Guests and Members of the Home Market Club:

I have the honor to greet you at our dinner. I desire especially to extend at this time the greetings of this Club to the members who are with us of the Army and Navy. No transient words of mine are adequate to express our feelings toward you. You can rest assured that as long as history is written and read the glorious record of your achievements in the World War will be known to mankind.

You recall how, in ancient Rome, when the victorious legions returned they were given a triumphal progress through the city, displaying their booty and leading their captives in chains. You, thank God, have no booty and need no captives, for you have all the citizens of this great city and old Commonwealth as your captives, chained in admiration of your glorious deeds.

I shall not touch on the League of Nations, capital and labor, or on the Bolsheviki. I must say, however, I love law and order and stable institutions. I have no sympathy with hasty changes and rash innovations. I have only a word to say:-a plea for this nation.

From the point of view of a manufacturer this nation is drifting, but without a compass or a rudder. Personally, I cannot see how there can be a serious issue on the tariff question for some years, for I believe that

both Republicans and Democrats will join to create a tariff on foreign importations as a means to raise a substantial sum for the country's needs; a tariff, be it for revenue only or for protection, seems certain. Certainly adequate protection is needed.

Today, what of the manufacturer in this country? Broadly speaking, he does not know where he is; he is asked to buy in a high market and sell in a low one. This means bankruptcy or an approach to it. The Government has commandeered all raw material and controls the price. It has put an embargo on all importations. We cannot cable to foreign countries without intolerable delays; it takes six weeks to cable to India and from three to four weeks to cable to South America. The wires are full of the Paris conference.

The Government is left with four hundred million pounds of sixty-cent wool when wool is selling in the world markets at thirty-one cents a pound. The deficit this year on the railways averages thirty-seven million per month. All these deficits must be met out of taxation.

To avoid a loss of about one billion dollars, the consumers of the United States are expected to pay twice the market value for their food and raiment. The country asks for a reduction in the high cost of living, but prices are held at their present level by government decree.

Flour is

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$15.25 per barrel and $1.92 per bag. The coming crop promises to be the largest ever known. Under government control, the greater the crop, the higher the price.

Wages of labor will remain where they are until the cost of living goes down; labor will continue to demand higher wages as long as the cost of living is where it is. While the price of raw material and food is artificially high by reason of Government control, the manufacturer is helpless.

The President said in his last New York address:

"I am amazed [not alarmed but amazed], that there should be in some quarters, such a comprehensive ignorance of the state of the world."

Is not this amazing language from a man who was urging for years neutrality on the part of this government, in the midst of international outrages?

I am amazed and I am alarmed that the President should be so ignorant of conditions in the United States. For years the President stood in this

country and took no note of the outIside world. Now he stands in Paris and takes no note of the United States. He obtained his last election because he kept this country out of war; now he would have us enter into an agreement to go to war with every nation in the world to enforce peace. In his world-view, the President has entirely forgotten that there is a country called the United States and that he is President of it. For almost six months, we have been drifting and I can see rocks ahead.

I remember St. Paul and his vision in the night: a Macedonian ap peared before him and besought him: "Come over into Macedonia and help us!"

May the President of this great Republic have in Paris a vision at night of one hundred and ten millions of the citzens of this great country of ours, and may he hear great cry go

up:

"Come over into America and help us!"

Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Home Market Club:

The government of the United States under the Constitution has been in operation for 130 years. I know that by many people such an age as that is considered to be against it. Personally I am still so much of a reactionary, as some

people are fond of terming me, that I think, with all allowance for human fallibility and human error, that it is the best government and has been the best government ever devised by man on this earth.

I hope to see it continue. I hope it will go on, following the great lines marked out for it by the

founders; that it will continue to be the government which Lincoln described as "of the people, for the people, by the people." I think it is a better government and a safer government for human rights and human liberty than any autocracy set up by socialism or any tyranny established by bolshevism.

During the first half of those 130 years Massachusetts gave to the country four speakers of the national House-Sedgwick, Varnum, Winthrop, and the last, Gen. Banks, in 1856 and 1857. Now, in the closing year of the second half of that period, Our representative and friend, Mr. Gillett, comes back to bring to Massachusetts again that great office, and lays it at her feet, and to be added to the long roll of distinguished men who have represented her in the government of the United States.

I do not propose to say anything about the Senate. It has certain duties peculiar to it. To the Senate is entrusted such matters as treaties and it is well to remember that while the President has the sole power to initiate and negotiate, no treaty can become the supreme law of the land without the approbation of the Senate. And with the power to ratify goes the power to amend.

