President Wilsons Addresses | Page 9

heels of the tariff changes, if not
accompany them, of which the chief is the reform of our banking and
currency laws; but just now I refrain. For the present, I put these

matters on one side and think only of this one thing--of the changes in
our fiscal system which may best serve to open once more the free
channels of prosperity to a great people whom we would serve to the
utmost and throughout both rank and file.
I thank you for your courtesy.
[B] It had been the practice of our Presidents to send their Messages to
Congress and not to read them in person.

ADDRESS ON THE BANKING SYSTEM
[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, June 23,
1913.]
MR. SPEAKER, MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE
CONGRESS:
It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear and imperative
duty that I have a second time this session sought the privilege of
addressing you in person. I know, of course, that the heated season of
the year is upon us, that work in these chambers and in the committee
rooms is likely to become a burden as the season lengthens, and that
every consideration of personal convenience and personal comfort,
perhaps, in the cases of some of us, considerations of personal health
even, dictate an early conclusion of the deliberations of the session; but
there are occasions of public duty when these things which touch us
privately seem very small, when the work to be done is so pressing and
so fraught with big consequence that we know that we are not at liberty
to weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in the
presence of such an occasion. It is absolutely imperative that we should
give the business men of this country a banking and currency system by
means of which they can make use of the freedom of enterprise and of
individual initiative which we are about to bestow upon them.
We are about to set them free; we must not leave them without the tools
of action when they are free. We are about to set them free by removing

the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have
waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities it will bring
with it. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Some fell in love,
indeed, with the slothful security of their dependence upon the
Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set
up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the tonic
and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. There will be
some readjustments of purpose and point of view. There will follow a
period of expansion and new enterprise, freshly conceived. It is for us
to determine now whether it shall be rapid and facile and of easy
accomplishment. This it cannot be unless the resourceful business men
who are to deal with the new circumstances are to have at hand and
ready for use the instrumentalities and conveniences of free enterprise
which independent men need when acting on their own initiative.
It is not enough to strike the shackles from business. The duty of
statesmanship is not negative merely. It is constructive also. We must
show that we understand what business needs and that we know how to
supply it. No man, however casual and superficial his observation of
the conditions now prevailing in the country, can fail to see that one of
the chief things business needs now, and will need increasingly as it
gains in scope and vigor in the years immediately ahead of us, is the
proper means by which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate and
individual, and its originative brains. What will it profit us to be free if
we are not to have the best and most accessible instrumentalities of
commerce and enterprise? What will it profit us to be quit of one kind
of monopoly if we are to remain in the grip of another and more
effective kind? How are we to gain and keep the confidence of the
business community unless we show that we know how both to aid and
to protect it? What shall we say if we make fresh enterprise necessary
and also make it very difficult by leaving all else except the tariff just
as we found it? The tyrannies of business, big and little, lie within the
field of credit. We know that. Shall we not act upon the knowledge? Do
we not know how to act upon it? If a man cannot make his assets
available at pleasure, his assets of capacity and character and resource,
what satisfaction