To you, men and women who have come here to this great city of this great
State formally to launch a new party, a party of the people of the whole
Union, the National Progressive Party, I extend my hearty greeting. You are
taking a bold and a greatly needed step for the service of our beloved country.
The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial
lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous
elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly what should
be said on the vital issues of the day. This new movement is a movement of
truth, sincerity, and wisdom, a movement which proposes to put at the service
of all our people the collective power of the people, through their Governmental
agencies, alike in the Nation and in the several States. We propose boldly
to face the real and great questions of the day, and not skillfully to evade
them as do the old parties. We propose to raise aloft a standard to which
all honest men can repair, and under which all can fight, no matter what
their past political differences, if they are content to face the future
and no longer to dwell among the dead issues of the past. We propose to put
forth a platform which shall not be a platform of the ordinary and insincere
kind, but shall be a contract with the people; and, if the people accept
this contract by putting us in power, we shall hold ourselves under honorable
obligation to fulfill every promise it contains as loyally as if it were
actually enforceable under the penalties of the law. ...
THE FARMER
There is no body of our people whose interests are more inextricably interwoven
with the interests of all the people than is the case with the farmers. The
Country Life Commission should be revived with greatly increased powers;
its abandonment was a severe blow to the interests of our people. The welfare
of the farmer is a basic need of this Nation. It is the men from the farm
who in the past have taken the lead in every great movement within this Nation,
whether in time of war or in time of peace. It is well to have our cities
prosper, but it is not well if they prosper at the expense of the country.
I am glad to say that in many sections of our country there has been an extraordinary
revival of recent years in intelligent interest in and work for those who
live in the open country. In this movement the lead must be taken by the
farmers themselves; but our people as a whole, through their governmental
agencies, should back the farmers. Everything possible should be
done to better the economic condition of the farmer, and also to increase
the social value of the life of the farmer, the farmer's wife, and their
children. The burdens of labor and loneliness bear heavily on the women in
the country; their welfare should be the especial concern of all of us. Everything
possible should be done to make life in the country profitable so as to be
attractive from the economic standpoint and also to give an outlet among
farming people for those forms of activity which now tend to make life in
the cities especially desirable for ambitious men and women. There should
be just the same chance to live as full, as well-rounded, and as highly useful
lives in the country as in the city.
The Government must co-operate with the farmer to make the farm more productive.
There must be no skinning of the soil. The farm should be left to the farmer's
soil in better, and not worse, condition because of its cultivation. Moreover,
every invention and improvement, every discovery and economy, should be at
the service of the farmer in the work of production; and, in addition, he
should be helped to co-operate in business fashion with his fellows, so
that the money paid by the consumer for the product of the soil shall to
as large a degree as possible go into the pockets of the man who raised that
product from the soil. So long as the farmer leaves co-operative
activities with their profit-sharing to the city man of business, so long
will the foundations of wealth be undermined and the comforts of enlightenment
be impossible in the country communities. In every respect this Nation has
to learn the lessons of efficiency in production and distribution, and of
avoidance of waste and destruction; we must develop and improve instead of
exhausting our resources. It is entirely possible by improvements in production,
in the avoidance of waste, and in business methods on the part of the farmer
to give him all increased income from his farm while at the same time reducing
to the consumer the price of the articles raised on the farm. Important although
education is everywhere, it has a special importance in the country. The
country school must fit the country life; in the country, as elsewhere, education
must be hitched up with life. The country church and the country Young Men's
and Young Women's Christian Associations have great parts to play. The
farmers must own and work their own land; steps must be taken at once to
put a stop to the tendency towards absentee landlordism and tenant farming;
this is one of the most imperative duties confronting the Nation. The
question of rural banking and rural credits is also of immediate importance. ...
THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
There can be no more important question than the high cost of living necessities.
