Homeward Bound Edition

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS
April 7, 1904, to May 9, 1905

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT


VOLUME III

NEW YORK

THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY

MCMX

REMARKS AT THE DINNER OF THE PERIODICAL PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. THE NEW WILLARD, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 7, 1904

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:

It is always a pleasure to a man in public life to meet the real governing classes. I wish to bid you welcome to Washington this evening, and to say but one word of greeting to you, and that word shall take the form of a warning. I did not speak in jest when I alluded to you as representatives of the governing classes. I think that we of the United States can not keep too fresh in our minds the fact that the men ultimately responsible for the Government are not the representatives of the people, but the people themselves, and that therefore heavy is the responsibility that lies upon the people and above all upon those who do the most toward shaping the thought of the people. In the days of my youth I was a literary man myself. In reading a book recently, a series of essays, I was immensely struck by one thought developed in it. The writer, one of our greatest scholars, was speaking of the fact that freedom could not exist unless there went with it a thorough appreciation of responsibility,[6] and he used a phrase somewhat like this—that among all peoples there must be restraint; if there is no restraint the result is inevitably anarchy. That means the negation of all government, and the negation of all government of course means the negation of popular government; and that therefore there must be restraint, and that therefore a free people had merely substituted self-restraint for external restraint; and the permanence of our freedom as a people, the permanence of our liberties, depends upon the way in which we show and exercise that self-restraint.

There must be much more than good laws to make a good people. The man whose morality is expressed simply in the non-infringement of the law is a pretty poor creature. Unless our average citizenship is based upon a good deal more than the mere observance of the laws on the statute books—that, of course, is the preliminary—that, of course, is the beginning—but unless it is based on more than that then our average citizenship can never produce the kind of government which it must and will produce. So far from liberty, from freedom, from responsible self-government, being things that come easily and to any peoples, they are peculiarly things that can come only to the highly developed peoples. Only peoples capable, not merely of mastering others, but of mastering themselves, can achieve real liberty, can achieve real self-government; and for that self-mastery, for the cultivation of the spirit of self-restraint which is but another[7] side of the spirit of self-reliance, we must rely to no small degree upon those who furnish us much of the thought of the great bulk of our people who think most. Therefore, gentlemen, in greeting you here to-night I wish not merely to welcome you, but to say that I trust every man of you feels the weight of the responsibility that rests upon him. The man who writes, the man who month in and month out, week in and week out, day in and day out, furnishes the material which is to do its part in shaping the thoughts of our people is fundamentally the man who, more than any other, determines what kind of character, and therefore ultimately what kind of government, this people shall possess. I believe in the future of this people; I believe in the growth and greatness of this country, because I believe that fundamentally you and those like you approach your task in the proper spirit. It seems to me that because of the very fact that we are so confident in the greatness of our country and in our country’s future, we should beware of any undue levity, of any spirit of mere boastfulness, of that most irritating of all qualities, not the most noxious, but the most irritating of all qualities—the tendency to depreciate others and thereby exalt ourselves.

Courtesy among individuals is a good thing, but international courtesy is quite as good a thing. If there is any one quality to be deprecated in a public man and in a public writer alike, it is the using of language which without any corresponding gain to ourselves tends to produce irritation among nations[8] with whom we ought to be on friendly terms. Nations are now brought much nearer together than they formerly were. Steam, electricity, the immense spread of the newspaper press in all countries, the way in which so much of what is written in any country is translated into the language of another country, all of these facts have tended to bring peoples closer together now. That ought to and I think in the future will tell predominantly for good; but it does not help us in the least to be brought closer together with other peoples if they merely find our unamiable traits more strongly marked than they thought. We can rest assured that no man ever thinks better of us because we point out his salient defects; and no nation is ever won to a kindlier feeling toward us if we adopt toward it a tone which we would resent if adopted toward us.

We have a very large field for warring against evil here at home. When we have made things all as they should be in Nation, State, and municipality here at home, then we can talk about reforming the rest of mankind; but meanwhile let us begin at home.

ADDRESS AT THE PRIZE DAY EXERCISES AT GROTON SCHOOL, GROTON, MASS., MAY 24, 1904

Mr. Rector, and Boys, and Fellow-Parents:

All I shall have to say to you to-day will be simply in the line of illustrating what the Rector has said, for it seems to me that he has preached[9] just about the right gospel of life as we ought to learn it; and let me at the beginning thank the Rector for what I shall hope was a personal allusion to me, because it is the only time in my life that I have been even indirectly compared to Apollo. When the comparison was made I saw the Bishop look self-conscious, so I wish to put in my claim first.

I want to speak to you first of all as regards your duties as boys; and in the next place as regards your duties as men; and the two things hang together. The same qualities that make a decent boy make a decent man. They have different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the same. If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common-sense he is a pretty poor creature; and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.

I was struck, Mr. Peabody, by what you said as to the attitude these boys should have in college. The boys from a school like this—from Groton, from St. Mark’s, from St. Paul’s, from any of these schools—if they are worth their salt, if they have real loyalty and not merely lip-loyalty to their schools, ought to go to Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, with the firm intention of so carrying themselves that Groton, St. Mark’s, St. Paul’s, and the other schools shall not be sneered at because of anything they do. You are not entitled, either in college or in after life, to an ounce of privilege because you have been at Groton—not an[10] ounce; but we are entitled to hold you to an exceptional accountability because you have been at Groton. Because much has been given to you, therefore we have a right to expect much from you; and we have a right to expect that you shall begin to give that much just as soon as you leave school and go to college, so that you shall count when you are there.

I read the other day in a very bright college book a sentence that grated on me because of a sneer it contained at the “shoals of freshmen from church schools,” which implied that they did not so conduct themselves as to add weight for what was best in college life. I do not think such sneers are justified; but you are peculiarly liable to such sneers, and therefore you should be peculiarly careful to walk so as not to be suspected of deserving them. We have a right to expect that you will, from the outset, and without showing yourselves varieties of that most obnoxious of creatures, the prig, handle yourselves decently, so as to be a force for what is decent and right in college.

Another thing: I was glad to hear the Rector, in describing one pitfall that you are to avoid, use just exactly the right word when he asked you to be careful not to turn out snobs. Now, there are in our civic and social life very much worse creatures than snobs, but none more contemptible. (By the way—this is not speaking to the boys, but to the parents—I have had the good luck to have my boys go to the public schools before they[11] came here.) If you have any stuff in you at all, and try to amount to anything in after life, you will not remain snobs even if you start as such. It will be taken out of you very soon and very roughly if you go into any real work. Go into politics—go to your district convention, and try to carry it on the snob basis and see how far you will get. The thing that will strike you in just about a week is that there are a whole lot of able people sliding around this planet. The fact that the individual opposed to you does not wear a cravat, and does wear a saw-edge collar, does not imply that you are going to carry the convention against him! You will soon find that it is not his clothes but his political sense and energy that control. You will find that if you expect to do anything there will be mighty little temptation to try to treat the men with whom you are working on any basis save the fundamental democratic basis of what they amount to, and what you can show you amount to as compared to them. So that if you go into life to do anything, it is perfectly useless for me to tell you to get rid of snobbery, because you will have to. It is just as true in every other field as in politics. Every man who works in philanthropy—and he can do nothing in philanthropy unless he combines a very earnest desire to accomplish what is decent with the determination to accomplish it in practical fashion (I shall speak of that later)—if he goes into philanthropy and tries to do something in a college settlement, tries to do his part in working to[12] disentangle the tangled knot of our social and civic life, he will find just as soon as he gets interested in his work he won’t care and won’t know who the people are who are with him except as he judges them by their fruits. The interest that you take in him is, can a given man accomplish something? If he can not, then let him give place to the man who can.

You see, all I am doing is to amplify here and there the Rector’s speech. Take what was said about scholarship. I came here intending to speak to you along that same line, although in a slightly different way, approaching it from a slightly different aspect. I believe with all my heart in athletics, in sport, and have always done as much thereof as my limited capacity and my numerous duties would permit; but I believe in bodily vigor chiefly because I believe in the spirit that lies back of it. If a boy can not go into athletics because he is not physically able to, that does not count in the least against him. He may be just as much of a man in after life as if he could, because it is not physical address but the moral quality behind it which really counts. But if he has the physical ability and keeps out because he is afraid, because he is lazy, because he is a mollycoddle, then I haven’t any use for him. If he has not the right spirit, the spirit which makes him scorn self-indulgence, timidity and mere ease, that is if he has not the spirit which normally stands at the base of physical hardihood, physical prowess, then that boy does not amount to much, and he is[13] not ordinarily going to amount to much in after life. Of course, there are people with special abilities so great as to outweigh even defects like timidity and laziness, but the man who makes the Republic what it is, if he has not courage, the capacity to show prowess, the desire for hardihood; if he has not the scorn of mere ease, the scorn of pain, the scorn of discomfort (all of them qualities that go to make a man’s worth on an eleven or a nine or an eight); if he has not something of that sort in him then the lack is so great that it must be amply atoned for, more than amply atoned for, in other ways, or his usefulness to the community will be small. So I believe heartily in physical prowess, in the sports that go to make physical prowess. I believe in them not only because of the amusement and pleasure they bring, but because I think they are useful. Yet I think you had a great deal better never go into them than to go into them with the idea that they are the chief end even of school or college; still more of life. There was an article in one of the “Atlantic” monthlies last year which all parents (even those of the most limited intellectual home development, Mr. Peabody!) should read, by Lawrence Lowell, on the careers in after life of those who have distinguished themselves as scholars and as athletes in college; and the showing for the athletes was not as good, either, as I had hoped or as I had expected that it would have been. I believe that to have been in athletics is an advantage to a man only if he realizes that[14] even when he is in college it is not his chief end, and if he realizes that once out of college it can not be his end at all. It is a mighty good thing to be a halfback on a varsity eleven; but it is a mighty poor thing, when a man reaches the age of forty, only to be able to say that he was once halfback on an eleven. Do not lose the sense of proportion. Remember that in life, and above all in the very active, practical, workaday life on this continent, the man who wins out must be the man who works. He can not play all the time. He can not have play as his principal occupation and win out. Let him play; let him have as good a time as he can have. I have a pity that is akin to contempt for the man who does not have as good a time as he can out of life. But let him work. Let him count in the world. When he comes to the end of his life let him feel he has pulled his weight and a little more. A sound body is good; a sound mind is better; but a strong and clean character is better than either. In college it is not necessary to get into Phi Beta Kappa, though that is desirable; but it is necessary to work hard at your studies. It is necessary to have the habit of application, the habit of subordinating mere pleasure to serious duty, if you are going to do really good work once you are out of school and out of college. And while I would be very sorry to see those who are in control here in Groton lose that personal touch with their students which has made them again and again keep a poor scholar and thereby make in the end a good citizen;[15] while I should be very sorry to see that policy reversed, still I am glad—I do not know that the boys will share my joy on this point—I am glad that the standard of scholarship is to be raised.

Now, what I have to say to you yourselves, boys, as to what you will amount to when you are men, is in substance but a repetition of what I have already said. If you leave Groton, and the college to which you afterward go, if you go to any—if you leave simply with the feeling that you have had ten delightful years; that you have just barely got through your examinations; that you have graduated; that you are not positively disgraced; that you have met decent people, and that life has been easy and it won’t be your fault if it does not continue as easy—if that is the feeling with which you have left school and college, then you are poor creatures, and there is small good that will ever come out of you. Of course, the worst of all lives is the vicious life; the life of a man who becomes a positive addition to the forces of evil in a community. Next to that—and when I am speaking to people who, by birth and training and standing, ought to amount to a great deal, I have a right to say only second to it in criminality—comes the life of mere vapid ease, the ignoble life of a man who desires nothing from his years but that they shall be led with the least effort, the least trouble, the greatest amount of physical enjoyment—or intellectual enjoyment of a mere dilettante type. The life that is worth living, and the only life that is worth living, is the life of[16] effort, the life of effort to attain what is worth striving for. Incidentally, of all the miserable people that I know I should put high in the top rank those who reach middle age having steadfastly striven only to amuse themselves as they went through life. If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness can not come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait. You will meet plenty of well-meaning people who speak to you as if one trait were enough. That is not so. You might just as well in any rough sport in any game, think that a man could win by mere strength if he was clumsy; or by mere agility and precision of movement without strength; or by strength and agility if he had no heart. You need a great many qualities to make a successful man on a nine or an eleven; and just so you need a great many different qualities to make a good citizen. In the first place, of course it is almost tautological to say that to make a good citizen the prime need is to be decent, clean in thought, clean in mind, clean in action; to have an ideal and not to keep that ideal purely for the study—to have an ideal which you will in good faith strive to live up to when you are out in life. If you have an ideal only good while you sit at home, an ideal that nobody can live up to in outside life, then I advise you strongly to take that ideal, examine it closely, and[17] then cast it away. It is not a good one. The ideal that it is impossible for a man to strive after in practical life is not the type of ideal that you wish to hold up and follow. Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground. Be truthful; a lie implies fear, vanity or malevolence; and be frank; furtiveness and insincerity are faults incompatible with true manliness. Be honest, and remember that honesty counts for nothing unless back of it lie courage and efficiency. If in this country we ever have to face a state of things in which on one side stand the men of high ideals who are honest, good, well-meaning, pleasant people, utterly unable to put those ideals into shape in the rough field of practical life, while on the other side are grouped the strong, powerful, efficient men with no ideals: then the end of the Republic will be near. The salvation of the Republic depends—the salvation of our whole social system depends—upon the production year by year of a sufficient number of citizens who possess high ideals combined with the practical power to realize them in actual life.

You often hear people speaking as if life was like striving upward toward a mountain peak. That is not so. Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other. It shall profit us nothing if our people are[18] decent and ineffective. It shall profit us nothing if they are efficient and wicked. In every walk of life, in business, politics; if the need comes, in war; in literature, science, art, in everything, what we need is a sufficient number of men who can work well and who will work with a high ideal. The work can be done in a thousand different ways. Our public life depends primarily not upon the men who occupy public positions for the moment, because they are but an infinitesimal fraction of the whole. Our public life depends upon men who take an active interest in that public life; who are bound to see public affairs honestly and competently managed; but who have the good sense to know what honesty and competency actually mean. And any such man, if he is both sane and high-minded, can be a greater help and strength to any one in public life than you can easily imagine without having had yourselves the experience. It is an immense strength to a public man to know a certain number of people to whom he can appeal for advice and for backing; whose character is so high that baseness would shrink ashamed before them; and who have such good sense that any decent public servant is entirely willing to lay before them every detail of his actions, asking only that they know the facts before they pass final judgment. And now, gentlemen and ladies, I must be pardoned for one personal allusion. We have here to-day one man whom I have found exactly to answer to that need, who stands as a strong pillar for decency because he has high ideals combined[19] with practical common-sense; and that is Bishop Lawrence.

Well, I guess I have said about all I have to say. Success does not lie entirely in the hands of any one of us. From the day the tower of Siloam fell, misfortune has fallen sometimes upon the just as well as the unjust. We sometimes see the good man, the honest man, the strong man, broken down by forces over which he had no control. If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon us the strength and wisdom of man shall avail nothing. But as a rule in the long run each of us comes pretty near to getting what he deserves. Each of us can, as a rule—there are, of course, exceptions—finally achieve the success best worth having, the success of having played his part honestly and manfully; of having lived so as to feel at the end he has done his duty; of having been a good husband, a good father; of having tried to make the world a little better off rather than worse off because he has lived; of having been a doer of the word and not a hearer only—still less a mere critic of the doers. Every man has it in him, unless fate is indeed hard upon him, to win out that measure of success if he will honestly try.

There are two kinds of success to be won. In the first place, there is success in doing the thing that can only be done by the exceptional man. Therefore most of us can not achieve this kind of success. It comes only to the man who has very exceptional qualities. The other kind, a very, very high kind, is the ordinary kind of success, the success[20] that comes to the man who does the things which most men could do, but which they do not do; which comes to the man who develops or possesses to a higher degree the qualities that all of us have to a greater or less extent. In the history of the world some of the men who stand high—who stand in all but the very highest places—are those who have not possessed any wonderful genius in statecraft, war, art, literature—in whatever calling; but who have developed within themselves, by long, patient effort, resolutely maintained in spite of repeated failure, the ordinary, everyday, humdrum qualities of courage, of resolution, of proper appreciation of the relative importance of things; of honesty, of truth, of good sense, of unyielding perseverance. We can each one of us develop to a very high degree these qualities; and if we do so develop them, each one of us is sure of a measure of success; and I greet you here on this twentieth anniversary of the founding of Groton School because I feel that Groton School is one of those institutions which pre-eminently stand for the development of precisely those qualities among the boys whom it sends forth to be American men, American citizens, to do honor to themselves and their school by honoring the commonwealth to which we all belong.

[21]

ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG, PA., MEMORIAL DAY, MAY 30, 1904

Governor, and You, my Fellow-Citizens:

It is indeed a pleasure to greet you to-day. In greeting all I, of course, greet above all others the men to whom we owe it that we are here to-day, or that we have a country of which to be proud—the men who fought to a finish the great Civil War. And, having greeted first those at one end of the line, I want to speak of the others and say I was exceedingly pleased to see the children. Also let me say a word of greeting in your behalf, my comrades of the Civil War, to the regulars who were here to-day as an escort—to the men who now wear the uniform of “Uncle Sam,” and wear it honorably to defend the flag as you defended it in your youth and early manhood. The memories of this field are inextricably entwined in our hearts with the great deeds of the leaders of the past, as one by one the men who here signalized themselves have passed away.

Governor Pennypacker alluded to the fact that to-day Pennsylvania mourns its senior Senator. The regiment which Senator Quay was instrumental in raising took part in the battle of Gettysburg—the battle in which Governor Pennypacker shared. Senator Quay was not with it here; he had gone with another regiment, and it is appropriate at this time to recall the fact that when the term of service of that regiment expired, just before[22] the battle of Fredericksburg, Senator Quay declined to accept the discharge and continued as a volunteer with the army that fought at Fredericksburg and won the medal of honor on that bloody day.

The place where we now are has won a double distinction. Here was fought one of the great battles of all time, and here was spoken one of the few speeches which shall last through the ages. As long as this Republic endures or its history is known, so long shall the memory of the Battle of Gettysburg likewise endure and be known; and as long as the English tongue is understood, so long shall Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech thrill the hearts of mankind.

