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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
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.

***

State of the Union Address
Woodrow Wilson
December 8, 1914

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

The session upon which you are now entering will be the closing session of
the Sixty-third Congress, a Congress, I venture to say, which will long be
remembered for the great body of thoughtful and constructive work which it
has done, in loyal response to the thought and needs of the country. I
should like in this address to review the notable record and try to make
adequate assessment of it; but no doubt we stand too near the work that has
been done and are ourselves too much part of it to play the part of
historians toward it.

Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation of business is now
virtually complete. It has been put forth, as we intended, as a whole, and
leaves no conjecture as to what is to follow. The road at last lies clear
and firm before business. It is a road which it can travel without fear or
embarrassment. It is the road to ungrudged, unclouded success. In it every
honest man, every man who believes that the public interest is part of his
own interest, may walk with perfect confidence.

Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future than of the past. While
we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of the whole age
have been altered by war. What we have done for our own land and our own
people we did with the best that was in us, whether of character or of
intelligence, with sober enthusiasm and a confidence in the principles upon
which we were acting which sustained us at every step of the difficult
undertaking; but it is done. It has passed from our hands. It is now an
established part of the legislation of the country. Its usefulness, its
effects will disclose themselves in experience. What chiefly strikes us
now, as we look about us during these closing days of a year which will be
forever memorable in the history of the world, is that we face new tasks,
have been facing them these six months, must face them in the months to
come,-face them without partisan feeling, like men who have forgotten
everything but a common duty and the fact that we are representatives of a
great people whose thought is not of us but of what America owes to herself
and to all mankind in such circumstances as these upon which we look amazed
and anxious.

War has interrupted the means of trade not only but also the processes of
production. In Europe it is destroying men and resources wholesale and upon
a scale unprecedented and appalling, There is reason to fear that the time
is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of the countries of
Europe will find it difficult to do for their people what they have
hitherto been always easily able to do,--many essential and fundamental
things. At any rate, they will need our help and our manifold services as
they have never needed them before; and we should be ready, more fit and
ready than we have ever been.

It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usually
supplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of which
they are in constant need and without which their economic development
halts and stands still can now get only a small part of what they formerly
imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but empty markets. This
is particularly true of our own neighbors, the States, great and small, of
Central and South America. Their lines of trade have hitherto run chiefly
athwart the seas, not to our ports but to the ports of Great Britain and of
the older continent of Europe. I do not stop to inquire why, or to make any
comment on probable causes. What interests us just now is not the
explanation but the fact, and our duty and opportunity in the presence of
it. Here are markets which we must supply, and we must find the means of
action. The United States, this great people for whom we speak and act,
should be ready, as never before, to serve itself and to serve mankind;
ready with its resources, its energies, its forces of production, and its
means of distribution.

It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and means. We have the
resources, but are we fully ready to use them? And, if we can make ready
what we have, have we the means at hand to distribute it? We are not fully
ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We are willing, but we
are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to serve greatly,
generously; but we are not prepared as we should be. We are not ready to
mobilize our resources at once. We are not prepared to use them immediately
and at their best, without delay and without waste.

To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we have stunted
and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now, when we need
ships, we have not got them. We have year after year debated, without end
or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with regard to the use of the ores
and forests and water powers of our national domain in the rich States of
the West, when we should have acted; and they are still locked up. The key
is still turned upon them, the door shut fast at which thousands of
vigorous men, full of initiative, knock clamorously for admittance. The
water power of our navigable streams outside the national domain also, even
in the eastern States, where we have worked and planned for generations, is
still not used as it might be, because we will and we won't; because the
laws we have made do not intelligently balance encouragement against
restraint. We withhold by regulation.

I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes and omissions,
even at this short session of a Congress which would certainly seem to have
done all the work that could reasonably be expected of it. The time and the
circumstances are extraordinary, and so must our efforts be also.

Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to unlock, with
proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain, the other to
encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that domain for the
generation of power, have already passed the House of Representatives and
are ready for immediate consideration and action by the Senate. With the
deepest earnestness I urge their prompt passage. In them both we turn our
backs upon hesitation and makeshift and formulate a genuine policy of use
and conservation, in the best sense of those words. We owe the one measure
not only to the people of that great western country for whose free and
systematic development, as it seems to me, our legislation has done so
little, but also to the people of the Nation as a whole; and we as clearly
owe the other fulfillment of our repeated promises that the water power of
the country should in fact as well as in name be put at the disposal of
great industries which can make economical and profitable use of it, the
rights of the public being adequately guarded the while, and monopoly in
the use prevented. To have begun such measures and not completed them would
indeed mar the record of this great Congress very seriously. I hope and
confidently believe that they will be completed.

