Wilson in 1912

As the Democratic convention neared, Woodrow Wilson, surely recognizing that labor was a major constituency of his party, tried to appeal more to workers and organized labor.  He strove to differentiate his position from that of Taft.

In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Wilson stated:

"If I am right about this, it is going to be easier to act in accordance with the rule of right and justice in dealing with the labor question.  The so-called labor question is a question only because we have not yet found the rule of right in adjusting the interests of labor and capital.  The welfare, the happiness, the energy, and spirit of the men and women who do daily work in our mines and factories, on our railroads, in our offices and marts of trade, on our farms and on the sea, is of the essence of our national life.  There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented.  Their physical welfare affects the soundness of the whole nation.  We shall never get very far in the settlement of these vital matters so long as we regard everything done for the workingman, by law or by private agreement, as a concession yielded to keep him from agitation and a disturbance of our peace.  Here, again, the sense of universal partnership must come into play if we are to act like statesmen, as those who serve, not a class, but a nation.

The working people of America -- if they must be distinguished from the minority that constitutes the rest of it -- are, of course, the backbone of the nation.  No law that safeguards their life, that improves the physical and moral conditions under which they live, that makes their hours of labor rational and tolerable, that gives them freedom to act in their own interest, and that protects them where they can not protect themselves, can properly be regarded as class legislation or as anything but as a measure taken in the interest of the whole people, whose partnership in right action we are trying to establish and make real and practical.  It is in this spirit that we shall act if we are genuine spokesmen of the whole country."