The people living in this land of gold are the most daring and resourceful on the globe.  Coming from the hardiest stock of every nation of the old world their very history in the new world has made Americans a peculiar people in courage, initiative, love of justice and all the elements of independent character.

And, compared with other peoples, we are very few in numbers.  There are only ninety millions of us, scattered over a continent.  Germany has sixty-five millions packed in a country very much smaller than Texas.  The population of Great Britain and Ireland could be set down in California and still have more than enough room for the population of Holland.  If this country were as thickly peopled as Belgium there would be more than twelve hundred million instead of only ninety million persons within our borders.

So we have more than enough to supply every human being beneath the flag.  There ought not to be in this Republic a single day of bad business, a single unemployed workingman, a single unfed child.  American business men should never know an hour of uncertainty, discouragement or fear; American workingmen never a day of low wages, idleness or want.  Hunger should never walk in these thinly peopled gardens of plenty.

And yet in spite of all these favors which providence has showered upon us, the living of the people is the problem of the hour.  Hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans find it difficult to get enough to live on.  The average income of an American laborer is less than $500 a year.  With this he must furnish food, shelter and clothing for a family.

Women, whose nourishing and protection should be the first care of the State, not only are driven into the mighty army of wage-earners, but are forced to work under unfair and degrading conditions.  The right of a child to grow into a normal human being is sacred; and yet, while small and poor countries, packed with people, have abolished child labor, American mills, mines, factories and sweat-shops are destroying hundreds of thousands of American children in body, mind and soul.

At the same time men have grasped fortunes in this country so great that the human mind cannot comprehend their magnitude.  These mountains of wealth are far larger than even that lavish reward which no one would deny to business risk or genius.

On the other hand, American business is uncertain and unsteady compared with the business of other nations.  American business men are the best and bravest in the world, and yet our business conditions hamper their energies and chill their courage.  We have no permanency in business affairs, no sure outlook upon the business future.  This unsettled state of American business prevents it from realizing for the people that great and continuous prosperity which our country’s location, vast wealth and small population justifies.