The New Freedom by Woodrow Wilson

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The Declaration of Independence did not mention the questions of our day.
It is of no consequence to us unless we can translate its general terms
into examples of the present day and substitute them in some vital way for
the examples it itself gives, so concrete, so intimately involved in the
circumstances of the day in which it was conceived and written. It is an
eminently practical document, meant for the use of practical men; not a
thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; not a theory of
government, but a program of action. Unless we can translate it into the
questions of our own day, we are not worthy of it, we are not the sons of
the sires who acted in response to its challenge.

What form does the contest between tyranny and freedom take to-day? What
is the special form of tyranny we now fight? How does it endanger the
rights of the people, and what do we mean to do in order to make our
contest against it effectual? What are to be the items of our new
declaration of independence?

By tyranny, as we now fight it, we mean control of the law, of legislation
and adjudication, by organizations which do not represent the people, by
means which are private and selfish. We mean, specifically, the conduct of
our affairs and the shaping of our legislation in the interest of special
bodies of capital and those who organize their use. We mean the alliance,
for this purpose, of political machines with selfish business. We mean the
exploitation of the people by legal and political means. We have seen many
of our governments under these influences cease to be representative
governments, cease to be governments representative of the people, and
become governments representative of special interests, controlled by
machines, which in their turn are not controlled by the people.

Sometimes, when I think of the growth of our economic system, it seems to
me as if, leaving our law just about where it was before any of the modern
inventions or developments took place, we had simply at haphazard extended
the family residence, added an office here and a workroom there, and a new
set of sleeping rooms there, built up higher on our foundations, and put
out little lean-tos on the side, until we have a structure that has no
character whatever. Now, the problem is to continue to live in the house
and yet change it.

Well, we are architects in our time, and our architects are also
engineers. We don't have to stop using a railroad terminal because a new
station is being built. We don't have to stop any of the processes of our
lives because we are rearranging the structures in which we conduct those
processes. What we have to undertake is to systematize the foundations of
the house, then to thread all the old parts of the structure with the
steel which will be laced together in modern fashion, accommodated to all
the modern knowledge of structural strength and elasticity, and then
slowly change the partitions, relay the walls, let in the light through
new apertures, improve the ventilation; until finally, a generation or two
from now, the scaffolding will be taken away, and there will be the family
in a great building whose noble architecture will at last be disclosed,
where men can live as a single community, co-operative as in a perfected,
co-ordinated beehive, not afraid of any storm of nature, not afraid of
any artificial storm, any imitation of thunder and lightning, knowing that
the foundations go down to the bedrock of principle, and knowing that
whenever they please they can change that plan again and accommodate it as
they please to the altering necessities of their lives.

But there are a great many men who don't like the idea. Some wit recently
said, in view of the fact that most of our American architects are trained
in a certain _Ecole_ in Paris, that all American architecture in recent
years was either bizarre or "Beaux Arts." I think that our economic
architecture is decidedly bizarre; and I am afraid that there is a good
deal to learn about matters other than architecture from the same source
from which our architects have learned a great many things. I don't mean
the School of Fine Arts at Paris, but the experience of France; for from
the other side of the water men can now hold up against us the reproach
that we have not adjusted our lives to modern conditions to the same
extent that they have adjusted theirs. I was very much interested in some
of the reasons given by our friends across the Canadian border for being
very shy about the reciprocity arrangements. They said: "We are not sure
whither these arrangements will lead, and we don't care to associate too
closely with the economic conditions of the United States until those
conditions are as modern as ours." And when I resented it, and asked for
particulars, I had, in regard to many matters, to retire from the debate.
Because I found that they had adjusted their regulations of economic
development to conditions we had not yet found a way to meet in the United
States.

Well, we have started now at all events. The procession is under way. The
stand-patter doesn't know there is a procession. He is asleep in the back
part of his house. He doesn't know that the road is resounding with the
tramp of men going to the front. And when he wakes up, the country will be
empty. He will be deserted, and he will wonder what has happened. Nothing
has happened. The world has been going on. The world has a habit of going
on. The world has a habit of leaving those behind who won't go with it.
The world has always neglected stand-patters. And, therefore, the
stand-patter does not excite my indignation; he excites my sympathy. He is
going to be so lonely before it is all over. And we are good fellows, we
are good company; why doesn't he come along? We are not going to do him
any harm. We are going to show him a good time. We are going to climb the
slow road until it reaches some upland where the air is fresher, where the
whole talk of mere politicians is stilled, where men can look in each
other's faces and see that there is nothing to conceal, that all they have
to talk about they are willing to talk about in the open and talk about
with each other; and whence, looking back over the road, we shall see at
last that we have fulfilled our promise to mankind. We had said to all the
world, "America was created to break every kind of monopoly, and to set
men free, upon a footing of equality, upon a footing of opportunity, to
match their brains and their energies," and now we have proved that we
meant it.

