He who causes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before is a public benefactor. He who with one talent helps one child, one boy, to rise to manhood and usefulness, is a great and useful citizen. He who is fortunate enough to possess ten talents and who is an inspiration to thousands of the youth of the land, who has planted in their minds and in their hopes the desire to become great and useful in this world, to become great and good, efficient citizens—he is the greatest of all.
He is the Governor of a great State, and has inspired the citizens of mature age to a better government for the people and led them on to a greater field of usefulness. We feel perfectly safe in trusting him. To whatever position duty may call, whatever fortune may trust him with, the people will be safe under his guidance. (Applause.)
I feel unworthy to present to this audience one who has been the leader in so many good works, one who has been a practical conservator of human effort, but I take pleasure in introducing to you as the speaker of this day one who has come here to get closer in touch with the Conservationists of the United States, to gather from this audience an inspiration as to the great force of Conservation which is to lead the world—the Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey. (Great applause.)
ADDRESS BY THE HON. WOODROW WILSON, GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY.
Address, Honorable Woodrow Wilson
Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: It is with genuine pleasure that I find myself in this place, facing a company of men and women who are devoting themselves to so disinterested a cause as that to which this Congress is consecrated.
Your chairman has stated in exactly the terms of my own thought, the errand upon which I have come. It would seem presumption upon my part to instruct this Congress, or to attempt to instruct it in the means of Conservation. I have come here, as he has said, to share in the inspiration of the occasion, to gather into my own thought an impression of the men and women who are working for these great objects in the United States. When I was on my way out here, and was thinking of this occasion, I prepared my talk on the conservation of our natural resources. When I arrived at the station, I was told to change the subject, that was not what the Congress was, this year, devoting its particular attention to, but to the conservation of the vital energy of the people of the United States. I had thought that I would have to apologize to you for wandering off before I had finished my address, into that very topic, because it seems to me that the more broadly we view the field of obligation, the more clearly it will appear to us that our duty is only done in respect to the laying of the foundation, when we have conserved the natural resources of America, for those natural resources are of no consequence unless there is a free and virile people to use them.
We are in the midst of a political campaign, and most of the audiences that I have faced have been political audiences. I want to say very frankly to you, that it is a comfort to me to face another kind, because, in a campaign, we take politics, as it were, to the people, but on this occasion the people of the United States are bringing to us the great forces of their thought.
A congress like this means something more vital, in some aspects, than any of the ordered efforts of political parties; for here are represented the men and women from every quarter of the Union, come together to speak that great volunteer voice of America, which is the atmosphere of politics, which creates the environment of the public man, which is the independent conscience of a great people asserting itself and instructing those who serve it, what their lines of best service are.
All voluntary effort distinguishes a free people from a people that is not free. An effort, an organization, that comes about whether the politician wants it or not, is the kind of effort and organization which shows that the people are ready to govern themselves and to assert their own opinions, whether the men in the public eye now consent to be their servants or not. (Applause.)