The Civil War was a great war for righteousness; a war waged for the noblest ideals, but waged also in thoroughgoing, practical fashion. That is why you won then—because you had the ideals, because you had the lift of soul in you, and because also you had the right stuff in you to make those ideals count in actual life. You had to have the ideals, but if you had not been able to march and shoot you could not have put them into practice. It was one of the few wars which mean, in their successful outcome, a lift toward better things for the nations of mankind. Some wars have meant the triumph of order over anarchy and licentiousness masquerading as liberty; some wars have meant the triumph of liberty over tyranny masquerading as order; but this victorious war of[23] ours meant the triumph of both liberty and order, the triumph of orderly liberty, the bestowal of civil rights upon the freed slaves, and at the same time the stern insistence on the supremacy of the national law throughout the length and breadth of the land. Moreover, this was one of those rare contests in which it was to the immeasurable interest of the vanquished that they should lose, while at the same time the victors acquired the precious privilege of transmitting to those who came after them, as a heritage of honor forever, not only the memory of their own valiant deeds, but the memory of the deeds of those who, no less valiantly and with equal sincerity of purpose, fought against the stars in their courses. The war left to us all, as fellow-countrymen, as brothers, the right to rejoice that the Union has been restored in indestructible shape in a country where slavery no longer mocks the boast of freedom, and also the right to rejoice with exultant pride in the courage, the self-sacrifice, and the devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray.

He is but a poor American who, looking at this field, does not feel within himself a deeper reverence for the Nation’s past and a higher purpose to make the Nation’s future rise level to her past. Here fought the chosen sons of the North and the South, the East and the West. The armies which on this field contended for the mastery were veteran armies, hardened by long campaigning and desperate fighting into such instruments of war as no[24] other nation then possessed. The severity of the fighting is attested by the proportionate loss—a loss unrivaled in any battle of similar size since the close of the Napoleonic struggles; a loss which in certain regiments was from three-fourths to four-fifths of the men engaged. Every spot on this field has its own associations of soldierly duty nobly done, of supreme self-sacrifice freely rendered. The names of the chiefs who served in the two armies form a long honor roll; and the enlisted men were worthy, and even more than worthy, of those who led them. Every acre of this ground has its own associations. We see where the fight thundered through and around the village of Gettysburg; where the artillery formed on the ridges; where the cavalry fought; where the hills were attacked and defended; and where, finally, the great charge surged up the slope only to break on the summit in the bloody spray of gallant failure.

But the soldiers who won at Gettysburg, the soldiers who fought to a finish the Civil War and thereby made their countrymen forever their debtors, have left us far more even than the memories of the war itself. They fought for four years in order that on this Continent those who came after them, their children and their children’s children, might enjoy a lasting peace. They took arms not to destroy, but to save liberty; not to overthrow, but to establish the supremacy of the law. The crisis which they faced was to determine whether or not this people was fit for self-government and, therefore,[25] fit for liberty. Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those who show themselves worthy of it. In this world no privilege can be permanently appropriated by men who have not the power and the will successfully to assume the responsibility of using it aright. In his recent admirable little volume on freedom and responsibility in democratic government, President Hadley of Yale has pointed out that the freedom which is worth anything is the freedom which means self-government and not anarchy. Freedom thus conceived is a constructive force, which enables an intelligent and good man to do better things than he could do without it; which is in its essence the substitution of self-restraint for external restraint—the substitution of a form of restraint which promotes progress for the form which retards it. This is the right view to take of freedom; but it can only be taken if there is a full recognition of the close connection between liberty and responsibility in every domain of human thought and action. It was essentially the view taken by Abraham Lincoln, and by all those who, when the Civil War broke out, realized that in a self-governing democracy those who desire to be considered fit to enjoy liberty must show that they know how to use it with moderation and justice in peace, and how to fight for it when it is jeoparded by malice domestic or foreign levy.

The lessons they taught us are lessons as applicable in our everyday lives now as in the rare times[26] of great stress. The men who made this field forever memorable did so because they combined the power of fealty to a lofty ideal with the power of showing that fealty in hard, practical, common-sense fashion. They stood for the life of effort, not the life of ease. They had that love of country, that love of justice, that love of their fellow-men, without which power and resourceful efficiency but make a man a danger to his fellows. Yet, in addition thereto, they likewise possessed the power and the efficiency; for otherwise their high purpose would have been barren of result. They knew each how to act for himself, and yet each how to act with his fellows. They learned, as all the generation of the Civil War learned, that rare indeed is the chance to do anything worth doing by one sudden and violent effort. The men who believed that the Civil War would be ended in ninety days, the men who cried loudest “On to Richmond,” if they had the right stuff in them speedily learned their error; and the war was actually won by those who settled themselves steadfastly down to fight for three years, or for as much longer as the war might last, and who gradually grew to understand that the triumph would come, not by a single brilliant victory, but by a hundred painful and tedious campaigns. In the East and the West the columns advanced and recoiled, swayed from side to side, and again advanced; along the coasts the black ships stood endlessly off and on before the hostile forts; generals and admirals emerged into the light, each[27] to face his crowded hour of success or failure; the men in front fought; the men behind supplied and pushed forward those in front; and the final victory was due to the deeds of all who played their parts well and manfully, in the scores of battles, in the countless skirmishes, in march, in camp, or in reserve, as commissioned officers, or in the ranks—wherever and whenever duty called them. That is why the title that most appeals to you now is the title of comrade, by which the private in the ranks and the lieutenant-general address one another, because each did his duty and asks no more than recognition of that fact. Just so it must be for us in civil life. We can make and keep this country worthy of the men who gave their lives to save it, only on condition that the average man among us on the whole does his duty bravely, loyally, and with common-sense, in whatever position life allots to him. Exactly as in time of war courage is the cardinal virtue of the soldier, so in time of peace honesty, using the word in its deepest and broadest significance, is the essential basic virtue, without which all else avails nothing. National greatness is of slow growth. It can not be forced and yet be stable and enduring; for it is based fundamentally upon national character, and national character is stamped deep in a people by the lives of many generations. The men who went into the army had to submit to discipline, had to submit to restraint through the government of the leaders they had chosen, as the price of winning. So we, the people,[28] can preserve our liberty and our greatness in time of peace only by ourselves exercising the virtues of honesty, of self-restraint, and of fair dealing between man and man. In all the ages of the past men have seen countries lose their liberty, because their people could not restrain and order themselves, and therefore forfeited the right to what they were unable to use with wisdom.

It was because you men of the Civil War both knew how to use liberty temperately and how to defend it at need that we and our children and our children’s children shall hold you in honor forever. Here, on Memorial Day, on this great battlefield, we commemorate not only the chiefs who actually won this battle; not only Meade, and his lieutenants, Hancock and Reynolds and Howard and Sickles, and the many others whose names flame in our annals; but also the chiefs who had made the Army of the Potomac what it was, and those who afterward led it in the campaigns which were crowned at Appomattox; and furthermore those who made and used its sister armies: McClellan, with his extraordinary genius for organization; Rosecrans; Buell; Thomas, the unyielding, the steadfast; and that great trio, Sherman, Sheridan, and last and greatest of all, Grant himself, the silent soldier whose hammer-like blows finally beat down even the prowess of the men who fought against him. Above all we meet here to pay homage to the officers and enlisted men who served and fought and died, without having, as their chiefs had, the chance to write their[29] names on the tablets of fame; to the men who marched and fought in the ranks, who were buried in long trenches on the field of battle, who died in cots marked only by numbers in the hospitals; who, if they lived, when the war was over, went back each to his task on the farm or in the town, to do his duty in peace as he had done it in war; to take up the threads of his working life where he had dropped them when the trumpets of the Nation pealed to arms. To-day, all over this land our people meet to pay reverent homage to the dead who died that the Nation might live; and we pay homage also to their comrades who are still with us.

All are at one now, the sons of those who wore the blue and the sons of those who wore the gray, and all can unite in paying respect to the memory of those who fell, each of them giving his life for his duty as he saw it; and all should be at one in learning from the deaths of these men how to live usefully while the times call for the performance of the countless necessary duties of everyday life, and how to hold ourselves ready to die nobly should the Nation ever again demand of her sons the splendid ultimate proof of loyalty to her and to the flag.

REMARKS AT THE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL CHAPEL, VALLEY FORGE, PA., JUNE 19, 1904

It is a great pleasure to come here this afternoon and say a word on behalf of the project to erect a[30] memorial chapel on this great historic site. Three weeks ago I was at the field where the bloodiest and most decisive battle of the Civil War was fought, and it is a noteworthy thing that this State of Pennsylvania should have within its borders the places which mark the two turning points in our history—Gettysburg, which saw the high-tide of the Rebellion—Valley Forge, which saw the getting beyond the danger point of the Revolution.

There have been two great crises in our national history—two crises where failure meant the absolute breaking asunder of the Nation—one the Revolutionary War, one the Civil War. If the men who took to arms in ’76 for national independence had failed, then not merely would there never have been a national growth on this Continent, but the whole spirit of nationality for the younger lands of the world would have perished still-born. If the men of ’61 had failed in the great struggle for national unity it would have meant that the work done by Washington and his associates might almost or quite as well have been left undone. There would have been no point in commemorating what was done at Valley Forge if Gettysburg had not given us the national right to commemorate it. If we were now split up into a dozen wrangling little communities, if we lacked the power to keep away here on our own Continent, within our own lines, or to show ourselves a unit as against foreign aggression, then, indeed, the Declaration of Independence would read like empty sound, and the Constitution would not be[31] worth the paper upon which it was written, save as a study for antiquarians.

There have been other crises than those that culminated during the War for Independence and the great Civil War, there have been great deeds and great men at other periods of our national history, but there never has been another deed vital to the welfare of the Nation save the two—the deed of those who founded and the deed of those who saved the Republic. There never has been another man whose life has been vital to the Republic save Washington and Lincoln. I am not here to say anything about Lincoln, but I do not see how any American can think of either of them without thinking of the other too, because they represent the same work. Think how fortunate we are as a Nation. Think what it means to us as a people that our young men should have as their ideals two men, not conquerors, not men who have won glory by wrongdoing; not men whose lives were spent in their own advancement, but men who lived, one of whom died, that the Nation might grow steadily greater and better—the man who founded the Republic and took no glory from it himself save what was freely given him by his fellow-citizens, and that only in the shape of a chance of rendering them service, and the man who afterward saved the Republic, who saved the state, without striking down liberty. Often in history a state has been saved and liberty struck down at the same time. Lincoln saved the Union and lifted the cause of liberty higher than before.[32] Washington created the Republic, rose by statecraft to the highest position, and used that position only for the welfare of his fellows and for so long as his fellows wished him to keep it.

It is a good thing that of these great landmarks of our history—Gettysburg and Valley Forge—one should commemorate a single tremendous effort and the other what we need, on the whole, much more commonly, and what I think is, on the whole, rather more difficult to do—long-sustained effort. Only men with a touch of the heroic in them could have lasted out that three days’ struggle at Gettysburg. Only men fit to rank with the great men of all time could have beaten back the mighty onslaught of that gallant and wonderful army of Northern Virginia, whose final supreme effort faded at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge on that July day forty-one years ago.

But after all, hard though it is to rise to the supreme height of self-sacrifice and of effort at a time of crisis that is short, to rise to it for a single great effort—it is harder yet to rise to the level of a crisis when that crisis takes the form of needing constant, patient, steady work, month after month, year after year, when, too, it does not end after a terrible struggle in a glorious day—when it means months of gloom and effort steadfastly endured, and triumph wrested only at the very end.

Here at Valley Forge Washington and his Continentals warred not against the foreign soldiery, but against themselves, against all the appeals of our[33] nature that are most difficult to resist—against discouragement, discontent, the mean envies and jealousies, and heart-burnings sure to arise at any time in large bodies of men, but especially sure to arise when defeat and disaster have come to large bodies of men. Here the soldiers who carried our national flag had to suffer from cold, from privation, from hardship, knowing that their foes were well housed, knowing that things went easier for the others than it did for them. And they conquered, because they had in them the spirit that made them steadfast, not merely on an occasional great day, but day after day in the life of daily endeavor to do duty well.

When two lessons are both indispensable, it seems hardly worth while to dwell more on one than on the other. Yet I think that as a people we need more to learn the lesson of Valley Forge even than that of Gettysburg. I have not the slightest anxiety but that this people, if the need should come in the future, will be able to show the heroism, the supreme effort that was shown at Gettysburg, though it may well be that it would mean a similar two years of effort, checkered by disaster, to lead up to it. But the vital thing for this Nation to do is steadily to cultivate the quality which Washington and those under him so pre-eminently showed during the winter at Valley Forge—the quality of steady adherence to duty in the teeth of difficulty, in the teeth of discouragement, and even disaster, the quality that makes a man do what is straight and decent, not one day when a great crisis comes, but every day,[34] day in and day out, until success comes at the end.

Of course, all of us are agreed that a prime national need is the need of commemorating the memories of the men who did greatly, thought highly, who fought, suffered, endured, for the Nation. It is a great thing to commemorate their lives; but, after all, the worthy way to do so is to try to show by our lives that we have profited by them. If we show that the lives of the great men of the past have been to us incitements to do well in the present, then we have paid to them the only homage which is really worthy of them. If we treat their great deeds as matters merely for idle boasting, not as spurring us on to effort, but as excusing us from effort, then we show that we are not worthy of our sires, of the people who went before us in the history of our land. What we as a people need more than aught else is the steady performance of the everyday duties of life, not with hope of reward, but because they are duties.

I spoke of how we felt that we had in Washington and Lincoln national ideals. I contrasted their names with the names of many others in history, names which will shine as brightly, but oh! with how much less power and light. I think you will find that the fundamental difference between our two great national heroes and almost any other men of equal note in the world’s history, is that when you think of our two men you think inevitably not of glory, but of duty, not of what the man did for[35] himself in achieving name, or fame, or position, but of what he did for his fellows. They set the right ideal and also they lived up to it in practical fashion. Had either of them possessed that fantastic quality of mind which sets an impossible, and, perhaps, an undesirable ideal, or which declines to do the actual work of the present because forsooth the implements with which it is necessary to work are not to that man’s choice, his fame would have been missed, his achievement would have crumbled into dust, and he would not have left one stroke on the book which tells of effort accomplished for the good of mankind.

A man, to amount to anything, must be practical. He must actually do things, not talk about doing them, least of all cavil at how they are accomplished by those who actually go down into the arena, and actually face the dust and the blood and the sweat, who actually triumphed in the struggle. The man must have the force, the power, the will to accomplish results, but he must have also the lift toward lofty things which shall make him incapable of striving for aught unless that for which he strives is something honorable and high—something well worth striving for.

I congratulate you that it is your good fortune to be engaged in erecting a memorial to the great man who was equal to the great days—to the man and the men who showed by their lives that they were indeed doers of the word and not hearers only.

[36]

ADDRESS AT OYSTER BAY, N. Y., JULY 27, 1904, IN RESPONSE TO THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO NOTIFY HIM OF HIS NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Notification Committee:

I am deeply sensible of the high honor conferred upon me by the representatives of the Republican party assembled in convention, and I accept the nomination for the Presidency with solemn realization of the obligations I assume. I heartily approve the declaration of principles which the Republican National Convention has adopted, and at some future day I shall communicate to you, Mr. Chairman, more at length and in detail a formal written acceptance of the nomination.

Three years ago I became President because of the death of my lamented predecessor. I then stated that it was my purpose to carry out his principles and policies for the honor and the interest of the country. To the best of my ability I have kept the promise thus made. If next November my countrymen confirm at the polls the action of the convention you represent, I shall, under Providence, continue to work with an eye single to the welfare of all our people.

A party is of worth only in so far as it promotes the national interest, and every official, high or low, can serve his party best by rendering to the people the best service of which he is capable. Effective[37] government comes only as the result of the loyal co-operation of many different persons. The members of a legislative majority, the officers in the various departments of the Administration, and the Legislative and Executive branches as toward each other, must work together with subordination of self to the common end of successful government. We who have been intrusted with power as public servants during the past seven years of administration and legislation now come before the people content to be judged by our record of achievement. In the years that have gone by we have made the deed square with the word; and if we are continued in power we shall unswervingly follow out the great lines of public policy which the Republican party has already laid down; a public policy to which we are giving, and shall give, a united, and therefore an efficient, support.

In all of this we are more fortunate than our opponents, who now appeal for confidence on the ground, which some express and some seek to have confidentially understood, that if triumphant they may be trusted to prove false to every principle which in the last eight years they have laid down as vital, and to leave undisturbed those very acts of the Administration because of which they ask that the Administration itself be driven from power. Seemingly their present attitude as to their past record is that some of them were mistaken and others insincere. We make our appeal in a wholly[38] different spirit. We are not constrained to keep silent on any vital question; we are divided on no vital question; our policy is continuous, and is the same for all sections and localities. There is nothing experimental about the Government we ask the people to continue in power, for our performance in the past, our proved governmental efficiency, is a guarantee as to our promises for the future. Our opponents, either openly or secretly, according to their several temperaments, now ask the people to trust their present promises in consideration of the fact that they intend to treat their past promises as null and void. We know our own minds and we have kept of the same mind for a sufficient length of time to give to our policy coherence and sanity. In such a fundamental matter as the enforcement of the law we do not have to depend upon promises, but merely to ask that our record be taken as an earnest of what we shall continue to do. In dealing with the great organizations known as trusts, we do not have to explain why the laws were not enforced, but to point out that they actually have been enforced, and that legislation has been enacted to increase the effectiveness of their enforcement. We do not have to propose to “turn the rascals out,” for we have shown in very deed that whenever by diligent investigation a public official can be found who has betrayed his trust he will be punished to the full extent of the law without regard to whether he was appointed under a Republican or a Democratic[39] Administration. This is the efficient way to turn the rascals out and to keep them out, and it has the merit of sincerity. Moreover, the betrayals of trust in the last seven years have been insignificant in number when compared with the extent of the public service. Never has the administration of the Government been on a cleaner and higher level; never has the public work of the Nation been done more honestly and efficiently.