III

FREEMEN NEED NO GUARDIANS

There are two theories of government that have been contending with each
other ever since government began. One of them is the theory which in
America is associated with the name of a very great man, Alexander
Hamilton. A great man, but, in my judgment, not a great American. He did
not think in terms of American life. Hamilton believed that the only
people who could understand government, and therefore the only people who
were qualified to conduct it, were the men who had the biggest financial
stake in the commercial and industrial enterprises of the country.

That theory, though few have now the hardihood to profess it openly, has
been the working theory upon which our government has lately been
conducted. It is astonishing how persistent it is. It is amazing how
quickly the political party which had Lincoln for its first
leader,--Lincoln, who not only denied, but in his own person so completely
disproved the aristocratic theory,--it is amazing how quickly that party,
founded on faith in the people, forgot the precepts of Lincoln and fell
under the delusion that the "masses" needed the guardianship of "men of
affairs."

For indeed, if you stop to think about it, nothing could be a greater
departure from original Americanism, from faith in the ability of a
confident, resourceful, and independent people, than the discouraging
doctrine that somebody has got to provide prosperity for the rest of us.
And yet that is exactly the doctrine on which the government of the United
States has been conducted lately. Who have been consulted when important
measures of government, like tariff acts, and currency acts, and railroad
acts, were under consideration? The people whom the tariff chiefly
affects, the people for whom the currency is supposed to exist, the people
who pay the duties and ride on the railroads? Oh, no! What do they know
about such matters! The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought are the
big manufacturers, the bankers, and the heads of the great railroad
combinations. The masters of the government of the United States are the
combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is written
over every intimate page of the records of Congress, it is written all
through the history of conferences at the White House, that the
suggestions of economic policy in this country have come from one source,
not from many sources. The benevolent guardians, the kind-hearted trustees
who have taken the troubles of government off our hands, have become so
conspicuous that almost anybody can write out a list of them. They have
become so conspicuous that their names are mentioned upon almost every
political platform. The men who have undertaken the interesting job of
taking care of us do not force us to requite them with anonymously
directed gratitude. We know them by name.

Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You will
always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really
consulted are the men who have the biggest stake,--the big bankers, the
big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad
corporations and of steamship corporations. I have no objection to these
men being consulted, because they also, though they do not themselves seem
to admit it, are part of the people of the United States. But I do very
seriously object to these gentlemen being _chiefly_ consulted, and
particularly to their being exclusively consulted, for, if the government
of the United States is to do the right thing by the people of the United
States, it has got to do it directly and not through the intermediation of
these gentlemen. Every time it has come to a critical question these
gentlemen have been yielded to, and their demands have been treated as the
demands that should be followed as a matter of course.

The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the
special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own. It is told
at every move: "Don't do that; you will interfere with our prosperity."
And when we ask, "Where is our prosperity lodged?" a certain group of
gentlemen say, "With us." The government of the United States in recent
years has not been administered by the common people of the United States.
You know just as well as I do,--it is not an indictment against anybody,
it is a mere statement of the facts,--that the people have stood outside
and looked on at their own government and that all they have had to
determine in past years has been which crowd they would look on at;
whether they would look on at this little group or that little group who
had managed to get the control of affairs in its hands. Have you ever
heard, for example, of any hearing before any great committee of the
Congress in which the people of the country as a whole were represented,
except it may be by the Congressmen themselves? The men who appear at
those meetings in order to argue for or against a schedule in the tariff,
for this measure or against that measure, are men who represent special
interests. They may represent them very honestly, they may intend no wrong
to their fellow-citizens, but they are speaking from the point of view
always of a small portion of the population. I have sometimes wondered why
men, particularly men of means, men who didn't have to work for their
living, shouldn't constitute themselves attorneys for the people, and
every time a hearing is held before a committee of Congress should not go
and ask: "Gentlemen, in considering these things suppose you consider the
whole country? Suppose you consider the citizens of the United States?"

