LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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"^'mSesTol^^ } HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES j ^No''272''' 
 
 Celebration of the Rededication 
 F 158 of Congress Hall 
 
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 Copy 1 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. WOODROW WILSON 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 AND 
 
 HON CHAMP CLARK 
 
 SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 AT PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 OCTOBER 25, 1913 
 
 PRESENTED BY MR. HARDWICK 
 October 27, 1913.— Ordered to be printed 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 1913 
 
\-\5S 
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 0. OF D. 
 
 NOV 10 1913 
 
] 
 
 - \ 
 
 ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 
 
 [Delivereil at riiilatlelphia. Pa., on the occasion of the re(le<lication of Congress 
 
 Hall, Oct. 2o, 1913.1 
 
 You)' Honor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: 
 
 No American could stand in this place to-day and think of the cir- 
 cumstances which we are come toj^ether to celebrate without being 
 most profoundly stirred. There has come over me since I sat down 
 here a sense of deep solemnity, because it has seemed to me that I saw 
 ghosts crowding — a great assemblage of spirits, no longer visible, but 
 whose influence we still feel as Ave feel the molding power of history 
 itself. The men who sat in this hall, to whom we now look back with 
 a touch of deep sentiment, were men of flesh and blood, face to face 
 with extremely difficult problems. The population of the United 
 States then Avas hardly three times the i)resent i)opulation of the city 
 of Philadelphia, and yet that was a Nation as this is a Nation, and 
 the men who spoke for it were setting their hands to a work which 
 was to last, not only that their people might be happy, but that an 
 example might be lifted up for the instruction of the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 I like to read the quaint old accounts such as Mr. Day has read to 
 us this afternoon. Strangers came then to America to see what the 
 young people that had sprung up here were like, and they found men 
 in counsel who knew how to construct governments. They found 
 men deliberating here who had none of the appearance of novices, 
 none of the hesitation of men who did not know whether the work 
 they were doing was going to last or not ; men who addressed them- 
 selves to a problem of construction as familiarly as we attempt to 
 carry out the traditions of a Government established these 137 years. 
 
 I feel to-da}^ the com])ulsion of these men, the compulsion of ex- 
 amples which were set uj) in this place. And of what do their 
 examples remind us? They remind us not merely of public service 
 but of public service shot through with i)rinciple and honor. They 
 were not histrionic men. They did not say — 
 
 Look upon us as upon those who shall hereafter he illustrious. 
 
 They said : 
 
 Look upon us who are doing the tirst free work of constitutional liherty in 
 the world, and who must do it in soherness and truth, or it will not last. 
 
 Politics, ladies and gentlemen, is made up in just about equal parts 
 of comprehension and sympathy. No man ought to go into politics 
 who does not comprehend the task that he is going to attack. lie 
 
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4 CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 may comprehend it so completel}^ that it daunts him, that he doubts 
 whether his own spirit is stout enough and liis own mind able enough 
 to attempt its great undertakings, but unless he comprehend it he 
 ought not to enter it. After he has comprehended it, there should 
 come into his mind those profound impulses of sjanpathy which con- 
 nect him with the rest of mankind, for politics is a business of inter- 
 pretation, and no men are fit for it who do not see and seek more than 
 their own advantage and interest. 
 
 We have stumbled upon many unhappy circumstances in the hun- 
 dred years that have gone by since the event that we are celebrating. 
 Almost all of them have come from self-centered men, men who saw 
 in their own interest the interest of the country, and who did not 
 have vision enough to read it in wider terms, in the universal terms 
 of equity and justice and the rights of mankind. I hear a great 
 many people at Fourth of July celebrations laud the Declaration of 
 Independence who in between Julys shiver at the plain language of 
 our bills of rights. The Declaration of Independence was, indeed, the 
 first audible breath of liberty, but the substance of liberty is written 
 in such documents as the declaration of rights attached, for example, 
 to the first constitution of Virginia which was a model for the simi- 
 lar documents read elsewhere into our great fundamental charters. 
 That document speaks in very plain terms. The men of that genera- 
 tion did not hesitate to say that every people has a right to choose 
 its own forms of government— not once, but as often as it pleases— 
 and to accommodate those forms of government to its existing inter- 
 ests and circumstances. Not only to establish but to alter is the 
 fundamental principle of self-government. 
 
