The Waxahachie daily light. [volume] (Waxahachie, Tex.) 1894-current, 1911-05-06
Woodrow Wilson Says their Pur-
pose Is to Restore Repre-
sentative Government.
OBJECT OF THE RECALL
If Properly Regulated and Devised it
Is Means Of Restoring Re
sponsibility to Admins
trarive Officials.
Associated Press Special

Y Associated Press Special.
: Kansas City, Mo. May 6.-Gov
ernor Woodrow Wilson of New Jer
sey was the guest of the Knife ant
Fork club at its banquet last evenins
He said in part:
There can be no installing the fact
political changes which may have q
, very profound effect upon our polit-
ical life Those who do not under
stand the impending change are
afraid of it, Those who do under
stand it know that it is not a pro-
cess of revolution, but process 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. 1t lies not in
the change itself so much as in the
method of some of those who pro-
mote it. 1t is a noteworthy circum-
stance that in proportion as the peo
| pie of the country come to recog
nize what it is that renders them un-
| easy and what it is that is proposed
by way of reformation the ylost their
fear and take on certain irresist-
ible enth usiasm.
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 up
on long experience in a free life in
which they have been at liberty to
acquire property as they pleased and
bind themselves by such contracts
as suited them. No other people
have ever had such freedom in the
establish ment of personal relation
ships of 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 their political
action are out of gear. They have
been cheated by their own political
machinery They have been domf-
mated by the very instrumentalities
which they themselves created in the
field of industrial action The lib
erty of the individual is hampered
and impaired, They desire, there
fore, not revolution, not a cutting
loose from any part of their past
but a readjustment of the elements
of their life, a reconsideration of
what 1t is Just to do and equitable
to arrange in order that they may
be indeed free, may indeed make
their own life undominated unafraid
unsuspicious, confident that they
viii be served by their public men
and that the open processes of their
government will bring them justice
and timely reform.
What we are witnessing now is
not so much conflict of parties as
contest of ideals, a struggle be-
tween 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 present and of the
future in clear, revealing light.
know that there must be sober
change; know that progress none the
less active and determined because it
! 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 men who feel this ardor of
| progress 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, I'm
doubleday the present moment offers
a greater and larger opportunity to
the democratic party than to the re-
publican party, but this is not be-
cause there are not men in the re-
publican party who have devoted
their whole intelligence and energy
to necessary reform, but the
cause 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 reacti0rary forces by
speaking of them as embodied in the
interests. BY that we do not mean
the legitimate but the illegitimate
interests, those which have not ad-
justed themselves to the public in
terest, those which are clinging to
their vested rights as . hulwark
against the adjustment which is alb
solutely necessary If they are to be
servants and not masters of the pub
lie. The chief political tact Of the
day is that the republican party is
more closely allied with these in
terests than the democratic party.