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President[ Woodrow Wilson

         Date[ December 2, 1913

Gentlemen of the Congress:

In pursuance of my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress information

of the state of the Union," I take the liberty of addressing you on several

matters which ought, as it seems to me, particularly to engage the

attention of your honorable bodies, as of all who study the welfare and

progress of the Nation.

I shall ask your indulgence if I venture to depart in some degree from the

usual custom of setting before you in formal review the many matters which

have engaged the attention and called for the action of the several

departments of the Government or which look to them for early treatment in

the future, because the list is long, very long, and would suffer in the

abbreviation to which I should have to subject it. I shall submit to you

the reports of the heads of the several departments, in which these

subjects are set forth in careful detail, and beg that they may receive the

thoughtful attention of your committees and of all Members of the Congress

who may have the leisure to study them. Their obvious importance, as

constituting the very substance of the business of the Government, makes

comment and emphasis on my part unnecessary.

The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all the world, and many

happy manifestations multiply about us of a growing cordiality and sense of

community of interest among the nations, foreshadowing an age of settled

peace and good will. More and more readily each decade do the nations

manifest their willingness to bind themselves by solemn treaty to the

processes of peace, the processes of frankness and fair concession. So far

the United States has stood at the front of such negotiations. She will, I

earnestly hope and confidently believe, give fresh proof of her sincere

adherence to the cause of international friendship by ratifying the several

treaties of arbitration awaiting renewal by the Senate. In addition to

these, it has been the privilege of the Department of State to gain the

assent, in principle, of no less than 31 nations, representing four-fifths

of the population of the world, to the negotiation of treaties by which it

shall be agreed that whenever differences of interest or of policy arise

which can not be resolved by the ordinary processes of diplomacy they shall

be publicly analyzed, discussed, and reported upon by a tribunal chosen by

the parties before either nation determines its course of action.

There is only one possible standard by which to determine controversies

between the United States and other nations, and that is compounded of

these two elements: Our own honor and our obligations to the peace of the

world. A test so compounded ought easily to be made to govern both the

establishment of new treaty obligations and the interpretation of those

already assumed.

There is but one cloud upon our horizon. That has shown itself to the south

of us, and hangs over Mexico. There can be no certain prospect of peace in

America until Gen. Huerta has surrendered his usurped authority in Mexico;

until it is understood on all hands, indeed, that such pretended

governments will not be countenanced or dealt with by-the Government of the

United States. We are the friends of constitutional government in America;

we are more than its friends, we are its champions; because in no other way

can our neighbors, to whom we would wish in every way to make proof of our

friendship, work out their own development in peace and liberty. Mexico has

no Government. The attempt to maintain one at the City of Mexico has broken

down, and a mere military despotism has been set up which has hardly more

than the semblance of national authority. It originated in the usurpation

of Victoriano Huerta, who, after a brief attempt to play the part of

constitutional President, has at last cast aside even the pretense of legal

right and declared himself dictator. As a consequence, a condition of

affairs now exists in Mexico which has made it doubtful whether even the

most elementary and fundamental rights either of her own people or of the

citizens of other countries resident within her territory can long be

successfully safeguarded, and which threatens, if long continued, to

imperil the interests of peace, order, and tolerable life in the lands

immediately to the south of us. Even if the usurper had succeeded in his

purposes, in despite of the constitution of the Republic and the rights of

its people, he would have set up nothing but a precarious and hateful

power, which could have lasted but a little while, and whose eventual

downfall would have left the country in a more deplorable condition than

ever. But he has not succeeded. He has forfeited the respect and the moral

support even of those who were at one time willing to see him succeed.

Little by little he has been completely isolated. By a little every day his

power and prestige are crumbling and the collapse is not far away. We shall

not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting. And

then, when the end comes, we shall hope to see constitutional order

restored in distressed Mexico by the concert and energy of such of her

leaders as prefer the liberty of their people to their own ambitions.

I turn to matters of domestic concern. You already have under consideration

a bill for the reform of our system of banking and currency, for which the

country waits with impatience, as for something fundamental to its whole

business life and necessary to set credit free from arbitrary and

artificial restraints. I need not say how earnestly I hope for its early

enactment into law. I take leave to beg that the whole energy and attention

of the Senate be concentrated upon it till the matter is successfully

disposed of. And yet I feel that the request is not needed-that the Members

of that great House need no urging in this service to the country.

I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that special provision

be made also for facilitating the credits needed by the farmers of the

country. The pending currency bill does the farmers a great service. It

puts them upon an equal footing with other business men and masters of

enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage they will find themselves

quit of many of the difficulties which now hamper them in the field of

credit. The farmers, of course, ask and should be given no special

privilege, such as extending to them the credit of the Government itself.

What they need and should obtain is legislation which will make their own

abundant and substantial credit resources available as a foundation for

joint, concerted local action in their own behalf in getting the capital

they must use. It is to this we should now address ourselves.

