All the stories we tell to our children about work are told of such men as Stradivarius, who lingered in the making of a violin as a lover would linger with his lady; who hated to take his fingers from the beloved wood which was yielding its music to his magic touch. In all poetry and song since, Stradivarius has been to us the type of the human genius and heart that is put into the work that is done without attention and zest.

We point to some of the exquisitely completed work of the stone carvers of the Middle Ages, the little hidden pieces tucked away unseen in the great cathedrals, where the work is just as loving in its detail and completeness as it is upon the altar itself, and we say this is the efflorescence of the human spirit expressed in work. The man knew that nobody, except perhaps an occasional adventurer coming to repair that cathedral, would ever see that work, but he wrought it for the sake of his own heart and in the sight of God. And that, we instinctively accept as the type of the spiritual side of work.

Now, imagine, ladies and gentlemen, imagine as merchants and manufacturers and bankers, what would happen to the industrial supremacy of the United States if all her workmen worked in that spirit. Would there be goods anywhere in the world that could for one moment match the goods made in America? Would not the American label be the label of spiritual distinction? And how are you going to bring that about? You are going to bring it about by such work as this Congress is interested in and the work which will ensue, because the things which you are discussing now are merely the passageways to things that are better.

Just so soon as you make it a matter of conscience with your legislatures to see to it that human life is conserved wherever modern processes touch it, just as soon as you make it the duty of society to release the human spirit occasionally on playgrounds, to surround it with beauty, to give it, even in the cities, a touch of nature, and the freedom of the open sky, just as soon as you realize and have all of society realize that play—enjoyment—is part of the building up of the human spirit, and that the load must sometimes be lifted, or else it will be a breaking load, just as soon as you realize that every time you touch the imagination of your people and quicken their thought and encourage their hope and spread abroad among them the sense of human fellowship and of mutual helpfulness, you are elevating all the levels of the national life, and then you will begin to see that your factories are doing better work, because, sooner or later, this atmospheric influence is going to get into every office in the United States, and men are going to see that the best possible instruments that they can have are men whom they regard as partners and fellow-beings. (Applause.)

I look upon a Congress like this as one of the indispensable instruments of the public life. Law, ladies and gentlemen, does not run before the thought of society and draw that thought after it. Law is nothing else but the embodiment of the thought of society, and when I see great bodies of men and women like this, running ahead of the law, and beckoning it on to fair enterprises of every sort, I know that I see the rising tide which is going to bring these things in inevitably. I know that I see law in the making; I know that I see the future forming its lines before my eyes, and that, presently, when we come to an agreement, and wherever we come to substantial agreement, we shall have the things that we desire. So that, for a man in public life, an assemblage like this is the food of his thought, if he lend his thought to what his fellow-countrymen are desiring and planning; and all the zest of politics lies, not in holding things where they are, but in carrying them forward along the lines of promise, to the place where they ought to be. (Applause.)

You are our consciences, you are our mentors, you are our schoolmasters. The men in public life have only twenty-four hours in their day and they generally spend eight of the twenty-four in sleeping—I must admit generally to spending nine—and in what remains they cannot comprehend the interests of a great nation. No man that I ever met, no group of men that I ever met, could sum up in their own thought the interests of a varied nation. Therefore, they are absolutely dependent upon suggestions coming from every fertile quarter, into their consciousness. They are subject, or they ought to be subject, daily, to instruction. A gentleman was quoting to me today a very fine remark of Prince Bismarck’s. He was taxed with inconsistency, with holding an opinion today that he had not held yesterday. He said he would be ashamed of himself if he did not hold himself at liberty, whenever he learned a new fact, to readjust his opinions. Why, that is what learning is for. Ought any man to be ashamed of having accepted the Darwinian theory, because he did not hold it before Darwin demonstrated it? Ought any man to be ashamed of having given up the Copernican idea of the universe? Ought any man to be obliged to apologize for having yielded to the facts? If he does not he will sooner or later be very sorry, because the facts are our masters, and if we do not yield to them, we will presently be their slaves. I suppose if I chose to assert the full consistency of my independence I would say that I was at liberty to jump from the top of this building, but just as soon as I reached the ground nature would have said to me, “You fool, didn’t you ever hear of the law of gravitation? Didn’t you hear of any of the things that would happen to you if you jumped off a building of this height? Suppose you spend a considerable period in a hospital thinking it over,” and it would be very impressively borne in upon me what the penalties of ignorance of the law of gravitation are. Now, it is going to be very impressively borne in upon the public men of this country if they ignore them what the laws of human life are. As Dr. Holmes used to say, “The truth is no invalid. You need not be afraid; no matter how roughly you treat her, she will survive, and if you treat her too roughly there will be a certain reaction in your own situation which will be the severest penalty you could carry.”

I come, therefore, to Indianapolis today to put my mind at your service, merely to express an attitude, merely to confess a faith, merely to declare the deep interest which must underlie all human effort, for, when the last thing is said about human effort, ladies and gentlemen, it lies in human sympathy. Unless the hearts of men are bound together the policies of men will fail, because the only thing that makes classes in a great nation is that they do not understand that their interests are identical. (Applause.)

The only thing that embarrasses public action is that certain men seek advantages which they can gain only at the expense of the rest of the country, and when they have gained them those very advantages prove the heaviest weight they have to carry, because they are then responsible for all that happens to those upon whom they have imposed and to those from whom they have subtracted what was their right.

So that the deepest task of all politics is to understand one another; the deepest task of all politics is to understand everybody, and I do not see how everybody is going to be understood unless everybody speaks up, and the more independent spokesmen there are the more vocal the Nation is, the more certain we shall be to work out in peace and finally in pride the great tasks which lie ahead of us. (Great and prolonged applause.)