Assuredly it is unwise to change the policies which have worked so well and which are now working so well. Prosperity has come at home. The national honor and interest have been upheld abroad. We have placed the finances of the Nation upon a sound gold basis. We have done this with the aid of many who were formerly our opponents, but who would neither openly support nor silently acquiesce in the heresy of unsound finance; and we have done it against the convinced and violent opposition of the mass of our present opponents who still refuse to recant the unsound opinions which for the moment they think it inexpedient to assert. We know what we mean when we speak of an honest and stable currency. We mean the same thing from year to year. We do not have to avoid definite and conclusive committal on the most important issue which has recently been before the people, and which may at any time in the near future be before them again. Upon the principles which underlie this issue the convictions of half of our number do not clash with those of the other[40] half. So long as the Republican party is in power the gold standard is settled, not as a matter of temporary political expediency, not because of shifting conditions in the production of gold in certain mining centres, but in accordance with what we regard as the fundamental principles of national morality and wisdom.

Under the financial legislation which we have enacted there is now ample circulation for every business need; and every dollar of this circulation is worth a dollar in gold. We have reduced the interest-bearing debt, and in still larger measure the interest on that debt. All of the war taxes imposed during the Spanish War have been removed with a view to relieve the people and to prevent the accumulation of an unnecessary surplus. The result is that hardly ever before have the expenditures and income of the Government so closely corresponded. In the fiscal year that has just closed the excess of income over the ordinary expenditures was nine millions of dollars. This does not take account of the fifty millions expended out of the accumulated surplus for the purchase of the Isthmian Canal. It is an extraordinary proof of the sound financial condition of the Nation that instead of following the usual course in such matters and throwing the burden upon posterity by an issue of bonds, we were able to make the payment outright and yet after it to have in the treasury a surplus of one hundred and sixty-one millions. Moreover, we were able to pay this fifty millions of[41] dollars out of hand without causing the slightest disturbance to business conditions.

We have enacted a tariff law under which during the past few years the country has attained a height of material well-being never before reached. Wages are higher than ever before. That whenever the need arises there should be a readjustment of the tariff schedules is undoubted; but such changes can with safety be made only by those whose devotion to the principle of a protective tariff is beyond question; for otherwise the changes would amount not to readjustment, but to repeal. The readjustment when made must maintain and not destroy the protective principle. To the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer this is vital; but perhaps no other man is so much interested as the wage-worker in the maintenance of our present economic system, both as regards the finances and the tariff. The standard of living of our wage-workers is higher than that of any other country, and it can not so remain unless we have a protective tariff which shall always keep as a minimum a rate of duty sufficient to cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad. Those who, like our opponents, “denounce protection as a robbery” thereby explicitly commit themselves to the proposition that if they were to revise the tariff no heed would be paid to the necessity of meeting this difference between the standards of living for wage-workers here and in other countries; and therefore on this point their antagonism to our position is[42] fundamental. Here again we ask that their promises and ours be judged by what has been done in the immediate past. We ask that sober and sensible men compare the workings of the present tariff law, and the conditions which obtain under it, with the workings of the preceding tariff law of 1894 and the conditions which that tariff of 1894 helped to bring about.

We believe in reciprocity with foreign nations on the terms outlined in President McKinley’s last speech, which urged the extension of our foreign markets by reciprocal agreements whenever they could be made without injury to American industry and labor. It is a singular fact that the only great reciprocity treaty recently adopted—that with Cuba—was finally opposed almost alone by the representatives of the very party which now states that it favors reciprocity. And here again we ask that the worth of our words be judged by comparing their deeds with ours. On this Cuban reciprocity treaty there were at the outset grave differences of opinion among ourselves; and the notable thing in the negotiation and ratification of the treaty, and in the legislation which carried it into effect, was the highly practical manner in which without sacrifice of principle these differences of opinion were reconciled. There was no rupture of a great party, but an excellent practical outcome, the result of the harmonious co-operation of two successive Presidents and two successive Congresses. This is an illustration of the governing[43] capacity which entitles us to the confidence of the people not only in our purposes but in our practical ability to achieve those purposes. Judging by the history of the last twelve years, down to this very month, is there justification for believing that under similar circumstances and with similar initial differences of opinion, our opponents would have achieved any practical result?

We have already shown in actual fact that our policy is to do fair and equal justice to all men, paying no heed to whether a man is rich or poor; paying no heed to his race, his creed, or his birthplace.

We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice, no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense.

In inaugurating the great work of irrigation in the West the Administration has been enabled by[44] Congress to take one of the longest strides ever taken under our Government toward utilizing our vast national domain for the settler, the actual homemaker.

Ever since this Continent was discovered the need of an Isthmian Canal to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic has been recognized; and ever since the birth of our Nation such a canal has been planned. At last the dream has become a reality. The Isthmian Canal is now being built by the Government of the United States. We conducted the negotiation for its construction with the nicest and most scrupulous honor, and in a spirit of the largest generosity toward those through whose territory it was to run. Every sinister effort which could be devised by the spirit of faction or the spirit of self-interest was made in order to defeat the treaty with Panama and thereby prevent the consummation of this work. The construction of the canal is now an assured fact; but most certainly it is unwise to intrust the carrying out of so momentous a policy to those who have endeavored to defeat the whole undertaking.

Our foreign policy has been so conducted that, while not one of our just claims has been sacrificed, our relations with all foreign nations are now of the most peaceful kind; there is not a cloud on the horizon. The last cause of irritation between us and any other nation was removed by the settlement of the Alaskan boundary.

In the Caribbean Sea we have made good our[45] promises of independence to Cuba, and have proved our assertion that our mission in the island was one of justice and not of self-aggrandizement; and thereby no less than by our action in Venezuela and Panama we have shown that the Monroe Doctrine is a living reality, designed for the hurt of no nation, but for the protection of civilization on the Western Continent, and for the peace of the world. Our steady growth in power has gone hand in hand with a strengthening disposition to use this power with strict regard for the rights of others, and for the cause of international justice and goodwill.

We earnestly desire friendship with all the nations of the New and Old Worlds; and we endeavor to place our relations with them upon a basis of reciprocal advantage instead of hostility. We hold that the prosperity of each nation is an aid and not a hindrance to the prosperity of other nations. We seek international amity for the same reasons that make us believe in peace within our own borders; and we seek this peace not because we are afraid or unready, but because we think that peace is right as well as advantageous.

American interests in the Pacific have rapidly grown. American enterprise has laid a cable across this, the greatest of oceans. We have proved in effective fashion that we wish the Chinese Empire well and desire its integrity and independence.

Our foothold in the Philippines greatly strengthens our position in the competition for the trade of the East; but we are governing the Philippines in[46] the interest of the Philippine people themselves. We have already given them a large share in their government, and our purpose is to increase this share as rapidly as they give evidence of increasing fitness for the task. The great majority of the officials of the islands, whether elective or appointive, are already native Filipinos. We are now providing for a legislative assembly. This is the first step to be taken in the future; and it would be eminently unwise to declare what our next step will be until this first step has been taken and the results are manifest. To have gone faster than we have already gone in giving the islanders a constantly increasing measure of self-government would have been disastrous. At the present moment to give political independence to the islands would result in the immediate loss of civil rights, personal liberty, and public order, as regards the mass of the Filipinos, for the majority of the islanders have been given these great boons by us, and only keep them because we vigilantly safeguard and guarantee them. To withdraw our Government from the islands at this time would mean to the average native the loss of his barely won civil freedom. We have established in the islands a Government by Americans assisted by Filipinos. We are steadily striving to transform this into self-government by the Filipinos assisted by Americans.

The principles which we uphold should appeal to all our countrymen, in all portions of our country. Above all they should give us strength with the men[47] and women who are the spiritual heirs of those who upheld the hands of Abraham Lincoln; for we are striving to do our work in the spirit with which Lincoln approached his. During the seven years that have just passed there is no duty, domestic or foreign, which we have shirked; no necessary task which we have feared to undertake, or which we have not performed with reasonable efficiency. We have never pleaded impotence. We have never sought refuge in criticism and complaint instead of action. We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.

LETTER ACCEPTING THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Oyster Bay, N. Y., Sept. 12, 1904

Hon. J. G. Cannon, Chairman of the Notification Committee,

My dear Sir:

I accept the nomination for the Presidency tendered me by the Republican National Convention, and cordially approve the platform adopted by it. In writing this letter there are certain points upon which I desire to lay especial stress.

It is difficult to find out from the utterances of our opponents what are the real issues upon which they propose to wage this campaign. It is not unfair to say that, having abandoned most of the principles[48] upon which they have insisted during the last eight years, they now seem at a loss, both as to what it is that they really believe, and as to how firmly they shall assert their belief in anything. In fact, it is doubtful if they venture resolutely to press a single issue; as soon as they raise one they shrink from it and seek to explain it away. Such an attitude is the probably inevitable result of the effort to improvise convictions; for when thus improvised, it is natural that they should be held in a tentative manner.

The party now in control of the Government is troubled by no such difficulties. We do not have to guess at our own convictions, and then correct the guess if it seems unpopular. The principles which we profess are those in which we believe with heart and soul and strength. Men may differ from us; but they can not accuse us of shiftiness or insincerity. The policies we have pursued are those which we earnestly hold as essential to the national welfare and repute. Our actions speak even louder than our words for the faith that is in us. We base our appeal upon what we have done and are doing, upon our record of administration and legislation during the last seven years, in which we have had complete control of the Government. We intend in the future to carry on the Government in the same way that we have carried it on in the past.

A party whose members are radically at variance on most vital issues, and if united at all, are only united on issues where their attitude threatens widespread[49] disaster to the whole country, can not be trusted to govern in any matter. A party which, with facile ease, changes all its convictions before election can not be trusted to adhere with tenacity to any principle after election. A party fit to govern must have convictions. In 1896 the Republican party came into power, and in 1900 it retained power on certain definite pledges, each of which was scrupulously fulfilled. But in addition to meeting and solving the problems which were issues in these campaigns, it also became necessary to meet other problems which arose after election; and it is no small part of our claim to public confidence that these were solved with the same success that had attended the solution of those concerning which the battles at the polls were fought. In other words, our governmental efficiency proved equal not only to the tasks that were anticipated, but to doing each unanticipated task as it arose.

When the contest of 1896 was decided, the question of the war with Spain was not an issue. When the contest of 1900 was decided, the shape which the Isthmian Canal question ultimately took could not have been foreseen. But the same qualities which enabled those responsible for making and administering the laws at Washington to deal successfully with the tariff and the currency, enabled them also to deal with the Spanish War; and the same qualities which enabled them to act wisely in the Philippines, and in Cuba, also enabled them to do their duty as regards the problems connected with[50] the trusts, and to secure the building of the Isthmian Canal. We are content to rest our case before the American people upon the fact that to adherence to a lofty ideal we have added proved governmental efficiency. Therefore, our promises may surely be trusted as regards any issue that is now before the people; and we may equally be trusted to deal with any problem which may hereafter arise.

So well has the work been done that our opponents do not venture to recite the facts about our policies or acts and then oppose them. They attack them only when they have first misrepresented them; for a truthful recital would leave no room for adverse comment.

Panama offers an instance in point. Our opponents can criticise what we did in Panama only on condition of misstating what was done. The Administration behaved throughout not only with good faith, but with extraordinary patience and large generosity toward those with whom it dealt. It was also mindful of American interests. It acted in strict compliance with the law passed by Congress. Had not Panama been promptly recognized, and the transit across the Isthmus kept open, in accordance with our treaty rights and obligations, there would have ensued endless guerilla warfare and possibly foreign complications; while all chance of building the canal would have been deferred, certainly for years, perhaps for a generation or more. Criticism of the action in this matter is simply criticism of the only[51] possible action which could have secured the building of the canal; as well as the peace and quiet which we were, by treaty, bound to preserve along the line of transit across the Isthmus. The service rendered this country in securing the perpetual right to construct, maintain, operate, and defend the canal was so great that our opponents do not venture to raise the issue in straightforward fashion; for if so raised there would be no issue. The decisive action which brought about this beneficent result was the exercise by the President of the powers vested in him, and in him alone, by the Constitution; the power to recognize foreign Governments by entering into diplomatic relations with them, and the power to make treaties which, when ratified by the Senate, become under the Constitution part of the supreme law of the land. Neither in this nor in any other matter has there been the slightest failure to live up to the Constitution in letter and in spirit. But the Constitution must be observed positively as well as negatively. The President’s duty is to serve the country in accordance with the Constitution; and I should be derelict in my duty if I used a false construction of the Constitution as a shield for weakness and timidity, or as an excuse for governmental impotence.

Similar misrepresentation is the one weapon of our opponents in regard to our foreign policy, and the way the Navy has been made useful in carrying out this policy. Here again all that we ask is that they truthfully state what has been done, and then[52] say whether or not they object to it; for if continued in power we shall continue our foreign policy and our handling of the Navy on exactly the same lines in the future as in the past. To what phase of our foreign policy, and to what use of the Navy, do our opponents object? Do they object to the way in which the Monroe Doctrine has been strengthened and upheld? Never before has this doctrine been acquiesced in abroad as it is now; and yet, while upholding the rights of the weaker American republics against foreign aggression, the Administration has lost no opportunity to point out to these republics that those who seek equity should come with clean hands, and that whoever claims liberty as a right must accept the responsibilities that go with the exercise of the right. Do our opponents object to what was done in reference to the petition of American citizens against the Kishineff massacre? or to the protest against the treatment of the Jews in Roumania? or to the efforts that have been made in behalf of the Armenians in Turkey? No other Administration in our history, no other Government in the world, has more consistently stood for the broadest spirit of brotherhood in our common humanity, or has held a more resolute attitude of protest against every wrong that outraged the civilization of the age at home or abroad. Do our opponents object to the fact that the international tribunal at The Hague was rescued from impotence, and turned into a potent instrument for peace among the nations?[53] This Government has used that tribunal, and advocated its use by others, in pursuance of its policy to promote the cause of international peace and goodwill by all honorable methods. In carrying out this policy, it has settled dispute after dispute by arbitration or by friendly agreement. It has behaved toward all nations, strong or weak, with courtesy, dignity, and justice; and it is now on excellent terms with all.

Do our opponents object to the settlement of the Alaska boundary line? Do they object to the fact that after freeing Cuba we gave her reciprocal trade advantages with the United States, while at the same time keeping naval stations in the island and providing against its sinking into chaos, or being conquered by any foreign Power? Do they object to the fact that our flag now flies over Porto Rico? Do they object to the acquisition of Hawaii? Once they “hauled down” our flag there; we have hoisted it again; do they intend once more to haul it down? Do they object to the part we played in China? Do they not know that the voice of the United States would now count for nothing in the Far East if we had abandoned the Philippines and refused to do what was done in China? Do they object to the fact that this Government secured a peaceful settlement of the troubles in Venezuela two years ago? Do they object to the presence of the ship-of-war off Colon when the revolution broke out in Panama, and when only the presence of this ship saved the lives of American citizens, and prevented insult to[54] the flag? Do they object to the fact that American warships appeared promptly at the port of Beirut when an effort had been made to assassinate an American official, and in the port of Tangier when an American citizen had been abducted? and that in each case the wrong complained of was righted and expiated? and that within the last few days the visit of an American squadron to Smyrna was followed by the long-delayed concession of their just rights to those Americans concerned in educational work in Turkey? Do they object to the trade treaty with China, so full of advantage for the American people in the future? Do they object to the fact that the ships carrying the national flag now have a higher standard than ever before in marksmanship and in seamanship, as individual units and as component parts of squadrons and fleets? If they object to any or all of these things, we join issue with them. Our foreign policy has been not only highly advantageous to the United States, but hardly less advantageous to the world as a whole. Peace and goodwill have followed in its footsteps. The Government has shown itself no less anxious to respect the rights of others than insistent that the rights of Americans be respected in return. As for the Navy, it has been and is now the most potent guarantee of peace; and it is such chiefly because it is formidable, and ready for use.

When our opponents speak of “encroachments” by the Executive upon the authority of Congress or the[55] Judiciary, apparently the act they ordinarily have in view is Pension Order No. 78, issued under the authority of existing law. This order directed that hereafter any veteran of the Civil War who had reached the age of sixty-two should be presumptively entitled to the pension of six dollars a month, given under the dependent pension law to those whose capacity to earn their livelihood by manual labor has been decreased fifty per cent, and that by the time the age of seventy was reached the presumption should be that the physical disability was complete; the age being treated as an evidential fact in each case. This order was made in the performance of a duty imposed upon the President by an act of Congress, which requires the Executive to make regulations to govern the subordinates of the Pension Office in determining who are entitled to pensions. President Cleveland had already exercised this power by a regulation which declared that seventy-five should be set as the age at which total disability should be conclusively presumed. Similarly, President McKinley established sixty-five as the age at which half disability should be conclusively presumed. The regulation now in question, in the exercise of the same power, supplemented these regulations made under Presidents Cleveland and McKinley.

The men who fought for union and for liberty in the years from 1861 to 1865 not only saved this Nation from ruin, but rendered an inestimable service to all mankind. We of the United States owe[56] the fact that to-day we have a country to what they did; and the Nation has decreed by law that no one of them, if disabled from earning his own living, shall lack the pension to which he is entitled, not only as a matter of gratitude, but as a matter of justice. It is the policy of the Republican party, steadily continued through many years, to treat the veterans of the Civil War in a spirit of broad liberality. The order in question carried out this policy, and is justified not merely on legal grounds, but also on grounds of public morality. It is a matter of common knowledge that when the average man who depends for his wages upon bodily labor has reached the age of sixty-two his earning ability is in all probability less by half than it was when he was in his prime; and that by the time he has reached the age of seventy he has probably lost all earning ability. If there is doubt upon this point let the doubter examine the employees doing manual labor in any great manufactory or any great railroad, and find out how large is the proportion of men between the ages of sixty-two and seventy, and whether these men are still employed at the highly paid tasks which they did in their prime. As a matter of fact, many railroads pension their employees when they have reached these ages, and in nations where old-age pensions prevail they always begin somewhere between the two limits thus set. It is easy to test our opponents’ sincerity in this matter. The order in question is revocable at the pleasure of the Executive. If our opponents come into power they can[57] revoke this order and announce that they will treat the veterans of sixty-two to seventy as presumably in full bodily vigor and not entitled to pensions. Will they now authoritatively state that they intend to do this? If so, we accept the issue. If not, then we have the right to ask why they raise an issue which, when raised, they do not venture to meet.

