We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labor throughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be.  And we must do more than justice.  We must safeguard life and promote health and safety in every occupation in which they are threatened or imperilled.  That is more than justice, and better, because it is humanity and economy.

We must cooerdinate the railway systems of the country for national use, and must facilitate and promote their development with a view to that cooerdination and to their better adaptation as a whole to the life and trade and defense of the nation.  The life and industry of the country can be free and unhampered only if these arteries are open, efficient, and complete.

Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as circumstance and international policy effect their unfolding, whether the changes come slowly or come fast and without preface.

I have not spoken explicitly, Gentlemen, of the platform adopted at St. Louis; but it has been implicit in all that I have said.  I have sought to interpret its spirit and meaning.  The people of the United States do not need to be assured now that that platform is a definite pledge, a practical program.  We have proved to them that our promises are made to be kept.

We hold very definite ideals.  We believe that the energy and initiative of our people have been too narrowly coached and superintended; that they should be set free, as we have set them free, to disperse themselves throughout the nation; that they should not be concentrated in the hands of a few powerful guides and guardians, as our opponents have again and again, in effect if not in purpose, sought to concentrate them.  We believe, moreover,—­who that looks about him now with comprehending eye can fail to believe?—­that the day of Little Americanism, with its narrow horizons, when methods of “protection” and industrial nursing were the chief study of our provincial statesmen, are past and gone and that a day of enterprise has at last dawned for the United States whose field is the wide world.

We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all America, the republics of both continents, on to a new life and energy and initiative in the great affairs of peace.  We are Americans for Big America, and rejoice to look forward to the days in which America shall strive to stir the world without irritating it or drawing it on to new antagonisms, when the nations with which we deal shall at last come to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and justice our passion for peace rests, and when all mankind shall look upon our great people with a new sentiment of admiration, friendly rivalry and real affection, as upon a people who, though keen to succeed, seeks always to be at once generous and just and to whom humanity is dearer than profit or selfish power.