“THE MOB” WHO RULE.
But when I ask that the choppers, the plowmen, the fishers be given the absolute, the real control over their Government: when I ask that the farmers, the factory workers, the retail merchants, the young professional men, the railroad men, all the average citizens, be given the real control of this Government of theirs, be given the right to nominate their own candidates, be given the right to supervise the acts of all their servants—the minute I do that, I am told that I am appealing to the momentary passion of the mob [laughter and applause], that fishers and choppers and plowmen are all right in poetry but when I try to put them into politics they become a mob cursed with an inability to act except under the impulse of momentary passion. [Laughter and applause.]
Now, friends, in my life, according to the strength that has been given me, I have always striven measurably to realize every ideal I have ever possessed, and I hold with deepest conviction that there is nothing worse in any man than to profess a high ideal as a mere matter of intellectual pleasure and in practice to make no effort to realize that ideal. [Applause.] I hold that it is discreditable to us as a people, discreditable to you of Massachusetts, if you praise Emerson’s and Lowell’s lines in the abstract and fail to do your best to endeavor actually to realize them in the present. [Applause.]