pared yet for a change involving a centralization of power that would affect the whole relationship of the States to the Union, but merely to have nationalization discussed as a serious proposition will be a portent of interest.

Presenting himself for re-election within nine weeks of his settlement of the railroad dispute, Mr. Wilson commanded a substantial section of the Labour vote that would otherwise have gone to the Socialist candidate. In his speech of acceptance at the beginning of September he had given evidence of his solicitude for Labour in a passage recalling the legislation he had initiated or furthered.

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The working-men of America," he claimed, have been given a veritable emancipation by the legal recognition of a man's labour as part of his life, and not a mere marketable commodity; by exempting labour organizations from processes of the Courts which treated their members like fractional mobs and not like accessible and responsible individuals; by releasing our seamen from involuntary servitude; by making adequate provision for compensation for industrial accidents; by providing suitable machinery for mediation and conciliation in industrial disputes; and by putting the Federal Department of Labour at the disposal of the working-man when in search of work." To this list of services would, of course, have been added the eighthour day victory, but for the fact that on the day the President's speech was being the measure conferring that benefit

delivered the

was still in course of passage through the Senate.

On the whole, Labour recognized the justice of President Wilson's claims. The union clauses in the Clayton Act they regarded as a vindication of the principle that "the labour of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce " -and may therefore be legitimately withheld through the action of a combination when a commodity or article of commerce may not. Mr. Gompers, the President of the A.F.L., no doubt carried most of his membership with him when he wrote on the eve of the 1916 election: "President Woodrow Wilson has advocated, urged, and signed legislation protecting human rights and promoting the welfare of the workers and all of the masses of the people. It lies with the working people-the masses-on Election Day to determine by their votes whether the policy of progress, justice, freedom, and humanity shall prevail in the re-election of Mr. Wilson to the Presidency of the United States, or whether the pendulum shall swing backward, and the policy of reaction shall be enthroned." I

It does not appear that the Labour vote was in most areas cast solid for the President, but it may well have been responsible for giving him the victory in more than one doubtful State.

› American Federationist, November 1916.

CHAPTER XII

RE-ELECTION

Four years is too long a term for a President who is not a true spokesman of the people, who is imposed upon and does not lead. It is too short a term for a President who is doing or attempting a great work of reform and who has not had time to finish it.-Letter to Congressman A. M. Palmer, February 1913.

FROM the end of 1915, when political thought began seriously to concern itself with the Presidential Election of the following November, down to the actual day of assembly of the Progressive and Republican Conventions at Chicago in June, a curious and baffling situation prevailed. On the Democratic side, indeed, there was neither division nor doubt. Only one candidate was possible, Woodrow Wilson, and the 1912 pronouncement in favour of a single Presidential term was by tacit agreement thrown to the winds. But with the opposition the case was very different. They did not know whether they were one party or two, and even if they should decide to be one they were completely at a loss for a candidate.

Half a dozen names were under discussion, the mention of any one of them calculated to provoke more criticism than approval. Mr. Roosevelt was an obvious nomination, but public