 We are just as much under compulsion to study the particular cir- 
 cumstances of our own day as the gentlemen were who sat in this 
 hall and set us precedents, not of what to do but of how to do it. 
 Liberty inheres in the circumstances of the day. Human happiness 
 consists in the life which human being are leading at the time that 
 they live. I can feed my memory as happily upon the circumstances 
 of the revolutionary and constitutional period as you can, but I can 
 not feed all my purposes with them in Washington now. Every day 
 problems arise which wear some new phase and aspect, and I must 
 fall back, if I would serve my conscience, upon those things which 
 are fundamental rather than upon those things which are super- 
 ficial, and ask myself this question. How are you going to assist in 
 some small part to give the American people and, by example, the 
 peoples of the world more liberty, more happiness, more substantial 
 prosperity ; and how are you going to make that prosperity a common 
 heritage instead of a selfish possession? I came here to-day partly in 
 order to feed my own spirit. I did not come in compliment. When 
 1 was asked to come I kncAv immediately upon the utterance of the 
 invitation that I had to come, that to be absent would be as if I 
 refused to drink once more at the original fountains of inspiration 
 for our own Government. 
 
 The men of the day which we now celebrate had a very great 
 advantage over us, ladies and gentlemen, in this one particular: Life 
 was simple in America then. All men shared the same circumstances 
 in almost equal degree. We think of Washington, for example, as 
 an aristocrat, as a nuin separated by training, separated by family 
 
CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 5 
 
 and neighborliood tradition, from the ordinary people of the rank 
 aTid file of the ooiiiitrv. Have von fori'otten the personal history of 
 George Washin<>ton? Do you not know tliat he strufTirled as poor 
 boys now strug<:le for a niea<rer and imperfect education; that he 
 worked at his surveyor's tasks in the lonely forests; that he Icnew all 
 the rou<rhness. all the hardships, all the adventure, all the variety 
 of the common life of that day: and that if he stood a little stiffly 
 in this place, if he looked a little akmf, it was because life had dealt 
 hai'dly with him? All his sinews had been stiffened by the rough 
 work of making America. He was a man of the people, whose touch 
 had been with them since the day he saw the light first in the old 
 Dominion of Virginia. And the men who came after him, men, 
 some of whom had drunk deep at the sources of philosophy and of 
 study, were, nevertheless, also men Avho on this side of the water 
 knew no complicated life but the simple life of primitive neighbor- 
 hoods. Our task is very much more difficult. That sympathy which 
 alone interprets public duty is more difficult for a public man to 
 ac(juire noAv than it Avas then, because Ave live in the midst of circum- 
 stances and conditions infinitely complex. 
 
 Xo man can boast that he understands America. No man can boast 
 that he has lived the life of America, as almost every man Avho sat 
 in this hall in those days could boast. Xo man can pretend that 
 except by common counsel he can gather into his consciousness what 
 the varied life of this people is. The duty that we have to keejD open 
 eyes and open hearts and accessible understandings is a very much 
 more difficult duty to perform than it was in their day. Yet how 
 much more important that it should be performed, for fear we make 
 infinite and irreparable blunders. The city of Washington is in 
 some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to foi-get what the 
 rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate 
 circumstance that almost all the windoAvs of the White House and its 
 offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the 
 Potomac and then out into Virginia and on to the heavens themselves, 
 and that as I sit there I can constantly forget AVashington and re- 
 member the United States. Xot that I would intimate that all of 
 the United States lies south of AVashington, but there is a serious 
 thing back of my thought. If you think too much about being 
 reelected, it is very difficult to be Avorth reelecting. You are so apt 
 to forget that the comi)arati\ely small number of persons, numerous 
 as they seem to be when they SAvarm, Avho come to ^A'^ashington to 
 ask for things, do not constitute an important proportion of the 
 population of the country, that it is constantly necessary to come 
 aAvay from AA^'ashington and rencAV one's contact Avith the j^eople who 
 do not sAvarm there, Avho do not ask for anything, but Avho do trust 
 you Avithout their personal counsel to do your duty. Unless a man 
 gets these contacts he groAvs Aveaker and Aveaker. He needs them as 
 Hei-cules needed the touch of mother earth. If you lift him up 
 too high or he lifts himself too high, he loses the contacr and therefore 
 loses the inspirati(m. 
 
