The Green Forest tribune., 1912-04-26

an honest expression or the pOpu-h' will in my party. If the people don't wish me, all right I have nothing to say; but if they do wish me and if the politicians cheat them out of it., will have a good deal to say.
 And, mind you, in the fundamentals am not making a party fight, l am making a fight to have you men mas ters of your public servants, to have you control the men who themselves control the political machinery. If guarantee he will not work you in your interest, but work you in his own.
 And now, friends, there is more than one thing that I wish to see the government do. You remember, per haps some of you, that while was president 1 did my best to get the government to take up with all se riousness the question of handling our national resources. One item of that was to get the national govern ment to take full control over the rivers, and I ask that the national government take charge to assist our people in conserving not only the soil and the forest, but to see to the draining of the swamp lands; and, friends, when the government does as it should do, such floods as those that have taken place will be impos- sible
 The national government, cooper ating wherever necessary with the states. must see to it that such works are built as to render absolutely safe all the people who dwell along the loWeg Mississippi, from the Missouri to the Ohio down, and it will not do to leave our people who dwell on the banks of the Mississippi subject to such calamities as are entailed by these floods, and it is the duty of the nation, in cooperating with the states, to see the possibility of the recurrence of these floods, or at least to the extent of the damage that they now do, becomes a thing of the past
 And, friends, that puts me in the 1lIIu Ol oOLlVIllllIS SioS OA e"iNSN disaster that has recently occurred the destruction of the Titanic. One of those appalling calamities that now and then happen among the con- ditions of modern, civilized life. Many of us had friends aboard the vessel. I had a former aide of mine, Capt. Butt, Georgian, and an Ameri- can gentleman from my own state, who died as an officer and a gentle man should die, doing his duty, help ing the ships officers to save the women and children at the loss of his own life. Friends, our nations sor- row at such a loss is tempered by the fact that the man went to his death as honorably as if he died in battle.
 I wish to call attention to the fact that under the English law the wid- ows and orphans of all the sailors aboard will have compensation for the loss of the bread winner in each family, whereas in New York, where the Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, has declared that the people of that state are powerless to enact such a law. 1 ask you, the people of this industrial and railroad center in this great state of yours, to make up your minds as l have made up mine, that we will continue to battle for real progressive policies until there are laws for the compen- sation of working men killed or wounded in battle, until there are laws to protect working men in their lives in their work everywhere throughout this country.
 Now, friends, 1 am so pressed for time that I have to leave unsaid half of the things I would like to tell you about. But there are just one or two points upon which I wish to touch. One of the accusations that my oppo- nents make about me, and if there is any accusation that they don't make I don't know it, is that while l was president I was dictator. Well l wasn't. Whom did I dictate to? The people? Not bit of it. And I nev- CT dictated to any senator or con- gressman who represented the peo- pie and stood up for the rights of the people. The only kind of dictation in which I ever indulged was when l found that there was something that the people ought to have and that Congress would not give them. l then went out and stated to the peo- pie why I thought it was in their in- terest to have that particular law and. if I could convince them that I was right, they brought pressure to 1 bear upon the recalcitrant senators or congressman. Sometimes it would be one law, sometimes another; now it was the rate law, now the pure food law, now it was a law to in crease the power of the Department of Agriculture so that it could deal with the people, the farming people who most always make the basis of our national life. And sometimes it would be something else, and if I act ed on these subjects, my opponents would be very apt to say that I was acting unconstitutionally. I always bore in mind that the preamble to the constitution says that the people made it, and if a question came up, always gave the benefit of the doubt to the people.
 Now, I'll give you two illustrations of the way I acted. One taken from before I was president. I was colonel of a regiment in the Spanish war. There were several Arkansas men in