Then there is the question of conservation.  What is our fear about conservation?  The hands that are being stretched out to monopolize our forests, to prevent or pre-empt the use of our great power-producing streams, the hands that are being stretched into the bowels of the earth to take possession of the great riches that lie hidden in Alaska and elsewhere in the incomparable domain of the United States, are the hands of monopoly.  Are these men to continue to stand at the elbow of government and tell us how we are to save ourselves,—­from themselves?  You can not settle the question of conservation while monopoly is close to the ears of those who govern.  And the question of conservation is a great deal bigger than the question of saving our forests and our mineral resources and our waters; it is as big as the life and happiness and strength and elasticity and hope of our people.

There are tasks awaiting the government of the United States which it cannot perform until every pulse of that government beats in unison with the needs and the desires of the whole body of the American people.  Shall we not give the people access of sympathy, access of authority, to the instrumentalities which are to be indispensable to their lives?

IV

LIFE COMES FROM THE SOIL

When I look back on the processes of history, when I survey the genesis of America, I see this written over every page:  that the nations are renewed from the bottom, not from the top; that the genius which springs up from the ranks of unknown men is the genius which renews the youth and energy of the people.  Everything I know about history, every bit of experience and observation that has contributed to my thought, has confirmed me in the conviction that the real wisdom of human life is compounded out of the experiences of ordinary men.  The utility, the vitality, the fruitage of life does not come from the top to the bottom; it comes, like the natural growth of a great tree, from the soil, up through the trunk into the branches to the foliage and the fruit.  The great struggling unknown masses of the men who are at the base of everything are the dynamic force that is lifting the levels of society.  A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file.

So the first and chief need of this nation of ours to-day is to include in the partnership of government all those great bodies of unnamed men who are going to produce our future leaders and renew the future energies of America.  And as I confess that, as I confess my belief in the common man, I know what I am saying.  The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.  The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn.  The man who is on the make is the judge of what is happening in America, not the man who has made good; not the man who has emerged from the flood; not the man who is standing on the bank looking on, but the man who is struggling for his life and for the lives of those who are dearer to him than himself.  That is the man whose judgment will tell you what is going on in America; that is the man by whose judgment I, for one, wish to be guided.