In dealing with future problems like this one of Conservation, we need to keep in mind the lesson taught by the American pioneer. It is a lesson that is to be found in the fact that the pioneer is so good an American. He is an American, first and foremost. The man of the West throughout the successive stages of Western growth has always been one of the two or three most typical figures, indeed I am tempted to say the most typical figure, in American life; and no man can really understand our country, and appreciate what it really is and what it promises, unless he has the fullest and closest sympathy with the ideals and aspirations of the West. The great lesson that all of us need to learn and to keep is the lesson that it is unimportant whether a man lives North or South, East or West, provided that he is genuinely and in good faith an American; that he feels every part of the United States as his own, and that he is honestly desirous to uphold the interests of all other Americans in whatever sections of the country they may dwell. The Tariff: A Moral Issue Whenever men just like ourselves—probably not much better, and certainly no worse—continually fail to give us the results we have a right to expect from their efforts, we may just as well make up our minds that the fault lies, not in their personality, but in the conditions under which they work, and profit comes, not from denouncing them, but in seeing that the conditions are changed. This is especially true of tariff-making. It has been conclusively shown, by experiments repeated again and again, that the methods of tariff-making by Congress, which have now obtained for so many years, cannot, from the very nature of the case, bring really satisfactory results. I think that the present tariff is better than the last, and considerably better than the one before the last; but it has certainly failed to give general satisfaction. I believe this country is fully committed to the principle of protection; but it is to protection as a principle; to protection primarily in the interest of the standard of living of the American workingman. I believe that when protection becomes, not a principle, but a privilege and a preference—or, rather, a jumble of privileges and preferences—then the American people disapprove of it. Now, to correct the trouble, it is necessary, in the first place, to get in mind clearly what we want, and, in the next place, to get in mind clearly the method by which we hope to obtain what we want. What we want is a square deal in the tariff as in everything else; a square deal for the wage-earner; a square deal for the employer; and a square deal for the general public. To obtain it we must have a thoroughly efficient and well-equipped tariff commission.