stocks. There must be prohibition of child labor, diminution of woman labor, shortening of hours of all mechanical labor; stock watering should be prohibited, and stock gambling so far as is possible discouraged. There should be a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes. Industrial education should be encouraged. As far as possible we should lighten the burden of taxation on the small man. We should put a premium upon thrift, hard work, and business energy; but these qualities cease to be the main factors in accumulating a fortune long before that fortune reaches a point where it would be seriously affected by any inheritance tax such as I propose. It is eminently right that the Nation should fix the terms upon which the great fortunes are inherited. They rarely do good and they often do harm to those who inherit them in their entirety.

The above is the merest sketch, hardly even a sketch in outline, of the reforms for which we should work.1

1 Message communicated to the two Houses of Congress, December 8, 1908.

II. LABOR UNIONS

WAGES and other most important conditions of employment must remain largely outside of government control; must be left for adjustment by free contract between employers and wage-earners, subject - and I call your attention to the proviso — to legislation which will prevent conditions which compel men or women to accept wages representing less than will insure decent living. But to attempt to leave the question of contract between employer and employee merely to individual action means the absolute destruction of individualism; for where the individual is so weak that he, perforce, has to accept whatever a strongly organized body chooses to give him, his individual liberty becomes a mere sham and mockery. It is indispensably necessary, in order to preserve to the largest degree our system of individualism, that there should be effective and organized collective action. The wage-earners must act jointly, through the process of collective bargaining, in great industrial enterprises. Only thus can they be put upon a plane of economic equality with their corporate employers. Only thus is freedom of contract made a real thing and not a mere legal fiction. There are occasional occupations where this is not necessary; but, speaking broadly, it is necessary throughout the great world of organized industry. I believe this practice of collective bargaining, effective only through such organizations as the trades unions, to have been one of the most potent forces in the past century in promoting the progress of the wage-earn

ers and in securing larger social progress for humanity. Wherever there is organized capital on a considerable scale I believe in the principle of organized labor and in the practice of collective bargaining, not merely as a desirable thing for the wage-earners, but as something which has been demonstrated to be essential in the long run to their permanent progress. Where capital is organized, as it must be organized under modern industrial conditions, the only way to secure proper freedomproper treatment for the individual laborer is to have labor organize also.

This does not mean that I unequivocally endorse any or all practices that labor organizations may happen to adopt, or any or all principles that they may choose to enunciate. Labor organizations have the weaknesses and defects common to all forms of human organizations. When any man tells you that the laboring man never goes wrong, make up your minds that he is telling you what he knows to be an untruth, and distrust him accordingly; for it is a good old principle to act upon in the long run, that the most uncomfortable truth is a safer traveling companion that the pleasantest falsehood. Sometimes labor organizations act very well, and sometimes, like the rest of mankind, they act very badly; and I am for them when they act well, and I am against them when they act badly. I believe that their existence is a necessity; I believe that their aims and purposes are generally good; and I believe that all of them have occasionally made mistakes, and that some of them have been guilty of wrongdoing. Just in so far as they are strong and effective they tempt designing men who seek to control them for their own interests,

and stimulate the desires of ambitious leaders who may be clever, crooked men, or who may be honest but visionary and foolish. In other words, in treating of labor unions, as in treating of corporations, or of humanity generally, we shall do well to remember Abraham Lincoln's saying that "there is a deal of human nature in mankind."

I think that the next quarter of a century will be important politically in many ways (I do not use the word "politically" in the way of party politics; but I am speaking of the social development of our people); and in none more so than in the labor movement. Not only are the benefits of labor organizations more clearly understood than before, but any shortcoming or vice displayed in connection therewith is also more clearly understood and more quickly resented. Just as it is with corporations, just so it is with railroads. Forty years ago the railroads could do with absolute impunity, and without any criticism, things which would cause well nigh a revolution if they attempted them now. The public is growing more and more to understand that, in a contest between employer and employee - a corporation and a trades union - not only the interests of the contestants, but the interests of the third party - the public must be considered. Anything like levity in provoking a strike, on the one hand or on the other, is certain more and more to be resented by the public. Strikes are sometimes necessary and proper; sometimes they represent the only way in which, after all other methods have been exhausted, it is possible for the laboring man to stand up for his rights; but it must be clearly understood that a strike is a matter of last resort, and,

of course, violence, lawlessness, and mob rule must be promptly and sternly dealt with, no matter what the cause may be that excites them. Our social organization is too complex for us to fail quickly to condemn those who, with levity or in a spirit of wanton brutality, bring about far-reaching and disastrous interference with normal processes. More and more we are growing to understand that corruption and lawless disorder are twin foes of the body politic, and that neither can be tolerated.1

1 Speech at Fargo, North Dakota, September 5, 1910. From The New Nationalism. Copyright, 1910. The Outlook Company, publishers.