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The Commoner
VOL. 15, No. 4
1
6
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President Wilson's Business Message
An address delivered by the president of the
United States at the third annual meeting of the
Chamber of Commerco of the United States, Feb
ruary 3, 1915.
I feel that It is hardly fair to you for mo to
come In In this casual fashion among a body of
men who have been seriously discussing great
questions, and it Is hardly fair to me, because
I come In cold, not having had the advantage of
sharing the atmosphere of your deliberations and
catching the feeling of your conference. More
over, I hardly know just how to express my in
terest in the things you are undertaking. When
n man stands outside an organization and speaks
to it he Is too apt to have the tone of outside
commendation, as who should say, "I would de
Biro to pat you on the back and 'Good boys; you
are doing well!' " I would a great deal rather
have you receive mo as if for the time being I
werq one of your own number.
Because the longer I occupy the office that I
now occupy the moro I regret any lines of sep
aration; the more I deplore any feeling that
ono set of men has one set of interests and an
other set of men another set of interests; the
moro I fell the solidarity of the nation the im
possibility of separating one interest from an
other without misconceiving it; the necessity
that we should all understand one another, in
order that we may understand ourselves.
There is an illustration which I have used a
great many times. I will use it again, because
It is the most serviceable to my own mind. We
often speak of a man who can not find his way
in some jungle or some desert as having "lost
himself." Did you never reflect that that is the
only thing he has not lost? He is there. He has
lost the rest of the world. He has no fixed
point by which to steer. Ho does not know which
is north, which is south, which is east, which is
fvest; and If he did know, he is so confused that
he would not know In which of those directions
his goal Jay. Therefore, following his heart, he
walks in a great circle from right to left and
comes back to where he started to himself
again. To my mind that is a picture of the world.
If you have lost sight of other interests and do
not know the relation of your own interests to
those other interests, then you do not understand
your own interests, and have lost yourself. What
you want is orientation, relationship to the points
of the compass; relationship to the other people
in the world; vital connections which you have
for the time being severed.
DANGERS OF FALSE ADVERTISING
I am particularly glad to express my admira
tion for the kind of organization which you have
drawn together. I have attended banquets of
chambers of commerce in various parts of the
country and have got the impression at each of
those banquets that there was only one city in the
country. It has seemed to me that those asso
ciations were meant in order to destroy men's
perspective, in order to destroy their sense of rel
ative proportions. Worst of all, if I may be per
mitted to say so, they were intended to boost
something in particular. Boosting is a very un
handsome thing. Advancing enterprise is a very
handsome thing, but to exaggerate local merits
In order to create disproportion, in the general
development is not a particularly handsome
thing or a particularly intelligent thing. A city
can not grow on the face of a great state like a
mushroom on that one spot. Its roots are
throughout the state, and unless the state it is
in, or the region it draws from, can itself thrive
and pulse with life as a whole, the city can have
,no healthy growth. You forget the wide root
ages of everything when you boost some partic
ular region. There are dangers which probably
you all understand in the mere practice of ad
vertisement. When a man begins to advertise
himself there are certain points that are some
what exaggerated, and I have noticed that men
who exaggerate most, most quickly lose atiy
proper conception of what their own proportions
vare. Therefore, these local cente. of enthusi
asm may be local centers of mistake if they are
not very wisely guided and if they do not them
, selves realize their relations to the other centers
of enthusiasm and of advancement.
The advantage about a Chamber of Commerce
, of the United States is that there is only one wav
,to boost the United States, and that is by seeing
to it that the conditions under which business is
done throughout the whole country are the best
possible conditions. There can not be any dis
proportion about that. If you draw your sap
and your vitality from all quarters, then the
more sap and vitality there is in you the more
there is in the commonwealth as a whole, and
every time you lift at all you lift the whole level
of manufacturing and mercantile enterprise.
Moreover, the advantage of it is that you can
not boost the United States in that way without
understanding the United States. You learn a
great deal. I agreed with a colleague of mine
in the cabinet the other day that we had never
attended in our lives before a school to compare
with that we were now attending for the pur
pose of gaining a liberal education.
HOW TRUTH PREVAILS
Of course, I learn a great many things that
are not so, but the interesting thing about that
is this: Things that are not so do not match. If
you hear enough of them, you see there is no
pattern whatever; it is a crazy quilt. Whereas,
the truth always matches, piece by piece, with
other parts of the. truth. No man can lie con
sistently, and he can not lie about everything if
he talks to you long.' I would guarantee that if
enough liars talked to you, you would get the
truth; because the parts that they did not invent
would match one another, and the parts that
they did invent would not match one another.
Talk long enough, therefore, rihd see the con
nections clearly enough, and you can patch to
gether the case as a whole. I had somewhat
that experience about Mexico, and that was about
the only way in which I learned anything that
was true about it. For there had been vivid
imaginations and many special interests which
depicted things as they wished md to believe
them to be.
Seriously, the task of this body is to match all
the facts of business throughout the country
and to see the vast and consistent pattern of it.
That is the reason I think you are to be con
gratulated upon the fact that you can not do
this thing without common counsel. There isn't
any man who knows enough to comprehend the
United States. It is a co-operative effort, neces
sarily. You can not perform the functions of
this chamber of commerce without drawing in
not only a vast "number of men, but men, and a
number of men, from every region and section
of the country. The minute this association falls
into the hands, if it ever should, of men from a
single section or men with a single set of inter
ests most at heart, it will go to seed and die.
