



Produced by James Linden.  HTML version by Al Haines.








State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson



The addresses are separated by three asterisks: ***

Dates of addresses by Woodrow Wilson in this eBook:

  December 2, 1913
  December 8, 1914
  December 7, 1915
  December 5, 1916
  December 4, 1917
  December 2, 1918
  December 2, 1919
  December 7, 1920



***

State of the Union Address
Woodrow Wilson
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
