to speed
the solution of the difficult problems confronting both the legislative
and executive branches of the Government.
It is worth while to make allusion here to the character of our Clove
Government, mindful as one must be that an address to you is no less it
message to all our people, for whom you speak most intimately. Ours is
it popular Government through political parties. We divide along
political lines, and I would ever have it so. I do not mean that
partisan preferences should hinder any public servant in the performance
of a conscientious and patriotic official duty. We saw partisan lines
utterly obliterated when war imperiled, and our faith in the Republic
was riveted anew. We ought not to find these partisan lines obstructing
the expeditious solution of the urgent problems of peace.
Granting that we are fundamentally a representative popular Government,
with political parties the governing agencies, I believe the political
party in power should assume responsibility, determine upon policies ill
the conference which supplements conventions and election campaigns, and
then strive for achievement through adherence to the accepted policy.
There is vastly greater security, immensely more of the national
viewpoint, much larger and prompter accomplishment where our divisions
are along party lines, in the broader and loftier sense, than to divide
geographically, or according to pursuits, or personal following. For a
century and a third, parties have been charged with responsibility and
held to strict accounting. When they fail, they are relieved of
authority; and the system has brought its to a national eminence no less
than a world example.
Necessarily legislation is a matter of compromise. The full ideal is
seldom attained. In that meeting of minds necessary to insure results,
there must and will be accommodations and compromises, but in the
estimate of convictions and sincere put-poses the supreme responsibility
to national interest must not be ignored. The shield to the high-minded
public servant who adheres to party policy is manifest, but the higher
purpose is the good of the Republic as a whole.
It would be ungracious to withhold acknowledgment of the really large
volume and excellent quality of work accomplished by the extraordinary
session of Congress which so recently adjourned. I am not unmindful of
the very difficult tasks with which you were called to deal, and no one
can ignore the insistent conditions which, during recent years, have
called for the continued and almost exclusive attention of your
membership to public work. It would suggest insincerity if I expressed
complete accord with every expression recorded in your roll calls, but
we are all agreed about the difficulties and the inevitable divergence
of opinion in seeking the reduction, amelioration and readjustment of
the burdens of taxation. Later on, when other problems are solved, I
shall make some recommendations about renewed consideration of our tax
program, but for the immediate time before us we must be content with
the billion dollar reduction in the tax draft upon the people, and
diminished irritations, banished uncertainty and improved methods of
collection. By your sustainment of the rigid economies already
inaugurated, with hoped-for extension of these economies and added
efficiencies in administration, I believe further reductions may be
enacted and hindering burdens abolished.
In these urgent economies we shall be immensely assisted by the budget
system for which you made provision in the extraordinary session. The
first budget is before you. Its preparation is a signal achievement, and
the perfection of the system, a thing impossible in the few months
available for its initial trial, will mark its enactment as the
beginning of the greatest reformation in governmental practices since
the beginning of the Republic.
There is pending a grant of authority to the administrative branch of
the Government for the funding and settlement of our vast foreign loans
growing out of our grant of war credits. With the hands of the executive
branch held impotent to deal with these debts we are hindering urgent
readjustments among our debtors and accomplishing nothing for ourselves.
I think it is fair for the Congress to assume that the executive branch
of the Government would adopt no major policy in dealing with these
matters which would conflict with the purpose of Congress in authorizing
the loans, certainly not without asking congressional approval, but
there are minor problems incident to prudent loan transactions and the
safeguarding of our interests which can not even be attempted without
this authorization. It will be helpful to ourselves and it will improve
conditions among our debtors if funding and the settlement of defaulted
interest may be negotiated.