Its strength must come from the uttermost parts
of the land and must be compounded of brains
and comprehensions of every sort. It is a very
noble and handsome picture for the imagina
tion, and I have asked myself before I came here
today, what relation you could bear to the gov
ernment of the United States and what relation
the government could bear to you?
CONTACT WITH THE GOVERNMENT
The're are two aspects and activities of the
government with which you will naturally come
into most direct contact. The first is the gov-'
ernment's power of inquiry, systematic and dis
interested inquiry, and its power of scientific as
sistance. You get an illustration of the latter,
for example, in the department of agriculture'
Has it occurred to you, I wonder, that we are
just upon the eve of a time when our department
of agriculture will be of infinite importance to
the whole world? There is a shortage of food
in the world now. That shortage will be much
more serious a few months from now than it is
now. It is necessary that we, should plant a
great deal more; it is necessary that our lands
should yield more per acre than they do now
it is necessary that there should not be a plow
or a spade idle in this country if the world is to
be fed. And the methods of our farmers must
feed upon the scientific information to be derived
from the state departments of agriculture, and
from that taproot of all, the United States de
partment of agriculture. The object and use of
that department is to inform men of the latest
SSS t5m1? and disclosure ot science with re
gard to all the processes by which soils can bo
put to their proper usd and their fertility made
the greatest possible. -Similarly with the bureau
Sy wwcifvn;, ll is r.eady t0 8upply those twSS
for n ?vLyl CaSGt norms' you can sot bases,
for all the scientific processes of business
I have a great admiration for the 'scientific
Parts of the government of the United States!
and it has amazed me that so few men have dis
covered them. Here in these departments are
quiet men, trained to the highest degree of skill
serving for a petty remuneration along lines that
are infinitely useful to mankind; and yet in some
cases they waited to be discovered until this
Chamber of Commerce of the United States wa3
established. Coming to this city, officers of that
association found that there were here things
that were infinitely useful to them and with which
the whole United States ought to be put into
communication.
GOVERNMENT INQUIRY AND INFORMATION
The" government of the United States is verv
properly a great instrumentality of inquiry and
information. One thing we are just beginning
to do that we ought to have done long ago: We
ought long ago to have had our bureau of foreign
and domestic commerce. We ought long ago t')
have sent the best eyes cf the government out
into the world to see where the opportunities and
openings of American commerce and American
genius were to be found men who were not sent
out as the commercial agents of any particular
set of business men in the United States, but
who were eyes for the whole business commun
ity. I have been reading consular reports for
20 years. In what I came to regard as an evil
day the congressman from my district began to
send me consular reports, and they ate up more
and more of my time. They are very interesting,
but they are a good deal like what the old ladv
said of the dictionary, that it was very interesi
ing, but a little disconnected. You get a picture
of the world as if a spotlight were being dotted
about over the surface of it. Here you see a
glimpse of this, and here you see a glimpse of
that, and through the medium of some consuls
you do not see anything at all. Because the
consul has to have eyes and the consul has tn
know what he is looking for. A literary friend
of mine said that he used to believe in the max
im that "everything comes to the man who
'waits," but he discovered after awhile by prac
tical experience that it needed an additional
clause, "provided he knows what he is waiting
for." Unless you know what you are looking
for and have trained eyes to see it when it comes
your way, it may pass you unnoticed. We are
just beginning to do, systematically and scien
tifically, what we ought long ago to have done,
to employ the government of the United States
to survey the world in order that American com
merce might be guided.
But there are other ways of using the govern
ment of the United States, ways that have long
been tried, though not always with conspicuous
success or fortunate results. You can use the
government of the United States by influencing
its legislation. That has been a very active in
dustry, but it has not always been managed in
the interest of the whole people. It is very in
structive and useful for the government of the
United States to have such means as you are
ready to supply for getting a sort of consensus
of opinion which, proceeds from no particular
quarter and originates with no particular inter
est. Information is the very foundation of all
right action in legislation.
BUSINESS AND LEGISLATION
I remember once, a good many years ago, I
was attending one of the local chambers of com
merce of the United States at a time when every
body was complaining that congress was inter
fering with business. If you have heard that
complaint recently and supposed that it was
original with the men who made it, you have not
lived as long as I have. It has been going on
ever since I can remember. The complaint came
most vigorously from men who were interested
in large corporate development. I took the lib
erty to say to that body of men, whom I did not
know, that I took it for granted that there were
a great many lawyers among them, and that it
was likely that the more prominent of those
lawyers were the intimate advisors of. the cor
porations of that region. I said that I had met
a great many lawyers from whom the complaint
had come most vigorously, not only that there
was too much legislation with regard to corpora
tions, but that it was ignorant legislation. I
said, "Now, the responsibility is with you. If
the legislation is mistaken, you are on the inside
and know where the mistakes are being made.
You know not only the innocent and right things
that your corporations are doing, but you know
the other things, too. Knowing how they are
done, you can bo expert advisors as to how the
wrong things can be prevented. If, therefore,
this thing is handled ignorantly, there is nobody
to blame but yourselves." If we on the outside
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