reverberating down the centuries long after the loud-mouthed cannon of Napoleon shall have been hushed forever. The name of Abraham Lincoln, the plain, unassuming teacher of the doctrine of peace and brotherly love, is now mentioned an hundred times where that of General Grant, the conquering hero of the greatest war of modern times, is mentioned once. In the firmament of history, as the ages roll away, the bloody orbs of military heroes are paling year by year, while the stars of the great teachers of earth are shining more and more unto the perfect day.

I stand here tonight to espouse the cause of one of the most illustrious teachers of the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson. With your kind indulgence I ask to state now specifically my reasons for advocating his fitness for the presidency and for indulging the hope that should Missouri's favorite son, whoever he may be, go down in the convention at Baltimore, our thirty-six votes will be cast for the governor of New Jersey-formerly the president of Princeton University.

To begin with, I advocate the fitness of Woodrow Wilson for the presidency of the Republic because he is a man of vast learning. I am fully aware that a large number of millionaires, a good many great corporation lawyers and hundreds of representatives of "The Interests" are now descanting upon the impracticability of learning and its want of adaptability to practical business methods. They are prating loud and long about the scholastic vagaries and populistic visions of the schoolmaster from Princeton. Governor Wilson is replying to these men not only with the unanswerable logic of a great teacher but also with his courageous, practical record as the governor of New Jersey. It is evident, however, that his apt replies and dauntless, practical reasoning are having but little effect upon these lofty plutocratic aristocrats. It requires dollars, not reason, to satisfy the ravenous maw of human greed.

But, my friends, learning never disqualified any man for a public trust. If it did, then Daniel Webster-a regular college graduate, a scholar whose ripe learning traversed the whole field of knowledge, and the bell tones of whose classic eloquence are ringing today in our ears-was not competent to represent the old Bay State in the United States Senate. If so, then Thomas Jefferson-one of the most learned men of his time, the writer of the Declaration of Independence, the author of many books, and the founder of a great university-the pride and glory of his heart

was totally incompetent to act as president of the United States. If so, then Wm. E. Gladstone-the broadest, most finished European scholar of his day, the greatest premier England ever had, was singularly incompetent to direct the destinies of the mistress of the seas. Surely these "peerless captains of industry," as we are taught to call them, and their satellites are hard pressed for an objection to the learned and successful head of the great University of Princeton and the practical, intrepid and courageous governor who has inaugurated and carried to completion so many reforms in the interests of the masses in New Jersey, the very birth-place of colossal corporations. If ever a friend of the people, by the union of learning and practical common sense, in spite of tremendous opposition pushed through to successful passage a set of laws to curb corruption and debauchery in elections and to protect honest toilers from the cruelty and rapacity of the powerful, it was he. If ever a knight has ridden out upon the political field and fought party bosses and the panoplied emissaries of corporate despotism with a leveler or more successful lance than this college president, then history has not found him.

I am for Woodrow Wilson because he is a progressive statesmen. In the mad rush of the strenuous lives which we live in our times, too many of us fail to pause long enough to consider our actual condition as citizens. The liberties of the masses are gradually passing from them in our Republic. The individual who asserts this is at once dubbed by the man who boasts himself a conservative, as an alarmist. But we had as well face facts just as we find them. Liberty is not that intangible, sentimental something which many imagine it to be. Nothing is more inseparably linked with the substantial. Liberty depends upon the power the citizen possesses, and in the last analysis, power goes largely with property. Strip A of his property, and so circumstance him that he must work for B, and B alone, and though ostensibly free, he is the slave of B. Strip the great masses of their property and compel them to work alone for a small aggregation of individuals, or a system of trusts and monopolies, and their liberties are gone. Though ostensibly free, they are industrial slaves. A large per cent of the property in America has passed into the hands of a favored few. In the past thirty years there has been a stupendous change in the distribution of wealth in our Republic, and power has gone with wealth in this tremendous industrial revolution. Half the vast wealth of America is owned by a smaller number of men than reside in Kansas City, Missouri. The list

of our millionaires has already increased to many thousands, and is rapidly growing larger. We have two billionaires in America who are worth more than all of the people of Missouri combined. And this appalling condition is growing worse every day. If the present trend continues, in twenty years we will have as many citizens without property in the United States as they have in Russia. It is the opinion of some of our best and wisest statesmen that if something is not done to check it, thirty years from now we may experience what was finally experienced in the Imperial City by the Tiber; when the property of a vast empire passed into the hands of a few patricians; when vast multitudes, clad in rags. and tortured by hunger, paraded the streets, crying for bread or blood, until the mightiest government known to men fell with a thud that shook the world. In the meantime, while this mighty economic revolution is going on and our property is passing into the hands of the few, the words of Wendell Phillips are sounding louder than ten thunders in our ears: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Power is ever passing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered every day or it is rotten."

