The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-09-03
THE BIRMINGHAM AeEHERALD SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 1916

enjoy definite and settled conditions of law, a policy accommodated to the freest progress. We have set the just and necessary limits. We have put all kinds of unfair competition under the ban and penalty of the law. We have barred monopoly. These fatal and ugly things being excluded, we must now quicken action and facilitate enterprise by every just means within our choice There will be peace in the business world, and, with peace, revived confi- dence and life.
 We ought both to husband and to develop our natural resources, our mines. our forests, our water power. I wish we could have made more preg- ress than we have made in this vital matter; and I call once more, with the deepest earnestness and solicitude, upon the advocates of a careful and provident conservation, on the one hand, and the advocates of free and inviting field for private capital, on the other. to get together in spirit of genuine accomm odation and agree ment and set this great policy forward at once.
 We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labor through out our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all occupations do- ing justice to the laborer, not only by pa ying a living wage but also by mak- ing all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard life and promote health and safety in every occupation in which they are threatened or imperiled. That is more than justice. and better, be- cause it is humanity and economy.
 We must coordinate the railway systems of the country for national use and must. facilitate and promote their development with view to that coordination and to their better adaptation as a whole to the life and trade and defense of the nation. The life and industry of the country can be free and unhampered only if these arteries are open, efficient and com plete.
 Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as circumstance and inter- national policy effect their unfolding. whether the changes come slowly or come fast and without preface
 PLATFORM EXPLICIT
 have not spoken explicitly, gentle men, of the platform adopted at St. Louis; but 1t has been implicit in all that have said have sought to in- terpret it's spirit and meaning. The peo- pie of the United States do not need to be assured now that that platform Is a definite pledge. practical prp- gramme. We have proved to them that our promises are made to be Kept
 We hold very definite ideals. We be- 1ieve that the energy and initiative of our people have been too narrowly coached and superintended; that they should be set free, as we have set them free, to disperse themselves throughout the nation: that they should not be concentrated in the hands of a few powerful guides and guardians, as our opponents have again and again, in effect if not in purpose, sought to concentrate them. We believe, more over-who that looks about him now with comprehending eye can fail to be- lieve?-that the day of little Ameri- canism, with it's narrow horizons, when methods of protection" and industrial nursing were the chief study of our pr ovincial statesmen, are past and gone and that day of enterprise has at last dawned for the United States whose field is the wide world.
 We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all America, the re- puhlics of both continents, on to a new life and energy and initiative in the great affairs of peace. We are Amer jeans for big America, and rejoice to look forward to the days in which America shall strive to stir the world without irritating it or drawing it on CO new dutdBOuISIHS, when tHe udliOuS with which we deal shall at last come to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and justice our passion for peace rests. and when all mankind shall look. upon our great people with a new sentiment of admiration, friend ly rivalry and real affection, as upon a people who. though keen to suc- cce1, seeks always to be at once gen. er ous and just and to whom humanity is dearer than profit or selfish power.
 Upon this record and in the faith of this purpose we go to the country.