At present we face such utter lack of supervision, such freedom from the restraints of law, that excellent men have often been literally forced into doing what they deplored because otherwise they were left at the mercy of unscrupulous…

What we need to do is to develop an orderly system, and such a system can only come through the gradually increased exercise of the right of efficient Government control.

It is true that some judges have misused this power; but this does not justify a denial of the power any more than an improper exercise of the power to call a strike by a labor leader would justify the denial of the right to strike.

I renew the recommendation I made in my last annual message for an investigation by the Department of Commerce and Labor of general labor conditions, especial attention to be paid to the conditions of child labor and child-labor…

In such a Republic as ours the one thing that we cannot afford to neglect is the problem of turning out decent citizens.

The future of the Nation depends upon the citizenship of the generations to come; the children of today are those who tomorrow will shape the destiny of our land, and we cannot afford to neglect them.

We must face accomplished facts, and the adjustment of factory conditions must be made, but surely it can be made with less friction and less harmful effects on family life than is now the case.

Every considerable labor difficulty in which interstate commerce is involved should be investigated by the Government and the facts officially reported to the public.

The question of securing a healthy, self-respecting, and mutually sympathetic attitude as between employer and employe, capitalist and wage-worker, is a difficult one.

But the underlying principles, the root principles, in accordance with which the problem must be solved are entirely simple.

We can get justice and right dealing only if we put as of paramount importance the principle of treating a man on his worth as a man rather than with reference to his social position, his occupation or the class to which he belongs.

Such conduct is just as reprehensible in one case as in the other, and all honest and farseeing men should join in warring against it wherever it becomes manifest.

Individual capitalist and individual wage-worker, corporation and union, are alike entitled to the protection of the law, and must alike obey the law.

To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish.

This inevitably brings about a tendency to treat each man not on his merits as an individual, but on his position as belonging to a certain class in the community.

If such a spirit grows up in this Republic it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has proved fatal to every community in which it has become dominant.

Unless we continue to keep a quick and lively sense of the great fundamental truth that our concern is with the individual worth of the individual man, this Government cannot permanently hold the place which it has achieved among the…

In other words, the standard we should establish is the standard of conduct, not the standard of occupation, of means, or of social position.

I believe that our people are too sane, too self-respecting, too fit for self-government, ever to adopt such an attitude.

The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there be within the more there must be without.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.

There is need of a far stricter and more uniform regulation of the vast insurance interests of this country.

The United States should in this respect follow the policy of other nations by providing adequate national supervision of commercial interests which are clearly national in character.

Much must depend, not merely on the needs, but on the desires, of the people as a whole; for needs and desires are not necessarily identical.