Weekly journal-miner., 1911-05-10

KANSAS CITY. Mo. May 5-Gov- ernor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey was the guest of the Knife and Fork Club at its banquet this evening. He said in part
 that we are now face to face with po- litical changes which may have very profound effect upon our political life. Those who do not understand the i'm pending change are afraid of it. Those who do understand it know that it is not a process of revolution, but a pro- cess of restoration, rather, in which there is as much healing as hurt. There are strain and peril, no doubt, in every process of change, but the chief peril comes from undertaking it in the wrong temper. It lies not in the change itself so much as in the method of some Of those who promote it. It is a noteworthy circumstance that in proportion as the people of the coun- try come to recognize what it is that renders them uneasy and what it is that is proposed by way of reformation they lose their fear and take on a certain irresistible enthusiasm.
 The American people are naturally a conservative people. They do not wish to touch the stable foundations of their life; they have a reverence for the rights of property and the rights of contract which is based upon a long experience in a free life in which they have been at liberty to acquire prop erty as they pleased and bind them them. No other people have ever had such freedom in the establishment of personal relationships or property rights. They do not mean to lose this freedom or to impair any rights at all, but they do feel that a great many things in their economic life and in They have been cheated by their own political machinery. They have been dominated by the very instrumental ities which they themselves created in 1R al ,,Fs .~4r Tho h erty of the individual is hampered and impaired. They desire, therefore, not a revolution, not cutting loose from any part of their past but a readjust- reconsideration of what it is just to do and equitable to arrange in order that they may be indeed free, may in deed make their own choices and live their own life undominated, unafraid. unsuspicious, confident that they will he served by their public men and that will bring to them justice and timely reform.
 What we are witnessing now is not much a conflict of parties as a con- test of ideals, a struggle between those who. because they do not understand what is happening, blindly hold on to what is and those who, because they do see the real questions of the pres ent and of the future in a clear, re- vealing light, know that there must he sober change; know that progress, none the less active and determined because 1t is sober and just. is necessary for the maintenance of our institutions and the rectification of our life. In both the great national parties there are and of reform, and in both parties there are men who hold back. who struggle to restrain change, who do not understand it or who have reason to fear it. Undoubtedly the present moment offers a greater and larger op- portunity to the Democratic party than to the Republican party, but this is not because there are not men in the their whole intelligence and energy to necessary reform, but because the Democratic party as a whole is freer to move and to act than the Republican is and is held back by a smaller and weaker body of representatives of the things that are and have been.
 We generally sum up what We mean by the reactionary forces by speaking By that we do not mean the legitimate but the illegitimate interests, those which have not adjusted themselves to the public interest, those which are clnging to their vested rights as bulwark against the adjustment which is absolutely necessary if they are to be servants and not masters or the pub lie. The chief political fact of the day is that the Republican party is more closely allied with these interests than the Democratic party This circum-
 
 the Democrats. They are free to act and to move in the right direction if they win but accept the responsibility and the leadership. The Democratic new tendencies than the Republican. Its free forces are the forces of pro- gress and popular reform.
 Both parties are of necessity break ing away from the past, whether they will or no, because our life has broken away from the past. The life of Amer ica is not the life it was twenty years ago. It is not the life it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions from top to bottom, and with our economic conditions has changed also the organization of our life. The old party formulas do not fit the present problems, The old cries of the stump sound if they belonged to past age which men have almost forgotten. The things which used to be put into the party platforms Of ten years ago would sound antiquated now. You will note, moreover. that the political audiences which nowadays gather together are not partisan audi ences. They are made up of all ele- ments and come together. not to hear parties denounced or praised, but to hear the interest of the nation discus sed in new terms-the terms of the present moment.
 We have so complicated our machin- cry of government. we have made it so difficult, so full of ambushes and hiding places, so indirect, that instead of having true representative govern ment We have great ineXtricable jungle of organization in .rvening be- tween the people and the processes ot their government. so that by stages. without intending it, without being aware of it, We have lost the purity and drectness of representative gov arnment. What we must devote our selves to now is not to upsetting our institutions, but to restoring them.
 Undoubtedly We should avoid excite ment and should silence the dema- gogue. The man with power, but with out conscience. could. with an eloquent fongOe if he cared for potbiup but bic