During my service in Washington I had seen a large amount of government business. Peace had been made with the Central Powers, the tariff revised, the budget system adopted, taxation reduced, large payments made on the national debt, the Veterans’ Bureau organized, important farm legislation passed, public expenditures greatly decreased, the differences with Colombia of twenty years’ standing composed, and the Washington Conference had reached an epoch-making agreement for the practical limitation of naval armaments. It would be difficult to find two years of peace-time history in all the record of our republic that were marked with more important and far-reaching accomplishments. From my position as President of the Senate, and in my attendance upon the sessions of the Cabinet, I thus came into possession of a very wide knowledge of the details of the government. In spite of the remarkable record which had already been made, much remained to be done. While anything that relates to the functions of the government is of enormous interest to me, its economic relations have always had a peculiar fascination for me. Though these are necessarily predicated on order and peace, yet our people are so thoroughly law-abiding and our foreign relations are so happy that the problem of government action which is to carry its benefits into the homes of all the people becomes almost entirely confined to the realm of economics. My personal experience with business had been such as comes to a country lawyer. My official experience with government business had been of a wide range. As Mayor, I had charge of the financial affairs of the City of Northampton. As Lieutenant-Governor, I was Chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Governor’s Council, which had to authorize every cent of the expenditures of the Commonwealth before they could be made. As Governor, I was chargeable with responsibility both for appropriations and for expenditures. My fundamental idea of both private and public business came first from my father. He had the strong New England trait of great repugnance at seeing anything wasted. He was a generous and charitable man, but he regarded waste as a moral wrong. Wealth comes from industry and from the hard experience of human toil. To dissipate it in waste and extravagance is disloyalty to humanity. This is by no means a doctrine of parsimony. Both men and nations should live in accordance with their means and devote their substance not only to productive industry, but to the creation of the various forms of beauty and the pursuit of culture which give adornments to the art of life. When I became President it was perfectly apparent that the key by which the way could be opened to national progress was constructive economy. Only by the use of that policy could the high rates of taxation, which were retarding our development and prosperity, be diminished, and the enormous burden of our public debt be reduced.