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AS

PRESIDENT

BY

EUGENE C. BROOKS

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, TRINITY COLLEGE,
DURHAM, N. C.

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COPYRIGHT, 1916 ROW, PETERSON AND COMPANY

INTRODUCTION

The Wilson Administration marks the end of an era. It is divided into two historic periods separated by the European War, which draws a heavy curtain between the first and the second half of his Administration. Moreover, each has been so crowded with events of vital importance to this nation as to assume the significance of a turning point in history. Therefore, the student of history will find in this period the beginnings of questions likely to occupy the public attention for generations and destined to shape the growth of our nation for all time.

In the conclusion of the old era the Wilson Administration achieved, perhaps, the most notable legislation ever enacted in an equal period of time in the history of the Congress of the United States. However, so many things have occurred since then-"the terrible swift sword" has so affected men's memories-that even those acts have been almost forgotten, except in circles affected directly by them. The reduced tariff, an

income tax, the banished lobby, the Federal Reserve Act, the struggle through the long, hot summer against boss-rule and machine methods, the Alaska railroad, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, another summer of intense labor, the destruction of monopoly, the Federal Trade Commission, the conservation of material and human resourcesthese suggest an era long removed from the present, but they are the epitome of the first eighteen months of the Wilson Administration.

The sixty-third Congress, the Long Congress, brought the old era to a close and witnessed the beginning of the new. In it will be found, standing close together, the solution of old problems and the beginnings of new issues. The student of history who recalls the vast crowds that assembled in 1912 and the fiery speeches of the leaders of that time, and contrasts the marching crowds of 1916 and the fiery speeches by the same leaders to the same people on different issues, must realize that in the meantime affairs of consequence have taken place.

A vast gulf separates 1912 and 1916. Men's thoughts have turned about; men's ideas have changed; the world is different; it is drifting on an unknown sea; seemingly impossible things are

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