Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1910-10-27
Interest In platforms.

Continuing, DR.. Wilson aid in part:
81 don't know how many of this audi
ence may have interested themselves
II platforms. A platform which points
with scorn to another record which
everybody has forgotten does not
thrill the blood. ! say hat we are not
Interested in platforms as mere prom
ises cast in vague Language. We are
interested in them only when they
seem to be progressive. and what in
~terests us about the present time, l
must admit, is that everywhere men
are interested IN great programs.
You al never see a corporation or
tell it what you think about It. That
is the difficulty about a government.
You never saw the government of New
Jersey or the government of the
United States; you have eve cor
rallied it anywhere, and you have never
looked at 1t all at once. If you could
get the present government of New
Jersey into this room. I. for one, would
like to tell it what 1 think of it, but
l haven't that privilege.
Now, we can deal with one man 1t
a time; we can get a man into court
and make him tell us all about him
self, and we can impose restrictions
and penalties upon him: he does no.
slip from our grasp.
When we arrest a man we have
got him and can produce him at any
moment, but when you arrest a dis
ease you haven't got anything. and so
it is with the corporations; you can't
arrest a corporation, put 1t into Jail
or punish it, and, therefore. we are
distressed by these circumstances, by
these relations; their methods are being
determined by certain things. We
haven't learned how to grasp them In
the tentacles of the law.
I'VE see that something is out OF
joint, namely, a trolley car or railway
company we have got to use, 1t is part
and parcel of our lives. We cannot
move or handle our goods otherwise,
but somehow II. is not adjusted to us.
We have all sorts of suspicious as to
what 1t is adjusted to. but 1t is not adj
justed to us. Our lives are unjustly in
convenienced by the way 1t is handled.
We haven't got these instrumentalities
adjusted for the use we want to make
of them, n they are so big we are
bothered how to handle them. That Is
the reason that so many people tall.
In h terms of big corporations. They
are all SO dependent upon each other
that we have to pool our interest and
cooperate in every respect. ?
About Corporations.
we talk about corporations as If the
most interesting thing they did is the
business they did; that Is not the most
Interesting; it is the men they employ.
1t is the power they have over the
lives of individuals. 1t is the wages
they pay, and the right Of the indi-
vidual man who is so humble that he
has not power enough to make trouble
and take care of himself.
There the community has to step In
and say 1t is our business, men have
equal rights; we are going to see thai
this property Is properly handled and
that this business is so safeguarded
that men will not be injured-we arr
going to see that the hours are prop.
erly observed so that men will not bt
overworked, so as not to sap their vi
tally. We are going to limit the hours
of labor, and we are going to see to Il
as men one by one have the power te
deal with things themselves, have a
right to combine and produce them
selves, and when that shall be accom-
| pliahed in our Reueration then there