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Copyright Photograph by Harris & Fwing, Washington. From Paul Thompson, New York.

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President Wilson Signing the Federal Reserve Act-THE LAW THAT ABOLISHED PANICS

Why Business Men Will Vote for Wilson

T

The Constructive DOMESTIC Legislation which has Created Prosperity and Made for its Permanence

HE outstanding feature of the 1916 Presidental campaign is that many thousands of Progressives and Republicans are openly supporting President Wilson and advocating a continuance of his policies.

An astonishingly large proportion of these are the heads of our most important industries which do an inter-state business. They are your kind of business men. They believe that the marvelous business development of this nation during the last two years is due to the policies of Mr. Wilson and not to the war in Europe. You will doubtless challenge this, but read a little further and you will see the proof. These business men feel that he has caused to be enacted legislation which the country needed desperately and which, in spite of promises, it failed to get under other administrations. They feel that he has far exceeded his campaign pledges that, unlike predecessors, he has created helpful laws as he found the need to

arise from conditions which made themselves evident after his adjustment to his office. They feel that never before in the history of the nation have so many vitally necessary and so completely sound economic reforms been enacted into laws in so short a time.

These views and the reasons for them can not fail to merit your earnest consideration, since they are the views of Mr. Wilson's former political opponents, important men who do not change their minds easily, but who, in this instance, have had overwhelming cause to do so. They have changed their minds-they will vote for Mr. Wilson, and here are the reasons why.

In two years our national wealth has increased $41,000,000,000. This is approximately $410 per capita, an increase beyond parallel in any other period of the nation's history. Bank deposits have increased 24% over 1912. The trade balance in favor of the nation has increased 227% over 1912. Our

Our national_wealth has increased $41,000,000,000 in This is NOT due to the war. What DID it?

two years.

The Outlook Advertising Section

agricultural exports have increased 44.1%. Our manufactured exports have increased 55%. Farm lands have increased in valuation 12.7% over 1912. Employees of manufacturing industries have increased 23.2% over 1912. The value of our manufactured products has increased $9,400,000,000, or 41.2% over 1912. The very magnitude of these figures makes it difficult to comprehend their true significance. Labor leaders have made the statement that never before in the history of the world have so many people been given steady employment at such high wages, under conditions so satisfactory as in this country to-day.

In New York State the number of factory employees was 21% greater in April, 1916, than in April, 1915. This condition is typical of that in industrial centres throughout the nation.

This is not a sectional prosperity. It is national. Neither is it a class prosperity bene fiting some at the expense of others. Farmers, working men-skilled and unskilled, manufacturers, merchants, transportation lines, public service corporations, all have had their proportion-the makers and the distributors, all have shared in the unprecedented trade vol

ume.

FACTS ABOUT WAR PROFITS

The war has helped the country-in spots. There is no argument about that. But few realize how very small are our benefits from the war compared with the mighty volume of trade increase.

Here are the figures. Our munitions exports are $480,000,000 for the fiscal year, or only one per cent of our manufactured products. The manufactured products have increased $9,400,000,000 for 1916 over 1912. Deduct the munitions business from this total, and there is still an increase of $8,920,000,000 in manufactured products over 1912.

It is true that our exports of other commodities, foodstuffs, agricultural machinery and the like have been increased both to countries at peace and at war by the paralyzing of European industries during war time. But here again our benefit is but a small percentage of the trade increase. Our foreign trade balance, the excess of our exports over our imports, has increased $2,130,000,000 during the two years of war. For the sake of conservatism, let us assume that this entire foreign trade balance is due to war conditions. Still, our national wealth has increased $41,000,

000,000 during the same period, or nearly twenty times our foreign trade balance. Giving the war credit for all our increase of exports, it is still evident that the staggering amount of over $38,000,000,000 increase in national wealth in two years is due to interior conditions-domestic prosperity.