 I love to think of those plain men, hoAvever far from plain their 
 dress sometimes Avas, Avho assembled in this hall. One is startled to 
 think of the variety of costume and color Avhich Avonld now occur if 
 Ave Avere let loose upon the fashions of that age. Men's lack of taste 
 
D CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 is largely concealed now by the limitations of fashion. Yet these 
 men, who sometimes dressed like the peacock, were, nevertheless, of 
 the ordinary flight of their time. They were birds of a feather ; they 
 were birds come from a very simple breeding ; they were much in the 
 open heaven. They were beginning, when there was so little to dis- 
 tract their attention, to show that they could live upon fundamental 
 principles of government. We talk those principles, bnt we have not 
 time to absorb them. We have not time to let them into our blood, 
 and thence have them translated into the plain mandates of action. 
 The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of it all, all 
 the suggestions which come from its restoration, are reassuring 
 things — things which it becomes a man to realize. Therefore my 
 theme here to-day, my only thought, is a very simple one. Do 
 not let us go back to the annals of those sessions of Congress to 
 find out what to do, because we live in another age and the circum- 
 stances are absolutely different; but let us be men of that kind; let 
 us feel at every turn the compulsions of principle and of honor 
 which thy felt; let us free our vision from temporary circumstances 
 and look abroad at the horizon and take into our lungs the great 
 air of freedom which has blown through this country and stolen 
 across the seas and blessed people everywhere; and, looking east 
 and west and north and south, let us remind ourselves that we are 
 the custodians, in some degree, of the principles which have made 
 men free and governments just. 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. CHAMP CLARK. 
 
 [Delivered at Philadelphia, Pa., Saturday, Oct. 25, 1913.] 
 
 In the history of America there are certain gi*eat epochal events 
 which we can all most heartily and enthusiastically celebrate. 
 Among these are the discovery of the New World; the first white 
 settlement at Jamestown; the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth 
 Rock; Patrick Henry's great lyric speech in the Virginia House of 
 Burgesses, which precipitated the Kevolution and which still stirs 
 the heart like strains of martial music; the skirmish at Lexington, 
 where the embattled farmers fired the shot heard around the world; 
 the Declaration of Independence; the surrender of Lord Cornwallis 
 at Yorktown; the adoption of the Constitution; and the purchase of 
 the Louisiana Territory, which made us a world power. 
 
 Philadelphia was the scene of two of these vastly important and 
 far-reaching transactions — the promulgatiou of the Declaration and 
 the making of the Constitution. The former published our theory 
 of go\ ernment ; the latter set forth the plan to put that theory into 
 eifect. The Declaration is the most splendid State paper in all the 
 hoary registers of time; the Constituticm ha§ been pronounced the 
 greatest single emanation of the human mind. The majestic sweep 
 of the Declaration helped us secure our liberty. A man of sensibility 
 can not read it, even at this late day, without his blood flowing faster. 
 For 137 years it has been a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire 
 by night to people everywhere struggling for the freedom to which 
 all men are entitled. 
 
 If there were saints in the political calendar as there are in the 
 religious and if i)articular days were assigned to particular saints, 
 the Fourth of July would be universally called Saint Jetferson's 
 Day. The twin basic ideas. ''All men are created equal " and 
 "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed." which the fathers enunciated that day in this goodly city 
 have Avorked like the leaven described in the Bible until the civilized 
 world has accepted our political philosoi)hy in whole or in part. 
 Like Tennyson's brook, they will go on forever until men everywhere 
 are free. Our Declaration of Independence is the Magiui Charta of 
 human libertv and has revolutionized the world. 
 
