The Isthmian Canal will greatly increase the efficiency of our navy if the navy is of sufficient size; but if we have an inadequate navy, then the building of the canal would be merely giving a hostage to any power of superior strength.

The veteran seamen of our warships are of as high a type as can be found in any navy which rides the waters of the world; they are unsurpassed in daring, in resolution, in readiness, in thorough knowledge of their profession.

We need a thousand additional officers in order to properly man the ships now provided for and under construction.

At the same time that we thus add the officers where we need them, we should facilitate the retirement of those at the head of the list whose usefulness has become impaired.

Promotion must be fostered if the service is to be kept efficient.

Alaska should have a Delegate in the Congress.

We should pass, for instance, a wise employer’s-liability act for the District of Columbia, and we need such an act in our navy yards.

The excessive cost of Government printing is a strong argument against the position of those who are inclined on abstract grounds to advocate the Government’s doing any work which can with propriety be left in private hands.

It is much to be desired that our consular system be established by law on a basis providing for appointment and promotion only in consequence of proved fitness.

Through a wise provision of the Congress at its last session, the White House, which had become disfigured by incongruous additions and changes, has now been restored to what it was planned to be by Washington.

There should no longer be any paltering with the question of taking care of the wage-workers who, under our present industrial system, become killed, crippled, or worn out as part of the regular incidents of a given business.

The majority of wageworkers must have their rights secured for them by State action; but the National Government should legislate in thoroughgoing and far-reaching fashion not only for all employees of the National Government, but for all…

To strengthen these practical measures should be our immediate duty; it is not at present necessary to consider the larger and more general governmental schemes that most European governments have found themselves obliged to adopt.

Our present system, or rather no system, works dreadful wrong, and is of benefit to only one class of people--the lawyers.

When a workman is injured what he needs is not an expensive and doubtful lawsuit, but the certainty of relief through immediate administrative action.

The number of accidents which result in the death or crippling of wageworkers, in the Union at large, is simply appalling; in a very few years it runs up a total far in excess of the aggregate of the dead and wounded in any modern war.

The law, passed at the last session of the Congress, granting compensation to certain classes of employees of the Government, should be extended to include all employees of the Government and should be made more liberal in its terms.

There is no good ground for the distinction made in the law between those engaged in hazardous occupations and those not so engaged.

Whether 1 per cent or 10 per cent of those following a given occupation actually suffer injury or death ought not to have any bearing on the question of their receiving compensation.

It is a grim logic which says to an injured employee or to the dependents of one killed that he or they are entitled to no compensation because very few people other than he have been injured or killed in that occupation.

Perhaps one of the most striking omissions in the law is that it does not embrace peace officers and others whose lives may be sacrificed in enforcing the laws of the United States.

A year's compensation is not adequate for a wage-earner's family in the event of his death by accident in the course of his employment.

And in the event of death occurring, say, ten or eleven months after the accident, the family would only receive as compensation the equivalent of one or two months' earnings.

In this respect the generosity of the United States towards its employees compares most unfavorably with that of every country in Europe--even the poorest.

The terms of the act are also a hardship in prohibiting payment in cases where the accident is in any way due to the negligence of the employee.