In addition to those acts of the Administration which they venture to assail only after misrepresenting them, there are others which they dare not overtly or officially attack, and yet which they covertly bring forward as reasons for the overthrow of the party. In certain great centres and with certain great interests our opponents make every effort to show that the settlement of the Anthracite Coal Strike by the individual act of the President, and the successful suit against the Northern Securities Company—the Merger suit—undertaken by the Department of Justice, were acts because of which the present Administration should be thrown from power. Yet they dare not openly condemn either act. They dare not in any authoritative or formal manner say that in either case wrong was done or error committed in the method of action, or in the choice of instruments for putting that action into effect. But what they dare not manfully assert in open day, they seek to use furtively and through special agents. It is perhaps natural that an attack so conducted should be made sometimes on the ground that too much, sometimes on the ground[58] that too little, has been done. Some of our opponents complain because under the anti-trust and interstate commerce laws suits were undertaken which have been successful; others, because suits were not undertaken which would have been unsuccessful.

The Democratic State Convention in New York dealt with the Anthracite Coal Strike by demanding in deliberate and formal fashion that the National Government should take possession of the coal fields; yet champions of that convention’s cause now condemn the fact that there was any action by the President at all—though they must know that it was only this action by the President which prevented the movement for national ownership of the coal fields from gaining what might well have been an irresistible impetus. Such mutually destructive criticisms furnish an adequate measure of the chance for coherent action or constructive legislation if our opponents should be given power.

So much for what our opponents openly or covertly advance in the way of an attack on the acts of the Administration. When we come to consider the policies for which they profess to stand we are met with the difficulty always arising when statements of policy are so made that they can be interpreted in different ways. On some of the vital questions that have confronted the American people in the last decade, our opponents take the position that[59] silence is the best possible way to convey their views. They contend that their lukewarm attitude of partial acquiescence in what others have accomplished entitles them to be made the custodians of the financial honor and commercial interests which they have but recently sought to ruin. Being unable to agree among themselves as to whether the gold standard is a curse or a blessing, and as to whether we ought or ought not to have free and unlimited coinage of silver, they have apparently thought it expedient to avoid any committal on these subjects, and individually each to follow his particular bent. Their nearest approach to a majority judgment seems to be that it is now inexpedient to assert their convictions one way or the other, and that the establishment of the gold standard by the Republican party should not be disturbed unless there is an alteration in the relative quantity of production of silver and gold. Men who hold sincere convictions on vital questions can respect equally sincere men with whose views they radically differ; and men may confess a change of faith without compromising their honor or their self-respect. But it is difficult to respect an attitude of mind such as has been fairly described above; and where there is no respect there can be no trust. A policy with so slender a basis of principle would not stand the strain of a single year of business adversity.

We, on the contrary, believe in the gold standard as fixed by the usage and verdict of the business[60] world, and in a sound monetary system, as matters of principle; as matters not of momentary political expediency, but of permanent organic policy. In 1896 and again in 1900 farsighted men, without regard to their party fealty in the past, joined to work against what they regarded as a debased monetary system. The policies which they championed have been steadfastly adhered to by the Administration; and by the act of March 14, 1900, Congress established the single gold standard as the measure of our monetary value. This act received the support of every Republican in the House, and of every Republican except one in the Senate. Of our opponents, eleven supported it in the House and two in the Senate; and one hundred and fifty opposed it in the House and twenty-eight in the Senate. The record of the last seven years proves that the party now in power can be trusted to take the additional action necessary to improve and strengthen our monetary system, and that our opponents can not be so trusted. The fundamental fact is that in a popular government such as ours no policy is irrevocably settled by law unless the people keep in control of the Government men who believe in that policy as a matter of deep-rooted conviction. Laws can always be revoked; it is the spirit and the purpose of those responsible for their enactment and administration which must be fixed and unchangeable. It is idle to say that the monetary standard of the Nation is irrevocably fixed so long as the party which at the last election cast approximately forty-six per cent[61] of the total vote refuses to put in its platform any statement that the question is settled. A determination to remain silent can not be accepted as equivalent to a recantation. Until our opponents as a party explicitly adopt the views which we hold and upon which we have acted and are acting, in the matter of sound currency, the only real way to keep the question from becoming unsettled is to keep the Republican party in power.

As for what our opponents say in reference to capital and labor, individual or corporate, here again all we need by way of answer is to point to what we have actually done, and to say that if continued in power we shall continue to carry out the policy we have been pursuing, and to execute the laws as resolutely and fearlessly in the future as we have executed them in the past. In my speech of acceptance I said:

“We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice, no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in[62] our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense.”

The action of the Attorney-General in enforcing the anti-trust and interstate commerce laws, and the action of the last Congress in enlarging the scope of the interstate commerce law, and in creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, with a Bureau of Corporations, have for the first time opened a chance for the National Government to deal intelligently and adequately with the questions affecting society, whether for good or for evil, because of the accumulation of capital in great corporations, and because of the new relations caused thereby. These laws are now being administered with entire efficiency; and as, in their working, need is shown for amendment or addition to them—whether better to secure the proper publicity, or better to guarantee the rights of shippers, or in any other direction—this need will be met. It is now asserted “that the common law, as developed, affords a complete legal remedy against monopolies.” But there is no common law of the United States. Its rules can be enforced only by the State courts and officers. No Federal court or officer could take any action whatever under them. It was this fact, coupled with the inability of the States to control trusts and monopolies, which led to the passage of the Federal statutes known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and[63] the Interstate Commerce Act; and it is only through the exercise of the powers conferred by these acts, and by the statutes of the last Congress supplementing them, that the National Government acquires any jurisdiction over the subject. To say that action against trusts and monopolies should be limited to the application of the common law is equivalent to saying that the National Government should take no action whatever to regulate them.

Undoubtedly, the multiplication of trusts and their increase in power has been largely due to the “failure of officials charged with the duty of enforcing the law to take the necessary procedure.” Such stricture upon the failure of the officials of the National Government to do their duty in this matter is certainly not wholly undeserved as far as the Administration preceding President McKinley’s is concerned; but it has no application at all to Republican administration. It is also undoubtedly true that what is most needed is “officials having both the disposition and the courage to enforce existing law.” This is precisely the need that has been met by the consistent and steadily continued action of the Department of Justice under the present Administration.

So far as the rights of the individual wage-worker and the individual capitalist are concerned, both as regards one another, as regards the public, and as regards organized capital and labor, the position of the Administration has been so clear that there is[64] no excuse for misrepresenting it, and no ground for opposing it unless misrepresented. Within the limits defined by the National Constitution the National Administration has sought to secure to each man the full enjoyment of his right to live his life and dispose of his property and his labor as he deems best, so long as he wrongs no one else. It has shown in effective fashion that in endeavoring to make good this guarantee, it treats all men, rich or poor, whatever their creed, their color, or their birthplace, as standing alike before the law. Under our form of government the sphere in which the Nation as distinguished from the State can act is narrowly circumscribed; but within that sphere all that could be done has been done. All thinking men are aware of the restrictions upon the power of action of the National Government in such matters. Being ourselves mindful of them, we have been scrupulously careful on the one hand to be moderate in our promises, and on the other hand to keep these promises in letter and in spirit. Our opponents have been hampered by no such considerations. They have promised, and many of them now promise, action which they could by no possibility take in the exercise of constitutional power, and which, if attempted, would bring business to a standstill; they have used, and often now use, language of wild invective and appeal to all the baser passions which tend to excite one set of Americans against their fellow-Americans; and yet whenever they have had power they have fittingly supplemented[65] this extravagance of promise by absolute nullity in performance.

This Government is based upon the fundamental idea that each man, no matter what his occupation, his race, or his religious belief, is entitled to be treated on his worth as a man, and neither favored nor discriminated against because of any accident in his position. Even here at home there is painful difficulty in the effort to realize this ideal; and the attempt to secure from other nations acknowledgment of it sometimes encounters obstacles that are wellnigh insuperable; for there are many nations which in the slow procession of the ages have not yet reached that point where the principles which Americans regard as axiomatic obtain any recognition whatever. One of the chief difficulties arises in connection with certain American citizens of foreign birth, or of particular creed, who desire to travel abroad. Russia, for instance, refuses to admit and protect Jews. Turkey refuses to admit and protect certain sects of Christians. This Government has consistently demanded equal protection abroad for all American citizens, whether native or naturalized. On March 27, 1899, Secretary Hay sent a letter of instructions to all the diplomatic and consular officers of the United States, in which he said: “This Department does not discriminate between native-born and naturalized citizens in according them protection while they are abroad, equality of treatment being required by the laws[66] of the United States.” These orders to our agents abroad have been repeated again and again, and are treated as the fundamental rule of conduct laid down for them, proceeding upon the theory “that all naturalized citizens of the United States while in foreign countries are entitled to and shall receive from this Government the same protection of person and property which is accorded to native-born citizens.” In issuing passports the State Department never discriminates, or alludes to any man’s religion; and in granting to every American citizen, native or naturalized, Christian or Jew, the same passport, so far as it has power it insists that all foreign Governments shall accept the passport as prima facie proof that the person therein described is a citizen of the United States and entitled to protection as such. It is a standing order to every American diplomatic and consular officer to protect every American citizen, of whatever faith, from unjust molestation; and our officers abroad have been stringently required to comply with this order.

Under such circumstances, the demand of our opponents that negotiations be begun to secure equal treatment of all Americans from those Governments which do not now accord it, shows either ignorance of the facts or insincerity. No change of policy in the method or manner of negotiation would add effectiveness to what the State Department has done and is doing. The steady pressure which the Department has been keeping up in the past will be continued in the future. This Administration[67] has on all proper occasions given clear expression to the belief of the American people that discrimination and oppression because of religion, wherever practiced, are acts of injustice before God and man; and in making evident to the world the depth of American convictions in this regard we have gone to the very limit of diplomatic usage.

It is a striking evidence of our opponents’ insincerity in this matter that with their demand for radical action by the State Department they couple a demand for a reduction in our small military establishment. Yet they must know that the heed paid to our protests against ill-treatment of our citizens will be exactly proportionate to the belief in our ability to make these protests effective should the need arise.

Our opponents have now declared themselves in favor of the Civil Service law, the repeal of which they demanded in 1900 and in 1896. If consistent, they should have gone one step further and congratulated the country upon the way in which the Civil Service law is now administered, and the way in which the classified service has been extended. The exceptions from examinations are fewer by far than ever before, and are confined to individual cases, where the application of the rules would be impracticable, unwise, unjust, or unnecessary. The administration of the great body of the classified civil service is free from politics, and appointments and removals have been put upon a business basis.[68] Statistics show that there is little difference between the tenure of the Federal classified employees and that of the employees of private business corporations. Less than one per cent of the classified employees are over seventy years of age, and in the main the service rendered is vigorous and efficient. Where the merit system was of course most needed was in the Philippine Islands; and a civil service law of very advanced type has there been put into operation and scrupulously observed. Without one exception every appointment in the Philippines has been made in accordance with the strictest standard of fitness, and without heed to any other consideration.

Finally, we come to certain matters upon which our opponents do in their platform of principles definitely take issue with us, and where, if they are sincere, their triumph would mean disaster to the country. But exactly as it is impossible to call attention to the present promises and past record of our opponents without seeming offensive, so it is impossible to compare their platform with their other and later official utterances and not create doubt as to their sincerity. In their private or unofficial utterances many of them frankly advance this insincerity as a merit, taking the position that as regards the points on which I am about to speak they have no intention of keeping their promises or of departing from the policies now established, and that therefore they can be trusted not to abuse the power they seek.

[69]

When we take up the great question of the tariff we are at once confronted by the doubt as to whether our opponents do or do not mean what they say. They say that “protection is robbery,” and promise to carry themselves accordingly if they are given power. Yet prominent persons among them assert that they do not really mean this and that if they come into power they will adopt our policy as regards the tariff; while others seem anxious to prove that it is safe to give them partial power, because the power would be only partial, and therefore they would not be able to do mischief. The last is certainly a curious plea to advance on behalf of a party seeking to obtain control of the Government.

At the outset it is worth while to say a word as to the attempt to identify the question of tariff revision or tariff reduction with a solution of the trust question. This is always a sign of desire to avoid any real effort to deal adequately with the trust question. In speaking on this point at Minneapolis, on April 4, 1903, I said:

There is little for me to add to this. It is but ten years since the last attempt was made, by means of lowering the tariff, to prevent some people from prospering too much. The attempt was entirely successful. The tariff law of that year was among the causes which in that year and for some time afterward effectually prevented anybody from prospering[71] too much, and labor from prospering at all. Undoubtedly it would be possible at the present time to prevent any of the trusts from remaining prosperous by the simple expedient of making such a sweeping change in the tariff as to paralyze the industries of the country. The trusts would cease to prosper; but their smaller competitors would be ruined, and the wage-workers would starve, while it would not pay the farmer to haul his produce to market. The evils connected with the trusts can be reached only by rational effort, step by step, along the lines taken by Congress and the Executive during the past three years. If a tariff law is passed under which the country prospers, as the country has prospered under the present tariff law, then all classes will share in the prosperity. If a tariff law is passed aimed at preventing the prosperity of some of our people, it is as certain as anything can be that this aim will be achieved only by cutting down the prosperity of all of our people.

Of course, if our opponents are not sincere in their proposal to abolish the system of a protective tariff, there is no use in arguing the matter at all, save by pointing out again that if on one great issue they do not mean what they say, it is hardly safe to trust them on any other issue. But if they are sincere in this matter, then their advent to power would mean domestic misfortune and misery as widespread and far-reaching as that which we saw ten years ago. When they speak of protection as “robbery,” they of course must mean that it is immoral[72] to enact a tariff designed (as is the present protective tariff) to secure to the American wage-worker the benefit of the high standard of living which we desire to see kept up in this country. Now to speak of the tariff in this sense as “robbery,” thereby giving it a moral relation, is not merely rhetorical; it is on its face false. The question of what tariff is best for our people is primarily one of expediency, to be determined not on abstract academic grounds, but in the light of experience. It is a matter of business; for fundamentally ours is a business people—manufacturers, merchants, farmers, wage-workers, professional men, all alike. Our experience as a people in the past has certainly not shown us that we could afford in this matter to follow those professional counselors who have confined themselves to study in the closet; for the actual working of the tariff has emphatically contradicted their theories. From time to time schedules must undoubtedly be rearranged and readjusted to meet the shifting needs of the country; but this can with safety be done only by those who are committed to the cause of the protective system. To uproot and destroy that system would be to ensure the prostration of business, the closing of factories, the impoverishment of the farmer, the ruin of the capitalist, and the starvation of the wage-worker. Yet, if protection is indeed “robbery,” and if our opponents really believe what they say, then it is precisely to the destruction and uprooting of the tariff, and therefore of our business[73] and industry, that they are pledged. When our opponents last obtained power it was on a platform declaring a protective tariff “unconstitutional”; and the effort to put this declaration into practice was one of the causes of the general national prostration lasting from 1893 to 1897. If a protective tariff is either “unconstitutional” or “robbery,” then it is just as unconstitutional, just as much robbery, to revise it down, still leaving it protective, as it would be to enact it. In other words, our opponents have committed themselves to the destruction of the protective principle in the tariff, using words which if honestly used forbid them from permitting this principle to obtain in even the smallest degree.

Our opponents assert that they believe in reciprocity. Their action on the most important reciprocity treaty recently negotiated—that with Cuba—does not bear out this assertion. Moreover, there can be no reciprocity unless there is a substantial tariff; free trade and reciprocity are not compatible. We are on record as favoring arrangements for reciprocal trade relations with other countries, these arrangements to be on an equitable basis of benefit to both the contracting parties. The Republican party stands pledged to every wise and consistent method of increasing the foreign commerce of the country. That it has kept its pledge is proven by the fact that while the domestic trade of this country exceeds in volume the entire export and import trade of all the nations of the world, the United[74] States has in addition secured more than an eighth of the export trade of the world, standing first among the nations in this respect. The United States has exported during the last seven years nearly ten billions of dollars’ worth of goods—on an average half as much again annually as during the previous four years, when many of our people were consuming nothing but necessaries, and some of them a scanty supply even of these.

Two years ago, in speaking at Logansport, Indiana, I said:

“The one consideration which must never be omitted in a tariff change is the imperative need of preserving the American standard of living for the American workingman. The tariff-rate must never fall below that which will protect the American workingman by allowing for the difference between the general labor cost here and abroad, so as at least to equalize the conditions arising from the difference in the standard of labor here and abroad—a difference which it should be our aim to foster in so far as it represents the needs of better educated, better paid, better fed, and better clothed workingmen of a higher type than any to be found in a foreign country. At all hazards, and no matter what else is sought for or accomplished by changes of the tariff, the American workingman must be protected in his standard of wages, that is, in his standard of living, and must be secured the fullest opportunity of employment. Our laws should in no event afford advantage to[75] foreign industries over American industries. They should in no event do less than equalize the difference in conditions at home and abroad.”

It is a matter of regret that the protective tariff policy, which, during the last forty-odd years, has become part of the very fibre of the country, is not now accepted as definitely established. Surely we have a right to say that it has passed beyond the domain of theory, and a right to expect that not only its original advocates but those who at one time distrusted it on theoretic grounds should now acquiesce in the results that have been proved over and over again by actual experience. These forty-odd years have been the most prosperous years this Nation has ever seen; more prosperous years than any other nation has ever seen. Beyond question this prosperity could not have come if the American people had not possessed the necessary thrift, energy, and business intelligence to turn their vast material resources to account. But it is no less true that it is our economic policy as regards the tariff and finance which has enabled us as a nation to make such good use of the individual capacities of our citizens, and the natural resources of our country. Every class of our people is benefited by the protective tariff. During the last few years the merchant has seen the export trade of this country grow faster than ever in our previous history. The manufacturer could not keep his factory running if it were not for the protective tariff. The wage-worker[76] would do well to remember that if protection is “robbery,” and is to be punished accordingly, he will be the first to pay the penalty; for either he will be turned adrift entirely, or his wages will be cut down to the starvation point. As conclusively shown by the bulletins of the Bureau of Labor, the purchasing power of the average wage received by the wage-worker has grown faster than the cost of living, and this in spite of the continual shortening of working hours. The accumulated savings of the workingmen of the country, as shown by the deposits in the savings banks, have increased by leaps and bounds. At no time in the history of this or any other country has there been an era so productive of material benefit alike to workingman and employer as during the seven years that have just passed.