The main purpose of the Progressive movement is to place the American people
in possession of their birthright, to secure for all the American
people unobstructed access to the fountains of measureless prosperity which
their Creator offers them. We in this country are blessed with great
natural resources, and our men and women have a very high standard of intelligence
and of industrial capacity. Surely such being the case, we cannot
permanently support conditions under which each family finds it increasingly
difficult to secure the necessaries of life and a fair share of its comforts
through the earnings of its members. The cost of living in this country has
risen during the last few years out of all proportion to the increase in
the rate of most salaries and wages; the same situation confronts alike the
majority of wage-workers, small business men, small professional men, the
clerks, the doctors, clergymen. Now, grave though the problem is,
there is one way to make it graver, and that is to deal with it insincerely,
to advance false remedies, to promise the impossible. Our opponents, Republicans
and Democrats alike, propose to deal with it in this way. The Republicans
in their platform promise all inquiry into the facts. Most certainly there
should be such inquiry. But the way the present Administration has failed
to keep its promises in the past, and the rank dishonesty of action on the
part of the Penrose-Barnes-Guggenheim National Convention, makes their every
promise worthless. The Democratic platform affects to find the entire cause
of the high cost of living in the tariff, and promises to remedy it by free
trade, especially free trade in the necessaries of life. In the first place,
this attitude ignores the patent fact that the problem is world-wide, that
everywhere, in England and France, as in Germany and Japan, it appears with
greater or less severity; that in England, for instance, it has become a
very severe problem, although neither the tariff nor, save to a small degree,
the trusts can there have any possible effect upon the situation. In the
second place, the Democratic platform, if it is sincere, must mean that all
duties will be taken off the products of the farmer. Yet most certainly we
cannot afford to have the farmer struck down. The welfare of the
tiller of the soil is as important as the welfare of the wage worker himself,
and we must sedulously guard both. The farmer, the producer of the necessities
of life, can himself live only if he raises these necessities for a profit.
On the other hand, the consumer who must have that farmer's product in order
to live, must be allowed to purchase it at the lowest cost that can give
the farmer his profit, and everything possible must be done to eliminate
any middleman whose function does not tend to increase the cheapness of distribution
of the product; and, moreover, everything must be done to stop all speculating,
all gambling with the bread-basket which has even the slightest deleterious
effect upon the producer and consumer. There must be legislation
which will bring about a closer business relationship between the farmer
and the consumer. Recently experts in the Agricultural Department have figured
that nearly fifty per cent of the price for agricultural products paid by
the consumer goes into the pockets, not of the farmer, but of various middlemen;
and it is probable that over half of what is thus paid to middlemen is needless,
can be saved by wise business methods (introduced through both law and custom),
and can therefore be returned to the farmer and the consumer. Through the
proposed Inter-State Industrial Commission we can effectively do away with
any arbitrary control by combinations of the necessities of life. Furthermore,
the Governments of the Nation and of the several States must combine in doing
everything they can to make the farming business profitable, so that he shall
get more out of the soil, and enjoy better business facilities for marketing
what he thus gets. In this manner his return will be increased while the
price to the consumer is diminished. The elimination of the middleman by
agricultural exchanges and by the use of improved business methods generally,
the development of good roads, the reclamation of arid lands and swamp lands,
the improvement in the productivity of farms, the encouragement of all agencies
which tend to bring people back to the soil and to make country life more
interesting as well as more profitable — all these movements will help
not only the farmer but the man who consumes the farmer's products.
There is urgent need of non-partisan expert examination into any tariff
schedule which seems to increase the cost of living, and, unless the increase
thus caused is more than countervailed by the benefit to the class of the
community which actually receives the protection, it must of course mean
that that particular duty must be reduced. The system of levying a tariff
for the protection and encouragement of American industry so as to secure
higher wages and better conditions of life for American laborers must never
be perverted so as to operate for the impoverishment of those whom it was
intended to benefit. But, in any event, the effect of the tariff on the cost
of living is slight; any householder can satisfy himself of this fact by
considering the increase in price of articles, like milk and eggs, where
the influence of both the tariff and the trusts is negligible. No conditions
have been shown which warrant us in believing that the abolition of the protective
tariff as a whole would bring any substantial benefit to the consumer, while
it would certainly cause unheard of immediate disaster to all wage-workers,
all business men, and all farmers, and in all probability would permanently
lower the standard of living here. In order to show the utter futility of
the belief that the abolition of the tariff and the establishment of free
trade would remedy the condition complained of, all that is necessary is
to look at the course of industrial events in England and in Germany during
the last thirty years, the former under free trade, the latter under a protective
system. During these thirty years it is a matter of common knowledge that
Germany has forged ahead relatively to England, and this not only as regards
the employers, but as regards the wage-earners — in short, as regards
all members of the industrial classes. Doubtless, many causes have combined
to produce this result; it is not to be ascribed to the tariff alone, but,
on the other hand it is evident that it could not have come about if a protective
tariff were even a chief cause among many other causes of the high cost of
living.
