The working people of America, — if they must be distinguished from the minority that constitutes the rest of it, — are, of course, the backbone of the Nation. No law that safeguards their lives, that improves the physical and moral conditions under which they live, that makes their hours of labor rational and tolerable, that gives them freedom to act in their own interest, and that protects them where they cannot project themselves, can properly be regarded as class legislation or as anything but as a measure taken in the interest of the whole people, whose partnership in right action we are trying to establish and make real and practical. It is in this spirit that we shall act if we are genuine spokesmen of the whole country.
Woodrow Wilson Connected to the Carolinas
Source
The Democratic Text-Book 1912 ISSUED BY The Democratic National Committee, The Democratic Congressional Committee, 1912, P.351, excerpt from Wilson’s acceptance speech as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate
- form
- speech
- year
- 1912
- locator
- P.351
Cite this record
“The working people of America, — if they must be distinguish…” Woodrow Wilson. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-DCDAA78C17. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/dcdaa78c17
More from Woodrow Wilson
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and be his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies of a great people who think for themselves. A nation of employees cannot be free any more than a nation of employers can be.
America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.
Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.