Arizona republican., 1916-09-26

times branch banks drawn out of oth CT countries, notably out of Canada, were established at our chief ports to dc what American bankers ought to have done.
 we had, as it were. deliberately re- trained from playing our part in the field in which we prided ourselves that we were most ambitious and most expert, the field of manufacture and of commerce
 "All that is past and the scene has been changed by the events of the last two years. almost suddenly and with a completeness that almost dauntS the planning mind. Not only, when this war is over, but now, America has her place in the world and must take her place in the world of finance and com merce upon a scale that she never dreamed of before.
 My dream is that she will take her place in that great field in a new spirit which the world has never seen before; not the spirit of those who would ex- clude others, but the spirit of those who would excel others. 1 want to see America pitted against the world, not in SelfishneSS, but in brains. The first thing that brains have to feed upon is knowledge and when 1 hear men pro- posing to deal with the business prob lems in the United States in the future as we dealt with them in the past, l do not have to inquire any further whether they are equipped with knowl- edge. 1 dismiss them from the reckon ing, because l know that the facts are going to dominate and they know nCth- ing about the facts. And the most that We can supply ourselves with just now is not the detailed program or policy, but the inStrumentalitieS of gOining thorough knowledge of what we are about. Every man of us must for some time to come be from Missouri. We must want to know what the facts are, and when we know what the facts are we shall know what the policy ought to be.
 What instrumentalities have we | provided ourselves with in order that
 we may be equipped with knowledge? | There has been an instrumentality in | operation for four or five years of
 which strangely enough, American | business men have only slowly be-
 came aware. Some four or five years ago the congress established in con- nection with the department what then ] was the department of commerce and
 labor (now the department of com
 meree) a bureau of foreign and do-
 mestic commerce, and one of the ad-
 
 ment has had has been that it has been
 able to hire brains for much less than the brains were worth. It is in a way
 a national discreoit to us, my friends. that we are paying studious men cap able of understanding anything and of | conducting any business just about one-third of what they could command
 in the field of business and it is one
 of the admirable circumstances of
 American life that they are proud to
 serve the government on a pittance
 There are such men in the bureau of
 foreign ana domestic commerce. An6
 l have found that some Of the best of
 those reports seem never to have been
 read. All you have to do in order tC
 find out the details of some of the
 greatest fields of activity in the world
 in the matter of business is to resort
 to the bureau of foreign ond domestic
 commerce; but there again the phe-
 nOmena that I have been speaking o1 have displayed themselves in a very , remarkable way. It needed the catas. , trophe and the tragedy of this war tC awaken American business men to tn, fact that these were the things whicl they must know and know at once. And then, in addition to that, ther, was recently created the federal trad , commission. It is hard to describe tn, functions of that commission, but al , 1 can say is that it has transformet 2 the government of the United State from being an antagonist of bushes I into being a friend of business FBut that is not the matter that am most interested in. It has alway
 been a fiction-I don't know who in vented it or why he invented it-bu ' it has always been a fiction that ther was contest between the law an : | business There always has been ] contest in every government betwee the law and bad business and l do no z want to see that contest softened i |: any way; but there never has been an contest between men who intended tn n right thing and the men who admins tered the law. But what l want t q speak about is this: one of the func tions of the federal trade commissio l is to inquire with the fullest power e ever conferred upon a similar com = mission in this country into all tn Q circumstances of American bushes . for the purpose of doing for America e business exactly what the departmer f of agriculture has so long and wit q increasing efficiency done for tn t farmer, informing the American busi = ness man of every element, big an . little, with which it is his duty to dea |: Iltle are created Searcnlng eyes of IT n quiry to do the very thing that it wa
 imperatively necessary and immediate ;. ly necessary that tke country shoul q do, look upon the field of business an - know what was going on.
 a And then, in the third place. yC "a Know that we have just now done wh;
 II was common sense to do about u
 tariff. We have not put this in e words, but l do not hesitate to put -s into words. am hopef Y that l can find the men who will s, io the facts and state them, no matt
 whose opinion those facts contradiC IL For an opinion ought always to have II profound respect for a fact, and wht n you once get the facts, opinions th le are antagonistic to those facts a y necessarily defeated
 Ne T have never found a really cou = ageous man who was afraid to put h T. opinion to the test of facts or a mo le ally sincere man who was not ready IS surrender to the facts when they we ie contrary to his opinion And the ta r. if commission is going to look for t
 facts, no matter who is hurt So tn T. we are creating one after another t 5: instrumentalities of knowledge so tn es the business men of this country sh; i'd know what the field of the world )- business is and deal with that fife CT upon that knowledge
 l. Then when the knowledge is O
 tained, what are we going to do? O
 of the things that interests me mo ' about an association of this sort is tn the intention of it is that the membe \ should share a common body of i