I don't want a smug lot of experts to sit down behind closed doors in
Washington and play Providence to me. There is a Providence to which I am
perfectly willing to submit. But as for other men setting up as Providence
over myself, I seriously object. I have never met a political savior in
the flesh, and I never expect to meet one. I am reminded of Gillet
Burgess' verses:

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
But this I'll tell you anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

That is the way I feel about this saving of my fellow-countrymen. I'd
rather see a savior of the United States than set up to be one; because I
have found out, I have actually found out, that men I consult with know
more than I do,--especially if I consult with enough of them. I never came
out of a committee meeting or a conference without seeing more of the
question that was under discussion than I had seen when I went in. And
that to my mind is an image of government. I am not willing to be under
the patronage of the trusts, no matter how providential a government
presides over the process of their control of my life.

I am one of those who absolutely reject the trustee theory, the
guardianship theory. I have never found a man who knew how to take care of
me, and, reasoning from that point out, I conjecture that there isn't any
man who knows how to take care of all the people of the United States. I
suspect that the people of the United States understand their own
interests better than any group of men in the confines of the country
understand them. The men who are sweating blood to get their foothold in
the world of endeavor understand the conditions of business in the United
States very much better than the men who have arrived and are at the top.
They know what the thing is that they are struggling against. They know
how difficult it is to start a new enterprise. They know how far they have
to search for credit that will put them upon an even footing with the men
who have already built up industry in this country. They know that
somewhere, by somebody, the development of industry is being controlled.

I do not say this with the slightest desire to create any prejudice
against wealth; on the contrary, I should be ashamed of myself if I
excited class feeling of any kind. But I do mean to suggest this: That the
wealth of the country has, in recent years, come from particular sources;
it has come from those sources which have built up monopoly. Its point of
view is a special point of view. It is the point of view of those men who
do not wish that the people should determine their own affairs, because
they do not believe that the people's judgment is sound. They want to be
commissioned to take care of the United States and of the people of the
United States, because they believe that they, better than anybody else,
understand the interests of the United States. I do not challenge their
character; I challenge their point of view. We cannot afford to be
governed as we have been governed in the last generation, by men who
occupy so narrow, so prejudiced, so limited a point of view.

The government of our country cannot be lodged in any special class. The
policy of a great nation cannot be tied up with any particular set of
interests. I want to say, again and again, that my arguments do not touch
the character of the men to whom I am opposed. I believe that the very
wealthy men who have got their money by certain kinds of corporate
enterprise have closed in their horizon, and that they do not see and do
not understand the rank and file of the people. It is for that reason that
I want to break up the little coterie that has determined what the
government of the nation should do. The list of the men who used to
determine what New Jersey should and should not do did not exceed half a
dozen, and they were always the same men. These very men now are, some of
them, frank enough to admit that New Jersey has finer energy in her
because more men are consulted and the whole field of action is widened
and liberalized. We have got to relieve our government from the domination
of special classes, not because these special classes are bad,
necessarily, but because no special class can understand the interests of
a great community.

I believe, as I believe in nothing else, in the average integrity and the
average intelligence of the American people, and I do not believe that the
intelligence of America can be put into commission anywhere. I do not
believe that there is any group of men of any kind to whom we can afford
to give that kind of trusteeship.

I will not live under trustees if I can help it. No group of men less than
the majority has a right to tell me how I have got to live in America. I
will submit to the majority, because I have been trained to do
it,--though I may sometimes have my private opinion even of the majority.
I do not care how wise, how patriotic, the trustees may be, I have never
heard of any group of men in whose hands I am willing to lodge the
liberties of America in trust.

If any part of our people want to be wards, if they want to have guardians
put over them, if they want to be taken care of, if they want to be
children, patronized by the government, why, I am sorry, because it will
sap the manhood of America. But I don't believe they do. I believe they
want to stand on the firm foundation of law and right and take care of
themselves. I, for my part, don't want to belong to a nation, I believe
that I do not belong to a nation, that needs to be taken care of by
guardians. I want to belong to a nation, and I am proud that I do belong
to a nation, that knows how to take care of itself. If I thought that the
American people were reckless, were ignorant, were vindictive, I might
shrink from putting the government into their hands. But the beauty of
democracy is that when you are reckless you destroy your own established
conditions of life; when you are vindictive, you wreak vengeance upon
yourself; the whole stability of a democratic polity rests upon the fact
that every interest is every man's interest.

The theory that the men of biggest affairs, whose field of operation is
the widest, are the proper men to advise the government is, I am willing
to admit, rather a plausible theory. If my business covers the United
States not only, but covers the world, it is to be presumed that I have a
pretty wide scope in my vision of business. But the flaw is that it is my
own business that I have a vision of, and not the business of the men who
lie outside of the scope of the plans I have made for a profit out of the
particular transactions I am connected with. And you can't, by putting
together a large number of men who understand their own business, no
matter how large it is, make up a body of men who will understand the
business of the nation as contrasted with their own interest.