The previous Congress, deeply concerned in behalf of our merchant
marine, in 1920 enacted the existing shipping law, designed for the
upbuilding of the American merchant marine. Among other things provided
to encourage our shipping on the world’s seas, the Executive was
directed to give notice of the termination of all existing commercial
treaties in order to admit of reduced duties on imports carried in
American bottoms. During the life of the act no Executive has complied
with this order of the Congress. When the present administration came
into responsibility it began an early inquiry into the failure to
execute the expressed purpose of the Jones Act. Only one conclusion has
been possible. Frankly, Members of House and Senate, eager its I am to
join you in the making of an American merchant marine commensurate with
our commerce, the denouncement of our commercial treaties would involve
us in a chaos of trade relationships and add indescribably to the
confusion of the already disordered commercial world. Our power to do so
is not disputed, but power and ships, without comity of relationship,
will not give us the expanded trade which is inseparably linked with a
great merchant marine. Moreover, the applied reduction of duty, for
which the treaty denouncements were necessary, encouraged only the
carrying of dutiable imports to our shores, while the tonnage which
unfurls the flag on the seas is both free and dutiable, and the cargoes
which make it nation eminent in trade are outgoing, rather than
incoming.
It is not my thought to lay the problem before you in detail today. It
is desired only to say to you that the executive branch of the
Government, uninfluenced by the protest of any nation, for none has been
made, is well convinced that your proposal, highly intended and heartily
supported here, is so fraught with difficulties and so marked by
tendencies to discourage trade expansion, that I invite your tolerance
of noncompliance for only a few weeks until a plan may be presented
which contemplates no greater draft upon the Public Treasury, and which,
though yet too crude to offer it to-day, gives such promise of expanding
our merchant marine, that it will argue its own approval. It is enough
to say to-day that we are so possessed of ships, and the American
intention to establish it merchant marine is so unalterable, that a
plain of reimbursement, at no other cost than is contemplated in the
existing act, will appeal to the pride and encourage the hope of all the
American people.
There is before you the completion of the enactment of what has been
termed a “permanent” tariff law, the word “permanent” being used to
distinguish it from the emergency act which the Congress expedited early
in the extraordinary session, and which is the law today. I can not too
strongly urge in early completion of this necessary legislation It is
needed to stabilize our industry at home; it is essential to make more
definite our trade relations abroad. More, it is vital to the
preservation of many of our own industries which contribute so notably
to the very lifeblood of our Nation.
There is now, and there always will be, a storm of conflicting opinion
about any tariff revision. We can not go far wrong when we base our
tariffs on the policy of preserving the productive activities which
enhance employment and add to our national prosperity.
Again comes the reminder that we must not be unmindful of world
conditions, that peoples are struggling for industrial rehabilitation
and that we can not dwell in industrial and commercial exclusion and at
the same time do the just thing in aiding world reconstruction and
readjustment. We do not seek a selfish aloofness, and we could not
profit by it, were it possible. We recognize the necessity of buying
wherever we sell, and the permanency of trade lies in its acceptable
exchanges. In our pursuit of markets we must give as well as receive. We
can not sell to others who do not produce, nor can we buy unless we
produce at home. Sensible of every obligation of humanity, commerce and
finance, linked as they are in the present world condition, it is not to
be argued that we need destroy ourselves to be helpful to others. With
all my heart I wish restoration to the peoples blighted by the awful
World War, but the process of restoration does not lie in our acceptance
of like conditions. It were better to, remain on firm ground, strive for
ample employment and high standards of wage at home, and point the way
to balanced budgets, rigid economies, and resolute, efficient work as
the necessary remedies to cure disaster.
Everything relating to trade, among ourselves and among nations, has
been expanded, excessive, inflated, abnormal, and there is a madness in
finance which no American policy alone will cure. We are a creditor
Nation, not by normal processes, but made so by war. It is not an
unworthy selfishness to seek to save ourselves, when the processes of
that salvation are not only not denied to others, but commended to them.
We seek to undermine for others no industry by which they subsist; we
are obligated to permit the undermining of none of our own which make
for employment and maintained activities.
Every contemplation, it little matters in which direction one turns,
magnifies the difficulty of tariff legislation, but the necessity of the
revision is magnified with it. Doubtless we are justified in seeking it.