And domestic prosperity can be due only to domestic causes, and powerful indeed must be the causes to produce so unprecedented an increase in prosperity in the unprecedentedly short space of two years.

Here are the causes: Mr. Wilson has from his first days of office shown the keenest solicitude for the business of the nation.

He early formulated the policy of compelling big business to correct its own abuses where abuses existed. The Department of Justice has been coldly just and absolutely relentless in the prosecution of criminal interests and individuals. But it has taken firm yet friendly counsel with interests whose practices were legitimate. Not only has this been a direct benefit to the country at large, which has been protected from predatory short cuts by great interests, but it has placed these interests themselves on the sure, safe foundation of justice, right and fair dealing; changed many a short-sighted get-rich-quick policy to an enduring soundness which is immune from attack through its very qualities of fairness and clean methods. And the interests so reconstructed are vastly sounder and safer financially through this enforced reconstruction of policy from within.

RESTORING CONFIDENCE

Capital has been encouraged in all legitimate enterprises, instead of being discouraged and intimidated. Mr. Wilson has made business ethics, business decency, business morality and business humanitarianism nationally fashionable to our everlasting credit. The figures above prove how very profitable it has been.

We cried for years about a nation-wide lack of confidence. Mr. Wilson recognized the need-Mr. Wilson restored confidence.

Mr. Wilson has kept us out of war-and with honor and dignity. He gave us the chance to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunities for business increase within our own borders. The expansion of our trade to foreign countries is a splendid thing. The men engaged in it are doing a work for which the nation will be deeply indebted to them in years to come. But it is well to remember that this The Outlook Advertising Section

WHY BUSINESS MEN WILL VOTE FOR WILSON

country is so young, its confines so wide, its natural resources so beyond estimate, its opportunities for self-development so vast, its powers of consumption of both agricultural and manufactured products so astounding, that we could even wipe out our own exports completely and still have prosperity with us through the encouragement and extension of our home industries and home consumption. The increase of manufactured products alone was more during a single year by the volume of $3,886,000,000 than our combined agricultural and manufactured exports during twenty months-a period nearly twice as long. And this increase was consumed within the confines of our own nation, an easy and natural market.

This is an indication of how we can prosper at home if helped by constructive legislation, how Mr. Wilson's sound administrative policy has helped us when we were sadly in need of help. It must not be taken to decry the value of building up our export trade on which the ultimate prosperity of the nation will unquestionably depend.*

WHAT MADE EXPANSION POSSIBLE

That expansion of home business, which far exceeds the prophecy of any optimist, is what Mr. Wilson made possible for us by keeping us out of war. Taking the coldly material side of it alone, leaving out the horrors of death and mutilation, the nation-wide sadness of devastated homes, Mr. Wilson has brought us Prosperity by assuring us Peace. And this he has done through the most trying period the world has ever known, though he was perplexed and beset with complications from every side. And we must be forever indebted to Mr. Wilson for saving the lives of countless thousands of

our sons.

Now see the enduring foundation of desperately needed, sound economic reforms which have been enacted into laws during Mr. Wilson's administration and which are the most vital insurance of our prosperity, while increasing our national self-respect:

No. 1. The Federal Reserve Act, which has “cured us of fits ❞—cured our national disease of panics. Economists unite in saying that we would have had the worst panic of the nation's history at the outbreak of the European war, were it not for the elastic currency system, the Please write us in 100 words, or fewer, why you are supporting Mr. Wilson. We can make a most valuable use of your expression.

fluid mobilization of banking resources at needed points, which this law made possible. By its provisions not one bank was obliged to call the loans of one merchant, at a time when the money centres of the world were shut up almost over night. This one piece of legislation, which has made panics almost impossible, stands out in value far beyond any constructive legislation which any other administration has ever given us.

No. 2. The Rural Credit Bill, which for the first time puts the farmer on a plane with other business men in the enjoyment of credit facilities adapted to his needs-a situation provided over a generation ago for every other business of the country by the National Bank Act.