 If it be true that imitation is the sincerest flattery, we iiave ample 
 cause for self-congratulation, for our Constitution has become both 
 the fashion and the pattern amcmg nations. The highest compli- 
 ment ever paid the fathers of the Republic was when Bismarck built 
 the new German Empire upon the model of our dual government. 
 
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8 CELEBEATIOlsr OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 Be it ours to preserve, strengthen, and perpetuate our free insti- 
 tutions, thereby transmitting to our descendants the richest herit- 
 age ever possessed by the children of men. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, the words I have just spoken constitute the 
 written speech which I gaA'e out in advance to the newspapers be- 
 cause they wanted it. Now I am going to say a few things perti- 
 nent to the occasion for my own satisfaction. 
 
 From tlie smaHest beginning we have risen to a commanding 
 position. 
 
 Truly does Emerson say : 
 
 We live in n new and exceptional asje. America is another word for oppor- 
 tunity. Our entire history appears like a last effort of Divine Providence in 
 behalf of the human I'ace. 
 
 Those words of the great Concord philosopher Avere fitly spoken 
 and are like apples of gold in pictures of silver. 
 
 Our growth in every respect has been, indeed, phenomenal. 
 
 In ISOO we had 5,308,483 people. In 1910 our population was 
 91,972,266 in continental America alone, exclusive of Alaska, Hawaii, 
 Guam, Porto Eico, the Philippines, and the Canal Zone- If our 
 population increases at that rate for the next 110 vears, in 2010 it will 
 number 2,000,000,000 souls— 500,000,000 more than are supposed to 
 be on earth to-day. It makes one think of Andrew Carnegie's gor- 
 geous vision of " the United States of the World." Not long since 
 Mr. Secretary of Agriculture James AVilson declared in a public 
 address that if the Mississippi Valley were cultivated for all it is 
 worth on the average one acre would support one human being, which 
 would give us 1,250,000,000 citizens betwixt the top of the Alle- 
 ghenies and the crest of the Rockies. 
 
 When Mr. Speaker Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg called the 
 House of the First Congress to order he presided over a House com- 
 posed of 56 Members. Now I preside over a House composed of 435 
 Members, to say nothing of two Territorial Delegates and three Resi- 
 dent Commissioners from Porto Rico and the Philippines. In the 
 beginning the ratio for a Representative in Congress was 33,000; 
 now it is 212,500. With the first ratio and our present population 
 the House of Representatives would consist of 2,787 Representatives. 
 
 In 113 vears our total wealth multiplied 125 fold and is now rated 
 by statisticians at the enormous sum of $140,000,000,000, which, if 
 equally distributed, would give $1,312 to every man, woman, and 
 child between the two oceans. But there's the rub, for while a few are 
 rich beyond the dream of avarice, many have not the wherewithal to 
 feed and clothe themselves. I am fain to believe that the crowning 
 glory of the philosophy, statecraft, humanitarianism, and religion of 
 the twentieth century will be to devise a scheme whereby every man, 
 and every Avoman, too, shall enjoy the usufruct of his own labor and 
 to prevent one greedy soul from monopolizing the toil and sAveat and 
 lives of thousands. The signs of the times indicate that that dream 
 is not too fantastic for entertainment. That glad era began Avhen 
 N. O. Nelson, of St. Louis, originated the plan of sharing profits Avith 
 his employees. I humbly and reverently thank God this day that he 
 is a Missourian. Some of the great manufacturing concerns, rail- 
 roads, and insurance companies are establishing pension systems for 
 their em])loyees disabled by sickness, accident, or old age, which put 
 to blush the liberal pension system of the Federal GoA^ernment for 
 
CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 9 
 
 the soldiers of our various Avars. I say blessed he the name of the 
 man forever, without reofard to ])olitics or relitjion, Avho establishes 
 abidino; peace between labor and capital, which should be friends and 
 not enemies. 
 
 Should our wealth increase for the next W.) vears at the rate of the 
 hist li:}, in the year 'lO'H) it will amount to $17.r)0(),()00.()00.()()(). a sum 
 so stui)en(l()us as to be incompi'ehensible by the mathematical powers 
 of the human mind. 
 
