The Tariff Bill

Title

The Tariff Bill

Creator

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924

Identifier

WWP18057

Date

1913 October 3

Description

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech at his signing of the Tariff Bill.

Source

Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Washington, District of Columbia

Subject

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Correspondence

Text

From Appendix to the Congressional Record, 63rd Congress, Second Session, Volume 51, Pages 928--929.

The President, at the White House, October 3, 1913, after signing the tariff bill, said:
“Gentlemen, I feel a very peculiar pleasure in what I have just done by way of taking part in the completion of a great piece of business. It is a pleasure which is very hard to express in words which are adequate to express the feeling, because the feeling that I have is that we have done the rank and file of the people of this country a great service. It is hard to speak of these things without seeiming to go off into campaign eloquence, but that is not my feeling. It is one very profound, a feeling of profound gratitude that, working with the splendid men who have carried this thing through with studious attention and doing justice all ’round, I should have had part in serving the people of this country as we have been striving to serve them every since I can remember.

“I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy, and I know men standing around me who can say the same thing, who have been waiting to see the things done which it was necessary to do in order that there might be justice in the United States. And so it is a solemn moment that brings such a business to a conclusion, and I hope I will not be thought to be demanding too much of myself or of my colleagues when I say that this, great as it is, is the accomplishment of only half the journey. We have set the business of this country free from those conditions which have made monopoly not only possible, but in a sense easy and natural. But there is no use taking away the conditions of monopoly if we do not take away also the power to create monopoly; and that is a financial rather than a merely circumstantial and economic power. The power to control and guide and direct the credits of the country is the power to say who shall and who shall not build up the industries of the country, in which direction they shall be built, and in which direction they shall not be built. We are now about to take the second step, which will be the final step in setting the business of this country free. That is what we shall do in the currency bill, which the House has already passed and which I have the utmost confidence the Senate will pass much sooner than some pessimistic individuals believe. Because the question, now that this piece of work is done, will arise all over the country. ‘For what do we wait? Why should we wait to crown ourselves with consummate honor? Are we so self-denying that we do wish to complete success?’ I was quoting the other day to some of my colleagues in the Senate those lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V, which have always appealed to me, ‘If it be a sin to covet honor, then am I the most offending soul alive,’ and I am happy to say that I do not covet it for myself alone. I covet it with equal ardor for the men who are associated with me, and the honor is going to come from them. I am their associate. I can only complete the work which they do. I can only counsel when they ask for my counsel. I can come in only when the last stages of the business are reached. And I covet this honor for them quite as much as I covet it for myself; and I covet it for the great party of which I am a member, because that party is not honorable unless it redeem its name and serve the people of the United States.

“So I feel to-night like a man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies halfway along the journey, and that in the morning with a fresh impulse we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey’s end like men with a quiet conscience, knowing that we have served our fellow men and have thereby tried to serve God.”

Original Format

Speech

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Temp00545.pdf

Tags

Citation

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924, “The Tariff Bill,” 1913 October 3, WWP18057, First Year Wilson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.