No. 3. The Income Tax Law, which takes from the extraordinarily rich a largely increased amount toward the expenses of a Government that operates for their benefit in safeguarding the investments on which the balance of their incomes depend.

No. 4. The Federal Trade Commission Act, for the protection of the public and the business man as well-which is framed to prevent unfairness in competition, injustice in any industrial operation. It assures a constant study of business conditions that they may be improved for vested capital, manufacturers, distributors, the wage earners, and the consumers.

No. 5. The Clayton Bill, which makes clear, simple rules of the alarming and threatening vagueness of the Sherman Law-which prevents monopoly through the control of one corporation by another, which restricts the abuses that have in the past arisen from interlocking directorates, which decrees that "The labor of a human being is not a commodity nor article of commerce.”"

No. 6. The Good Roads Law, which gives to the states Federal aid in building roads and which will inevitably make more accessible the farm lands of the nation, increase their value and decrease the operating expenses of the farmer.

No. 7. The Smith-Lever Agricultural Education Act, providing that the Federal Government shall co-operate with the states in educating the farmer in ways of securing greater productivity of the soil-in replacing rule-of-thumb methods with scientific and intensive effort, which will add vastly to the wealth of the nation by increasing the productivity of each acre and by increasing acreage under cultivation.

No. 8. The Child Labor Bill, which Mr. Wilson has vigorously advocated against

The Outlook Advertising Section

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The list of achievements under Wilson is long the time in which they were wrought was short. But there is still work to be done. After many distressing years, after years of trusting and being disappointed, we have found a man who will do it-who has done it-and who is doing more-who is still laboring at the work yet to be done.

We need to keep that man. We must keep prosperity and we must carry the work forward.

We want to keep the proven man, the proven motives, the wisdom, the foresight, the unselfishness, the caution, the safety, the good times, the contented, happy workers with useful work to do and lots of it.

Under President Wilson business has been emancipated from panics; the farmer from chaotic credit conditions; the workers of the nation from adverse conditions which persisted for generations; the children by an enlightened

economic principle which no President ever before advocated.

When Woodrow Wilson was elected the voters of the nation were emancipated from the necessity of depending on a few rich men with far-reaching vested interests to finance a presidential campaign, and it is imperative that this emancipation be made permanent.

It takes money so to conduct a campaign for the Presidency that all the issues may be properly presented to all the people for their intelligent consideration-it always has and always will. We propose to see that the people themselves provide the necessary funds. This is their right and their privilege.

We earnestly request you to join the "Hundred Thousand Club," the members of which will contribute the funds to insure the continuance of the work which was begun under Mr. Wilson. We urge you to contribute what you can. Send us $100-send us more if you can. Send us all you can-if it is only $10. Send that and it will be just as gratefully received.

This is a test. It is a test of you and your convictions, and your willingness to strive for these convictions. We want a contribution from you that will mean a real sacrifice. Mr. Wilson has fought the people's fight. He has treated all citizens as Americans and sought to serve them all. We, therefore, have no hesitancy in accepting from you a contribution which will be a real sacrifice, a real strain on your resources, to do your part in carrying a great work forward.

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MR. HUGHES IN THE WEST

BY FREDERICK M. DAVENPORT
STAFF CORRESPONDENT OF THE OUTLOOK

BOOKER WASHINGTON: THE MAN AND
HIS SCHOOL

BY E. J. SCOTT AND L. B. STOWE

TWO VIEWS OF MEXICO

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE OUTLOOK

CARDINAL MERCIER: A PERSONAL IMPRESSION BY EDWARD EYRE HUNT

PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A DIFFERENCE
BY HENRY HOYT MOORE

FOR COMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS SEE
THIRD PAGE PRECEDING READING MATTER

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1916

PRICE: TEN CENTS A COPY
THRLE DOLLARS A YEAR

381 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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