JANE ADDAMS

SECONDING THE NOMINATION OF ROOSEVELT FOR PRESIDENT, 1912

Jane Addams was born in 1860 and has long been identified with the social settlement of Hull House in Chicago. She has written and lectured on many subjects of political and social reform. She is generally recognized as the most eminent woman in public life in this country. The following notable speech was made in seconding the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 convention of the Progressive Party. Miss Addams' eulogy of Henry Lloyd is given in Volume IX and another speech in Volume I.

I RISE to second the nomination, stirred by the splendid platform adopted by this convention.

Measures of industrial amelioration, demands for social justice, long discussed by small groups in charity conferences and economic associations, have here been considered in a great national convention and are at last thrust into the stern arena of political action.

A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safeguarding of burdened men. Committed to these humane undertakings, it is inevitable that such a party should appeal to women, should seek to draw upon the great reservoir of their moral energy so long undesired and unutilized in practical politics-one the corollary of the other; a program of human welfare, the necessity for women's participation.

We ratify this platform not only because it represents our earnest convictions and formulates our high hopes, but because it pulls upon our faculties and calls us to definite action. We find it a prophecy that democracy shall not be actually realized until no group of our people-certainly not 10,000,000 so sadly in need of reassurance-shall fail to bear the responsibili

ties of self-government and that no class of evils shall lie beyond redress.

The new party has become the American exponent of a worldwide movement toward juster social conditions, a movement which the United States, lagging behind other great nations, has been unaccountably slow to embody in political action.

I second the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt because he is one of the few men in our public life who has been responsive to the social appeal and who has caught the significance of the modern movement. Because of that, because the program will require a leader of invincible courage, of open mind, of democratic sympathies, one endowed with power to interpret the common man and to identify himself with the common lot, I heartily second the nomination.

MAGNUS WASHINGTON

ALEXANDER

CITIZENSHIP

Mr. Alexander, born in New York, 1870, is now consulting engineer on economic issues of the General Electric Co. This address was delivered at the commencement of Trinity College, June 20, 1921.

PERMIT me to give a word of vital information out of the book of experience and to sound a note of warning.

It was the custom in ancient Athens to hold each year a festival at which all young men who had attained their eighteenth year were admitted to citizenship. There in the Temple of Aglaurus, in the presence of the Elders of the city and of many citizens, and with the gods of ancient Hellas as his witness, each of the young men took a solemn oath in these terms:

I will never disgrace these hallowed weapons or abandon my companions beside whom I am placed in battle, but will fight for both sacred and secular things with my fellows. I will not leave my country less, but greater and better by sea and by land. I will obey the rulers appointed and the established laws and whatsoever new laws the state may lawfully establish. And if anyone attempt to abolish the existing ordinances or disobey them, I will resist him and defend them individually and with the rest.

(Translation from Pollux by Sir Richard Jebb.)

You young men who are about to leave this college, have reached a period in life similar to that of the youth of Athens. Commencement is your time for taking the Athenian oath. This festival attended by your elders in learning, by the officers and trustees of the college, by some of the citizenry and by many of those dear to you, has very aptly been called "Com

mencement," for it is for you the beginning, the commencement of a broader period of activity.

Most of you leave these college walls to seek your fortunes in the world. You are indeed fortunate that you are entering the world of activity at such a time as the present, for this is a period of momentous and world-wide change. It is a time that has shaken some of the oldest nations to their very roots. We are now emerging from a great world war, the significance and effects of which we cannot clearly see because of our proximity to it. Almost three years have elapsed since the termination of this war, but political and economic world conditions still appear chaotic. The present world-wide depression of industry is but one of the waves in the backwash of this war. No one can tell how long a period will yet elapse before conditions again approach a state of normality.

In this world of momentous and far-reaching change, you in common with the rest of the citizens of this country will have to take your part. It is a part that is all the more difficult because of the position of leadership which our young country has attained among civilized nations.

You will find that in national as well as in international activities, the economic elements dominate, for economics is nothing but the study of the relations of man and man in society. It is little more than the study of how men earn their bread and butter. Economic life to-day is highly organized; national boundaries and territorial demarcations do not limit it. It is like a delicate web encompassing all our activities. A single tension at any one point is immediately reflected in other parts, and a weakening in one place is followed by a weakening in other places.

Thus a strike of sheep shearers in Australia may mean not only a serious curtailment in the wool clip in Australia, but the enforced idleness of men and women in the woolen mills of New England and, in turn, may be reflected in higher prices of woolen wearing apparel in France, Italy, China and other countries to which we export woolen clothing. Similarly, the failure of the wheat crop in the United States or the serious curtailment of the cotton crop, due to the depredations of the boll weevil, may not only throw food or cotton manufacturing