among the great powers of the world is free to govern her own life; and all the world is looking to America to serve its economic need. And while this is happening what is going on?

Do you know, gentlemen, that the ocean freight rates have gone up in some instances to ten times their ordinary figure? and that the farmers of the United States, those who raise grain and those who raise cotton-these things that are absolutely necessary to the world as well as to ourselves—can not get their due profit out of the great prices that they are willing to pay for these things on the other side of the sea, because practically the whole profit is eaten up by the extortionate charges for ocean carriage? In the midst of this the Democrats propose a temporary measure of relief in a shipping bill. The merchants and the farmers of this country must have ships to carry their goods. Just at the present moment there is no other way of getting them than through the instrumentality that is suggested in the shipping bill. I hear it said in Washington on all hands that the Republicans in the United States Senate mean to talk enough to make the passage of that bill impossible. These self-styled friends of business, these men who say the Democratic party does not know what to do for business, are saying that the Democrats shall do nothing for business. I challenge them to show their right to stand in the way of the release of American products to the rest of the world! Who commissioned them-a minority, a lessening minority? (For they will be in a greater minority in the next Senate than in this.) You know it is the peculiarity of that great body that it has rules of procedure which make it possible for a minority to defy the Nation; and these gentlemen are now seeking to defy the Nation and prevent the release of American products to the suffering world which needs them more than it ever needed them before. Their credentials as friends of business and friends of America will be badly discredited if they succeed. If I were speaking from a selfish, partisan point of view, I could wish nothing better than that they should show their true colors as partisans and succeed. But I am not quite so malevolent as that. Some of them are misguided; some of them are blind; most of them are ignorant. I would rather pray for them than abuse them. The great voice of America ought to make them understand what they are said to be attempting now really means. I have to say "are said to be attempting," because they do not come and tell me that they are attempting them. I do not know why. I would express my opinion of them in parliamentary language, but I would express it, I hope, no less plainly because couched in the terms of courtesy. This country is bursting its jacket, and they are seeing to it that the jacket is not only kept tight but is riveted with steel.

The Democratic party does know how to serve business in this

WILSON'S MESSAGE ON PREPAREDNESS

President Wilson's third annual address, which was read to the 64th Congress, December 7, 1915, was devoted largely to questions growing out of the general war in Europe. He counselled strict neutrality toward the belligerent nations, deplored the passionate sympathy of foreign-born citizens for the countries of their nativity, which impelled them to hostile acts against the land of their adoption. He urged Congress to adopt immediate measures for increasing the army and navy and for the enlistment of 400,000 disciplined citizen soldiers.

The Monroe Doctrine was endorsed, and the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of American republics was reiterated. Abstention from interference in the case of the prolonged revolution in Mexico was cited as an example of the hands-off policy of the United States toward other American republics.

The building of an adequate merchant marine through the purchase and construction of ships with government money was urged upon Congress as the best means to secure immediate success in the extension of our trade with foreign countries, particularly with South and Central America.

Continuance of the existing war tax was suggested, as well as the raising of additional internal revenue by a tax on iron and steel, gasoline, automobiles, and bank checks.

country, and its future program is a program of service. We have cleared the decks. We have laid the lines now upon which business that was to do the country harm shall be stopped and an economic control which was intolerable shall be broken up. We have emancipated America, but America must do something with her freedom. There are great bills pending in the United States Senate just now that have been passed by the House of Representatives, which are intended as constructive measures in behalf of business--one great measure which will make available the enormous water powers of this country for the industry of it; another bill which will unlock the resources of the public domain which the Republicans, desiring to save, locked up so that nobody could use them.

The reason I say the Republicans have not had a new idea in thirty years is that they have not known how to do anything except sit on the lid. If you can release the steam so that it will drive great industries, it is not necessary to sit on the lid. What we are trying to do in the great conservation bill is to carry out for the first time in the history of the United States a system by which the great resources of this country can be used instead of being set aside so that no man can get at them. I shall watch with a great deal of interest what the self-styled friends of business try to do to those bills. Do not misunderstand me. There are some men on that side of the Chamber who understand the value of these things and are standing valiantly by them, but they are a small minority. The majority that is standing by them is on our side of the Chamber, and they are the friends of America.

But there are other things which we have to do. Sometimes when I look abroad, my friends, and see the great mass of struggling humanity on this continent, it goes very much to my heart to see how many men are at a disadvantage and are without guides and helpers. Don't you think it would be a pretty good idea for the Democratic party to undertake a systematic method of helping the workingmen of America? There is one very simple way in which they can help the workingmen. If you were simply to establish a great Federal employment bureau, it would do a vast deal. By the Federal agencies which spread over this country men could be directed to those parts of the country, to those undertakings, to those tasks where they could find profitable employment. The labor of this country needs to be guided from opportunity to opportunity. We proved it the other day. We were told that in two States of the Union 30,000 men were needed to gather the crops. We suggested in a Cabinet meeting that the Department of Labor should have printed information about this in such form that it could be posted up in the post offices all over the United States, and that the Department of Labor should get in touch with the labor departments of the States, so that notice could go out from them, and their co

operation obtained. What was the result? Those 30,000 men were found and were sent to the places where they got profitable employment. I do not know any one thing that has happened in my administration that made me feel happier than that-that the job and the man had been brought together. It will not cost a great deal of money and it will do a great deal of service if the United States were to undertake to do such things systematically and all the year round; and I for my part hope that it will do that. If I were writing an additional plank for a Democratic platform, I would put that in.

There is another thing that needs very much to be done. I am not one of those who doubt either the industry or the learning or the integrity of the courts of the United States, but I do know that they have a very antiquated way of doing business. I do know that the United. States in its judicial procedure is many decades behind every other civilized Government in the world, and I say that it is an immediate and an imperative call upon us to rectify that, because the speediness of justice, the inexpensiveness of justice, the ready access to justice, is the greater part of justice itself. If you have to be rich to get justice, because of the cost of the very process itself, then there is no justice at all. So I say this is another direction in which we ought to be very quick to see the signs of the times and to help those who need to be helped.

Then there is something else. The Democrats have heard the Republicans talking about the scientific way in which to handle a tariff, though the Republicans have never given any exhibition of a knowledge of how to handle it scientifically. If it is scientific to put additional profits into the hands of those who are already getting the greater part of the profits, then they have been exceedingly scientific. It has been the science of selfishness; it has been the science of privilege. That kind of science I do not care to know anything about except enough to stop it. But if by scientific treatment of the tariff they mean adjustment to the actual trade conditions of America and the world, then I am with them; and I want to call their attention-for though they voted for it they apparently have not noticed it-to the fact that the bill which creates the new Trade Commission does that very thing. We were at pains to see that it was put in there. That commission is authorized and empowered. to inquire into and report to Congress not only upon all the conditions of trade in this country, but upon the conditions of trade, the cost of manufacture, the cost of transportation-all the things that enter into the question of the tariff-in foreign countries and into all those questions of foreign combinations which affect international trade between. Europe and the United States. It has the full powers which will guide Congress in the scientific treatment of questions of international trade Being by profession a schoolmaster, I am glad to point that out to the