plexity of the American Government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the Americans could run any constitution. But there have been a great many technical difficulties in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose in this country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slavery question. And is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many women; those prominent in that day were so few that you can name them over in a brief catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing, not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play in America. After the Civil War had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like the same proportions that they

exist now.

And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in the cities and the cool spaces of the country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal questions. They have more and more become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another-not merely their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one another. This has been most characteristic of

American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, "What does this gathering force mean," if he knows anything about the history of the country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to stay, but has come with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took

its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into the perfection of her development.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the

organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consists, not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to

wait.

PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS ON THE RELATION OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE BUSINESS OF THE WORLD (Delivered before the Grain Dealers' Association, Baltimore, September 25, 1916)

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a matter of sincere gratification to me that I can come and address an association of this sort, and yet I feel that there is a certain drawback to the present occasion. That drawback consists of the fact that it occurs in the midst of a political campaign. Nothing so seriously interrupts or interferes with the sober and sincere consideration of public questions as a political campaign. I want to say to you at the outset that I believe in party action, but that I have a supreme contempt for partisan action; that I believe that it is necessary for men to concert measures together in organized coöperation by party, but that whenever party feeling touches any one of the passions that work against the general interest, it is altogether to be condemned. Therefore, I feel that on occasions like this we should divest ourselves of the consciousness that we are in the midst of a political campaign. .

What I have come to say to you today, therefore, I would wish to say in an atmosphere from which all the vapors of passion have been cleared away, for I want to

speak to you about the business situation of the world, so far as America is concerned. I am not going to take the liberty of discussing that business situation from the special point of view of your association, because I know that I would be bringing coals to Newcastle. I know that I am speaking to men who understand the relation of the grain business to the business of the world very much better than I do; and I know that it is true that, except under very unusual circumstances such as have existed in the immediate past, the export of grain from this country has been a diminishing part of our foreign commerce rather than an increasing part; that the increase of our own population— the decrease in proportion to that increase, of our production of grains-has been rendering the question of foreign markets less important, though still very important, than it was in past generations, so far as the dealing in grain is concerned. I also remember, however, that we have only begun in this country the process by which the full production of our agricultural acreage is to be obtained. The agricultural acreage of this country ought to produce twice what it is now producing, and under the stimulation and instruction which have recently been characteristic of agricultural development I think we can confidently predict that within, let us say, a couple of decades, the agricultural production of this country will be something like double, whereas, there is no likelihood that the population of this country will be doubled within the same period. You can look forward, therefore, it seems to me, with some degree of confidence to an increasing, and perhaps a rapidly increasing, volume of the products in which you deal.

But, as I have said, I have not come to discuss that. I have come to discuss the general relation of the United States to the business of the world in the decades immediately ahead of us. We have swung out, my fellow citizens, into a new business era in America. I suppose that there is no man connected with your association who does not re

member the time when the whole emphasis of American business discussion was laid upon the domestic market. I need not remind you how recently it has happened that our attention has been extended to the markets of the world; much less recently, I need not say, in the matters with which you are concerned than in the other export interests of the country. But it happened that American production, not only in the agricultural field and in mining and in all the natural products of the earth, but also in manufacture, increased in recent years to such a volume that American business burst its jacket. It could not any longer be taken care of within the field of the domestic markets; and when that began to disclose itself as the situation, we also became aware that American business men had not studied foreign markets, that they did not know the commerce of the world, and that they did not have the ships in which to take their proportionate part in the carrying trade of the world; that our merchant marine had sunk to a negligible amount, and that it had sunk to its lowest at the very time when the tide of our exports began to grow in most formidable volume.

One of the most interesting circumstances of our business history is this: The banking laws of the United States-I mean the Federal banking laws-did not put the national banks in a position to do foreign exchange under favorable conditions, and it was actually true that private banks, and sometimes branch banks drawn out of other countries, notably out of Canada, were established at our chief ports to do what American bankers ought to have done. It was as if America was not only unaccustomed to touching all the nerves of the world's business, but was disinclined to touch them, and had not prepared the instrumentality by which it might take part in the great commerce of the round globe. Only in very recent years have we been even studying the problem of providing ourselves with the instrumentalities.