The farmer has benefited quite as much as the manufacturer, the merchant, and the wage-worker. The most welcome and impressive fact established by the last census is the wide and even distribution of wealth among all classes of our countrymen. The chief agencies in producing this distribution are shown by the census to be the development of manufactures, and the application of new inventions to universal use. The result has been an increasing interdependence of agriculture and manufactures. Agriculture is now, as it always has been, the basis of civilization. The six million farms of the United States, operated by men who, as a class, are steadfast,[77] single-minded, and industrious, form the basis of all the other achievements of the American people and are more fruitful than all their other resources. The men on those six million farms receive from the protective tariff what they most need, and that is the best of all possible markets. All other classes depend upon the farmer, but the farmer in turn depends upon the market they furnish him for his produce. The annual output of our agricultural products is nearly four billions of dollars. Their increase in value has been prodigious, although agriculture has languished in most other countries; and the main factor in this increase is the corresponding increase of our manufacturing industries. American farmers have prospered because the growth of their market has kept pace with the growth of their farms. The additional market continually furnished for agricultural products by domestic manufacturers has been far in excess of the outlet to other lands. An export trade in farm products is necessary to dispose of our surplus; and the export trade of our farmers, both in animal products and in plant products, has very largely increased. Without the enlarged home market to keep this surplus down, we should have to reduce production or else feed the world at less than the cost of production. In the forty years ending in 1900 the total value of farm property increased twelve and a half billions of dollars; the farmer gaining even more during this period than the manufacturer. Long ago overproduction would[78] have checked the marvelous development of our national agriculture, but for the steadily increasing demand of American manufacturers for farm products required as raw materials for steadily expanding industries. The farmer has become dependent upon the manufacturer to utilize that portion of his produce which does not go directly to food supply. In 1900 fifty-two per cent, or a little over half, of the total value of the farm products of the Nation was consumed in manufacturing industries as the raw materials of the factories. Evidently the manufacturer is the farmer’s best and most direct customer. Moreover, the American manufacturer purchases his farm supplies almost exclusively in his own country. Nine-tenths of all the raw materials of every kind and description consumed in American manufactories are of American production. The manufacturing establishments tend steadily to migrate into the heart of the great agricultural districts. The centre of the manufacturing industry in 1900 was near the middle of Ohio, and it is moving westward at the rate of about thirty miles in every decade; and this movement is invariably accompanied by a marked increase in the value of farm lands. Local causes, notably the competition between new farm lands and old farm lands, tend here and there to obscure what is happening; but it is as certain as the operation of any economic law that in the country as a whole farm values will continue to increase as the partnership between manufacturer and farmer grows more[79] intimate through further advance of industrial science. The American manufacturer never could have placed this Nation at the head of the manufacturing nations of the world if he had not had behind him, securing him every variety of raw material, the exhaustless resources of the American farm, developed by the skill and the enterprise of intelligent and educated American farmers. On the other hand, the debt of the farmers to the manufacturers is equally heavy, and the future of American agriculture is bound up in the future of American manufactures. The two industries have become, under the economic policy of our Government, so closely interwoven, so mutually interdependent, that neither can hope to maintain itself at the high-water mark of progress without the other. Whatever makes to the advantage of one is equally to the advantage of the other.

So it is as between the capitalist and the wage-worker. Here and there there may be an unequal sharing as between the two in the benefits that have come by protection; but benefits have come to both; and a reversal in policy would mean damage to both; and while the damage would be heavy to all, it would be heaviest, and it would fall soonest, upon those who are paid in the form of wages each week or each month for that week’s or that month’s work.

Conditions change and the laws must be modified from time to time to fit new exigencies. But the[80] genuine underlying principle of protection, as it has been embodied in all but one of the American tariff laws for the last forty years, has worked out results so beneficent, so evenly and widely spread, so advantageous alike to farmers and capitalists and workingmen, to commerce and trade of every kind, that the American people, if they show their usual practical business sense, will insist that when these laws are modified they shall be modified with the utmost care and conservatism, and by the friends and not the enemies of the protective system. They can not afford to trust the modification to those who treat protection and robbery as synonymous terms.

In closing what I have to say about the system of promoting American industry let me add a word of cordial agreement with the policy of in some way including within its benefits, by appropriate legislation, the American merchant marine. It is not creditable to us as a nation that our great export and import trade should be wellnigh exclusively in the hands of foreigners.

It is difficult to know if our opponents are really sincere in their demand for the reduction of the Army. If insincere, there is no need for comment, and if sincere, what shall we say in speaking to rational persons of an appeal to reduce an Army of sixty thousand men which is taking care of the interests of over eighty million people? The Army is now relatively smaller than it was in the days of Washington, when on the peace establishment there[81] were thirty-six hundred soldiers, while there were a little less than four millions of population; smaller than it was in the peaceful days of Jefferson, when there were fifty-one hundred soldiers to five million three hundred thousand population. There is now one soldier to every fourteen hundred people in this country—less than one-tenth of one per cent. We can not be asked seriously to argue as to the amount of possible tyranny contained in these figures. The Army as it is now is as small as it can possibly be and serve its purpose as an effective nucleus for the organization, equipment, and supply of a volunteer army in time of need. It is now used, as never before, for aiding in the upbuilding of the organized militia of the country. The War Department is engaged in a systematic effort to strengthen and develop the National Guard in the several States; as witness, among many other instances, the great field manœuvres at Manassas, which have just closed. If our opponents should come into power they could not reduce our Army below its present size without greatly impairing its efficiency and abandoning part of the national duty. In short, in this matter, if our opponents should come into power they would either have to treat this particular promise of the year 1904 as they now treat the promises they made in 1896 and 1900, that is, as possessing no binding force; or else they would have to embark on a policy which would be ludicrous at the moment, and fraught with grave danger to the national honor in the future.

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Our opponents contend that the Government is now administered extravagantly, and that whereas there was “a surplus of $80,000,000 in 1900” there is “a deficit of more than $40,000,000” in the year that has just closed.

This deficit is imaginary, and is obtained by including in the ordinary current expenses the sum of fifty millions, which was paid for the right of way of the Panama Canal out of the accumulated surplus in the Treasury. Comparing the current or ordinary expenditures for the two years, there was a surplus of nearly eighty millions for the year 1900, and of only a little more than eight millions for the year that has just closed. But this diminution of the annual surplus was brought about designedly by the abolition of the war taxes in the interval between the two dates. The acts of March 2, 1901, and April 12, 1902, cut down the internal revenue taxes to an amount estimated at one hundred and five millions a year. In other words, the reduction of taxation has been considerably greater than the reduction in the annual surplus. Since the close of the war with Spain there has been no substantial change in the rate of annual expenditures. As compared with the fiscal year ending in June, 1901, for example, the fiscal year that has just closed showed a relatively small increase in expenditure (excluding the canal payment already referred to), while the year previous showed a relatively small decrease.

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The expenditures of the Nation have been managed in a spirit of economy as far removed from waste as from niggardliness; and in the future every effort will be continued to secure an economy as strict as is consistent with efficiency. Once more our opponents have promised what they can not or should not perform. The prime reason why the expenses of the Government have increased of recent years is to be found in the fact that the people, after mature thought, have deemed it wise to have certain new forms of work for the public undertaken by the public. This necessitates such expenditures, for instance, as those for rural free delivery, or for the inspection of meats under the Department of Agriculture, or for irrigation. But these new expenditures are necessary; no one would seriously propose to abandon them; and yet it is idle to declaim against the increased expense of the Government unless it is intended to cut down the very expenditures which cause the increase. The pensions to the veterans of the Civil War are demanded by every sentiment of regard and gratitude. The rural free-delivery is of the greatest use and convenience to the farmers, a body of men who live under conditions which make them ordinarily receive little direct return for what they pay toward the support of the Government. The irrigation policy in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West is one fraught with the most beneficent and far-reaching good to the actual settlers, the homemakers, whose encouragement is a traditional[84] feature in America’s National policy. Do our opponents grudge the fifty millions paid for the Panama Canal? Do they intend to cut down on the pensions to the veterans of the Civil War? Do they intend to put a stop to the irrigation policy? or to the permanent census bureau? or to immigration inspection? Do they intend to abolish rural free-delivery? Do they intend to cut down the Navy? or the Alaskan telegraph system? Do they intend to dismantle our coast fortifications? If there is to be a real and substantial cutting down in national expenditures it must be in such matters as these. The Department of Agriculture has done service of incalculable value to the farmers of this country in many different lines. Do our opponents wish to cut down the money for this service? They can do it only by destroying the usefulness of the service itself.

The public work of the United States has never been conducted with a higher degree of honesty and efficiency than at the present time; and a special meed of praise belongs to those officials responsible for the Philippines and Porto Rico, where the administrations have been models of their kind. Of course, wrong has occasionally occurred, but it has been relentlessly stamped out. We have known no party in dealing with offenders, and have hunted down without mercy every wrong-doer in the service of the Nation whom it was possible by the utmost vigilance to detect; for the public servant who[85] betrays his trust and the private individual who debauches him stand as the worst of criminals, because their crimes are crimes against the entire community, and not only against this generation, but against the generations that are yet to be.

Our opponents promise independence to the Philippine Islands. Here again we are confronted by the fact that their irreconcilable differences of opinion among themselves, their proved inability to create a constructive policy when in power, and their readiness, for the sake of momentary political expediency, to abandon the principles upon which they have insisted as essential, conspire to puzzle us as to whether they do or do not intend in good faith to carry out this promise if they are given control of the Government. In their platform they declare for independence, apparently—for their language is a little obscure—without qualification as to time; and indeed a qualification as to time is an absurdity, for we have neither right nor power to bind our successors when it is impossible to foretell the conditions which may confront them; while if there is any principle involved in the matter, it is just as wrong to deny independence for a few years as to deny it for an indefinite period. But in later and equally official utterances by our opponents the term self-government was substituted for independence; the words used being so chosen that in their natural construction they described precisely the policy now being carried on. The language of the platform indicated[86] a radical change of policy; the later utterances indicated a continuance of the present policy. But this caused trouble in their own ranks; and in a still later, although less formal, utterance, the self-government promise was recanted, and independence at some future time was promised in its place. They have occupied three entirely different positions within fifty days. Which is the promise they really intend to keep? They do not know their own minds; and no one can tell how long they would keep of the same mind, should they by any chance come to a working agreement among themselves. If such ambiguity affected only the American people it would not so greatly matter; for the American people can take care of themselves. But the Filipinos are in no such condition. Confidence is with them a plant of slow growth. They have been taught to trust the word of this Government because this Government has promised nothing which it did not perform. If promised independence they will expect independence; not in the remote future, for their descendants, but immediately, for themselves. If the promise thus made is not immediately fulfilled they will regard it as broken, and will not again trust to American faith; and it would be indeed a wicked thing to deceive them in such fashion. Moreover, even if the promise were made to take effect only in the distant future, the Filipinos would be thrown into confusion thereby. Instead of continuing to endeavor to fit themselves for moral and material advancement in the present, they would abandon all[87] effort at progress and begin factional intrigues for future power.

To promise to give them independence when it is “prudent” to do so, or when they are “fit” for it, of course implies that they are not fit for it now, and that it would be imprudent to give it to them now. But as we must ourselves be the judges as to when they become “fit,” and when it would be “prudent” to keep such a promise if it were made, it necessarily follows that to make such a promise now would amount to a deception upon the Filipinos.

It may well be that our opponents have no real intention of putting their promise into effect. If this is the case, if, in other words, they are insincere in the promise they make, it is only necessary to say again that it is unwise to trust men who are false in one thing to deal with anything. The mere consciousness of broken faith would hamper them in continuing our policy in the islands; and only by continuing unchanged this policy can the honor of the country be maintained, or the interests of the islands subserved. If, on the other hand, our opponents came into power and attempted to carry out their promises to the Filipinos by giving them independence, and withdrawing American control from the islands, the result would be a frightful calamity to the Filipinos themselves, and in its larger aspect would amount to an international crime. Anarchy would follow; and the most violent anarchic forces would be directed partly against the civil government,[88] partly against all forms of religious and educational civilization. Bloody conflicts would inevitably ensue in the archipelago, and just as inevitably the islands would become the prey of the first Power which in its own selfish interest took up the task we had cravenly abandoned. Of course, the practical difficulty in adopting any such course of action—such a “policy of scuttle,” as President McKinley called it—would be found wellnigh insuperable. If it is morally indefensible to hold the archipelago as a whole under our tutelage in the interest of its own people, then it is morally indefensible to hold any part of it. In such case, what right have we to keep a coaling station? What right to keep control over the Moro peoples? What right to protect the Igorrotes from their oppressors? What right to protect the law-abiding friends of America in the islands from treachery, robbery, and murder? Yet, to abandon the islands completely, without even retaining a coaling station, would mean to abandon the position in the competition for the trade of the Orient which we have acquired during the last six years; and what is far more important, it would mean irreparable damage to those who have become the wards of the Nation. To abandon all control over the Moros would amount to releasing these Moros to prey upon the Christian Filipinos, civilized or semi-civilized, as well as upon the commerce of other peoples. The Moros are in large part still in the stage of culture where the occupations of the bandit and the pirate are those most[89] highly regarded; and it has not been found practical to give them self-government in the sense that we have been giving it to the Christian inhabitants. To abandon the Moro country as our opponents propose in their platform, would be precisely as if twenty-five years ago we had withdrawn the Army and the civil agents from within and around the Indian reservations in the West, at a time when the Sioux and the Apache were still the terror of our settlers. It would be a criminal absurdity; and yet our opponents have pledged themselves thereto. If successful in the coming election they would either have to break faith, or else to do an act which would leave an indelible stain upon our national reputation for courage, and for good sense. During the last five years more has been done for the material and moral well-being of the Filipinos than ever before since the islands first came within the ken of civilized man. We have opened before them a vista of orderly development in their own interest, and not a policy of exploitation. Every effort is being made to fit the islanders for self-government, and they have already in large measure received it, while for the first time in their history their personal rights and civil liberties have been guaranteed. They are being educated; they have been given schools; they have been given libraries; roads are being built for their use; their health is being cared for; they have been given courts in which they receive justice as absolute as it is in our power to guarantee. Their individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of[90] happiness are now by act of Congress jealously safeguarded under the American flag; and if the protection of the flag were withdrawn their rights would be lost, and the islands would be plunged back under some form of vicious tyranny. We have given them more self-government than they have ever before had; we are taking steps to increase it still further by providing them with an elected legislative assembly; and surely we had better await the results of this experiment—for it is a wholly new experiment in Asia—before we make promises which as a Nation we might be forced to break, or which they might interpret one way and we another. It may be asserted without fear of successful contradiction that nowhere else in recent years has there been as fine an example of constructive statesmanship and wise and upright Administration as has been given by the civil authorities, aided by the Army, in the Philippine Islands. We have administered them in the interest of their own people; and the Filipinos themselves have profited most by our presence in the islands; but they have also been of very great advantage to us as a nation.

So far from having “sapped the foundations” of free popular government at home by the course taken in the Philippines, we have been spreading its knowledge, and teaching its practice, among peoples to whom it had never before been more than an empty name. Our action represents a great stride forward in spreading the principles of orderly liberty throughout the world. “Our flag has not lost[91] its gift of benediction in its world-wide journey to their shores.” We have treated the power we have gained as a solemn obligation, and have used it in the interest of mankind; and the peoples of the world, and especially the weaker peoples of the world, are better off because of the position we have assumed. To retrace our steps would be to give proof of an infirm and unstable national purpose.

Four years ago, in his speech of acceptance, President McKinley said:

“We have been moving in untried paths, but our steps have been guided by honor and duty. There will be no turning aside, no wavering, no retreat. No blow has been struck except for liberty and humanity, and none will be. We will perform without fear every national and international obligation. The Republican party was dedicated to freedom forty-four years ago. It has been the party of liberty and emancipation from that hour; not of profession, but of performance. It broke the shackles of four million slaves, and made them free, and to the party of Lincoln has come another supreme opportunity which it has bravely met in the liberation of ten millions of the human family from the yoke of imperialism. In its solution of great problems, in its performance of high duties, it has had the support of members of all parties in the past, and it confidently invokes their co-operation in the future.”

This is as true now as four years ago. We did not take the Philippines at will, and we can not put[92] them aside at will. Any abandonment of the policy which we have steadily pursued in the islands would be fraught with dishonor and disaster; and to such dishonor and disaster I do not believe that the American people will consent.

Alarm has been professed lest the Filipinos should not receive all the benefits guaranteed to our people at home by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. As a matter of fact, the Filipinos have already secured the substance of these benefits. This Government has been true to the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Philippines. Can our opponents deny that here at home the principles of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have been in effect nullified? In this, as in many other matters, we at home can well profit by the example of those responsible for the actual management of affairs in the Philippines. In our several commonwealths here in the United States we, as a people, now face the complex problem of securing fair treatment to each man regardless of his race or color. We can do so only if we approach the problem in the spirit of courage, common-sense, and high-minded devotion to the right, which has enabled Governor Taft, Governor Wright, and their associates, to do so noble a work in giving to the Philippine people the benefit of the true principles of American liberty.

