Woodrow Wilson as I Know HimTumulty, Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick)
History
Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him
Tumulty, Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
The candidate soon struck his gait and astonished me and all New Jersey
with the vigour, frankness, and lucidity of his speeches of exposition and
appeal. No campaign in years in New Jersey had roused such universal
interest. There was no mistaking the character and enthusiasm of the
greeting the candidate received every place he spoke, nor the response his
thrilling speeches evoked all over the state. Those who had gathered the
idea that the head of the great university would appear pedantic and stand
stiff-necked upon an academic pedestal from which he would talk over the
heads of the common people were forced, by the fighting, aggressive
attitude of the Doctor, to revise their old estimates. The campaign had
only begun when the leading newspapers of the country, particularly the
large dailies of New York, were taking an interest in the New Jersey
fight.
Those of us who doubted Woodrow Wilson's sincerity and his sympathy for
the great progressive measures for which we had been fighting in the New
Jersey Legislature were soon put at ease by the developments of his
campaign and his sympathetic attitude toward the things we had so much at
heart.
No candidate for governor in New Jersey had ever made so striking and
moving an appeal. Forgetting and ignoring the old slogans and shibboleths,
he appealed to the hearts and consciences of the people of the state. His
homely illustrations evoked expressions of delight, until it seemed as if
this newcomer in the politics of our state had a better knowledge of the
psychology of the ordinary crowd than the old stagers who had spent their
lives in politics. His illustrations always went home.
For instance, speaking of progress, Doctor Wilson said that much depended
upon the action of the one who is supposed to be progressive. "I can
recall," he would say in trying to make his point, "the picture of a poor
devil of a donkey on a treadmill. He keeps on tramping, tramping,
tramping, but he never gets anywhere. But," he continued, "there is a
certain elephant that's tramping, too, and how much progress is it
making?" And then, again, he would grow solemn when he spoke of the
average man. Turning aside from the humorous, he would strike a serious
note like this one:
You know that communities are not distinguished by exceptional men.
They are distinguished by the average of their citizenship. I often
think of the poor man when he goes to vote: a moral unit in his lonely
dignity.
The deepest conviction and passion of my heart is that the common
people, by which I mean all of us, are to be absolutely trusted. The
peculiarity of some representatives, particularly those of the
Republican party, is that when they talk about the people, they
obviously do not include themselves. Now if, when you think of the
people, you are not thinking about yourself, then you do not belong in
America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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