More flexible policy than we have provided heretofore. I hope a way will
be found to make for flexibility and elasticity, so that rates may be
adjusted to meet unusual and changing conditions which can not be
accurately anticipated. There are problems incident to unfair practices,
and to exchanges which madness in money have made almost unsolvable. I
know of no manner in which to effect this flexibility other than the
extension of the powers of the Tariff Commission so that it can adapt
itself to it scientific and wholly just administration of the law.
I am not unmindful of the constitutional difficulties. These can be met
by giving authority to the Chief Executive, who could
proclaim-additional duties to meet conditions which the Congress may
designate.
At this point I must disavow any desire to enlarge the Executive’s
powers or add to the responsibilities of the office. They are already
too large. If there were any other plan I would prefer it.
The grant of authority to proclaim would necessarily bring the Tariff
Commission into new and enlarged activities, because no Executive could
discharge such a duty except upon the information acquired and
recommendations made by this commission. But the plan is feasible, and
the proper functioning of the board would give its it better
administration of a defined policy than ever can be made possible by
tariff duties prescribed without flexibility.
There is a manifest difference of opinion about the merits of American
valuation. Many nations have adopted delivery valuation as the basis for
collecting duties; that is, they take the cost of the imports delivered
at the port of entry as the basis for levying duty. It is no radical
departure, in view of varying conditions and the disordered state of
money values, to provide for American valuation, but there can not be
ignored the danger of such a valuation, brought to the level of our own
production costs, making our tariffs prohibitive. It might do so in many
instances where imports ought to be encouraged. I believe Congress ought
well consider the desirability of the only promising alternative,
namely, a provision authorizing proclaimed American valuation, under
prescribed conditions, on any given list of articles imported.
In this proposed flexibility, authorizing increases to meet conditions
so likely to change, there should also be provision for decreases. A
rate may be just to-day, and entirely out of proportion six months from
to-day. If our tariffs are to be made equitable, and not necessarily
burden our imports and hinder our trade abroad, frequent adjustment will
be necessary for years to come. Knowing the impossibility of
modification by act of Congress for any one or a score of lines without
involving a long array of schedules, I think we shall go a long ways
toward stabilization, if there is recognition of the Tariff Commission’s
fitness to recommend urgent changes by proclamation.
I am sure about public opinion favoring the early determination of our
tariff policy. There have been reassuring signs of a business revival
from the deep slump which all the world has been experiencing. Our
unemployment, which gave its deep concern only a few weeks ago, has
grown encouragingly less, and new assurances and renewed confidence will
attend the congressional declaration that American industry will be held
secure.
Much has been said about the protective policy for ourselves making it
impossible for our debtors to discharge their obligations to us. This is
a contention not now pressing for decision. If we must choose between a
people in idleness pressing for the payment of indebtedness, or a people
resuming the normal ways of employment and carrying the credit, let us
choose the latter. Sometimes we appraise largest the human ill most
vivid in our minds. We have been giving, and are giving now, of our
influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off
the crushing burdens of armament. It is all very earnest, with a
national soul impelling. But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger,
face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater
obligation to-day is to do the Government’s part toward resuming
productivity and promoting fortunate and remunerative employment.
Something more than tariff protection is required by American
agriculture. To the farmer has come the earlier and the heavier burdens
of readjustment. There is actual depression in our agricultural
industry, while agricultural prosperity is absolutely essential to the
general prosperity of the country.
Congress has sought very earnestly to provide relief. It has promptly
given such temporary relief as has been possible, but the call is
insistent for the permanent solution. It is inevitable that large crops
lower the prices and short crops advance them. No legislation can cure
that fundamental law. But there must be some economic solution for the
excessive variation in returns for agricultural production.
It is rather shocking to be told, and to have the statement strongly
supported, that 9,000,000 bales of cotton, raised on American
plantations in a given year, will actually be worth more to the
producers than 13,000,000 bales would have been. Equally shocking is the
statement that 700,000,000 bushels of wheat, raised by American farmers,
would bring them more money than a billion bushels. Yet these are not
exaggerated statements. In a world where there are tens of millions who
need food and clothing which they can not get, such a condition is sure
to indict the social system which makes it possible.
