are called upon to render the country a great service in more matters
than one. Our responsibility should be met and our methods should be
thorough, as thorough as moderate and well considered, based upon the
facts as they are, and not worked out as if we were beginners. We are to
deal with the facts of our own day, with the facts of no other, and to
make laws which square with those facts. It is best, indeed it is
necessary, to begin with the tariff. I will urge nothing upon you now at
the opening of your session which can obscure that first object or
divert our energies from that clearly defined duty. At a later time I
may take the liberty of calling your attention to reforms which should
press close upon the heels of the tariff changes, if not accompany them,
of which the chief is the reform of our banking and currency laws; but
just now I refrain. For the present, I put these matters on one side and
think only of this one thing--of the changes in our fiscal system which
may best serve to open once more the free channels of prosperity to a
great people whom we would serve to the utmost and throughout both rank
and file.

I thank you for your courtesy.

[B] It had been the practice of our Presidents to send their Messages to
Congress and not to read them in person.

ADDRESS ON THE BANKING SYSTEM

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, June 23,
1913.]

MR. SPEAKER, MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear and imperative
duty that I have a second time this session sought the privilege of
addressing you in person. I know, of course, that the heated season of
the year is upon us, that work in these chambers and in the committee
rooms is likely to become a burden as the season lengthens, and that
every consideration of personal convenience and personal comfort,
perhaps, in the cases of some of us, considerations of personal health
even, dictate an early conclusion of the deliberations of the session;
but there are occasions of public duty when these things which touch us
privately seem very small, when the work to be done is so pressing and
so fraught with big consequence that we know that we are not at liberty
to weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in the
presence of such an occasion. It is absolutely imperative that we should
give the business men of this country a banking and currency system by
means o