And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and should
receive the sanction of the Senate: I mean the bill which gives a larger
measure of self-government to the people of the Philippines. How better, in
this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, could we show our
confidence in the principles of liberty, as the source as well as the
expression of life, how better could we demonstrate our own self-possession
and steadfastness in the courses of justice and disinterestedness than by
thus going calmly forward to fulfill our promises to a dependent people,
who will now look more anxiously than ever to see whether we have indeed
the liberality, the unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boasted
and professed. I can not believe that the Senate will let this great
measure of constructive justice await the action of another Congress. Its
passage would nobly crown the record of these two years of memorable
labor.

But I think that you will agree with me that this does not complete the
toll of our duty. How are we to carry our goods to the empty markets of
which I have spoken if we have not the ships? How are we to build up a
great trade if we have not the certain and constant means of
transportation upon which all profitable and useful commerce depends? And
how are we to get the ships if we wait for the trade to develop without
them? To correct the many mistakes by which we have discouraged and all but
destroyed the merchant marine of the country, to retrace the steps by which
we have.. it seems almost deliberately, withdrawn our flag from the seas..
except where, here and there, a ship of war is bidden carry it or some
wandering yacht displays it, would take a long time and involve many
detailed items of legislation, and the trade which we ought immediately to
handle would disappear or find other channels while we debated the items.

The case is not unlike that which confronted us when our own continent was
to be opened up to settlement and industry, and we needed long lines of
railway, extended means of transportation prepared beforehand, if
development was not to lag intolerably and wait interminably. We lavishly
subsidized the building of transcontinental railroads. We look back upon
that with regret now, because the subsidies led to many scandals of which
we are ashamed; but we know that the railroads had to be built, and if we
had it to do over again we should of course build them, but in another way.
Therefore I propose another way of providing the means of transportation,
which must precede, not tardily follow, the development of our trade with
our neighbor states of America. It may seem a reversal of the natural order
of things, but it is true, that the routes of trade must be actually
opened-by many ships and regular sailings and moderate charges-before
streams of merchandise will flow freely and profitably through them.

Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed at the last session but as yet
passed by neither House. In my judgment such legislation is imperatively
needed and can not wisely be postponed. The Government must open these
gates of trade, and open them wide; open them before it is altogether
profitable to open them, or altogether reasonable to ask private capital to
open them at a venture. It is not a question of the Government monopolizing
the field. It should take action to make it certain that transportation at
reasonable rates will be promptly provided, even where the carriage is not
at first profitable; and then, when the carriage has become sufficiently
profitable to attract and engage private capital, and engage it in
abundance, the Government ought to withdraw. I very earnestly hope that the
Congress will be of this opinion, and that both Houses will adopt this
exceedingly important bill.

The great subject of rural credits still remains to be dealt with, and it
is a matter of deep regret that the difficulties of the subject have seemed
to render it impossible to complete a bill for passage at this session. But
it can not be perfected yet, and therefore there are no other constructive
measures the necessity for which I will at this time call your attention
to; but I would be negligent of a very manifest duty were I not to call the
attention of the Senate to the fact that the proposed convention for safety
at sea awaits its confirmation and that the limit fixed in the convention
itself for its acceptance is the last day of the present month. The
conference in which this convention originated was called by the United
States; the representatives of the United States played a very influential
part indeed in framing the provisions of the proposed convention; and those
provisions are in themselves for the most part admirable. It would hardly
be consistent with the part we have played in the whole matter to let it
drop and go by the board as if forgotten and neglected. It was ratified in
May by the German Government and in August by the Parliament of Great
Britain. It marks a most hopeful and decided advance in international
civilization. We should show our earnest good faith in a great matter by
adding our own acceptance of it.

There is another matter of which I must make special mention, if I am to
discharge my conscience, lest it should escape your attention. It may seem
a very small thing. It affects only a single item of appropriation. But
many human lives and many great enterprises hang upon it. It is the matter
of making adequate provision for the survey and charting of our coasts. It
is immediately pressing and exigent in connection with the immense coast
line of Alaska, a coast line greater than that of the United States
themselves, though it is also very important indeed with regard to the
older coasts of the continent. We can not use our great Alaskan domain,
ships will not ply thither, if those coasts and their many hidden dangers
are not thoroughly surveyed and charted. The work is incomplete at almost
every point. Ships and lives have been lost in threading what were supposed
to be well-known main channels. We have not provided adequate vessels or
adequate machinery for the survey and charting. We have used old vessels
that were not big enough or strong enough and which were so nearly
unseaworthy that our inspectors would not have allowed private owners to
send them to sea. This is a matter which, as I have said, seems small, but
is in reality very great. Its importance has only to be looked into to be
appreciated.

Before I close may I say a few words upon two topics, much discussed out of
doors, upon which it is highly important that our judgment should be clear,
definite, and steadfast?

One of these is economy in government