For the problems which America faces to-day are economic and national.  They have to do with a more just distribution of prosperity.  They concern the living of the people; and therefore the more direct government of the people by themselves.

They affect the South exactly as they affect the North, the East or the West.  It is an artificial and dangerous condition that prevents the southern man and woman from acting with the northern man and woman who believe the same thing.  Yet just that is what the old parties do prevent.

Not only does this out-of-date partisanship cut our Nation into two geographical sections; it also robs the Nation of a priceless asset of thought in working out our national destiny.  The South once was famous for brilliant and constructive thinking on national problems, and to-day the South has minds as brilliant and constructive as of old.  But southern intellect cannot freely and fully aid, in terms of politics, the solving of the Nation’s problems.  This is so because of a partisan sectionalism which has nothing to do with those problems.  Yet these problems can be solved only in terms of politics.

The root of the wrongs which hurt the people is the fact that the people’s government has been taken away from them—­the invisible government has usurped the people’s government.  Their government must be given back to the people.  And so the first purpose of the Progressive party is to make sure the rule of the people.  The rule of the people means that the people themselves shall nominate, as well as elect, all candidates for office, including Senators and Presidents of the United States.  What profiteth it the people if they do only the electing while the invisible government does the nominating?

The rule of the people means that when the people’s legislators make a law which hurts the people, the people themselves may reject it.  The rule of the people means that when the people’s legislators refuse to pass a law which the people need, the people themselves may pass it.  The rule of the people means that when the people’s employees do not do the people’s work well and honestly, the people may discharge them exactly as a business man discharges employees who do not do their work well and honestly.  The people’s officials are the people’s servants, not the people’s masters.

We progressives believe in this rule of the people that the people themselves may deal with their own destiny.  Who knows the people’s needs so well as the people themselves?  Who so patient as the people?  Who so long suffering, who so just?  Who so wise to solve their own problems?

Today these problems concern the living of the people.  Yet in the present stage of American development these problems should not exist in this country.  For, in all the world there is no land so rich as ours.  Our fields can feed hundreds of millions.  We have more minerals than the whole of Europe.  Invention has made easy the turning of this vast natural wealth into supplies for all the needs of man.  One worker today can produce more than twenty workers could produce a century ago.