The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-07

velopment, questions of forests and
 water powers and mines and water
 ways, of the building of an adequate
 merchant marine. and the opening of
 every highway and facility, and the
 setting up offevery safeguard needed
 hysan industrious, expanding nation.
 In Parthership With the People.
 These are all great matters upon which everybody should be heard: We have got into trouble in recent years chiefly because these large things, l. which ought to have been handled by taking counsel with as large num- her of persons as possible, because they touched every interest. and the life of every class and region, have | in fact been too often handled in | private conference. They have been l settled by very small and often de nberately exclusive groups of men l who undertook to speak for the whole nation, or, rather, for themselves in l the terms of the whole nation-very honestly 1t may be, but very ignorant | ly sometimes. and very shortsightedly, 1 too-a poortsubstitute for genuine com mon counsel. No group of directors,
 economic. or political, can speak for a
 people. They have neither the point of view nor the knowledge. We need no
 revolution; we need no excited change;
 we need only new point of view and a new method and spirit of counsel, We are servants of the people, the whole people. The nation has been
 unnecessarily, unreasonably at war
 within itself. Interest has clashed
 with interest when there were com mon principles of right and of fair
 dealing which might and should have bound them all together, not as rivals, but as partners. As the servants of l all we are bound to undertake the great duty of accommodation and ad- l justment.
 We cannot undertake it except in a spirit which some find it hard to un- | derstand Some people only smile
 when you speak of yourself as atserv-
 ant of the people; 1t seems to them
 like affectation or mere demagogy. 1 They ask what the minimizing crowd
 knows or comprehends of great com
 paicated matters of government. They
 shrug their shoulders and lift their
 eyebrows when you speak as if you
 really believed in presidential prima- l ries, in the direct election of United States senators and in an utter pub
 ltcity about everything that. concerns government, from the sources of cam paign funds to the intimate debate of | &he4 hiuhorf a feu3rc of cfo fo . The Public Noble Whole.
 | They do not or will not compre-
 bend the, solemn thing that is in your
 thought. You know as well as they do that there are all sorts and condi-
 tons of nnen--the minimizing mixed with the wise. the reckless with the prudent, the interruptions with the fair. and honest and you know, what
 they sometimes forget, that every class, without exception, affords a
 sample of the mixture, the learned and
 the fortunate no less than the unedu-
 cated and the struggling mass. But
 you see more than they do. You see
 that these muititudes of men, mixed,
 of every kind and quality, constitute
 somehow an organic and cnobles whole,
 a single people, and that they have in
 terests which no man can privately
 determine without their knowledge
 and counsel. That is the meaning of,
 representative government itself. You may think that I am wandering off into general disquisition that has little to do with the business in hand
 but l am not. This is business-busi-
 ness of the deepest sort. It will solvc
 our difficulties if you will but take ii as business.
 The Tariff. .s
 See how it makes business out of the
 tariff question. The tariff question as
 dealt with in our timesat any rate has
 not been business. It has been politics l Tarfh schedules have been made up
 for the purpose of keeping as large
 number as possible of the rich and in
 fuential manufacturers of the country
 in good humor with the Republican l party, which desired their constant
 financial support. The tarihf has be
 come a. system of favora which the phraseOlogy of the schedule was often
 deliberately contrived to conceal. 1t becomes matter of business, of legiti-
 mate business, only when the partner ship and understanding it represents
 are between the leaderso of congress and
 the whole people of the United States
 instead of between the leaders of con- gress and small groups of manufac- turers demanding special recognition and consideration. That is why the general idea of representative govern ! ment becomes necessary part of the tariff question. Who when you come
 down to the hard facts of the matter
 have been represented in recent years when our tariff schedules, were being discussed and determined not on the
 floor of congress, for that is not where | they have been determined, but in the ] committee rooms and conferences? :?
 That is the heart. of the whole affair Will you, can you, bring the whole | people into the partnership or not? l No one is discontented with representa- | tive government It falls under ques-
 tion only when 1t ceases to be repre-
 sentative. It is at bottom question of good faith and morals.
 l How does the present tariff look in
 she light of it? I say nothing for the
 moment about the policy of protection l conceived and carried out as a disin- l terested statesman might conceive it. 1D1Ws 111A s.~A4 F~~~r