I wish to speak of the House of Representatives, because we are honored tonight and we are met here to welcome the next Speaker of the present Congress. It is a good opportunity for a Senator to indicate what he thinks the House ought to do when he has the leader

of the House at his right hand. The speakership of the national House of Representatives is one of the greatest offices under the government. It has been the fashion to say that of late it has been shorn of much of its power because the Speaker no longer selects the committees. I am not perfectly sure, from such observation as I have been able to make, that that great change was on the whole a beneficial one, but the fact remains that the Speaker no longer appoints the committees. Yet in the early days of our government there were only one or two committees-I think the first committee appointed was the Ways and Means Committee-but the speakership was then considered, as it is today, a post of great power and great importance, because the Speaker of the House, while he occupies the chair, is the officer of the House. He makes his rulings in accordance with parliamentary law and in accordance with the rules of the House, so far as he knows them; and I have never found anybody yet who knew all the rules of the House. But he makes those rulings without regard to party, and solely as the law and the rules require. But out of the chair he is the leader of the responsible majority party and is so recognized by the entire Congress of the United States. I am sure that the House and the Republican party, and best of all, the country, are going to benefit largely by the leadership of Mr. Gillett. The speakership comes to him as the de

served reward of a long and distinguished career. He brings to it He brings to it not only knowledge and ability and experience, but he brings character, and a courage which has never failed in the expression of his convictions. He will find himself confronted, as the majority which he leads in the House are confronted, by one of the most difficult situations which any House of Representatives has ever faced.

The country has passed through the great war-passed through it, thanks to our soldiers and sailors, victoriously. But any great convulsion such as the world has just passed through, any great convulsion of war, necessarily involves the doing of a great many things by the Congress which are only justifiable under the war power. We must return in time or peace to the limitations of the Constitution, and we must return also to the proper division of the functions. of government between the three great departments of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial.

During the war, for instance, Congress has appropriated money without question, as it was asked for it by the executive department. The duty of Congress is to scrutinize appropriations and care for the expenditure of the people's money. Under the pressure of war that care and scrutiny necessarily have been largely set aside in the interests of the people, the most generous people on the face of the earth, who have given their money and paid their taxes with a liberality and an absence of grumb

it is the duty of Congress to observe now the old rule. We have no right to waste the people's money. Every debt must be paid. Every war obligation must be fulfilled, and no one need suppose for a moment that every obligation put upon us by the war of any kind will fail to be observed. When Congress is in the hands of the Republican party it will fulfil those obligations as it fulfilled the obligations of the Civil War. But the House originates the appropriation bills, and the first great burden falls upon them. The Senate has only the minor part of occasionally offering an amendment; and the duty comes on them now-the old duty revived-of scrutinizing the appropriations and inquiring into the expenditure of money.

In this country-I am not speaking of expenditures abroad-there has undoubtedly been and is today great waste and extravagance. All that must come to an end. This is no time to burden the people needlessly. The House also frames the revenue bills. That right is secured to them by the Constitution and after the revenue bills go the bond bills, the bills for borrowing money. We shall have a great deal of money to borrow, and heavy taxes still to pay. There is a loan now before the country. It ought to be filled and filled quickly. Every bond ought to be taken without any delay whatever. For that loan is to pay the debts incurred by the war. Yet this loan is but the

forerunner of others. It was estimated by the Treasury experts, when they came before the committee of the Senate in regard to the loan bond bill, that the expenditures of the government for the next fiscal year would reach $18,000,000,000. First it seems strange, with the war over, that there should be such an enormous sum required. But you must remember that we have still a great army under pay. On the first of April there were between thirteen and fourteen hundred thousand men in France, and their pay must be provided. Every debt to them must be paid first. The great debt which the war has already incurred will reach probably an annual interest charge, without regard to sinking fund, of $800,000,000 to $1,000,000,000. That must be provided for. The navy is the great bulwark of the defence of the United States. It is the first line of defence. I hope from the bottom of my heart that we shall be able to bring about a general reduction of armaments. That is a burden which ought to be lifted, so far as is possible, from the shoulders of the people of the world. But whether there is a reduction or not, the navy of the United States, in proportion to other armaments, must always be strong enough to protect us, not only on the Atlantic, where the need of protection has been greatly diminished, but also on the Pacific. And assuming, if you please, a reduction of armaments or, if you please, none, the navy of the United States must always be maintained. That is another great branch of expenditures, be

cause it involves a certain amount of building, be it large or little, every year, and a program must be followed.

I have indicated only some of the normal expenses of the government. But in addition and I do not think these figures are included in the $18,000,000,000, although I am not perfectly sure we made a promise to maintain wheat at a certain price. I have no faith in price fixing of any kind, but it was made and it became law. It is a promise, and it must be maintained, because the United States must keep all her promises. To maintain the price of wheat will probably cost in the neighborhood of $1,000,

000,000.

The United States, during the period of government management of the railroads, has managed to incur a debt which now, I think, reaches into $700,000,000. That must be paid. There are other items, but I am not going to make a financial speech, and I did not mean to say as much on finance as I have. But all that money must be raised. Take the $18,000,000,000. The present revenue law presumes to raise $6,000,000,000, though I think it is probable that it may not raise quite so much. But at all events, assuming $6,000,000,000, there are $1,000,000,000 further that must be raised, and they can only be raised by loans. We authorized $7,000,000,000, and they have issued a loan for $4,500,000,000. But the rest must be raised, because there are debts that must be paid, and it will fall upon the Congress of the United States, and on the House in the first