of cooperation into our industry.  Every increase in the number of small stockholders in corporations is a good thing, for the same reasons; and where the employees are the stockholders the result is particularly good.  Very much of this movement must be outside of anything that can be accomplished by legislation; but legislation can do a good deal.  Postal savings banks will make it easy for the poorest to keep their savings in absolute safety.  The regulation of the national highways must be such that they shall serve all people with equal justice.  Corporate finances must be supervised so as to make it far safer than at present for the man of small means to invest his money in stocks.  There must be prohibition of child labor, diminution of woman labor, shortening of hours of all mechanical labor; stock watering should be prohibited, and stock gambling so far as is possible discouraged.  There should be a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes.  Industrial education should be encouraged.  As far as possible we should lighten the burden of taxation on the small man.  We should put a premium upon thrift, hard work, and business energy; but these qualities cease to be the main factors in accumulating a fortune long before that fortune reaches a point where it would be seriously affected by any inheritance tax such as I propose.  It is eminently right that the Nation should fix the terms upon which the great fortunes are inherited.  They rarely do good and they often do harm to those who inherit them in their entirety.

Protection for wageworkers.

The above is the merest sketch, hardly even a sketch in outline, of the reforms for which we should work.  But there is one matter with which the Congress should deal at this session.  There should no longer be any paltering with the question of taking care of the wage-workers who, under our present industrial system, become killed, crippled, or worn out as part of the regular incidents of a given business.  The majority of wageworkers must have their rights secured for them by State action; but the National Government should legislate in thoroughgoing and far-reaching fashion not only for all employees of the National Government, but for all persons engaged in interstate commerce.  The object sought for could be achieved to a measurable degree, as far as those killed or crippled are concerned, by proper employers’ liability laws.  As far as concerns those who have been worn out, I call your attention to the fact that definite steps toward providing old-age pensions have been taken in many of our private industries.  These may be indefinitely extended through voluntary association and contributory schemes, or through the agency of savings banks, as under the recent Massachusetts plan.  To strengthen these practical measures should be our immediate duty; it is not at present necessary to consider the larger and more general governmental schemes that most European governments have found themselves obliged to adopt.