 In 1800 our territory was eireumscribed i)v the Atlantic on the 
 east, the Mississippi on the west, the Great Lakes on the north, and 
 the Floridas on the south. It did not even touch the Gulf of Mexico. 
 Now it extends from the sunrise side of Porto Rico in the east to the 
 Lord only knows where in the west. 
 
 In ISOO Ave Avere a fourth-rate power, a feeble folk of little value in 
 the Avorld's calculations and i)lans. Now Ave are in the front rank, 
 and there is not an emperor, czar, kino-, ])rince, jiotentate, or premier 
 Avho does not lie aAvake of niirhts tryino- to discover Avhat Ave Avill do 
 next. The President of the T^nited States has more real power than 
 any ruler on eai'th, the reason beinir that so soon as any man is 
 elected President he is the President of all Americans of Avhatever 
 pel suasion, relifjious or political. 
 
 In ISOO churches Avere like angels' visits, few and far betAveen. The 
 advent of the jireacher into a community was the event of the season, 
 sometimes of the year. Noav the aA'era.sc citizen lives within less than 
 4 miles of a i)lace of Avorship and ])reachei's aiul jii-iests are as ))lenti- 
 ful as candidates in a Republican i^rimary in Philadel])liia. These 
 facts are not to be desijised even by statesmen, for the Avisest man that 
 ever liA'ed said: "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a 
 reproach to any ])eople." 
 
 The majority of the men aa'Iio fought in the Revolutionary War 
 could not read and Avrite. According to the last census less than 8 
 per cent of our Avhite people Avere classed as illiterate. 
 
 When (ieorge Washington was first sworn in as President there 
 Avere about a dozen colleges in the United States, every one of them 
 in imminent danger of dying of Avhat the doctors call anemia — that 
 is, poverty of the blood. Now a million ambitious boys and girls are 
 preparing themselves for the important and onerous duties of Amer- 
 ican citizenship at 500 universities and colleges, not to^mention high- 
 class academies. I myself have lectured to one audience composed 
 entirely of the teachers and students of one university which num- 
 bered more persons than did the army with which Sam Houston 
 established the lil)ertv of 'J'e.xas on the red field 'of San Jacinto. 
 
 It is said to have been the wish dearest to the heart of Henry IV, 
 the greatest of the Bourbon Kings, that France might become so 
 prosperous that every Frenchman might have a fowl iii the pot for 
 his Sunday dinner, Avhich does not seem much of a boon to us meat 
 eaters in this rich and favored land. If I had one prayer for the 
 American Republic Avhich I kncAv Avonld be ansAvered, it Avould be 
 that e\ery American citizen should be sufliciently educated to read 
 his ballot intelligently on election day and sufficiently courageous to 
 cast it as becomes an American freeuuin. 
 
 The small but goodly compain* of heroes and statesmen who once 
 sat in this Hall and legislated for the nascent Republic wrought: 
 
10 CELEBEATION OF THE REDEDICATION OP CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 wisely and patriotically in the cause of human freedom. We also 
 of this day who are intrusted with power — the President and his 
 administration and both Houses of Congress — work energetically, 
 patriotically, and wisely, I hope, for the public weal. 
 
 The greatest achievement to our credit is that we have taught all 
 the peoples of the earth that men can govern themselves — a glorious 
 fact of which we may well be proud. 
 
 I have no patience with the pessimists and muckrakers who are for- 
 ever predicting the downfall of the Republic and the return of chaos. 
 It surely must be that if 3,000,000 backwoodsmen in the dawn of civ- 
 ilization on this continent possessed the wisdom, skill, courage, forti- 
 tude, patriotism, and self-abnegation to achieve liberty, we ninety- 
 odd millions of their descendants, the very flower of the human race, 
 with a continent for our home and the resources of a continent to 
 command, possess the wisdom, skill, courage, fortitude, patriotism,^ 
 and self-abnegation to preserve our free institutions for ourselves and 
 our posterity. 
 
 When I look into the faces of my children my heart swells with 
 ineffable pride to think that they are citizens of this mighty Repub- 
 lic, one and indivisible, built not for a day but for all time, and des- 
 tined under God to be the dominating influence through all the cen- 
 turies yet to be. 
 
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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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