In the main the remedy lies in distribution and marketing. Every proper
encouragement should be given to the cooperative marketing programs.
These have proven very helpful to the cooperating communities in Europe.
In Russia the cooperative community has become the recognized bulwark of
law and order, and saved individualism from engulfment in social
paralysis. Ultimately they will be accredited with the salvation of the
Russian State.
There is the appeal for this experiment. Why not try it? No one
challenges the right of the farmer to a larger share of the consumer’s
pay for his product, no one disputes that we can not live without the
farmer. He is justified in rebelling against the transportation cost.
Given a fair return for his labor, he will have less occasion to appeal
for financial aid; and given assurance that his labors shall not be in
vain, we reassure all the people of a production sufficient to meet our
National requirement and guard against disaster.
The base of the pyramid of civilization which rests upon the soil is
shrinking through the drift of population from farm to city. For a
generation we have been expressing more or less concern about this
tendency. Economists have warned and statesmen have deplored. We thought
for at time that modern conveniences and the more intimate contact would
halt the movement, but it has gone steadily on. Perhaps only grim
necessity will correct it, but we ought to find a less drastic remedy.
The existing scheme of adjusting freight rates hits been favoring the
basing points, until industries are attracted to some centers and
repelled from others. A great volume of uneconomic and wasteful
transportation has attended, and the cost increased accordingly. The
grain-milling and meat-packing industries afford ample illustration, and
the attending concentration is readily apparent. The menaces in
concentration are not limited to the retardingly influences on
agriculture. Manifestly the. conditions and terms of railway
transportation ought not be permitted to increase this undesirable
tendency. We have a just pride in our great cities, but we shall find a
greater pride in the Nation, which has it larger distribution of its
population into the country, where comparatively self-sufficient smaller
communities may blend agricultural and manufacturing interests in
harmonious helpfulness and enhanced good fortune. Such a movement
contemplates no destruction of things wrought, of investments made, or
wealth involved. It only looks to a general policy of transportation of
distributed industry, and of highway construction, to encourage the
spread of our population and restore the proper balance between city and
country. The problem may well have your earnest attention.
It has been perhaps the proudest claim of our American civilization that
in dealing with human relationships it has constantly moved toward such
justice in distributing the product of human energy that it has improved
continuously the economic status of the mass of people. Ours has been a
highly productive social organization. On the way up from the elemental
stages of society we have eliminated slavery and serfdom and are now far
on the way to the elimination of poverty.
Through the eradication of illiteracy and the diffusion of education
mankind has reached a stage where we may fairly say that in the United
States equality of opportunity has been attained, though all are not
prepared to embrace it. There is, indeed, a too great divergence between
the economic conditions of the most and the least favored classes in the
community. But even that divergence has now come to the point where we
bracket the very poor and the very rich together as the least fortunate
classes. Our efforts may well be directed to improving the status of
both.
While this set of problems is commonly comprehended under the general
phrase “Capital and labor,” it is really vastly broader. It is a
question of social and economic organization. Labor has become a large
contributor, through its savings, to the stock of capital; while the
people who own the largest individual aggregates of capital are
themselves often hard and earnest laborers. Very often it is extremely
difficult to draw the line of demarcation between the two groups; to
determine whether a particular individual is entitled to be set down as
laborer or as capitalist. In a very large proportion of cases he is
both, and when he is both he is the most useful citizen.
The right of labor to organize is just as fundamental and necessary as
is the right of capital to organize. The right of labor to negotiate, to
deal with and solve its particular problems in an organized way, through
its chosen agents, is just as essential as is the right of capital to
organize, to maintain corporations, to limit the liabilities of
stockholders. Indeed, we have come to recognize that the limited
liability of the citizen as a member of a labor organization closely
parallels the limitation of liability of the citizen as a stockholder in
a corporation for profit. Along this line of reasoning we shall make the
greatest progress toward solution of our problem of capital and labor.
