There should, however, be no particle of doubt as to the power of the National Government completely to perform and enforce its own obligations to other nations.

The mob of a single city may at any time perform acts of lawless violence against some class of foreigners which would plunge us into war.

The entire power and the whole duty to protect the offending city or the offending community lies in the hands of the United States Government.

The presence of women in industry reacts with extreme directness upon the character of the home and upon family life, and the conditions surrounding the employment of children bear a vital relation to our future citizenship.

The National Government has as an ultimate resort for control of child labor the use of the interstate commerce clause to prevent the products of child labor from entering into interstate commerce.

There is one fundamental proposition which can be laid down as regards all these matters, namely: While honesty by itself will not solve the problem, yet the insistence upon honesty--not merely technical honesty, but honesty in purpose and…

Vice in its cruder and more archaic forms shocks everybody; but there is very urgent need that public opinion should be just as severe in condemnation of the vice which hides itself behind class or professional loyalty, or which denies…

It makes not a particle of difference whether these crimes are committed by a capitalist or by a laborer, by a leading banker or manufacturer or railroad man, or by a leading representative of a labor union.

But in any community with the solid, healthy qualities which make up a really great nation the bulk of the people should do work which calls for the exercise of both body and mind.

Progress can not permanently exist in the abandonment of physical labor, but in the development of physical labor, so that it shall represent more and more the work of the trained mind in the trained body.

Our school system is gravely defective in so far as it puts a premium upon mere literary training and tends therefore to train the boy away from the farm and the workshop.

Nothing is more needed than the best type of industrial school, the school for mechanical industries in the city, the school for practically teaching agriculture in the country.

The calling of the skilled tiller of the soil, the calling of the skilled mechanic, should alike be recognized as professions, just as emphatically as the callings of lawyer, doctor, merchant, or clerk.

It should be one of our prime objects to put both the farmer and the mechanic on a higher plane of efficiency and reward, so as to increase their effectiveness in the economic world, and therefore the dignity, the remuneration, and the…

No growth of cities, no growth of wealth, can make up for any loss in either the number or the character of the farming population.

We began our existence as a nation of farmers, and in every great crisis of the past a peculiar dependence has had to be placed upon the farming population; and this dependence has hitherto been justified.

But it can not be justified in the future if agriculture is permitted to sink in the scale as compared with other employments.

We can not afford to lose that preeminently typical American, the farmer who owns his own medium-sized farm.

To have his place taken by either a class of small peasant proprietors, or by a class of great landlords with tenant-farmed estates would be a veritable calamity.

The growth of our cities is a good thing but only in so far as it does not mean a growth at the expense of the country farmer.

We must welcome the rise of physical sciences in their application to agricultural practices, and we must do all we can to render country conditions more easy and pleasant.

The present diverse methods of inspection and grading throughout the country under different laws and boards, result in confusion and lack of uniformity, destroying that confidence which is necessary for healthful trade.

I therefore suggest to the Congress the advisability of a National system of inspection and grading of grain entering into interstate and foreign commerce as a remedy for the present evils.

The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our National life.

We must maintain for our civilization the adequate material basis without which that civilization can not exist.