No man in America understands this rapid and dangerous trend to economic centralization more thoroughly than Woodrow Wilson. Here and in the moral reforms which he champions is found the very gist of his progressive candidacy. He proposes as chief magistrate of the nation to lead the fight to restore to the people their liberties. With a profound and logical mind he has studied deeply our institutions. He sees how, not simply in theory but in actual practice, we have departed from the high ideals of the Fathers of the Republic. He fully comprehends the meaning of the deplorable fact, that in a nation where fifty years ago property was more equally distributed than in any other beneath the skies, the distribution today, mainly by reason of governmental favoritism, is rapidly becoming more unequal than at any spot on the globe-that we now have more millionaires and multi-millionaires than all the world beside. He is against the system which has brought this unjust and pernicious condition. about, and which portends in the immediate future even greater disparity and injustice.

And there is nothing visionary or Utopian about the methods advocated by Governor Wilson as the plutocrats are claiming. It nowhere appears in his writings or his speeches that any addition is to be made to our system of government. It is simply intended

to carry out the original spirit and intent of our institutions by the use of modern progressive machinery and the application of the fundamental principles of equality and justice. It is no objection to these methods that they are not hoary-headed. It would be as foolish to object to steam or electricity because the world knew nothing of their use for six thousand years, and their discovery and practical application by Watt, Franklin, Morse, Edison and others are all of comparatively recent date.

*

It is worthy of special note that the progressive methods advocated by Governor Wilson and others are not from Democracy, but to Democracy-not from the people, but to the people. The plan and one in entire harmony with the spirit of our system of government-is to call into action the latent sovereignty of the people and let them by sovereign edict correct the evils into which we have fallen. These are evils which did not exist during the lives of the founders of the Republic, but for which they provided adequate principles, leaving the immediate methods to be inaugurated as emergency required. The mailed hand of monopoly has now such a clutch upon the body politic that naught but a great blow from the sovereign people can release it, and here lies the one great objection to Woodrow Wilson. It is not his methods, but what he would likely accomplish as president which is arousing the patriotic ire and doleful forebodings of "The Interests."

I am for Woodrow Wilson because he stands for the Initiative and Referendum. It is at this point that the guns of the "Interests" are turned upon the New Jersey governor with greatest fury. It is here that their chief attack is centered. If they are directed against any other candidate for the presidency on this issue, I have not noticed it. It would seem that this comes not only because of his prominence as a candidate, but also from the learned and masterful manner in which he is advocating this method of arriving at the popular will. They fear that if he is elected it will become the law of the land.

What is the Initiative and Referendum? In my humble opinion it is the second Magna Charta of the Anglo-Saxon. Never since the sturdy Barons compelled King John to concede them their liberties at Runnymeade has there been a measure embodying more of popular sovereignty and freedom for the masses. I see that Governor Harmon, now considered, outside of Missouri at least, as Governor Wilson's principal opponent, has recently delivered an address in which he has vigorously attacked the Initiative and Referendum. This accentuates the issue all the

more and will doubtless embolden the great monopolists and trust magnates as well as all citizens with imperialistic tendencies, to attack Governor Wilson with increased intensity. The Democracy, it would seem, is gradually approaching the parting of the waysthe crucial hour in its life when we shall turn either to Jefferson or to Hamilton. You will bear with me, therefore, for a few moments while I make an argument mainly from a legal standpoint for this great measure, now so dear to the hearts of the masses of the people and which the advocates of a centralized and aristocratic Republic are fighting with all the arguments great corporation lawyers can devise, and all the power that goes with unlimited wealth.

The Initiative and Referendum is a simple method intended to obtain an expression of the popular will. It is the very essence of Democracy. Like most great methods it has arisen out of the exigencies of the hour. Its purpose in the main is to obtain the justice denied by corrupt or intimidated legislators and to correct the intentional or accidental mistakes they have made. It is probably best presented as found in the constitution of Oregon, where it was adopted several years ago. The people of Missouri have copied the Oregon Initiative and Referendum verbatim and placed it in the organic law of this State. It provides that when five per cent of the legal voters in two-thirds of the Congressional districts petition the Secretary of State to submit to the people a given constitutional amendment or statute, it shall be his duty to comply with the petitions and place the proposed amendment or statute upon the ballot and permit them to adopt or reject the same. By similar petition the Referendum compels the Secretary of State to submit for adoption or rejection any statute passed by the legislature. The vote of the people is to be taken as their sovereign edict and the governor is not permitted to exercise his veto power. It is absolutely impossible to conceive of anything more consistent with liberty and democracy.

But it is claimed by some good men, but more especially by the representatives of the great moneyed interests, that the Initiative and Referendum is a change in our form of government. It is wonderful how solicitous the great millionaires and their satellites are about our form of government when occasion requires. This same argument was made by eminent lawyers before the Supreme Court of Oregon. That court held that there was no change in our form of government-that they still had in Oregon the legislature which made it a representative form