i5 2 Presidential Addresses 



done by any corporation, the growth that could take 

 place in any community. 



Suddenly, during our own lifetime as a nation 

 a lifetime trivial in duration compared to the period 

 of recorded history there came a revolution in the 

 means of intercourse which made a change in com 

 merce, and in all that springs from commerce, in in 

 dustrial development, greater than all the changes 

 of the preceding thousands of years. A greater 

 change in the means of commerce of mankind has 

 taken place since Wheeling was founded, since the 

 first settlers built their log huts in the great forests 

 on the banks of this river, than in all the previous 

 period during which man had led an existence that 

 can be called civilized. 



Through the railway, the electric telegraph, and 

 other developments, steam and electricity worked a 

 complete revolution. This has meant, of course, 

 that entirely new problems have sprung up. You 

 have right in this immediate neighborhood a very 

 much larger population than any similar region in 

 all the United States held when the Continental 

 Congress began its sessions; and the change in in 

 dustrial conditions has been literally immeasurable. 

 Those changed conditions need a corresponding 

 change in the governmental agencies necessary for 

 their regulation and supervision. 



Such agencies were not provided, and could not 

 have been provided, in default of a knowledge of 

 prophecy by the men who founded the Republic. 

 In those days each State could take care perfectly 



