Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/257

WOODROW WILSON 215 dency, Mr. Wilson thus succinctly summarized in his speech at Sea Girt the two great things he would undertake to do : "There are two great things to do. One is to set up the rule of justice and of right in such mat ters as the tariff, the regulation of the trusts and the prevention of monopoly, the adaptation of our banking and currency laws to the varied uses to which our people must put them, the treatment of those who do the daily labor in our factories and mines and throughout all our great industrial and commercial undertakings, and the political life of the people of the Philippines, for whom we hold governmental power in trust for their service, not our own. The other, the additional duty, is the great task of protecting our people and our re sources and of keeping open to the whole people the doors of opportunity through which they must, generation by generation, pass if they are to make conquest of their fortunes in health, in freedom, in peace and in contentment. In the performance of this second great duty we are face to face with questions of conservation and of development, questions of forests and water powers and mines and waterways, of the building of an adequate merchant marine, and the opening of every high way and facility and the setting up of every safe guard needed by a great, industrious, expanding nation."