There is a new party, which it is difficult to characterize because it is made up of several elements. As I see it, it is made up three elements in particular. The first consists of those Republicans whose consciences and whose stomachs could not stand what the regular Republicans were doing. Added to this element are a great many men and women of noble character and of elevated purpose who believe that this combination of forces may, in the future, bring them out on a plane where they can accomplish those things which their hearts have so long desired. I have no word of criticism for them. Then there is a third element in the new party of which the less said the better. To discuss it would be interesting, only if I could mention names, and I have forbidden myself that indulgence. We have in this party two things. A political party and a body of social reformers. Mr. Roosevelt puts forth an admirable platform of what he would like to do for the people. But how is he going to do it? He proposes in his platform not to abolish monopoly, but to take it under the legal protection of the government and to regulate it. In other words, 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. It is perfectly idle to talk of doing things when your hands are tied for you, so long as the men who now control the industry of the country continue to control it. Now we don’t want to disturb the industry of the country; we are not here to destroy the industry which these men have developed. But we are here 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 hand in the service of the people. There are two programs. The Democratic program is this – to see to it that competition is so regulated that the big fellow cannot put the little fellow out of business, for he has been putting the little fellow out of business for the last half generation. The program of the third party is to take these big fellows that have been putting the little fellow out of business and regulate them, saying, "that is all right--you have put the other fellows out of business--but we are not going to put the little fellows back where you destroyed them. We’re going to adopt you and say run the business of the country, but run it in the way we tell you to run it." The only thing you have to choose between therefore is this: Are you going to have fresh brains injected into the business of this country and the best men win, or are you going to make the present combinations permanent.

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.