It is also asserted that the trusts are responsible for
the high cost of living. I have no question that, as regards certain trusts,
this is true. I also have no question that it will continue to be true just
as long as the country confines itself to acting as the Baltimore platform
demands that we act. This demand is, in effect, for the States and National
Government to make the futile attempt to exercise forty-nine sovereign and
conflicting authorities in the effort jointly to suppress the trusts, while
at the same time the National Government refuses to exercise proper control
over them. There will be no diminution in the cost of trust-made articles
so long as our Government attempts the impossible task of restoring the flint-lock
conditions of business sixty years ago by trusting only to a succession of
lawsuits under the Anti-Trust Law — a method which it has been definitely
shown usually results to the benefit of any big business concern which really
ought to be dissolved, but which cause disturbance and distress to multitudes
of smaller concerns. Trusts which increase production — unless they
do it wastefully, as in certain forms of mining and lumbering — cannot
permanently increase the cost of living; it is the trusts which limit production,
or which without limiting production, take advantage of the lack of governmental
control, and eliminate competition by combining to control the market, that
cause all increase in the cost of living. There should be established at
once, as I have elsewhere said, under the National Government an inter-State
industrial commission, which should exercise full supervision over the big
industrial concerns doing an inter-State business into which an element of
monopoly enters. Where these concerns deal with the necessaries of life the
commission should not shrink, if the necessity is proved, of going to the
extent of exercising regulatory control over the conditions that create or
determine monopoly prices.
By such action we shall certainly be able to remove the element of contributory
causation on the part of the trusts and the tariff towards the high cost
of living. There will remain many other elements. Wrong taxation,
including failure to tax swollen inheritances and unused land and other natural
resources held for speculative purposes, is one of these elements. The
modern tendency to leave the country for the town is another element; and
exhaustion of the soil and poor methods of raising and marketing the products
of the soil make up another element, as I have already shown. Another element
is that of waste and extravagance, individual and National. No laws which
the wit of man can devise will avail to make the community prosperous if
the average individual lives in such fashion that his expenditure always
exceeds his income.
National extravagance — that is, the expenditure of money which is
not warranted — we can ourselves control, and to some degree we can
help in doing away with the extravagance caused by international rivalries.
These are all definite methods by which something can be accomplished in
the direction of decreasing the cost of living. All taken together will not
fully meet the situation. There are in it elements which as yet we do not
understand. We can be certain that the remedy proposed by the Democratic
party is a quack remedy. It is just as emphatically a quack remedy as was
the quack remedy, the panacea, the universal cure-all which they proposed
sixteen years ago. It is instructive to compare what they now say with what
they said in 1896. Only sixteen years ago they were telling us that the decrease
in prices was fatal to our people, that the fall in the production of gold,
and, as a consequence, the fall in the prices of commodities, was responsible
for our ills. Now they ascribe these ills to diametrically opposite causes,
such as the rise in the price of commodities. It may well be that the immense
output of gold during the last few years is partly responsible for certain
phases of the present trouble — which is an instructive commentary
on the wisdom of those men who sixteen years ago insisted that the remedy
for everything was to be found in the mere additional output of coin, silver
and gold alike. There is no more curious delusion than that the Democratic
platform is a Progressive platform. The Democratic platform, representing
the best thought of the acknowledged Democratic leaders at Baltimore, is
purely retrogressive and reactionary. There is no progress in it. It represents
an effort to go back; to put this Nation of a hundred millions, existing
under modern conditions, back to where it was as a Nation of twenty-five
millions in the days of the stage-coach and canal boat. Such an attitude
is toryism, not Progressivism.
In addition, then, to the remedies that we can begin forthwith, there should
be a fearless, intelligent, and searching inquiry into the whole subject
made by an absolutely non-partisan body of experts, with no prejudices to
warp their minds, no object to serve, who shall recommend any necessary remedy,
heedless of what interest may be helped or hurt thereby, and caring only
for the interests of the people as a whole. ...
