The Green Forest tribune., 1914-12-11


 in the rich states of the West, when we should have acted; and they are still locked up. The key is still turned upon them, the door shut fast at which thousands of vigorous men, full of initiative, knock clamorously for admittance. The water power of our navigable streams outside the na- tional domain, also, even in the east ern states, where we have worked and planned for generations, is still not used as it might be, because we will and we won't; because the laws we have made do not intelligently balance encouragement against restraint. We withhold by regulation.
 l have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes and omis- sions, even at this short session of a congress which would certainly seem to have done all the work that could reasonably be expected of it. The time and the circumstances are extraor- dinary, and so must our efforts be also.
 Use and Conservation.
 Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to unlock, with proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain, the other to encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that domain for the generation of power, have already passed the house of representatives and are ready for immediate consider ation and action by the senate. With the deepest earnestness 1 urge their prompt passage. In them both we turn our backs upon hesita- tion and makeshift and formulate a genuine policy of use and con- servation, in the best sense of those words. We owe the one measure not only to the people of that great western country for whose free and systematic development, as it seems to me, our legislation has done so little, but also to the people of the nation as a whole; and we as clear ly owe the other in fulfillment of our repeated promises that the water pow CT of the country should in fact as well as in name be put at the disposal of great industries which can make economical and profitable use of it, the rights of the public being ade- quately guarded the while, and mo- nopoly in the use prevented. To have begun such measures and not com pleted them would indeed mar the record of this great congress very seriously. I hope and confidently be- lieve that they will be completed.
 And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and should receive the sanction of the senate:
 mean the bill which gives larger measure of self-government to the peo- pie of the Philippines. How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexing policy, could we show our confidence in the principles of liberty, as the source as well as the expression of life, how better could we demonstrate our own self-possession and steadfastness in the courses of justice and disinterestedness than by thus going calmly forward to fulfill our promises to a dependent people, who will now look more anXiously than ever to see whether we have in- deed the liberality, the unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boast ed and professed. I cannot believe that the senate will let this great measure of constructive justice await the action of another congress. It's passage would nobly crown the record of these two years of memorable la bor.
 An Important Duty.
 But I think that you will agree with me that this does not complete the toll of our duty. How are we to carry our goods to the empty markets of which I have spoken if we have not the certain and constant means of transportation upon which all profit able and useful commerce depends? And how are we to get the ships if we wait for the trade to develop with out them? To correct the many mis- takes by which we have discouraged and all but destroyed the merchant marine of the country, to retrace the steps by which we have, 1t seems al- most deliberately, withdrawn our flag from the seas, except where here and there, ship of war is bidden carry 1t, or some wandering yacht displays 1t, would take a long time and in- wolves many detailed items of legisla- tion, and the trade which we ought immediately to handle would disap- pear or find other channels while we debated the items.
 The case is not unlike that which confronted us when our own conti- nent was to be opened up to settle ment and industry, and we needed long lines of railway, extended means of transportation prepared beforehand, if development was not to lag intoler- ably and wait interminab1y. We law ishly subsidized the building of trans continental railroads. We look back upon that with regret now, because the subsidies led to many scandals of which we are ashamed; but we know that the railroads had to be