In the case of the corporation which enjoys the privilege of limited
liability of stockholders, particularly when engaged in in the public
service, it is recognized that the outside public has a large concern
which must be protected; and so we provide regulations, restrictions,
and in some cases detailed supervision. Likewise in the case of labor
organizations, we might well apply similar and equally well-defined
principles of regulation and supervision in order to conserve the
public’s interests as affected by their operations.
Just as it is not desirable that a corporation shall be allowed to
impose undue exactions upon the public, so it is not desirable that a
labor organization shall be permitted to exact unfair terms of
employment or subject the public to actual distresses in order to
enforce its terms. Finally, just as we are earnestly seeking for
procedures whereby to adjust and settle political differences between
nations without resort to war, so we may well look about for means to
settle the differences between organized capital and organized labor
without resort to those forms of warfare which we recognize under the
name of strikes, lockouts, boycotts, and the like.
As we have great bodies of law carefully regulating the organization and
operations of industrial and financial corporations, as we have treaties
and compacts among nations which look to the settlement of differences
without the necessity of conflict in arms, so we might well have plans
of conference, of common counsel, of mediation, arbitration, and
judicial determination in controversies between labor and capital. To
accomplish this would involve the necessity to develop a thoroughgoing
code of practice in dealing with such affairs It might be well to
frankly set forth the superior interest of the community as a whole to
either the labor group or the capital group. With rights, privileges,
immunities, and modes of organization thus carefully defined, it should
be possible to set up judicial or quasi judicial tribunals for the
consideration and determination of all disputes which menace the public
welfare.
In an industrial society such as ours the strike, the lockout, and the
boycott are as much out of place and as disastrous in their results as
is war or armed revolution in the domain of politics. The same
disposition to reasonableness, to conciliation, to recognition of the
other side’s point of view, the same provision of fair and recognized
tribunals and processes, ought to make it possible to solve the one set
of questions its easily as the other. I believe the solution is
possible.
The consideration of such a policy would necessitate the exercise of
care and deliberation in the construction of a code and a charter of
elemental rights, dealing with the relations of employer and employee.
This foundation in the law, dealing with the modern conditions of social
and economic life, would hasten the building of the temple of peace in
industry which a rejoicing nation would acclaim.
After each war, until the last, the Government has been enabled to give
homes to its returned soldiers, and a large part of our settlement and
development has attended this generous provision of land for the
Nation’s defenders.
There is yet unreserved approximately 200,000,000 acres in the public
domain, 20,000,000 acres of which are known to be susceptible of
reclamation and made fit for homes by provision for irrigation.
The Government has been assisting in the development of its remaining
lands, until the estimated increase in land values in the irrigated
sections is full $500,000,000 and the crops of 1920 alone on these lands
are estimated to exceed $100,000,000. Under the law authorization these
expenditures for development the advances are to be returned and it
would be good business for the Government to provide for the reclamation
of the remaining 20,000,000 acres, in addition to expediting the
completion of projects long under way.
Under what is known as the coal and gas lease law, applicable also to
deposits of phosphates and other minerals on the public domain, leases
are now being made on the royalty basis, and are producing large
revenues to the Government. Under this legislation, 10 per centum of all
royalties is to be paid directly to the Federal Treasury, and of the
remainder 50 per centum is to be used for reclamation of arid lands by
irrigation, and 40 per centum is to be paid to the States, in which the
operations are located, to be used by them for school and road purposes.
These resources are so vast, and the development is affording so
reliable a basis of estimate, that the Interior Department expresses the
belief that ultimately the present law will add in royalties and
payments to the treasuries of the Federal Government and the States
containing these public lands a total of $12,000,000,000. This means, of
course, an added wealth of many times that sum. These prospects seem to
afford every justification of Government advances in reclamation and
irrigation.
