The Philosophy of Labor Legislation: Presidential Address, American Association for Labor Legislation

Careful study of any period will reveal that back of all the complex happenings marking such period there have been certain fundamental impulses, certain human strivings, of which the happenings themselves have been, in great part, but the manifestations, or expression in concrete action. It is the prime function of the historian to discover, explain the rise, trace the development and make known the results of these forces which have dominated mass action in the past. Only as this is done do the myriad of events going to make up the body of historical data assume a real meaning, and historical narrative become other than a dry tabulation of detail.A distinguished historian, E. A. Freeman, has well said that if history is past politics, politics is present history. If it is of value for the historian to trace out and place in their true light those great movements of the past, how much more important it is that the student of present-day politics should, by a similar examination of current events and efforts, seek to make known, and interpret the forces and aspirations now dictating the collective action of peoples.