CONSERVATION
There can be no greater issue than that of Conservation in this country.
Just as we must conserve our men, women, and children, so we must conserve
the resources of the land on which they live. We must conserve the soil so
that our children shall have a land that is more and not less fertile than
that our fathers dwelt in. We must conserve the forests, not by disuse but
by use, making them more valuable at the same time that we use them. We must
conserve the mines. Moreover, we must insure so far as possible the
use of certain types of great natural resources for the benefit of the people
as a whole. The public should not alienate its fee in the water power which
will be of incalculable consequence as a source of power in the immediate
future. The Nation and the States within their several spheres should by
immediate legislation keep the fee of the water power, leasing its use only
for a reasonable length of time on terms that will secure the interests of
the public. Just as the Nation has gone into the work of irrigation
in the West, so it should go into the work of helping reclaim the swamp lands
of the South. We should undertake the complete development and control of
the Mississippi as a National work, just as we have undertaken the work of
building the Panama Canal. We can use the plant, and we call use the human
experience, left free by the completion of the Panama Canal in so developing
the Mississippi as to make it a mighty highroad of commerce, and a source
of fructification and not of death to the rich and fertile lands lying along
its lower length.
In the West, the forests, the grazing lands, the reserves of every kind,
should be so handled as to be in the interests of the actual settler, the
actual home-maker. He should be encouraged to use them at once, but in such
a way as to preserve and not exhaust them. We do not intend that
our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests
of the many, nor do we intend to turn them over to any man who will wastefully
use them by destruction, and leave to those who come after us a heritage
damaged by just so much. The man in whose interests we are working is the
small farmer and settler, the man who works with his own hands, who is working
not only for himself but for his children, and who wishes to leave to them
the fruits of his labor. His permanent welfare is the prime factor
for consideration in developing the policy of Conservation; for our aim is
to preserve our natural resources for the public as a whole, for the average
man and the average woman who make up the body of the American people.
ALASKA
Alaska should be developed at once, but in the interest of the actual settler.
In Alaska the Government has an opportunity of starting in what is almost
a fresh field to work out various problems by actual experiment. The
Government should at once construct, own, and operate the railways in Alaska.
The Government should keep the fee of all the coal-fields and allow them
to be operated by lessees with the condition in the lease that non-use shall
operate as a forfeit. Telegraph lines should be operated as the
railways are. Moreover, it would be well in Alaska to try a system
of land taxation which will, so far as possible, remove all the burdens from
those who actually use the land, whether for building or for agricultural
purposes, and will operate against any man who holds the land for speculation,
or derives an income from it based, not on his own exertions, but on the
increase in value due to activities not his own. There is very real
need that this Nation shall seriously prepare itself for the task of remedying
social injustice and meeting social problems by well-considered governmental
effort; and the best preparation for such wise action is to test by actual
experiment under favorable conditions the device which we have reason to
believe will work well, but which it is difficult to apply in old settled
communities without preliminary experiment. ...
Surely there never was a fight better worth making than the one in which
we are engaged. It little matters what befalls any one of us who for the
time being stand in the forefront of the battle. I hope we shall win, and
I believe that if we can wake the people to what the fight really means we
shall win. But, win or lose, we shall not falter. Whatever fate may at the
moment overtake any of us, the movement itself will not stop. Our cause is
based on the eternal principles of righteousness; and even though we who
now lead may for the time fail, in the end the cause itself shall triumph.
Six weeks ago, here in Chicago, I spoke to the honest representatives of
a Convention which was not dominated by honest men; a Convention wherein
sat, alas! a majority of men who, with sneering indifference to every principle
of right, so acted as to bring to a shameful end a party which had been founded
over half a century ago by men in whose souls burned the fire of lofty endeavor.
Now to you men, who, in your turn, have corne together to spend and be spent
in the endless crusade against wrong, to you who face the future resolute
and confident, to you who strive in a spirit of brotherhood for the betterment
of our Nation, to you who gird yourselves for this great new fight in the
never-ending warfare for the good of humankind, I say in closing what in
that speech I said in closing: We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for
the Lord.