I believe that they will feel, with me, that the stage of affairs is now set for such action as will be not only just but generous and in the spirit of the new age upon which we have so happily entered.
Woodrow Wilson
The Public Record
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, he was born in Virginia and raised in Georgia before moving to New Jersey, where he became a prominent political figure. Wilson was a key leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for reforms such as antitrust legislation and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. His presidency is also noted for significant events such as the United States' involvement in World War I and his efforts to promote the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at preventing future conflicts.
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Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached and led.
Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily become hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them and go their own way.
But the moment we knew the armistice to have been signed we took the harness off.
It is surprising how fast the process of return to a peace footing has moved in the three weeks since the fighting stopped.
It will not be easy to direct it any better than it will direct itself.
The ordinary and normal processes of private initiative will not, however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our returning armies.
But there will be others who will be at a loss where to gain a livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them in the way of work.
There will be a large floating residuum of labor which should not be left wholly to shift for itself.
The Congress can at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation of the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it will but enlarge the plans and appropriations which it has entrusted to the Department of the…
It is possible in dealing with our unused land to effect a great rural and agricultural development which will afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want to help themselves and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the…
No sums of money paid by way of indemnity will serve of themselves to save them from hopeless disadvantage for years to come.
Something more must be done than merely find the money.
If they had money and raw materials in abundance to-morrow they could not resume their place in the industry of the world to-morrow,-the very important place they held before the flame of war swept across them.
Their markets will be taken by others, if they are not in some special way assisted to rebuild their factories and replace their lost instruments of manufacture.
They should not be left to the vicissitudes of the sharp competition for materials and for industrial facilities which is now to set in.
It is idle to talk of successful and confident business reconstruction before those uncertainties are resolved.
But these demands will of course fall much below what a continuation of military operations would have entailed and six billions should suffice to supply a sound foundation for the financial operations of the year.
I urge your acceptance of his recommendation that provision be made now, not subsequently, that the taxes to be paid in 1920 should be reduced from six to four billions.
Any arrangements less definite than these would add elements of doubt and confusion to the critical period of industrial readjustment through which the country must now immediately pass, and which no true friend of the nation's essential…
Clearly determined conditions, clearly and simply charted, are indispensable to the economic revival and rapid industrial development which may confidently be expected if we act now and sweep all interrogation points away.
But all these necessities have now been served, and the question is, What is best for the railroads and for the public in the future?
Every approach to this difficult subject-matter of decision brings us face to face, therefore, with this unanswered question: What is it right that we should do with the railroads, in the interest of the public and in fairness to their…
Their release would at least produce one element of a solution, namely certainty and a quick stimulation of private initiative.
I believe that it will be serviceable for me to set forth as explicitly as possible the alternative courses that lie open to our choice.
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