The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1911-05-12
GOVERNOR WILSON
SPEAKS AT DENVER
Popular New Jerseyan Was Principal
Speaker at Meeting of Denver
Chamber of Commerce.

Denver, Col, May 9.-Governor
Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey was
the principal speaker at the banquet
of the chamber of commerce last
evening. He said in part:
The country is to be congratulated
upon the fact that the atmosphere of
politics has changed within the last
few years, for a few years ago there
was danger that reform would be the
source of continual uneasiness, because
it all seemed negative in character.
It's object was to correct, to restrain,
to punish. The talk was of marauding
corporations and great combinations
of wealth intended to crush the COM
mon man; of the abuse of their power
by railroads; of rebates and secret
rates and privileges given to the big
shipper as against the small one: Of
the monopolizing of the markets By
These things still trouble us, of course,
and are still in the background Of a
great deal that we talk about, and our
motive in a great deal that we do is
still to correct the abuses which have
arisen by these means, but happily the
whole program of reform has become
less negative and more constructive.
1t is becoming evident that we shall
not be satisfied with merely prohibitive
statutes and penalties imposed upon
those who do not sufficiently regard
the public interest in the conduct of
their business. We see that what we
are really after is a reconstruction of
our methods of action, not only in the
field of business, but also in the field
of politics. The picture is very much
enlarged before us, and we are seeking
larger ends by invigorating construo-
tive means.
A great people cannot afford to be
merely on the defensive 1t is not the
genius of America to be satisfied with
safeguards and prohibitions. We are
therefore lookin yourselves over from
top to bottom in order to find what
Encouragement of our statutes and
practices is necessary in order that we
may go forward in happy and eff
sective life. We are going about now
to enact thorough program of popu-
lar reform, and we know very definite
ly the objects at which we intend to
aim.
In the first place, we mean to open
up all the processes of our politics.
We find that they have been too Sc
cret, too complicated, too roundabout;
that they have consisted too much of
private conferences and secret under
standings, of the control of legislation
by men who were not legislators, but
stood outside and distated controlling
by very questionable means
which they would not have dreamed
of allowing to become public, and so
we have determined that the whole
process must be altered-that we must
take the eselection of candidates for
office, for example, out of the hands of
small groups of men, of little coteries.
Out of the hands of machines working
behind colsed doors, and put it in the
hands of the people themselves again
by means of direct primaries and cleo
tons to which candidates of every sort
and degree may have free acess. We
have begun to build up a new system
by which to substitute public for pri-
vate machinery.
We have determined, in the second
place, to give society command of it's
own economic life again by denying
o those who conduct the great modern