Who Are The People

Performed by William H. Taft
Recorded October 1, 1912

I cannot think that the American people, after the scrutiny and education of this campaign during which they will be able to see through the fog of misrepresentation and demagoguery, will fail to recognize that the two great issues, which are here presented to them, are: First, whether we shall retain on a sound and permanent basis, our popular constitutional representative form of government with the independence of the judiciary as necessary to the preservation of those liberties that are the inheritance of centuries, and second, whether we shall welcome prosperity which is just at our door by maintaining our present economic business basis, and by the encouragement of business expansion and progress through legitimate use of capital. May we not hope that the great majority of voters will be able to distinguish between the substance of performance and the question of promise? That they may be able to see that those who would deliberately stir up discontent and create hostility toward those who are conducting legitimate business enterprises, and who represent the business progress of the country, are sowing dragon seed. Who are the people? They are not alone the unfortunate and the weak. They are the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich, and the many who are neither. The wage earner and the capitalist, the farmer and the professional man, the merchant and the manufacturer, the storekeeper and the clerk, the railroad manager and the employee, they all make up the people, and they all contribute to the running of the government, and they have not, anyone of them, given into the hands of anyone the mandate that speaks for them as peculiarly the peoples’ representative. Especially does not he represent them, who assuming that only the people are the discontented, would stir them up against the remainder of those whose government alike this is. In other campaigns before this, the American people have been confused and misled and diverted from the truth, and from a clear perception of their welfare, by specious appeals to their prejudices and their misunderstanding. But the clarifying effect of a campaign of education, the breaking of the bubbles of demagogic promise, which the discussions of a campaign made possible, have brought the people to a clear perception of their own injuries and to a rejection of the injurious nostrum that in the beginning of the campaign it was then feared they might embrace and adopt. So may we not expect in the issues which are now before us, that the ballots cast in November shall show a prevailing majority in favor of sound progress great prosperity upon a protective basis and under true constitutional and representative rule by the people.