Our appeal is made to all good citizens who hold the honor and the interest of the Nation close to[93] their hearts. The great issues which are at stake, and upon which I have touched, are more than mere partisan issues, for they involve much that comes home to the individual pride and individual well-being of our people. Under conditions as they actually are, good Americans should refuse, for the sake of the welfare of the Nation, to change the national policy. We, who are responsible for the administration and legislation under which this country, during the last seven years, has grown so greatly in well-being at home and in honorable repute among the nations of the earth abroad, do not stand inertly upon this record, do not use this record as an excuse for failure of effort to meet new conditions. On the contrary, we treat the record of what we have done in the past as incitement to do even better in the future. We believe that the progress that we have made may be taken as a measure of the progress we shall continue to make if the people again intrust the Government of the Nation to our hands. We do not stand still. We press steadily forward toward the goal of moral and material well-being for our own people, of just and fearless dealing toward all other peoples, in the interest not merely of this country, but of mankind. There is not a policy, foreign or domestic, which we are now carrying out, which it would not be disastrous to reverse or abandon. If our opponents should come in and should not reverse our policies, then they would be branded with the brand of broken faith, of false promise, of insincerity in word[94] and deed; and no man can work to the advantage of the Nation with such a brand clinging to him. If, on the other hand, they should come in and reverse any or all of our policies, by just so much would the Nation as a whole be damaged. Alike as lawmakers and as administrators of the law we have endeavored to do our duty in the interest of the people as a whole. We make our appeal to no class and to no section, but to all good citizens, in whatever part of the land they dwell, and whatever may be their occupation or worldly condition. We have striven both for civic righteousness and for national greatness; and we have faith to believe that our hands will be upheld by all who feel love of country and trust in the uplifting of mankind. We stand for enforcement of the law and for obedience to the law; our Government is a government of orderly liberty equally alien to tyranny and to anarchy; and its foundation-stone is the observance of the law, alike by the people and by the public servants. We hold ever before us as the all-important end of policy and administration the reign of peace at home and throughout the world; of peace, which comes only by doing justice.

Faithfully yours,

Theodore Roosevelt.

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REMARKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE, SEPT. 24, 1904, ON THE OCCASION OF THE RECEPTION OF THE INTERPARLIAMENTARY UNION

Gentlemen of the Interparliamentary Union:

I greet you with profound pleasure as representatives in a special sense of the great international movement for peace and goodwill among the nations of the earth. It is a matter of gratification to all Americans that we have had the honor of receiving you here as the Nation’s guests. You are men skilled in the practical work of government in your several countries; and this fact adds weight to your championship of the cause of international justice. I thank you for your kind allusions to what the Government of the United States has accomplished for the policies you have at heart, and I assure you that this Government’s attitude will continue unchanged in reference thereto. We are even now taking steps to secure arbitration treaties with all other Governments which are willing to enter into them with us.

In response to your resolutions I shall at an early date ask the other nations to join in a second Congress at The Hague. I feel, as I am sure you do, that our efforts should take the shape of pushing forward toward completion the work already begun at The Hague, and that whatever is now done should appear not as something divergent therefrom, but as a continuance thereof. At the first conference at The Hague several questions were[96] left unsettled, and it was expressly provided that there should be a second conference. A reasonable time has elapsed, and I feel that your body has shown sound judgment in concluding that a second conference should now be called to carry some steps further toward completion the work of the first. It would be visionary to expect too immediate success for the great cause you are championing; but very substantial progress can be made if we strive with resolution and good sense toward the goal of securing among the nations of the earth, as among the individuals of each nation, a just sense of responsibility in each toward others, and a just recognition in each of the rights of others. The right and the responsibility must go hand in hand. Our effort must be unceasing both to secure in each nation full acknowledgment of the rights of others, and to bring about in each nation an ever growing sense of its own responsibilities.

At an early date I shall issue the call for the conference you request.

I again greet you and bid you welcome in the name of the American people, and wish you Godspeed in your efforts for the common good of mankind.

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White House, Washington
November 4, 1904

Certain slanderous accusations as to Mr. Cortelyou and myself have been repeated time and again by Judge Parker, the candidate of his party for the office of President. He neither has produced nor can produce any proof of their truth; yet he has not withdrawn them; and as his position gives them wide currency, I speak now lest the silence of self-respect be misunderstood. Mr. Parker’s charges are in effect that the President of the United States and Mr. Cortelyou, formerly Mr. Cleveland’s executive clerk, then Mr. McKinley’s and my secretary, then Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and now Chairman of the Republican National Committee, have been in a conspiracy to blackmail corporations, Mr. Cortelyou using his knowledge gained while he was Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor to extort money from the corporations, and I, the President, having appointed him for this especial purpose. The gravamen of these charges lies in the assertion that the corporations have been blackmailed into contributing, and in the implication, which in one or two of Mr. Parker’s speeches has taken the form practically of an assertion, that they have been promised certain immunities or favors, or have been assured that they would receive some kind of improper consideration in view of their contributions. That contributions have been made to the Republican Committee, as contributions have been[98] made to the Democratic Committee, is not the question at issue. Mr. Parker’s assertion is in effect that such contributions have been made for improper motives, either in consequence of threats or in consequence of improper promises, direct or indirect, on the part of the recipients. Mr. Parker knows best whether this is true of the contributions to his campaign fund which have come through his trusted friends and advisers who represent the great corporate interests that stand behind him. But there is not one particle of truth in the statement as regards anything that has gone on in the management of the Republican campaign. Mr. Parker’s accusations against Mr. Cortelyou and me are monstrous. If true they would brand both of us forever with infamy; and inasmuch as they are false, heavy must be the condemnation of the man making them. I chose Mr. Cortelyou as Chairman of the National Committee after having failed successively to persuade Mr. Elihu Root, Mr. W. Murray Crane, and Mr. Cornelius N. Bliss to accept the position. I chose him with extreme reluctance, because I could ill spare him from the Cabinet. But I felt that he possessed the high integrity which I demanded in the man who was to manage my campaign. I am content that Mr. Parker and I should be judged by the public on the characters of the two men whom we chose to manage our campaigns; he by the character of his nominee, Mr. Thomas Taggart, and I by the character of Mr. Cortelyou. The assertion that Mr. Cortelyou had[99] any knowledge, gained while in an official position, whereby he was enabled to secure and did secure any contributions from any corporation is a falsehood. The assertion that there has been any blackmail, direct or indirect, by Mr. Cortelyou or by me is a falsehood. The assertion that there has been made in my behalf and by my authority, by Mr. Cortelyou or by any one else, any pledge or promise, or that there has been any understanding as to future immunities or benefits, in recognition of any contributions from any source, is a wicked falsehood.

That Mr. Parker should desire to avoid the discussion of principles I can well understand; for it is but the bare truth to say that he has not attacked us on any matter of principle or upon any action of the Government save after first misstating that principle or that action. But I can not understand how any honorable man, a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the people, can take refuge not merely in personalities, but in such base and unworthy personalities. If I deemed it necessary to support my flat denial by any evidence, I would ask all men of common-sense to ponder well what has been done in this campaign by Mr. Cortelyou, and to compare it with what Mr. Parker himself did when he was managing Mr. Hill’s campaign for Governor; and to compare what has been done as regards the great corporations and moneyed interests under this Administration with what was done under the last Democratic Administration[100] while Mr. Olney was Attorney-General; I would ask all honest men whether they seriously deem it possible that the course this Administration has taken in every matter, from the Northern Securities suit to the settlement of the anthracite coal strike, is compatible with any theory of public behavior save the theory of doing exact justice to all men without fear and without favoritism; I would ask all honest and fair-minded men to remember that the agents through whom I have worked are Mr. Knox and Mr. Moody in the Department of Justice, Mr. Cortelyou in the Department of Commerce and Labor, and Mr. Garfield in the Bureau of Corporations, and that no such act of infamy as Mr. Parker charges could have been done without all these men being parties to it.

The statements made by Mr. Parker are unqualifiedly and atrociously false. As Mr. Cortelyou has said to me more than once during the campaign, if elected I shall go into the Presidency unhampered by any pledge, promise, or understanding of any kind, sort or description, save my promise, made openly to the American people, that so far as in my power lies I shall see to it that every man has a square deal, no less and no more.

Theodore Roosevelt.

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ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, AT WASHINGTON, NOV. 19, 1904

Mr. Ambassador:

Through you I wish on behalf of the people of the United States to thank his Majesty, the German Emperor, and the people of Germany for the gift to the Nation which you have just formally delivered to me. I accept it with deep appreciation of the friendly regard which it typifies for the people of this Republic both on the part of the Emperor and on the part of the German people. I accept it not merely as the statue of one of the half-dozen greatest soldiers of all time, and therefore peculiarly appropriate for placing in this War College, but I accept it as the statue of a great man, whose life was devoted to the service of a great people, and whose deeds hastened the approach of the day when a united Germany should spring into being.

As a soldier Frederick the Great ranks in that very, very small group which includes Alexander, Cæsar, and Hannibal in antiquity, and Napoleon, and possibly Gustavus Adolphus, in modern times. He belonged to the ancient and illustrious house of Hohenzollern, which, after playing a strong and virile part in the Middle Ages, and after producing some men, like the great Elector, who were among the most famous princes of their time, founded the royal house of Prussia two centuries ago, and at[102] last in our own day established the mighty German Empire as among the foremost of world powers. We receive this gift now at the hands of the present Emperor, himself a man who has markedly added to the lustre of his great house and his great nation, a man who has devoted his life to the welfare of his people, and who, while keeping ever ready to defend the rights of that people, has also made it evident in emphatic fashion that he and they desire peace and friendship with the other nations of the earth.

It is not my purpose here to discuss at length the career of the mighty King and mighty General whose statue we have just received. In all history no other great commander save only Hannibal fought so long against such terrible odds, and while Hannibal finally failed, Frederick finally triumphed. In almost every battle he fought against great odds, and he almost always won the victory. When defeated he rose to an even greater altitude than when victorious. The memory of the Seven Years’ War will last as long as there lives in mankind the love of heroism, and its operations will be studied to the minutest detail as long as the world sees a soldier worthy of the name. It is difficult to know whether to admire most the victories of Leuthen and Prague, Rossbach and Zorndorf, or the heartbreaking campaigns after Kunersdorf, when the great King, after having been beaten to the ground by the banded might of Europe, yet rose again and by an exhibition of skill, tenacity, energy, and daring[103] such as had never before been seen united in one person, finally wrested triumph from defeat. Not only must the military scholar always turn to the career of Frederick the Great for lessons in strategy and tactics; not only must the military administrator always turn to his career for lessons in organizing success; not only will the lover of heroism read the tales of his mighty feats as long as mankind cares for heroic deeds; but even those who are not attracted by the valor of the soldier must yet, for the sake of the greatness of the man, ponder and admire the lessons taught by his undaunted resolution, his inflexible tenacity of purpose, his farsighted grasp of lofty possibilities, and his unflinching, unyielding determination in following the path he had marked out. It is eminently fitting that the statue of this iron soldier, this born leader of men, should find a place in this War College; for when soldierly genius and soldierly heroism reach the highest point of achievement the man in whom they are displayed grows to belong not merely to the nation from which he sprang, but to all nations capable of showing, and therefore capable of appreciating, the virile and masterful virtues which alone make victors in those dread struggles where resort is at last had to the arbitrament of arms.

But, Mr. Ambassador, in accepting the statue given us to-day through you from the German Emperor, I accept it not merely because it is the statue of a mighty and terrible soldier, but I accept it as[104] a symbol of the ties of friendship and goodwill which I trust as the years go on will bind ever closer together the American and the German peoples. There is kinship of blood between the two nations. We of the United States are of mixed stock. In our veins runs the blood of almost all the peoples of middle, northern, and western Europe. We already have a history of which we feel that we have the right to be legitimately proud, and yet our nationality is still in the formative period. Nearly three centuries have elapsed since the landing of the English at Jamestown marked the beginning of what has since grown into the United States.

During these three centuries streams of newcomers from many different countries abroad have in each generation contributed to swell the increase of our people. Soon after the English settled in Virginia and New England, the Hollander settled at the mouth of the Hudson and the Swede at the mouth of the Delaware. Even in Colonial days the German element had become very strong among our people in various parts of this country; the Irish element was predominant in the foothills of the Alleghenies; French Huguenots were numerous. By the time of the Declaration of Independence that process of fusion which has gone on ever since was well under way. From the beginning of our national history men of German origin or German parentage played a distinguished part in the affairs both of peace and of war. In the Revolutionary War one of the leading generals[105] was Muhlenberg, an American of German descent, just as among the soldiers from abroad who came to aid us one of the most prominent was the German, Steuben. Muhlenberg was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives; and the battle which in the Revolution saved the valley of the Mohawk to the American cause was fought under the lead of the German, Herkimer. As all the different races here tend rapidly to fuse together, it is rarely possible after one or two generations to draw a sharp line between the various elements; but there is no student of our national conditions who has failed to appreciate what an invaluable element in our composite stock the German is. Here, on this platform, Mr. Ambassador, among those present to-day are many men partly or wholly of German blood, and among the officers of the Army and Navy who have listened to you and who now join with me in greeting you there are many whose fathers or grandfathers were born in Germany, and not a few who themselves first saw the light there.

Each nation has its allotted tasks to do; each nation has its peculiar difficulties to encounter; and as the peoples of the world tend to become more closely knit together alike for good and for evil, it becomes ever more important to all that each should prosper; for the prosperity of one is normally not a sign of menace but a sign of hope for the rest. Here on this Continent where it is absolutely essential that the different peoples coming[106] to our shores should not remain separate, but should fuse into one, our unceasing effort is to strive to keep and profit by the good that each race brings to our shores, and at the same time to do away with all racial and religious animosities among the various stocks. In both efforts we have met with an astonishing measure of success. As the years go by it becomes not harder but easier to live in peace and goodwill among ourselves; and I firmly believe that it will also become not harder but easier to dwell in peace and friendship with the other nations of the earth. A young people, a people of composite stock, we have kinship with many different nations, but we are identical with none of them, and are developing a separate national stock as we have already developed a separate national life. We have in our veins the blood of the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Welshman, the German and the Frenchman, the Scotchman, the Dutchman, the Scandinavian, the Italian, the Magyar, the Finn, the Slav, so that to each of the great powers of the Old World we can claim a more or less distant kinship by blood; and to each strain of blood we owe some peculiar quality in our national life or national character. As such is the case it is natural that we should have a peculiar feeling of nearness to each of many peoples across the water. We most earnestly wish not only to keep unbroken our friendship for each, but so far as we can without giving offence by an appearance of meddling, to seek to bring about a better understanding[107] and a broader spirit of fair dealing and toleration among all nations. It has been my great pleasure, Mr. Ambassador, in pursuance of this object, recently to take with you the first steps in the negotiation of a treaty of friendly arbitration between Germany and the United States.

In closing, let me thank you, and through you the German Emperor and the German people, for this statue, which I accept in the name of the American people; a people claiming blood kinship with your own; a people owing much to Germany; a people which, though with a national history far shorter than that of your people, nevertheless, like your people, is proud of the great deeds of its past, and is confident in the majesty of its future. I most earnestly pray that in the coming years these two great nations shall move on toward their several destinies knit together by ties of the heartiest friendship and goodwill.

[108]

REMARKS AT ST. PATRICK’S CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., NOV. 20, 1904

Cardinal Gibbons, Father Stafford, and you, my Fellow-Americans:

It is a great pleasure to me to be present with you to-day to assist at the dedication of the school, hall, and rectory of this Parish, a Parish whose one hundred and tenth anniversary we also now celebrate; for this Parish was founded six years before the national capital was placed in the present District of Columbia. I am glad indeed to have been introduced, Cardinal Gibbons, by you, the spiritual representative in a peculiar sense of that Bishop Carroll who played so illustrious a part in the affairs of the Church, and whose kinsfolk played as illustrious a part in the affairs of the Nation at the dawning of this Government. In greeting all of you I wish to say that I am especially glad to see the children present. You know I believe in children. I want to see enough of them and of the right kind.

I wish to-day, in the very brief remarks that I have to make, to dwell upon this thought—the thought that ought to be in the mind of every man and woman here, the thought that while in this country we need wise laws honestly and fearlessly executed, and while we can not afford to tolerate anything but the highest standard in the public service of the Government, yet that in the last analysis the future of the country must depend upon the[109] quality of the individual home, of the individual man or woman in that home. The future of this country depends upon the way in which the average man and the average woman in it does his or her duty, and that very largely depends upon the way in which the average boy or girl is brought up. Therefore, a peculiar responsibility rests upon those whose lifework it is to see to the spiritual welfare of our people and upon those who make it their lifework to try to train the citizens of the future so that they shall be worthy of that future. In wishing you well to-day, I wish you well in doing the most important work which is allotted to any of our people to do. The rules of good citizenship are tolerably simple. The trouble is not in finding them out; the trouble is in living up to them after they have been found out. I think we all of us know fairly well what qualities they are which in their sum make up the type of character we like to see in man or wife, son or daughter; but I am afraid we do not always see them as well developed as we would like to. I wish to see in the average American citizen the development of the two sets of qualities which we can roughly indicate as sweetness and strength—the qualities on the one hand which make the man able to hold his own, and those which on the other hand make him jealous for the rights of others just as much as for his own rights. We must have both sets of qualities. In the first place, the man must have the power to hold his own. You probably know that I do not[110] care very much for the coward or the moral weakling. I want each of you boys, and the girls just as much, and each of you young men and young women, to have the qualities without which people may be amiable and pleasant while things go well, but without which they can not succeed in times of stern trial. I wish to see in the man manliness, in the woman womanliness. I wish to see courage, perseverance, the willingness to face work, to face, you men, if it is necessary, danger, the determination not to shrink back when temporarily beaten in life, as each one will be now and then, but to come up again and wrest triumph from defeat. I want to see you men strong men and brave men, and in addition I wish to see each man of you feel that his strength and his courage but make him the worse unless to that strength and courage are joined the qualities of tenderness toward those he loves, who are dependent upon him, and of right dealing with all his neighbors.

Finally, I want to congratulate all of us here on certain successes that we have achieved in the century and a quarter that has gone by of our American life. We have difficulties enough, and we are a long ways short of perfection. I do not see any immediate danger of our growing too good; there is ample room for effort yet left. But we have achieved certain results, we have succeeded in measurably realizing certain ideals. We have grown to accept it as an axiomatic truth of our American life that the man is to be treated on his[111] worth as a man, without regard to the accidents of his position; that this is not a Government designed to favor the rich man as such, or the poor man as such, but that it is designed to favor every man, rich or poor, if he is a decent man who acts fairly by his fellows. We have grown to realize that part of the foundations upon which our liberty rests is the right of each man to worship his Creator according to the dictates of his conscience, and the duty of each man to respect his fellow who so worships Him. And, oh! my countrymen, one of the best auguries for the future of this country, for the future of this mighty and majestic Nation of ours, lies in the fact that we have grown to regard one another, that we brothers have grown to regard one another, with a broad and kindly charity, and to realize the field for human endeavor is wide, that the field for charitable, philanthropic, religious work is wide, and that while a corner of it remains untilled we do a dreadful wrong if we fail to welcome the work done in that field by every man, no matter what his creed, provided only he works with a lofty sense of his duty to God and his duty to his neighbor.

