152 State Papers and Addresses

Cordell Hull. By showing its attentiveness to the public interest, by adhering
to the wishes of the great body of American people, by choosing to continue
along the path of peace, the Democratic National Administration gives evidence
that the principles and purposes underlying its existence can be adapted to the
entirely changed situation than that which confronted the Country in Andrew
Jackson's day.

No safer rule can be followed than to base a prediction of future conduct
on that which has been done in the past. Such a rule is applicable to a group
of men composing a political party just as certainly as it is applicable to an
individual. Applying that yardstick, Americans can feel the safest by entrust-
ing their destinies to a Party such as yours, which has measured up to every
emergency in the past. We are fortunate and thankful that the Democratic
Party was, and is today, the melting pot of the North and of the South, of
capital and of labor. In a day when Republicans still waved the "bloody
shirts, " the Democrats elected a New Yorker, Grover Cleveland, with Southern
votes. Then they sent a Virginia Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, to become
Governor of New Jersey before he went to the White House. It was a Demo-
cratic Administration that first gave labor a seat in the President's cabinet.
It was a Democratic President who first put an outspoken Liberal on the
Supreme Court of the United States.

But after reviewing the many developments we might ask whether the
Americanization of Democracy has come to an end. Well, we might just as
well ask if the human body—if any living organism—can cease to assimilate
food and still continue to live. New ideas, necessary to meet new and ever-
changing problems, are the very sustenance of this ageless dream.

What was radical to the Pilgrim Fathers was middle-of-the-road doctrine
to their grandchildren. The French theories of Thomas Jefferson were Ameri-
can home-spun to Andrew Jackson, and so it goes. The moment we close our
minds to progressive thought, that moment we cease to be alive. This is the
challenge of the Democratic Party from this anniversary of Andrew Jackson's
triumph on. The year 1940 will be epochal in the Nation's history as well as
in the Party's annals.

Let us not draw back in alarm at the reactionaries who will always be
among us to raise their voices in great alarm because something new is being
suggested. In 1895 the spectre of an Income Tax caused Joseph H. Choate to
call that form of legislation "a Communistic march. " As late as 1912 Presi-
dent Taft was declaring that popular referendum "is socialism. " We smile
at those preposterous fears today, but they were the bugaboos of yesteryear.
Let us go forward with confidence in the ability of our Party—so many times
proven—to Americanize any idea before it is digested.

Reference to the undoubtedly great part played by Jackson in shaping this
Country's future would not be complete without the recital of the estimate of
this man by John Fiske, admittedly the outstanding contemporary authority
on the government and institutions of the United States. He said:

"The theory of government set forth in books is that the most clear-headed
and powerful thinker now living in the world, is a man who, moreover, is
thinking thoughts of tomorrow as well as of today. In spirit it is most
profoundly American, but not in the sense in which that word was under-
stood by Clay and the Whigs. It was Jackson whose sounder instincts