Fear Wilson's Intellect.

New York Times 100 years ago today, September 13, 1912:
Opponents Find His Mental Gifts Offensive, Says Jersey Governor.
Special to The New York Times.
    SYRACUSE, Sept. 12.— Gov. Wilson made a speech to the farmers to-day at the Syracuse State Fair, devoting much of his remarks to the Bull Moose candidate.
    The Governor, for the first time, retorted on Col. Roosevelt for referring to him as "Prof." Wilson and "Dr." Wilson.
    "I am very much embarrassed nowadays," he said, "at being introduced in terms which describe and always exaggerate my intellectual gifts, because I find that my intellectual gifts are very offensive to my opponents, and I would not do them an intellectual discourtesy. Because whenever argument touches the raw and goes to the quick, whenever you show that you know what the facts are and what they mean, then it is hurled back at you that you are academic. The only way not to be academic apparently is not to know what you are talking about."
    The Governor evoked a good laugh from the crowd by his reference to the attacks upon his scholastic training and he got another when he frankly confessed that he didn't know a thing about farming and so couldn't do the favorite political thing of trying to prove a fellowship with those who tilled the soil.
    Gov. Wilson spoke of the need of politics to touch life closer in a manner to make living easier for the people. He discussed the higher cost of living, pointing out that prices had become higher in the high tariff countries than in the free trade countries and higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world. He held that there no longer existed the need for the tariff that existed a score of years ago, since "the gentlemen on the American side of the tariff wall had pretty nearly all got together in combinations and cut off all domestic competition — a thing which kept the tariff from being iniquitous for many years."
    "A man came to me the other day," said Gov. Wilson, "and he took my breath away. He said he was a woolen manufacturer and a beneficiary of Schedule K. Yet he said I was dead right that Schedule K was an iniquity and ought to be changed. One of the bright signs of our times is the number of business men of high integrity who are willing to recognise that they themselves have been the beneficiaries of things that were wrong and who no longer wish to profit by them."
    The cause for the persistent defense of the tariff in Congress, Gov. Wilson said, was that the legislators managed to get a good slice of the tariff profits in campaign contributions, "and so were not anxious to kill the goose that lay the golden eggs, particularly when she has turned out to be a very ancient and a very wise goose who knows her own interests and her own business."
    From the tariff Gov. Wilson turned his remarks to Col. Roosevelt and the Bull Moose platform.
    "Any man who says that his only objection to the tariff," declared Gov. Wilson, "is that the spoils are not properly divided, and any man who says that he intends to let the trusts stay as they are, but act under the control of the Government, is a man who has declined to attack the very centre of our political and economic difficulties, and he is utterly unable afterward to solve any of the questions of our life. If he hasn't nerve enough to cut to the centre he cannot save the life. We have got to go to the heart of this business like men who know, and not like rash men; but we have got to go to the heart of it and we have got to go fearing no man, fearing only God and justice and righteousness.
    "I'll tell you this," the Governor went on speaking of his candidacy for the Presidency; "a man would be a rash fool to covet the position for his own aggrandizement. It will be the most solemn responsibility that any man has undertaken in our generation, and nothing but the counsel of wise men throughout the country will sustain the function."