women, and children. I want to see justice,
righteousness, fairness and humanity displayed in all the laws of the
United States, and I do not want any power to intervene between the people
and their government. Justice is what we want, not patronage and
condescension and pitiful helpfulness. The trusts are our masters now, but
I for one do not care to live in a country called free even under kind
masters. I prefer to live under no masters at all.

* * * * *

I agree that as a nation we are now about to undertake what may be
regarded as the most difficult part of our governmental enterprises. We
have gone along so far without very much assistance from our government.
We have felt, and felt more and more in recent months, that the American
people were at a certain disadvantage as compared with the people of other
countries, because of what the governments of other countries were doing
for them and our government omitting to do for us.

It is perfectly clear to every man who has any vision of the immediate
future, who can forecast any part of it from the indications of the
present, that we are just upon the threshold of a time when the systematic
life of this country will be sustained, or at least supplemented, at every
point by governmental activity. And we have now to determine what kind of
governmental activity it shall be; whether, in the first place, it shall
be direct from the government itself, or whether it shall be indirect,
through instrumentalities which have already constituted themselves and
which stand ready to supersede the government.

I believe that the time has come when the governments of this country,
both state and national, have to set the stage, and set it very minutely
and carefully, for the doing of justice to men in every relationship of
life. It has been free and easy with us so far; it has been go as you
please; it has been every man look out for himself; and we have continued
to assume, up to this year when every man is dealing, not with another
man, in most cases, but with a body of men whom he has not seen, that the
relationships of property are the same that they always were. We have
great tasks before us, and we must enter on them as befits men charged
with the responsibility of shaping a new era.

We have a great program of governmental assistance ahead of us in the
co-operative life of the nation; but we dare not enter upon that program
until we have fre