In a former generation, half a century ago, there were a great many men
associated with the government whose patriotism we are not privileged to
deny nor to question, who intended to serve the people, but had become so
saturated with the point of view of a governing class that it was
impossible for them to see America as the people of America themselves saw
it. Then there arose that interesting figure, the immortal figure of the
great Lincoln, who stood up declaring that the politicians, the men who
had governed this country, did not see from the point of view of the
people. When I think of that tall, gaunt figure rising in Illinois, I have
a picture of a man free, unentangled, unassociated with the governing
influences of the country, ready to see things with an open eye, to see
them steadily, to see them whole, to see them as the men he rubbed
shoulders with and associated with saw them. What the country needed in
1860 was a leader who understood and represented the thought of the whole
people, as contrasted with that of a class which imagined itself the
guardian of the country's welfare.

Now, likewise, the trouble with our present political condition is that we
need some man who has not been associated with the governing classes and
the governing influences of this country to stand up and speak for us; we
need to hear a voice from the outside calling upon the American people to
assert again their rights and prerogatives in the possession of their own
government.

My thought about both Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt is that of entire
respect, but these gentlemen have been so intimately associated with the
powers that have been determining the policy of this government for almost
a generation, that they cannot look at the affairs of the country with the
view of a new age and of a changed set of circumstances. They sympathize
with the people; their hearts no doubt go out to the great masses of
unknown men in this country; but their thought is in close, habitual
association with those who have framed the policies of the country during
all our lifetime. Those men have framed the protective tariff, have
developed the trusts, have co-ordinated and ordered all the great economic
forces of this country in such fashion that nothing but an outside force
breaking in can disturb their domination and control. It is with this in
mind, I believe, that the country can say to these gentlemen: "We do not
deny your integrity; we do not deny your purity of purpose; but the
thought of the people of the United States has not yet penetrated to your
consciousness. You are willing to act for the people, but you are not
willing to act _through_ the people. Now we propose to act for ourselves."

* * * * *

I sometimes think that the men who are now governing us are unconscious of
the chains in which they are held. I do not believe that men such as we
know, among our public men at least--most of them--have deliberately put
us into leading strings to the special interests. The special interests
have grown up. They have grown up by processes which at last, happily, we
are beginning to understand. And, having grown up, having occupied the
seats of greatest advantage nearest the ear of those who are conducting
government, having contributed the money which was necessary to the
elections, and therefore having been kindly thought of after elections,
there has closed around the government of the United States a very
interesting, a very able, a very aggressive coterie of gentlemen who are
most definite and explicit in their ideas as to what they want.

They don't have to consult us as to what they want. They don't have to
resort to anybody. They know their plans, and therefore they know what
will be convenient for them. It may be that they have really thought what
they have said they thought; it may be that they know so little of the
history of economic development and of the interests of the United States
as to believe that their leadership is indispensable for our prosperity
and development. I don't have to prove that they believe that, because
they themselves admit it. I have heard them admit it on many occasions.

I want to say to you very frankly that I do not feel vindictive about it.
Some of the men who have exercised this control are excellent fellows;
they really believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon them.
They really believe that if the leadership of economic development in
this country dropped from their hands, the rest of us are too
muddle-headed to undertake the task. They not only comprehend the power of
the United States within their grasp, but they comprehend it within their
imagination. They are honest men, they have just as much right to express
their views as I have to express mine or you to express yours, but it is
just about time that we examined their views for ourselves and determined
their validity.

As a matter of fact, their thought does not cover the processes of their
own undertakings. As a university president, I learned that the men who
dominate our manufacturing processes could not conduct their business for
twenty-four hours without the assistance of the experts with whom the
universities were supplying them. Modern industry depends upon technical
knowledge; and all that these gentlemen did was to manage the external
features of great combinations and their financial operation, which had
very little to do with the intimate skill with which the enterprises were
conducted. I know men not catalogued in the public prints, men not spoken
of in public discussion, who are the very bone and sinew of the industry
of the United States.

Do our masters of industry speak in the spirit and interest even of those
whom they employ? When men ask me what I think about the labor question
and laboring men, I feel that I am being asked what I know about the vast
majority of the people, and I feel as if I were being asked to separate
myself, as belonging to a particular class, from that great body of my
fellow-citizens who sustain and conduct the enterprises of the country.
Until we get away from that point of view it will be impossible to have a
free government.

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