[112]

REMARKS INTRODUCING REV. CHARLES WAGNER, AT THE LAFAYETTE OPERA HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., NOV. 22, 1904

Mr. Macfarland, Mr. Wagner, Men and Women of Washington:

This is the first and will be the only time during my Presidency that I shall ever introduce a speaker to an audience; and I am more than glad to do it in this instance, because if there is one book which I should like to have read as a tract, and also, what is not invariably true of tracts, as an interesting tract, by all our people, it is “The Simple Life,” written by Mr. Wagner. There are other books which he has written from which we can gain great good, but I know of no other book written of recent years anywhere, here or abroad, which contains so much that we of America ought to take to our hearts as is contained in “The Simple Life.” I like the book because it does not merely preach to the rich, and does not merely preach to the poor. It is a very easy thing to address a section of the community in reprobation of the forms of vice to which it is not prone. What we need to have impressed upon us is that it is not usually the root principle of the vice that varies with variation in social conditions, but that it is the manifestation of the vice that varies; and Mr. Wagner has well brought out the great fundamental truth that the brutal arrogance of a rich man who looks down upon a poor man because[113] he is poor, and the brutal envy and hatred felt by a poor man toward a rich man merely because he is rich, are at bottom twin manifestations of the same vice. They are simply different sides of the same shield. The arrogance that looks down in the one case, the envy that hates in the other, are really exhibitions of the same mean, base, and unlovely spirit which happens in one case to be in different surroundings from what it is in the other case. The kind of man who would be arrogant in one case is precisely the kind of man who would be envious and filled with hatred in the other. The ideal should be the just, the generous, the broad-minded man who is as incapable of arrogance if rich as he is of malignant envy and hatred if poor.

No republic can permanently exist when it becomes a republic of classes, where the man feels not the interest of the whole people, but the interest of the particular class to which he belongs, or fancies that he belongs, as being of prime importance. In antiquity, republics failed as they did because they tended to become either a republic of the few who exploited the many, or a republic of the many who plundered the few, and in either case the end of the republic was inevitable; just as much so in one case as in the other, and no more so in one case than in the other. We can keep this Republic true to the principles of those who founded, and of those who afterward preserved it, we can keep it a Republic at all, only by remembering that we must live up to the theory of its founders, to the theory,[114] of treating each man on his worth as a man; neither holding it for nor against him that he occupies any particular station in life, so long as he does his duty fairly and well by his fellows and by the Nation as a whole.

So much for the general philosophy taught so admirably in Mr. Wagner’s book—I might say books, but I am thinking especially of “The Simple Life,” because that has been the book that has appealed to me particularly. Now, a word with special reference to his address to this audience, to the Young Men’s Christian Association: The profound regard which I have always felt for those responsible for the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association, is largely because they have practically realized, or at least have striven practically to realize, the ideal of adherence to the text which reads, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.” If you here to-day came here only with the idea of passing a pleasant afternoon and then go home and do not actually practice somewhat of what Mr. Wagner preaches and practices, then small will be the use of your coming. It is not of the slightest use to hear the word if you do not try to put it into effect afterward. The Young Men’s Christian Associations have accomplished so much because those who have managed them have tried practically to do their part in bringing about what is expressed in the phrase “the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of men.” We can act individually or[115] we can act by associations. I intend this afternoon to illustrate by a couple of examples what I mean by a man acting individually, and what I mean by a man acting in associations with his fellows. I hesitated whether I would use, as I shall use, the names of the people whom I meant, but I came to the conclusion that I would, because the worth of an example consists very largely in the knowledge that the example is a real one.

I have been immensely interested for a number of years in the working of the Civic Club in New York, which has been started and superintended by Mr. Norton Goddard. It is a club on the East Side of New York City, the range of whose membership includes a big district of the city, extending from about Lexington Avenue to the East River. Mr. Goddard realized that such work can be done to best advantage only upon condition of there being genuine and hearty sympathy among those doing it. There are a great many people so made in this world (I think most of us come under the category) that they would resent being patronized about as much as being wronged. Great good can never be done if it is attempted in a patronizing spirit. Mr. Goddard realized that the work could be done efficiently only on condition of getting into close and hearty touch with the people through whom and with whom he was to work. In consequence, this Civic Club was founded, and it has gradually extended its operations until now the entire club membership of three or four thousand men practically[116] form a committee of betterment in social and civic life; a committee spread throughout that district, each member keeping a sharp lookout over the fortunes of all his immediate neighbors, of all of those of his neighborhood who do not come within the ken of some other member of the club. Therefore, any case of great destitution, of great suffering, in the district, almost inevitably comes to the attention of some member of the club, who then reports it at headquarters, so that steps can be taken to alleviate the misery; and I have reason to believe that there has been in consequence a very sensible general uplifting, a general increase of happiness, throughout the district. If we had a sufficient number of clubs of this kind throughout our great cities, while we would not by any means have solved all of the terrible problems that press upon us for solution in connection with municipal misgovernment and with the overcrowding, misery, vice, disease, and poverty of great cities, yet we would have taken a long stride forward in the right direction toward their solution. So much for the example that I use to illustrate what I mean by work in combination.

As an example of what can be done, and should be done, by the individual citizen, I shall mention something that recently occurred in this city of Washington, a thing that doubtless many of you know about, but which was unknown to me until recently. A few weeks ago when I was walking back from church one Sunday I noticed a great fire and found that it was Downey’s livery stable—you[117] recollect it, three or four weeks ago when the livery stable burned. Through a train of circumstances that I need not mention, my attention was particularly called to the case, and I looked into it. I had long known of the very admirable work done with singular modesty and self-effacement by Mr. Downey in trying to give homes to the homeless, and to be himself a friend of those in a peculiar sense friendless in this community; and I now by accident found out what had happened in connection with this particular incident. It appears that last spring Mr. Downey started to build a new livery stable; his stable is next door to a colored Baptist church. Mr. Downey is a white man and a Catholic and these neighbors of his are colored men and Baptists, and their kinship was simply the kinship of that broad humanity that should underlie all our feelings toward one another. Mr. Downey started to build his stable, and naturally wanted to have it as big a stable as possible and build it right up to the limits of his land. That brought the wall close up against the back of the colored Baptists’ church, cutting out the light and air. The preacher called upon him and told him that they would like to purchase a strip six feet broad of the ground of Mr. Downey, upon which he was intending to build, as it would be a great inconvenience to them to lose the light and the air; that they were aware that it was asking a good deal of him to cramp the building out of which he intended to make his livelihood, but that they hoped he would do it because of their need. After a good[118] deal of thought, Mr. Downey came to the conclusion that he ought to grant the request, and so he notified them that he would change his plans, make a somewhat smaller building, and sell them the six feet of land in the strip adjoining their church. After a little while the preacher came around with the trustees of his church and said that they very much appreciated Mr. Downey’s courtesy, and were sorry they had bothered him as they had, because, on looking into the affairs of the church, they found that as they were already in debt they did not feel warranted in incurring any further financial obligations, and so they had to withdraw their request. They thanked him for his kindly purpose, and said good-by. But Mr. Downey found he could not get to sleep that night until finally he made up his mind that as they could not buy it he would give it to them anyway; which he did. But, unfortunately, we know that the tower of Siloam often falls upon the just and the unjust alike, and Mr. Downey’s livery stable caught fire, and burned down. It was Sunday morning, and the Baptist church was in session next door to him; and the clergyman stopped and said, “Now, you women stay here and pray, and you men go straight out and help our benefactor, Mr. Downey”; and go out they did, and got his horses all out, so that none of them was burned, although he suffered otherwise a total loss. Now, I call that a practical application of Mr. Wagner’s teachings. Here in Washington we have a right to be proud of a citizen like Mr. Downey; and if only we can[119] develop enough such citizens, we shall turn out just the kind of community that does not need to, but will always be glad to, study “The Simple Life,” the author of which I now introduce to you.

MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, COMMUNICATED TO THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD SESSION OF THE FIFTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

The Nation continues to enjoy noteworthy prosperity. Such prosperity is of course primarily due to the high individual average of our citizenship, taken together with our great natural resources; but an important factor therein is the working of our long-continued governmental policies. The people have emphatically expressed their approval of the principles underlying these policies, and their desire that these principles be kept substantially unchanged, although of course applied in a progressive spirit to meet changing conditions.

The enlargement of scope of the functions of the National Government required by our development as a nation involves, of course, increase of expense; and the period of prosperity through which the country is passing justifies expenditures for permanent improvements far greater than would be wise in hard times. Battleships and forts, public buildings, and improved waterways are investments which should be made when we have the money; but abundant revenues and a large surplus always[120] invite extravagance, and constant care should be taken to guard against unnecessary increase of the ordinary expenses of government. The cost of doing Government business should be regulated with the same rigid scrutiny as the cost of doing a private business.

In the vast and complicated mechanism of our modern civilized life the dominant note is the note of industrialism; and the relations of capital and labor, and especially of organized capital and organized labor, to each other and to the public at large come second in importance only to the intimate questions of family life. Our peculiar form of government, with its sharp division of authority between the Nation and the several States, has been on the whole far more advantageous to our development than a more strongly centralized government. But it is undoubtedly responsible for much of the difficulty of meeting with adequate legislation the new problems presented by the total change in industrial conditions on this continent during the last half century. In actual practice it has proved exceedingly difficult, and in many cases impossible, to get unanimity of wise action among the various States on these subjects. From the very nature of the case this is especially true of the laws affecting the employment of capital in huge masses.

With regard to labor the problem is no less important, but it is simpler. As long as the States retain the primary control of the police power the[121] circumstances must be altogether extreme which require interference by the Federal authorities, whether in the way of safeguarding the rights of labor or in the way of seeing that wrong is not done by unruly persons who shield themselves behind the name of labor. If there is resistance to the Federal courts, interference with the mails or interstate commerce, or molestation of Federal property, or if the State authorities in some crisis which they are unable to face call for help, then the Federal Government may interfere; but though such interference may be caused by a condition of things arising out of trouble connected with some question of labor, the interference itself simply takes the form of restoring order without regard to the questions which have caused the breach of order—for to keep order is a primary duty and in a time of disorder and violence all other questions sink into abeyance until order has been restored. In the District of Columbia and in the Territories the Federal law covers the entire field of government; but the labor question is only acute in populous centres of commerce, manufactures, or mining. Nevertheless, both in the enactment and in the enforcement of law the Federal Government within its restricted sphere should set an example to the State Governments, especially in a matter so vital as this affecting labor. I believe that under modern industrial conditions it is often necessary, and even where not necessary it is yet often wise, that there should be organization of labor in order better to secure the[122] rights of the individual wage-worker. All encouragement should be given to any such organization, so long as it is conducted with a due and decent regard for the rights of others. There are in this country some labor unions which have habitually, and other labor unions which have often, been among the most effective agents in working for good citizenship and for uplifting the condition of those whose welfare should be closest to our hearts. But when any labor union seeks improper ends, or seeks to achieve proper ends by improper means, all good citizens and more especially all honorable public servants must oppose the wrongdoing as resolutely as they would oppose the wrongdoing of any great corporation. Of course any violence, brutality, or corruption should not for one moment be tolerated. Wage-workers have an entire right to organize and by all peaceful and honorable means to endeavor to persuade their fellows to join with them in organizations. They have a legal right, which, according to circumstances, may or may not be a moral right, to refuse to work in company with men who decline to join their organizations. They have under no circumstances the right to commit violence upon those, whether capitalists or wage-workers, who refuse to support their organizations, or who side with those with whom they are at odds; for mob rule is intolerable in any form.

The wage-workers are peculiarly entitled to the protection and the encouragement of the law. From[123] the very nature of their occupation railroad men, for instance, are liable to be maimed in doing the legitimate work of their profession, unless the railroad companies are required by law to make ample provision for their safety. The Administration has been zealous in enforcing the existing law for this purpose. That law should be amended and strengthened. Wherever the National Government has power there should be a stringent employers’ liability law, which should apply to the Government itself where the Government is an employer of labor.

In my Message to the Fifty-seventh Congress, at its second session, I urged the passage of an employers’ liability law for the District of Columbia. I now renew that recommendation, and further recommend that the Congress appoint a commission to make a comprehensive study of employers’ liability with the view of extending the provisions of a great and constitutional law to all employments within the scope of Federal power.

The Government has recognized heroism upon the water, and bestows medals of honor upon those persons who by extreme and heroic daring have endangered their lives in saving, or endeavoring to save, lives from the perils of the sea in the waters over which the United States has jurisdiction, or upon an American vessel. This recognition should be extended to cover cases of conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice in the saving of life in private employments under the jurisdiction of the United[124] States, and particularly in the land commerce of the Nation.

The ever-increasing casualty list upon our railroads is a matter of grave public concern, and urgently calls for action by the Congress. In the matter of speed and comfort of railway travel our railroads give at least as good service as those of any other nation, and there is no reason why this service should not also be as safe as human ingenuity can make it. Many of our leading roads have been foremost in the adoption of the most approved safeguards for the protection of travelers and employees, yet the list of clearly avoidable accidents continues unduly large. The passage of a law requiring the adoption of a block-signal system has been proposed to the Congress. I earnestly concur in that recommendation, and would also point out to the Congress the urgent need of legislation in the interest of the public safety limiting the hours of labor for railroad employees in train service upon railroads engaged in interstate commerce, and providing that only trained and experienced persons be employed in positions of responsibility connected with the operation of trains. Of course, nothing can ever prevent accidents caused by human weakness or misconduct; and there should be drastic punishment for any railroad employee, whether officer or man, who by issuance of wrong orders or by disobedience of orders causes disaster. The law of 1901, requiring interstate railroads to make monthly[125] reports of all accidents to passengers and employees on duty, should also be amended so as to empower the Government to make a personal investigation, through proper officers, of all accidents involving loss of life which seem to require investigation, with a requirement that the results of such investigation be made public.

The safety-appliance law, as amended by the Act of March 2, 1903, has proved beneficial to railway employees, and in order that its provisions may be properly carried out, the force of inspectors provided for by appropriation should be largely increased. This service is analogous to the Steamboat-Inspection Service, and deals with even more important interests. It has passed the experimental stage and demonstrated its utility, and should receive generous recognition by the Congress.

There is no objection to employees of the Government forming or belonging to unions; but the Government can neither discriminate for nor discriminate against non-union men who are in its employment, or who seek to be employed under it. Moreover, it is a very grave impropriety for Government employees to band themselves together for the purpose of extorting improperly high salaries from the Government. Especially is this true of those within the classified service. The letter carriers, both municipal and rural, are as a whole an excellent body of public servants. They should be amply paid. But their payment must be obtained[126] by arguing their claims fairly and honorably before the Congress, and not by banding together for the defeat of those Congressmen who refuse to give promises which they can not in conscience give. The Administration has already taken steps to prevent and punish abuses of this nature; but it will be wise for the Congress to supplement this action by legislation.

Much can be done by the Government in labor matters merely by giving publicity to certain conditions. The Bureau of Labor has done excellent work of this kind in many different directions. I shall shortly lay before you in a special message the full report of the investigation of the Bureau of Labor into the Colorado mining strike, as this is a strike in which certain very evil forces, which are more or less at work everywhere under the conditions of modern industrialism, became startlingly prominent. It is greatly to be wished that the Department of Commerce and Labor, through the Labor Bureau, should compile and arrange for the Congress a list of the labor laws of the various States, and should be given the means to investigate and report to the Congress upon the labor conditions in the manufacturing and mining regions throughout the country, both as to wages, as to hours of labor, as to the labor of women and children, and as to the effect in the various labor centres of immigration from abroad. In this investigation especial attention should be paid to the conditions of[127] child labor and child-labor legislation in the several States. Such an investigation must necessarily take into account many of the problems with which this question of child labor is connected. These problems can be actually met, in most cases, only by the States themselves; but the lack of proper legislation in one State in such a matter as child labor often renders it excessively difficult to establish protective restriction upon the work in another State having the same industries, so that the worst tends to drag down the better. For this reason, it would be well for the Nation at least to endeavor to secure comprehensive information as to the conditions of labor of children in the different States. Such investigation and publication by the National Government would tend toward the securing of approximately uniform legislation of the proper character among the several States.

When we come to deal with great corporations the need for the Government to act directly is far greater than in the case of labor, because great corporations can become such only by engaging in interstate commerce, and interstate commerce is peculiarly the field of the General Government. It is an absurdity to expect to eliminate the abuses in great corporations by State action. It is difficult to be patient with an argument that such matters should be left to the States, because more than one State pursues the policy of creating on easy terms corporations which are never operated within that[128] State at all, but in other States whose laws they ignore. The National Government alone can deal adequately with these great corporations. To try to deal with them in an intemperate, destructive, or demagogic spirit would, in all probability, mean that nothing whatever would be accomplished, and, with absolute certainty, that if anything were accomplished it would be of a harmful nature. The American people need to continue to show the very qualities that they have shown—that is, moderation, good sense, the earnest desire to avoid doing any damage, and yet the quiet determination to proceed, step by step, without halt and without hurry, in eliminating or at least in minimizing whatever of mischief or of evil there is to interstate commerce in the conduct of great corporations. They are acting in no spirit of hostility to wealth, either individual or corporate. They are not against the rich man any more than against the poor man. On the contrary, they are friendly alike toward rich man and toward poor man, provided only that each acts in a spirit of justice and decency toward his fellows. Great corporations are necessary, and only men of great and singular mental power can manage such corporations successfully, and such men must have great rewards. But these corporations should be managed with due regard to the interests of the public as a whole. Where this can be done under the present laws it must be done. Where these laws come short others should be enacted to supplement them.

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Yet we must never forget the determining factor in every kind of work, of head or hand, must be the man’s own good sense, courage, and kindliness. More important than any legislation is the gradual growth of a feeling of responsibility and forbearance among capitalists and wage-workers alike; a feeling of respect on the part of each man for the rights of others; a feeling of broad community of interest, not merely of capitalists among themselves, and of wage-workers among themselves, but of capitalists and wage-workers in their relations to each other, and of both in their relations to their fellows who with them make up the body politic. There are many captains of industry, many labor leaders, who realize this. A recent speech by the president of one of our great railroad systems to the employees of that system contains sound common-sense. It runs in part as follows:

“It is my belief we can better serve each other, better understand the man as well as his business, when meeting face to face, exchanging views, and realizing from personal contact we serve but one interest, that of our mutual prosperity.

