Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1912-08-07
Duty Is to Set Up Rule of Justice in Tariff and Trust
Regulation and Provide for National Conservation

"At such a time, and in the presence of such circumstances, what is
the meaning of our platform, and what is u responsibility under it? What
what the nation is thinking about, what it is most concerned about what IT
wishes corrected, and what it desires to SET attempted that is new and con-
structive and intended for its long future, But for us it is a very prac-
fca1 document We are not about ito ask the people Oft the Unted states
to adopt our platform; we are about to ask them to entrust is with office
and power and the guidance of their affairs. They will wish to know what
sort of men we are and of what definite purpose; what translation of action
and of policy we intend to give to the general terms of the platform which
the convention at Baltimore put forth should We be elected.
"The platform is not a program. A program must conssto of measures
administrative acts and acts of legislation. The proof of the pudding is the
eating thereof How do we intend It make it edible and dgeshble? From
this time or We shall be under interrogation. How do W e expect TO handle
each of the great matters that must be taken up by the next Congress and
the next administration?
"what is there to do? 1t is hard to sum the great task up, but ap-
parentiy this is the sum of the matter: There are two great things to do
One is to set up the rule of justice and of right in such matters as the tariff,
of our banking and currency laws to the varied uses to which our people
must put them, the treatment of those who do the daily labor in our fac
tories and mines and throughout all our great industrial and commercial
undertakings, and the political life OF the people oil the Phlhppnes' for
whom we hold governmental power in trust for their service, not our own.
"The other, the additional duty, is the great task of protecting Il peo-
pie and our resources and of keeping open to the whole people the doors of
opportunity through which they must, generation by generation, pass if they
are to make conquest of their fortunes in health, in freedom, in peace and
in contentment In the performance of this second great duty we are face
70 face with questions of conservation and of development, questions of
forests and water powers and mines and waterways, of the building of an
adequate merchant marine, and the opening of every highway and facility
and the setting UP of every safeguard needed by a great industrious, e-
banding nation
"These are all great matters upon which everybody should be heard
We have got into trouble in recent years chiefly because these large things
which ought to have been handled by taking counsel with as large a num-
Der of persons a. possible, because they touched every interest and the life
of every class and region have in fact been too often handled in private con-
ference. They have been settled by very small, and often deliberately ex-
elusive, groups of men who undertook to speak for the whole
nation or rather, for themselves n the terms of the whole nation-very
honestly it may be, but very ignoranty sometimes, and very shortsightedly,
fooEa poor substitute for genuine common counsel. No group of directors,
economic or political, can speak for a people. They have neither the point
of view nor the knowledge. Our difficulty is lot that wicked and designing
men have plotted against US, but that u common affairs have been deter
mined upon too narrow a view and by too private IN initiative. Our task
now isto effect a great readiustment and get the forces of the whole people
once more into play. We need 10 revolution; we need n o excited change;
we need only a nw point of view and a method and spirit of counsel