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than twenty workers could produce a century ago.
The people living in this land of gold are the most daring and resourceful on the globe. Coming from the
hardiest stock of every nation of the old world their very history in the new world has made Americans a
peculiar people in courage, initiative, love of justice and all the elements of independent character.
And, compared with other peoples, we are very few in numbers. There are only ninety millions of us,
scattered over a continent. Germany has sixty-five millions packed in a country very much smaller than
Texas. The population of Great Britain and Ireland could be set down in California and still have more than
enough room for the population of Holland. If this country were as thickly peopled as Belgium there would be
more than twelve hundred million instead of only ninety million persons within our borders.
So we have more than enough to supply every human being beneath the flag. There ought not to be in this
Republic a single day of bad business, a single unemployed workingman, a single unfed child. American
business men should never know an hour of uncertainty, discouragement or fear; American workingmen
never a day of low wages, idleness or want. Hunger should never walk in these thinly peopled gardens of
plenty.
And yet in spite of all these favors which providence has showered upon us, the living of the people is the
problem of the hour. Hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans find it difficult to get enough to live
on. The average income of an American laborer is less than $500 a year. With this he must furnish food,
shelter and clothing for a family.
Women, whose nourishing and protection should be the first care of the State, not only are driven into the
mighty army of wage-earners, but are forced to work under unfair and degrading conditions. The right of a
child to grow into a normal human being is sacred; and yet, while small and poor countries, packed with
people, have abolished child labor, American mills, mines, factories and sweat-shops are destroying hundreds
of thousands of American children in body, mind and soul.
"1_2_4">APPENDIX D. SPEECHES FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE 265
The Art of Public Speaking
At the same time men have grasped fortunes in this country so great that the human mind cannot comprehend
their magnitude. These mountains of wealth are far larger than even that lavish reward which no one would
deny to business risk or genius.
On the other hand, American business is uncertain and unsteady compared with the business of other nations.
American business men are the best and bravest in the world, and yet our business conditions hamper their
energies and chill their courage. We have no permanency in business affairs, no sure outlook upon the
business future. This unsettled state of American business prevents it from realizing for the people that great
and continuous prosperity which our country's location, vast wealth and small population justifies.
We mean to remedy these conditions. We mean not only to make prosperity steady, but to give to the many
who earn it a just share of that prosperity instead of helping the few who do not earn it to take an unjust share.
The progressive motto is "Pass prosperity around." To make human living easier, to free the hands of honest
business, to make trade and commerce sound and steady, to protect womanhood, save childhood and restore
the dignity of manhood--these are the tasks we must do.
What, then, is the progressive answer to these questions? We are able to give it specifically and concretely.
The first work before us is the revival of honest business. For business is nothing but the industrial and trade
activities of all the people. Men grow the products of the field, cut ripe timber from the forest, dig metal from
the mine, fashion all for human use, carry them to the market place and exchange them according to their
mutual needs--and this is business.
With our vast advantages, contrasted with the vast disadvantages of other nations, American business all the
time should be the best and steadiest in the world. But it is not. Germany, with shallow soil, no mines, only a
window on the seas and a population more than ten times as dense as ours, yet has a sounder business, a
steadier prosperity, a more contented because better cared for people.
What, then, must we do to make American business better? We must do what poorer nations have done. We
must end the abuses of business by striking down those abuses instead of striking down business itself. We
must try to make little business big and all business honest instead of striving to make big business little and
yet letting it remain dishonest.
Present-day business is as unlike old-time business as the old-time ox-cart is unlike the present-day
locomotive. Invention has made the whole world over again. The railroad, telegraph, telephone have bound
the people of modern nations into families. To do the business of these closely knit millions in every modern
country great business concerns came into being. What we call big business is the child of the economic
progress of mankind. So warfare to destroy big business is foolish because it can not succeed and wicked
because it ought not to succeed. Warfare to destroy big business does not hurt big business, which always
comes out on top, so much as it hurts all other business which, in such a warfare, never comes out on top.
With the growth of big business came business evils just as great. It is these evils of big business that hurt the
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