Contemplating the inevitable and desirable increase of population, there
is another phase of reclamation full worthy of consideration. There are
79,000,000 acres of swamp and cut-over lands which may be reclaimed and
made as valuable as any farm lands we possess. These acres are largely
located in Southern States, and the greater proportion is owned by the
States or by private citizens. Congress has a report of the survey of
this field for reclamation, and the feasibility is established. I gladly
commend Federal aid, by way of advances, where State and private
participation is assured.
Home making is one of the greater benefits which government can bestow.
Measures are pending embodying this sound policy to which we may well
adhere. It is easily possible to make available permanent homes which
will provide, in turn, for prosperous American families, without
injurious competition with established activities, or imposition on
wealth already acquired.
While we are thinking of promoting the fortunes of our own people I am
sure there is room in the sympathetic thought of America for fellow
human beings who are suffering and dying of starvation in Russia. A
severe drought in the Valley of the Volga has plunged 15,000,000 people
into grievous famine. Our voluntary agencies are exerting themselves to
the utmost to save the lives of children in this area, but it is now
evident that unless relief is afforded the loss of life will extend into
many millions. America can not be deaf to such a call as that.
We do not recognize the government of Russia, nor tolerate the
propaganda which emanates therefrom, but we do not forget the traditions
of Russian friendship. We may put aside our consideration of all
international politics and fundamental differences in government. The
big thing is the call of the suffering and the dying. Unreservedly I
recommend the appropriation necessary to supply the American Relief
Administration with 10,000,000 bushels of corn and 1,000,000 bushels of
seed grains, not alone to halt the wave of death through starvation, but
to enable spring planting in areas where the seed grains have been
exhausted temporarily to stem starvation.
The American Relief Administration is directed in Russia by former
officers of our own armies, and has fully demonstrated its ability to
transport and distribute relief through American hands without hindrance
or loss. The time has come to add the Government’s support to the
wonderful relief already wrought out of the generosity of the American
private purse.
I am not unaware that we have suffering and privation at home. When it
exceeds the capacity for the relief within the States concerned, it will
have Federal consideration. It seems to me we should be indifferent to
our own heart promptings, and out of accord with the spirit which
acclaims the Christmastide, if we do not give out of our national
abundance to lighten this burden of woe upon a people blameless and
helpless in famine’s peril.
There are it full score of topics concerning which it would be becoming
to address you, and on which I hope to make report at a later time. I
have alluded to the things requiring your earlier attention. However, I
can not end this limited address without a suggested amendment to the
organic law.
Many of us belong to that school of thought which is hesitant about
altering the fundamental law. I think our tax problems, the tendency of
wealth to seek nontaxable investment, and the menacing increase of
public debt, Federal, State and municipal-all justify a proposal to
change the Constitution so as to end the issue of nontaxable bonds. No
action can change the status of the many billions outstanding, but we
can guard against future encouragement of capital’s paralysis, while a
halt in the growth of public indebtedness would be beneficial throughout
our whole land.
Such a change in the Constitution must be very thoroughly considered
before submission. There ought to be known what influence it will have
on the inevitable refunding of our vast national debt, how it will
operate on the necessary refunding of State and municipal debt, how the
advantages of Nation over State and municipality, or the contrary, may
be avoided. Clearly the States would not ratify to their own apparent
disadvantage. I suggest the consideration because the drift of wealth
into nontaxable securities is hindering the flow of large capital to our
industries, manufacturing, agricultural, and carrying, until we are
discouraging the very activities which make our wealth.
Agreeable to your expressed desire and in complete accord with the
purposes of the executive branch of the Government, there is in
Washington, as you happily know, an International Conference now most
earnestly at work on plans for the limitation of armament, a naval
holiday, and the just settlement of problems which might develop into
causes of international disagreement.
It is easy to believe a world-hope is centered on this Capital City. A
most gratifying world-accomplishment is not improbable.
***
State of the Union Address
Warren Harding
December 8, 1922
MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS:
So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of them,
in the face of the known limitations of a short session of Congress,
would seem to lack sincerity of purpose. It is four years since the
World War ended, but the inevitable readjustment of the social and
economic order is not more than barely begun. There is no acceptance of
pre-war conditions anywhere in the world. In a very general way humanity
harbors individual wishes to go on with war-time compensation for
production, with pre-war requirements in expenditure. In short,
everyone, speaking broadly, craves readjustment for everybody except
himself, while there can be no just and permanent readjustment except
when all participate.
