We are living in an extremely interesting time. We have drifted away from purely political questions. We have, fortunately enough, ceased to make constitutional questions the center of discussion and are turning our attention more and more to those things which affect the daily life and fortunes of the rank and file of great nations. We are studying the people whom long ago we ought to have served better than we have served them, and as we get in closer and closer touch with the daily lives of men and women we know how to counsel better, we know how to govern better, we know how to conduct our own individual lives better, with a deeper insight and a truer sympathy. A conference such as this, to discuss social insurance, gives evidence of the dominant interest of our own time, and one of the best elements of social insurance is social understanding — an interchange of views and a comprehension of interests which for a long time was only too rare. It used to be confined to those who were supposed to be restricted to what the general public regarded as the useless precincts of the university. Now, it has spread to the ranks of practical men and has come to be regarded as a practical study.

Woodrow Wilson Connected to the Carolinas

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