President Wilson voices this new feeling best.
"Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence. This no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters of justice. There can be no equality of opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency.
"These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day; to lift everything that concerns our life as a nation to the light that shines from the hearth-fire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable that we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.
"And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics, but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action."
Governor Cox of Ohio, speaking for a state that had just made many fundamental changes in its organic law by adopting the recommendations, almost in their entirety, of a constitutional convention, says:
"Progressive government, so called, which means in its correct understanding, constructive work, along the lines pointed out by the lamps of experience and the higher moral vision of advanced civilization, is now on trial in our state. Every constitutional facility has been provided for an upward step and Ohio, because of the useful part it has played in the affairs of the country, is at this hour in the eye of the nation.
"The state has the resources, human and material, to make a thorough test of the principle of an enlarged social justice, through government, and the results of our labors will extend beyond state borders. A thorough appreciation, therefore, of the stupendous responsibility before you, and full recognition of the probable insidious resistance to be encountered, will add immeasurably to your equipment to meet the emergency. If I sense with any degree of accuracy the state of public mind, I am correct in the belief that a vast preponderance of the people of all classes have faith both in the wisdom and the certain results of a constructive progressive program of government. Let us in full understanding of the consequences of our acts maintain this measure of public confidence and encourage the faith of those who are honestly skeptical because of the apprehension generated in their minds by a third class, which may be unconsciously prompted by sordid impulses developed by unbroken preferences of government.
"No fair-minded person will dispute the logic nor question the equity of any plan which contemplates legislative action entirely within the limitations of suffrage endorsement. If the legislature, in the passage of a single law, runs counter to public desire or interest, the people through the referendum have the means to undo it. No greater safeguard can be devised by the genius of man, and to question either the moral or practical phase of this arrangement, is to admit unsoundness in the theory of a republic. In other days changes in government such as are made necessary everywhere by our industrial and social conditions, would have been wrought by riot and revolution. Now they are accomplished through peaceful evolution. He must be indeed a man of unfortunate temperamental qualities who does not find in this a circumstance that thrills every patriotic fiber in his being."
Governor Sulzer of New York, in similar vein, says, speaking of the proposed amendment to the constitution of the United States, providing for the popular election of senators:
"I favor this change in the federal constitution, as I shall every other change that will restore the government to the control of the people. I want the people, in fact as well as in theory, to rule this great republic and the government at all times to be responsive to their just demands."
Again, in speaking of the value of human life and its conservation, Governor Sulzer says:
"If Americans would excel other nations in commerce, in manufacture, in science, in intellectual growth, and in all other humane attainments, we must first possess a people physically and mentally sound. Any achievement that is purchased at the continued sacrifice of human life does not advance our material resources, but detracts from the wealth of the state. The leaders of our civilization now realize these fundamental truths, and the statesmen, the scientists, and the humanitarians are endeavoring more and more to protect human life and to secure to each individual not only the right to life, but the right to decent standards of living.
"We have had to change old customs and repeal antiquated laws. We must now convince employers that any industry that saps the vitality and destroys the initiative of the workers is detrimental to the interests of the state and menaces the general welfare of the government. We must try to work out practical legislation that will apply our social ideals and our views of industrial progress to secure for our men, women and children the greatest possible reserve of physical and mental force.
"I hold it to be self-evident that no industry has the right to sacrifice human life for its profit, but that just as each industry must reckon in its cost of production the material waste, so it should also count as a part of the cost of production the human waste which it employs.... No business has an inalienable right to child labor. No industry has a right to rob the state of that which constitutes its greatest wealth. No commerce that depends on child labor for its success has a right to exist. Let us do what we can to protect the children of the state and preserve their fundamental rights.... Human life is infinitely more valuable than the profit of material things. The state for its own preservation has the right to demand the use of safer and more hygienic methods, even if at greater cost of production to the employer. Occupational diseases should be studied, and the results of careful investigation embodied in laws to safeguard the health and lives of the workers."
Governor Craig of North Carolina, another Democrat, but from the more conservative southland, strikes the same note, when he says:
"We have not realized the moral benefits that should have resulted from modern progress. Avarice has been stimulated; hope and opportunity have been denied; antagonism and resentment have been generated. All classes have suffered. We realize the conditions; the injustice has been uncovered. It cannot stand in the clear, calm and resolute gaze of the American people. They are determined that our law shall be based upon a higher conception of social obligation and that our civilization shall mean a higher social life. They have put their hands to the plow and will not look back."