The civilization which measured its strength of genius and the power of
science and the resources of industries, in addition to testing the
limits of man power and the endurance and heroism of men and women--that
same civilization is brought to its severest test in restoring a
tranquil order and committing humanity to the stable ways of peace.
If the sober and deliberate appraisal of pre-war civilization makes it
seem a worth-while inheritance, then with patience and good courage it
will be preserved. There never again will be precisely the old order;
indeed, I know of no one who thinks it to be desirable For out of the
old order came the war itself, and the new order, established and made
secure, never will permit its recurrence.
It is no figure of speech to say we have come to the test of Our
civilization. The world has been passing--is today passing through of a
great crisis. The conduct of war itself is not more difficult than the
solution of the problems which necessarily follow. I am not speaking at
this moment of the problem in its wider aspect of world rehabilitation
or of international relationships. The reference is to our own social,
financial, and economic problems at home. These things are not to be
considered solely as problems apart from all international relationship,
but every nation must be able to carry on for itself, else its
international relationship will have scant importance.
Doubtless our own people have emerged from the World War tumult less
impaired than most belligerent powers; probably we have made larger
progress toward reconstruction. Surely we have been fortunate in
diminishing unemployment, and our industrial and business activities,
which are the lifeblood of our material existence, have been restored as
in no other reconstruction period of like length in the history of the
world. Had we escaped the coal and railway strikes, which had no excuse
for their beginning and less justification for their delayed settlement,
we should have done infinitely better. But labor was insistent on
holding to the war heights, and heedless forces of reaction sought the
pre-war levels, and both were wrong. In the folly of conflict our
progress was hindered, and the heavy cost has not yet been fully
estimated. There can be neither adjustment nor the penalty of the
failure to readjust in which all do not somehow participate.
The railway strike accentuated the difficulty of the American farmer.
The first distress of readjustment came to the farmer, and it will not
be a readjustment fit to abide until he is relieved. The distress
brought to the farmer does not affect him alone. Agricultural ill
fortune is a national ill fortune. That one-fourth of our population
which produces the food of the Republic and adds so largely to our
export commerce must participate in the good fortunes of the Nation,
else there is none worth retaining.
Agriculture is a vital activity in our national life. In it we had our
beginning, and its westward march with the star of the empire has
reflected the growth of the Republic. It has its vicissitudes which no
legislation will prevent, its hardships for which no law can provide
escape. But the Congress can make available to the farmer the financial
facilities which have been built up under Government aid and supervision
for other commercial and industrial enterprises. It may be done on the
same solid fundamentals and make the vitally important agricultural
industry more secure, and it must be done.
This Congress already has taken cognizance of the misfortune which
precipitate deflation brought to American agriculture. Your measures of
relief and the reduction of the Federal reserve discount rate
undoubtedly saved the country from widespread disaster. The very proof
of helpfulness already given is the strongest argument for the permanent
establishment of widened credits, heretofore temporarily extended
through the War Finance Corporation.
The Farm Loan Bureau, which already has proven its usefulness through
the Federal land banks, may well have its powers enlarged to provide
ample farm production credits as well as enlarged land credits. It is
entirely practical to create a division in the Federal land banks to
deal with production credits, with the limitations of time so adjusted
to the farm turnover as the Federal reserve system provides for the
turnover in the manufacturing and mercantile world. Special provision
must be made for live-stock production credits, and the limit of land
loans may be safely enlarged. Various measures are pending before you,
and the best judgment of Congress ought to be expressed in a prompt
enactment at the present session.
But American agriculture needs more than added credit facilities. The
credits will help to solve the pressing problems growing out of
war-inflated land values and the drastic deflation of three years ago,
but permanent and deserved agricultural good fortune depends on better
and cheaper transportation.