It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have allowed the industry

of our farms to lag behind the other activities of the country in its

development. I need not stop to tell you how fundamental to the life of the

Nation is the production of its food. Our thoughts may ordinarily be

concentrated upon the cities and the hives of industry, upon the cries of

the crowded market place and the clangor of the factory, but it is from the

quiet interspaces of the open valleys and the free hillsides that we draw

the sources of life and of prosperity, from the farm and the ranch, from

the forest and the mine. Without these every street would be silent, every

office deserted, every factory fallen into disrepair. And yet the farmer

does not stand upon the same footing with the forester and the miner in the

market of credit. He is the servant of the seasons. Nature determines how

long he must wait for his crops, and will not be hurried in her processes.

He may give his note, but the season of its maturity depends upon the

season when his crop matures, lies at the gates of the market where his

products are sold. And the security he gives is of a character not known in

the broker's office or as familiarly as it might be on the counter of the

banker.

The Agricultural Department of the Government is seeking to assist as never

before to make farming an efficient business, of wide co-operative effort,

in quick touch with the markets for foodstuffs. The farmers and the

Government will henceforth work together as real partners in this field,

where we now begin to see our way very clearly and where many intelligent

plans are already being put into execution. The Treasury of the United

States has, by a timely and well-considered distribution of its deposits,

facilitated the moving of the crops in the present season and prevented the

scarcity of available funds too often experienced at such times. But we

must not allow ourselves to depend upon extraordinary expedients. We must

add the means by which the, farmer may make his credit constantly and

easily available and command when he will the capital by which to support

and expand his business. We lag behind many other great countries of the

modern world in attempting to do this. Systems of rural credit have been

studied and developed on the other side of the water while we left our

farmers to shift for themselves in the ordinary money market. You have but

to look about you in any rural district to see the result, the handicap and

embarrassment which have been put upon those who produce our food.

Conscious of this backwardness and neglect on our part, the Congress

recently authorized the creation of a special commission to study the

various systems of rural credit which have been put into operation in

Europe, and this commission is already prepared to report. Its report ought

to make it easier for us to determine what methods will be best suited to

our own farmers. I hope and believe that the committees of the Senate and

House will address themselves to this matter with the most fruitful

results, and I believe that the studies and recently formed plans of the

Department of Agriculture may be made to serve them very greatly in their

work of framing appropriate and adequate legislation. It would be

indiscreet and presumptuous in anyone to dogmatize upon so great and

many-sided a question, but I feel confident that common counsel will

produce the results we must all desire.

Turn from the farm to the world of business which centers in the city and

in the factory, and I think that all thoughtful observers will agree that

the immediate service we owe the business communities of the country is to

prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented. I

think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman anti-trust

law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but

that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground

by further and more explicit legislation; and should also supplement that

great act by legislation which will not only clarify it but also facilitate

its administration and make it fairer to all concerned. No doubt we shall

all wish, and the country will expect, this to be the central subject of

our deliberations during the present session; but it is a subject so

many-sided and so deserving of careful and discriminating discussion that I

shall take the liberty of addressing you upon it in a special message at a

later date than this. It is of capital importance that the business men of

this country should be relieved of all uncertainties of law with regard to

their enterprises and investments and a clear path indicated which they can

travel without anxiety. It is as important that they should be relieved of

embarrassment and set free to prosper as that private monopoly should be

destroyed. The ways of action should be thrown wide open.

I turn to a subject which I hope can be handled promptly and without

serious controversy of any kind. I mean the method of selecting nominees

for the Presidency of the United States. I feel confident that I do not

misinterpret the wishes or the expectations of the country when I urge the

prompt enactment of legislation which will provide for primary elections

throughout the country at which the voters of the several parties may

choose their nominees for the Presidency without the intervention of

nominating conventions. I venture the suggestion that this legislation

should provide for the retention of party conventions, but only for the

purpose of declaring and accepting the verdict of the primaries and

formulating the platforms of the parties; and I suggest that these

conventions should consist not of delegates chosen for this single purpose,

but of the nominees for Congress, the nominees for vacant seats in the

Senate of the United States, the Senators whose terms have not yet closed,

the national committees, and the candidates for the Presidency themselves,

in order that platforms may be framed by those responsible to the people

for carrying them into effect.

These are all matters of vital domestic concern, and besides them, outside

the charmed circle of our own national life in which our affections command

us, as well as our consciences, there stand out our obligations toward our

territories over sea. Here we are trustees. Porto Rico, Hawaii, the

Philippines, are ours, indeed, but not ours to do what we please with. Such

territories, once regarded as mere possessions, are no longer to be

selfishly exploited; they are part of the domain of public conscience and

of serviceable and enlightened statesmanship. We must administer them for

the people who live in them and with the same sense of responsibility to

them as toward our own people in our domestic affairs. No doubt we shall

successfully enough bind Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands to ourselves

by ties of justice and interest and affection, but the performance of our

duty toward the Philippines is a more difficult and debatable matter. We

can satisfy the obligations of generous justice toward the people of Porto

Rico by giving them the ample and familiar rights and privileges accorded

our own citizens in our own territories and our obligations toward the

people of Hawaii by perfecting the provisions for self-government already

granted them, but in the Philippines we must go further. We must hold

steadily in view their ultimate independence, and we must move toward the

time of that independence as steadily as the way can be cleared and the

foundations thoughtfully and permanently laid.

