The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-04
WILSON ADDRESSES NATIONAL CIVIC BODY
 ONCOUNTRY'S 'SNEEDS
'We Must Pool Our Inter- ests to Discover Best Means for Handling Public Prob
 lems," Says the President

between business and the government in framing laws for the benefit of all the people was @ged by President Wilson tonight in an address before several hun dred representative business men here attending the annual convention of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. He declared that i've must all pool our interests to discover the best means for handling public problems
 The President urged the creation in the United States in time of peace of the same kind of united spirit which moves nations during wars He declared that 'when peace is as handsome as war there will be no wars" and that "when men engage in the pursuits of peace in the same spirit of self sacrifice as they en- gage in war, wars will disappear"
 The President predicted that, while there is a shortage of food in the world now, the shortage will be much greater later. He pointed out that under the gui1- ance of the department of agriculture, efforts must be made by American farm CTS to grow more and more grain that the world may be fed
 Speaking of the foreign trade of the United States, the President asked that business men devise some way of allow ing American exporters to combine to form common selling agencies and to give long time credits in such a way that these cooperative devices may be open to the use of all. He declared that ap- parently the antitrust law prohibited such combinations now, but that he would fa- vor a change, if a method fair to all could be found.
 He spoke of the bureau of foreign and domestic commerce's work in surveying the world for the benefit of all business men. vf
 Business men themselves are to blame if intelligent laws affecting them are not framed, the President asserted. He add ed that they should come out into the open and use their knowledge of condi- tions to bring about laws to prevent busi- ness evils.
 The Mexican question was mentioned by MT. Wilson as an example of the diff culty he had in getting accurate nforma. ton.
 "There is an illustration which I have used a great many times. I will use 1t again because it is the most serviceable to my mind. We often speak of man who cannot find his way in some jungle or some desert as having lost himself Did you never reflect that that is the only thing he has not lost? He is there. He has lost the rest of the world. He has no fixed point by which to steer. He does not know which is north, which is south, which is east, which is vest and if he did know, he is so confused that he would not know in which of those directions his goal lay, and, therefore, following his heart he walks in a great circle from right to left and comes back to where he started, to himself again.
 picturo of WorId
 ''To my mind it is a picture of the 2 world. If you have lost other interests and do not know the relation of your own interests to those other interests then you do not understand your own interests and have lost yours. What you want is orientation, relationship to the points of the compass, relationship to the other people in the world; vital connec- tions which have for the time being been severed. And so I am particularly glad to express my admiration for the kind of organization which you have drawn together.
 ''I have attended banquets of chambers of commerce in various parts of the country and have got the impression al each of those banquets that there was only one city in the country. And it has seemed to me that those associations were meant in order to destroy mems perspec- tive, in order to destroy his sense of relative proportions; worst of all, if ma y be permitted to say so, they were in- tended to boost something in particular Boosting is very unhandsome thing Advancing enterprise is a very handsome thing, but to exaggerate local merit ir order to create disproportion in the gen. eral development is not particularly handsome thing or a particularly intelli. gent thing.
 "The advantage about a chamber oi commerce of the United States is thai there is only one way to boost the Uni ted States, and that is by seeing tc it that the conditions under which busi. ness is done throughout the country are