The nation has awakened to a sense of neglected ideals and neglected duties, to a consciousness

that the rank and file of her people find life very hard to sustain, that her young men find

opportunity embarrassed, and that her older men find business difficult to renew and maintain,

because of circumstances of privilege and private advantage

which have interlaced their subtle threads throughout almost every part of the framework of our present law.

She has awakened to the knowledge that she has lost certain cherished liberties and wasted, priceless resources,

which she had solemnly undertaken to hold in trust for

posterity and for all men's eyes, and to the conviction that she stands confronted with an

occasion for constructive statements such as not arisen since the great days in which our

government was set up. There never was a time when impatience and suspicion were more keenly aroused by private power

selfishly employed.

And jealousy of everything concealed or touched with any purpose not late with the general

good or inconsistent with it, more sharply or immediately displayed itself.

Nor is the country ever more susceptible to unselfish appeals, or to the high arguments of sincere justice.

These are the unmistakable symptoms of an awakening.

There is the more need for wise counsel, because the people are so ready to heed counsel,

if it be given honestly and in their interest.

It is in the broad light of this new day that we stand face to face with great questions

of right and of justice, questions of national development, of the development of character and of standards of action,

no less than of a better business system, more free, more equitable, more open to ordinary men,

practicable to live under, tolerable to work under, or a better fiscal system whose taxes shall not come out of the

pockets of the many to go into the pockets of the few, and within whose intricacies special

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