We stand in the presence of an awakened nation. Plainly it is a new age. There are two great things to do. One is to set up the rule of justice and right in such matters as the tariff, the regulation of trust, and the prevention of monopoly. The business of government is to separate special and particular interests from the general interests of wide community. The initial task this year is to get our government in such shape that we can use it for our own purpose, not against anybody in particular, but for everybody in general. We want to establish a real partnership between all the people and the federal government instead of between special interests and the federal government. We must affect a great readjustment and get the forces of the whole people once more into play. The tariff question as dealt with in our time has not been business; it has been politics. The tariff has become a system of favors. Tariff schedules have been determined in committee rooms and in conferences. The tariff becomes a matter of legitimate business only when the understanding it represents is between the leaders of Congress and the whole people of the United States, instead of between the leaders of Congress and small groups of manufacturers demanding special recognition and consideration. That is the heart of the whole affair. It is at bottom a question of good faith and morals. Our conviction as Democrats is that the only legitimate object of tariff duties is to raise revenue for the support of the government. We denounce the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act as the most conspicuous example ever recorded of the special favors and monopolistic advantages which the leaders of the Republican party have too often shown themselves willing to extend to those to whom they look for campaign contributions. The changes which we make should be made only at such a rate, and in such a way, as will least interfere with the normal and healthful course of commerce and manufacture. There should be an immediate revision downward. It should begin with the schedules most obviously used to kill competition and raise prices in the United States and should be extended to every item which affords opportunity for monopoly and special advantage, until special favors shall have been absolutely withdrawn and our laws of taxation transformed from a system of governmental patronage into a system of just and reasonable charges which shall fall where they will create the least burden. The Republican party does not propose to change any of the essential conditions which mark our present difficulties. Mr. Roosevelt proposes in his platform not to abolish monopoly, but to take it under the legal protection of the government and to regulate it, to take the very men into partnership who have been making it impossible to carry out these great programs by which all of us wish to help the people. We do not wish to disturb the industry of the country, but to destroy the control over the industry of other people which these men have established and which makes it impossible that we should give ourselves a free field of public service.

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.