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I remember reading of a great day in the year 1775, when certain farmers took their guns in their hands and gathered into groups along the roads that led from Lexington in Massachusetts to Boston, and there quietly lay in order to intercept British troops who had come up on an errand aimed at the liberties of the colonies. And I have often heard, since that day, men speak of the embattled farmers at Lexington. Well, there are going to be embattled farmers again in the history of this country. Not with guns in their hands, but with ballots in their hands, who are going to come back and claim the sovereignty which they share with the rest of the people of the United States. I do not wish anything I say to be understood as embattling the farmers against any other great legitimate interest in this country, because our task at the present moment is the task of understanding one another so thoroughly that there will be only one cause, only one purpose, and men acting together can lift all the levels of our political life. The farmers of this country, however, are in a very interesting position. I have seen the interests of a great many classes specially regarded in legislation, but I must frankly say that I have never seen the interests of the farmer very often regarded in legislation, and one of the greatest impositions upon the farmers in this country that has ever been devised is the present tariff legislation of the United States. I have never heard anybody but orators on the stump say that the tariff was intended for the benefit of the farmer. When the United States was the granary of the world the farmers were not looking for protection, and while they were not looking, everything else had duties put upon it, and the cost of everything that they had to use was raised upon them until now it is almost impossible for them to make a legitimate profit. While you were feeding the world, Congress was feeding the trusts. I wish again to disavow all intentions of suggesting to the farmer that he go in and do somebody up. All that I am suggesting to you is that you break into your own house and live there, and I want you to examine very critically the character of the tenants who have been occupying it. The rent has been demanded of you and not of them. You have paid the money which enabled them to live in your own house and dominate your own premises. The tariff intimately concerns the farmer of this country. It makes a great deal of difference to you that Mr. Taft vetoed the Steel Bill. It makes a difference to you in the cost of practically every tool that you use upon the farm, and it is very significant that a Democratic House of Representatives passed the Steel Tariff Reduction Bill over the President’s veto. The farmer pays just as big a proportion of the tariff duties as anybody else. What happened in the Congress which has just recently adjourned? The House of Representatives with the acquiescence of a Senate, which is not Democratic, passed the Farmers Free List Bill. It put agriculture implements – lumber, shingles, salt, bagging and ties on the free list. Then what happened to the bill? It was vetoed by the President because, consciously or unconsciously, he represents not the people of the United States, but those who have held the peoples power and trust for their own purposes.

Biography:

Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the President," he said, "seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country." He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."

Wilson had seen the frightfulness of war. He was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902.

His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor.

He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote.

Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices.

Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won re-election.

But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2,1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims--the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations...affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."

After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?"

But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.