Acting under the authority conferred upon the President by Congress, I have

already accorded the people of the islands a majority in both houses of

their legislative body by appointing five instead of four native citizens

to the membership of the commission. I believe that in this way we shall

make proof of their capacity in counsel and their sense of responsibility

in the exercise of political power, and that the success of this step will

be sure to clear our view for the steps which are to follow. Step by step

we should extend and perfect the system of self-government in the islands,

making test of them and modifying them as experience discloses their

successes and their failures; that we should more and more put under the

control of the native citizens of the archipelago the essential instruments

of their life, their local instrumentalities of government, their schools,

all the common interests of their communities, and so by counsel and

experience set up a government which all the world will see to be suitable

to a people whose affairs are under their own control. At last, I hope and

believe, we are beginning to gain the confidence of the Filipino peoples.

By their counsel and experience, rather than by our own, we shall learn how

best to serve them and how soon it will be possible and wise to withdraw

our supervision. Let us once find the path and set out with firm and

confident tread upon it and we shall not wander from it or linger upon it.

A duty faces us with regard to Alaska which seems to me very pressing and

very imperative; perhaps I should say a double duty, for it concerns both

the political and the material development of the Territory. The people of

Alaska should be given the full Territorial form of government, and Alaska,

as a storehouse, should be unlocked. One key to it is a system of railways.

These the Government should itself build and administer, and the ports and

terminals it should itself control in the interest of all who wish to use

them for the service and development of the country and its people.

But the construction of railways is only the first step; is only thrusting

in the key to the storehouse and throwing back the lock and opening the

door. How the tempting resources of the country are to be exploited is

another matter, to which I shall take the liberty of from time to time

calling your attention, for it is a policy which must be worked out by

well-considered stages, not upon theory, but upon lines of practical

expediency. It is part of our general problem of conservation. We have a

freer hand in working out the problem in Alaska than in the States of the

Union; and yet the principle and object are the same, wherever we touch it.

We must use the resources of the country, not lock them up. There need be

no conflict or jealousy as between State and Federal authorities, for there

can be no essential difference of purpose between them. The resources in

question must be used, but not destroyed or wasted; used, but not

monopolized upon any narrow idea of individual rights as against the

abiding interests of communities. That a policy can be worked out by

conference and concession which will release these resources and yet not

jeopard or dissipate them, I for one have no doubt; and it can be done on

lines of regulation which need be no less acceptable to the people and

governments of the States concerned than to the people and Government of

the Nation at large, whose heritage these resources are. We must bend our

counsels to this end. A common purpose ought to make agreement easy.

Three or four matters of special importance and significance I beg, that

you will permit me to mention in closing.

Our Bureau of Mines ought to be equipped and empowered to render even more

effectual service than it renders now in improving the conditions of mine

labor and making the mines more economically productive as well as more

safe. This is an all-important part of the work of conservation; and the

conservation of human life and energy lies even nearer to our interests

than the preservation from waste of our material resources.

We owe it, in mere justice to the railway employees of the country, to

provide for them a fair and effective employers' liability act; and a law

that we can stand by in this matter will be no less to the advantage of

those who administer the railroads of the country than to the advantage of

those whom they employ. The experience of a large number of the States

abundantly proves that.

We ought to devote ourselves to meeting pressing demands of plain justice

like this as earnestly as to the accomplishment of political and economic

reforms. Social justice comes first. Law is the machinery for its

realization and is vital only as it expresses and embodies it.

An international congress for the discussion of all questions that affect

safety at sea is now sitting in London at the suggestion of our own

Government. So soon as the conclusions of that congress can be learned and

considered we ought to address ourselves, among other things, to the prompt

alleviation of the very unsafe, unjust, and burdensome conditions which now

surround the employment of sailors and render it extremely difficult to

obtain the services of spirited and competent men such as every ship needs

if it is to be safely handled and brought to port.

May I not express the very real pleas-are I have experienced in

co-operating with this Congress and sharing with it the labors of common

service to which it has devoted itself so unreservedly during the past

seven months of uncomplaining concentration upon the business of

legislation? Surely it is a proper and pertinent part of my report on "the

state of the Union" to express my admiration for the diligence, the good

temper, and the full comprehension of public duty which has already been

manifested by both the Houses; and I hope that it may not be deemed an

impertinent intrusion of myself into the picture if I say with how much and

how constant satisfaction I have availed myself of the privilege of putting

my time and energy at their disposal alike in counsel and in action.

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