“Serious misunderstandings can not occur where personal goodwill exists and opportunity for personal explanation is present.

“In my early business life I had experience with men of affairs of a character to make me desire to avoid creating a like feeling of resentment to myself and the interests in my charge, should fortune ever place me in authority, and I am solicitous of a[130] measure of confidence on the part of the public and our employees that I shall hope may be warranted by the fairness and good-fellowship I intend shall prevail in our relationship.

“But do not feel I am disposed to grant unreasonable requests, spend the money of our company unnecessarily or without value received, nor expect the days of mistakes are disappearing, or that cause for complaint will not continually occur; simply to correct such abuses as may be discovered, to better conditions as fast as reasonably may be expected, constantly striving, with varying success, for that improvement we all desire, to convince you there is a force at work in the right direction, all the time making progress—is the disposition with which I have come among you, asking your goodwill and encouragement.

“The day has gone by when a corporation can be handled successfully in defiance of the public will, even though that will be unreasonable and wrong. A public may be led, but not driven, and I prefer to go with it and shape or modify, in a measure, its opinion, rather than be swept from my bearings, with loss to myself and the interests in my charge.

“Violent prejudice exists toward corporate activity and capital to-day, much of it founded in reason, more in apprehension, and a large measure is due to the personal traits of arbitrary, unreasonable, incompetent, and offensive men in positions of authority. The accomplishment of results by indirection, the endeavor to thwart the intention, if[131] not the expressed letter of the law (the will of the people), a disregard of the rights of others, a disposition to withhold what is due, to force by main strength or inactivity a result not justified, depending upon the weakness of the claimant and his indisposition to become involved in litigation, has created a sentiment harmful in the extreme and a disposition to consider anything fair that gives gain to the individual at the expense of the company.

“If corporations are to continue to do the world’s work, as they are best fitted to, these qualities in their representatives that have resulted in the present prejudice against them must be relegated to the background. The corporations must come out into the open and see and be seen. They must take the public into their confidence and ask for what they want, and no more, and be prepared to explain satisfactorily what advantage will accrue to the public if they are given their desires; for they are permitted to exist not that they may make money solely, but that they may effectively serve those from whom they derive their power.

“Publicity, and not secrecy, will win hereafter, and laws be construed by their intent and not by their letter, otherwise public utilities will be owned and operated by the public which created them, even though the service be less efficient and the result less satisfactory from a financial standpoint.”

The Bureau of Corporations has made careful preliminary investigation of many important corporations.[132] It will make a special report on the beef industry.

The policy of the Bureau is to accomplish the purposes of its creation by co-operation, not antagonism; by making constructive legislation, not destructive prosecution, the immediate object of its inquiries; by conservative investigation of law and fact, and by refusal to issue incomplete and hence necessarily inaccurate reports. Its policy being thus one of open inquiry into, and not attack upon, business, the Bureau has been able to gain not only the confidence, but, better still, the co-operation of men engaged in legitimate business.

The Bureau offers to the Congress the means of getting at the cost of production of our various great staples of commerce.

Of necessity the careful investigation of special corporations will afford the Commissioner knowledge of certain business facts, the publication of which might be an improper infringement of private rights. The method of making public the results of these investigations affords, under the law, a means for the protection of private rights. The Congress will have all facts except such as would give to another corporation information which would injure the legitimate business of a competitor and destroy the incentive for individual superiority and thrift.

The Bureau has also made exhaustive examinations into the legal condition under which corporate business is carried on in the various States; into all[133] judicial decisions on the subject; and into the various systems of corporate taxation in use. I call special attention to the report of the chief of the Bureau; and I earnestly ask that the Congress carefully consider the report and recommendations of the Commissioner on this subject.

The business of insurance vitally affects the great mass of the people of the United States and is national and not local in its application. It involves a multitude of transactions among the people of the different States and between American companies and foreign Governments. I urge that the Congress carefully consider whether the power of the Bureau of Corporations can not constitutionally be extended to cover interstate transactions in insurance.

Above all else, we must strive to keep the highways of commerce open to all on equal terms; and to do this it is necessary to put a complete stop to all rebates. Whether the shipper or the railroad is to blame makes no difference; the rebate must be stopped, the abuses of the private car and private terminal-track and side-track systems must be stopped, and the legislation of the Fifty-eighth Congress which declares it to be unlawful for any person or corporation to offer, grant, give, solicit, accept, or receive any rebate, concession, or discrimination in respect of the transportation of any property in interstate or foreign commerce whereby such property shall by any device whatever be transported at[134] a less rate than that named in the tariffs published by the carrier must be enforced. For some time after the enactment of the Act to Regulate Commerce it remained a mooted question whether that act conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission the power, after it had found a challenged rate to be unreasonable, to declare what thereafter should, prima facie, be the reasonable maximum rate for the transportation in dispute. The Supreme Court finally resolved that question in the negative, so that as the law now stands the Commission simply possess the bare power to denounce a particular rate as unreasonable. While I am of the opinion that at present it would be undesirable, if it were not impracticable, finally to clothe the Commission with general authority to fix railroad rates, I do believe that, as a fair security to shippers, the Commission should be vested with the power, where a given rate has been challenged and after full hearing found to be unreasonable, to decide, subject to judicial review, what shall be a reasonable rate to take its place; the ruling of the Commission to take effect immediately, and to obtain unless and until it is reversed by the court of review. The Government must in increasing degree supervise and regulate the workings of the railways engaged in interstate commerce; and such increased supervision is the only alternative to an increase of the present evils on the one hand or a still more radical policy on the other. In my judgment the most important legislative act now needed as regards the regulation[135] of corporations is this act to confer on the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to revise rates and regulations, the revised rate to at once go into effect, and to stay in effect unless and until the court of review reverses it.

Steamship companies engaged in interstate commerce and protected in our coastwise trade, should be held to a strict observance of the interstate commerce act.

In pursuing the set plan to make the city of Washington an example to other American municipalities several points should be kept in mind by the legislators. In the first place, the people of this country should clearly understand that no amount of industrial prosperity, and above all no leadership in international industrial competition, can in any way atone for the sapping of the vitality of those who are usually spoken of as the working classes. The farmers, the mechanics, the skilled and unskilled laborers, the small shopkeepers, make up the bulk of the population of any country; and upon their well-being, generation after generation, the well-being of the country and the race depends. Rapid development in wealth and industrial leadership is a good thing, but only if it goes hand in hand with improvement, and not deterioration, physical and moral. The overcrowding of cities and the draining of country districts are unhealthy and even dangerous symptoms in our modern life. We should not permit overcrowding in cities. In[136] certain European cities it is provided by law that the population of towns shall not be allowed to exceed a very limited density for a given area, so that the increase in density must be continually pushed back into a broad zone around the centre of the town, this zone having great avenues or parks within it. The death-rate statistics show a terrible increase in mortality, and especially in infant mortality, in overcrowded tenements. The poorest families in tenement houses live in one room, and it appears that in these one-room tenements the average death-rate for a number of given cities at home and abroad is about twice what it is in a two-room tenement, four times what it is in a three-room tenement, and eight times what it is in a tenement consisting of four rooms or over. These figures vary somewhat for different cities, but they approximate in each city those given above; and in all cases the increase of mortality, and especially of infant mortality, with the decrease in the number of rooms used by the family and with the consequent overcrowding is startling. The slum exacts a heavy total of deaths from those who dwell therein; and this is the case not merely in the great crowded slums of high buildings in New York and Chicago, but in the alley slums of Washington. In Washington people can not afford to ignore the harm that this causes. No Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the youth of to-day; for, if so, the community will have to pay a terrible penalty[137] of financial burden and social degradation in the to-morrow. There should be severe child-labor and factory-inspection laws. It is very desirable that married women should not work in factories. The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances. If a race does not have plenty of children, or if the children do not grow up, or if when they grow up they are unhealthy in body and stunted or vicious in mind, then that race is decadent, and no heaping up of wealth, no splendor of momentary material prosperity, can avail in any degree as offsets.

The Congress has the same power of legislation for the District of Columbia which the State Legislatures have for the various States. The problems incident to our highly complex modern industrial civilization, with its manifold and perplexing tendencies both for good and for evil, are far less sharply accentuated in the city of Washington than in most other cities. For this very reason it is easier to deal with the various phases of these problems in Washington, and the District of Columbia government should be a model for the other municipal governments of the Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor, the creation[138] of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the children, in truant laws, and in providing schools.

In the vital matter of taking care of children, much advantage could be gained by a careful study of what has been accomplished in such States as Illinois and Colorado by the juvenile courts. The work of the juvenile court is really a work of character building. It is now generally recognized that young boys and young girls who go wrong should not be treated as criminals, not even necessarily as needing reformation, but rather as needing to have their characters formed, and for this end to have them tested and developed by a system of probation. Much admirable work has been done in many of our Commonwealths by earnest men and women who have made a special study of the needs of those classes of children which furnish the greatest number of juvenile offenders, and therefore the greatest number of adult offenders; and by their aid, and by profiting by the experiences of the different States and cities in these matters, it would be easy to provide a good code for the District of Columbia.

Several considerations suggest the need for a systematic investigation into and improvement of housing conditions in Washington. The hidden residential alleys are breeding grounds of vice and disease, and should be opened into minor streets. For a number of years influential citizens have[139] joined with the District Commissioners in the vain endeavor to secure laws permitting the condemnation of unsanitary dwellings. The local death-rates, especially from preventable diseases, are so unduly high as to suggest that the exceptional wholesomeness of Washington’s better sections is offset by bad conditions in her poorer neighborhoods. A special “Commission on Housing and Health Conditions in the National Capital” would not only bring about the reformation of existing evils, but would also formulate an appropriate building code to protect the city from mammoth brick tenements and other evils which threaten to develop here as they have in other cities. That the Nation’s Capital should be made a model for other municipalities is an ideal which appeals to all patriotic citizens everywhere, and such a special Commission might map out and organize the city’s future development in lines of civic social service, just as Major L’Enfant and the recent Park Commission planned the arrangement of her streets and parks.

It is mortifying to remember that Washington has no compulsory school attendance law and that careful inquiries indicate the habitual absence from school of some twenty per cent of all children between the ages of eight and fourteen. It must be evident to all who consider the problems of neglected child life, or the benefits of compulsory education in other cities, that one of the most urgent needs of the National Capital is a law requiring the school attendance of all children, this law to be[140] enforced by attendance agents directed by the Board of Education.

Public playgrounds are necessary means for the development of wholesome citizenship in modern cities. It is important that the work inaugurated here through voluntary efforts should be taken up and extended through Congressional appropriation of funds sufficient to equip and maintain numerous convenient small playgrounds upon land which can be secured without purchase or rental. It is also desirable that small vacant places be purchased and reserved as small-park playgrounds in densely settled sections of the city which now have no public open spaces and are destined soon to be built up solidly. All these needs should be met immediately. To meet them would entail expenses; but a corresponding saving could be made by stopping the building of streets and leveling of ground for purposes largely speculative in outlying parts of the city.

There are certain offenders, whose criminality takes the shape of brutality and cruelty toward the weak, who need a special type of punishment. The wife-beater, for example, is inadequately punished by imprisonment; for imprisonment may often mean nothing to him, while it may cause hunger and want to the wife and children who have been the victims of his brutality. Probably some form of corporal punishment would be the most adequate way of meeting this kind of crime.

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The Department of Agriculture has grown into an educational institution with a faculty of two thousand specialists making research into all the sciences of production. The Congress appropriates, directly and indirectly, six millions of dollars annually to carry on this work. It reaches every State and Territory in the Union and the islands of the sea lately come under our flag. Co-operation is had with the State experiment stations, and with many other institutions and individuals. The world is carefully searched for new varieties of grains, fruits, grasses, vegetables, trees, and shrubs, suitable to various localities in our country; and marked benefit to our producers has resulted.

The activities of our age in lines of research have reached the tillers of the soil and inspired them with ambition to know more of the principles that govern the forces of nature with which they have to deal. Nearly half of the people of this country devote their energies to growing things from the soil. Until a recent date little has been done to prepare these millions for their life work. In most lines of human activity college-trained men are the leaders. The farmer had no opportunity for special training until the Congress made provision for it forty years ago. During these years progress has been made and teachers have been prepared. Over five thousand students are in attendance at our State agricultural colleges. The Federal Government expends ten millions of dollars annually toward this education and for research[142] in Washington and in the several States and Territories. The Department of Agriculture has given facilities for post-graduate work to five hundred young men during the last seven years, preparing them for advanced lines of work in the Department and in the State institutions.

The facts concerning meteorology and its relations to plant and animal life are being systematically inquired into. Temperature and moisture are controlling factors in all agricultural operations. The seasons of the cyclones of the Caribbean Sea and their paths are being forecasted with increasing accuracy. The cold winds that come from the north are anticipated and their times and intensity told to farmers, gardeners, and fruiterers in all southern localities.

We sell two hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of animals and animal products to foreign countries every year, in addition to supplying our own people more cheaply and abundantly than any other nation is able to provide for its people. Successful manufacturing depends primarily on cheap food, which accounts to a considerable extent for our growth in this direction. The Department of Agriculture, by careful inspection of meats, guards the health of our people and gives clean bills of health to deserving exports; it is prepared to deal promptly with imported diseases of animals, and maintain the excellence of our flocks and herds in this respect. There should be an annual census of the live stock of the nation.

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We sell abroad about six hundred million dollars’ worth of plants and their products every year. Strenuous efforts are being made to import from foreign countries such grains as are suitable to our varying localities. Seven years ago we bought three-fourths of our rice; by helping the rice growers on the Gulf Coast to secure seeds from the Orient suited to their conditions, and by giving them adequate protection, they now supply home demand and export to the islands of the Caribbean Sea and to other rice-growing countries. Wheat and other grains have been imported from light-rainfall countries to our lands in the West and Southwest that have not grown crops because of light precipitation, resulting in an extensive addition to our cropping area and our home-making territory that can not be irrigated. Ten million bushels of first-class macaroni wheat were grown from these experimental importations last year. Fruits suitable to our soils and climates are being imported from all the countries of the Old World—the fig from Turkey, the almond from Spain, the date from Algeria, the mango from India. We are helping our fruit growers to get their crops into European markets by studying their methods of preservation through refrigeration, packing, and handling, which have been quite successful. We are helping our hop growers by importing varieties that ripen earlier and later than the kinds they have been raising, thereby lengthening the harvesting season. The cotton crop of the country is threatened[144] with root rot, the bollworm, and the boll weevil. Our pathologists will find immune varieties that will resist the root disease, and the bollworm can be dealt with, but the boll weevil is a serious menace to the cotton crop. It is a Central American insect that has become acclimated in Texas and has done great damage. A scientist of the Department of Agriculture has found the weevil at home in Guatemala being kept in check by an ant, which has been brought to our cotton fields for observation. It is hoped that it may serve a good purpose.

The soils of the country are getting attention from the farmer’s standpoint, and interesting results are following. We have duplicates of the soils that grow the wrapper tobacco in Sumatra and the filler tobacco in Cuba. It will be only a question of time when the large amounts paid to these countries will be paid to our own people. The reclamation of alkali lands is progressing, to give object lessons to our people in methods by which worthless lands may be made productive.

The insect friends and enemies of the farmer are getting attention. The enemy of the San Jose scale was found near the Great Wall of China, and is now cleaning up all our orchards. The fig-fertilizing insect imported from Turkey has helped to establish an industry in California that amounts to from fifty to one hundred tons of dried figs annually, and is extending over the Pacific Coast. A parasitic fly from South Africa is keeping in subjection[145] the black scale, the worst pest of the orange and lemon industry in California.

Careful preliminary work is being done toward producing our own silk. The mulberry is being distributed in large numbers, eggs are being imported and distributed, improved reels were imported from Europe last year, and two expert reelers were brought to Washington to reel the crop of cocoons and teach the art to our own people.

The crop-reporting system of the Department of Agriculture is being brought closer to accuracy every year. It has two hundred and fifty thousand reporters selected from people in eight vocations in life. It has arrangements with most European countries for interchange of estimates, so that our people may know as nearly as possible with what they must compete.

During the two and a half years that have elapsed since the passage of the reclamation act, rapid progress has been made in the surveys and examinations of the opportunities for reclamation in the thirteen States and three Territories of the arid West. Construction has already been begun on the largest and most important of the irrigation works, and plans are being completed for works which will utilize the funds now available. The operations are being carried on by the Reclamation Service, a corps of engineers selected through competitive civil-service examinations. This corps includes[146] experienced consulting and constructing engineers, as well as various experts in mechanical and legal matters, and is composed largely of men who have spent most of their lives in practical affairs connected with irrigation. The larger problems have been solved, and it now remains to execute with care, economy, and thoroughness the work which has been laid out. All important details are being carefully considered by boards of consulting engineers, selected for their thorough knowledge and practical experience. Each project is taken up on the ground by competent men and viewed from the standpoint of the creation of prosperous homes and of promptly refunding to the Treasury the cost of construction. The reclamation act has been found to be remarkably complete and effective, and so broad in its provisions that a wide range of undertakings has been possible under it. At the same time, economy is guaranteed by the fact that the funds must ultimately be returned to be used over again.

It is the cardinal principle of the forest-reserve policy of this Administration that the reserves are for use. Whatever interferes with the use of their resources is to be avoided by every possible means. But these resources must be used in such a way as to make them permanent.

The forest policy of the Government is just now a subject of vivid public interest throughout the West and to the people of the United States in general.[147] The forest reserves themselves are of extreme value to the present as well as to the future welfare of all the Western public-land States. They powerfully affect the use and disposal of the public lands. They are of special importance because they preserve the water supply and the supply of timber for domestic purposes, and so promote settlement under the reclamation act. Indeed, they are essential to the welfare of every one of the great interests of the West.

Forest reserves are created for two principal purposes. The first is to preserve the water supply. This is their most important use. The principal users of the water thus preserved are irrigation ranchers and settlers, cities and towns to whom their municipal water supplies are of the very first importance, users and furnishers of water power, and the users of water for domestic, manufacturing, mining, and other purposes. All these are directly dependent upon the forest reserves.

The second reason for which forest reserves are created is to preserve the timber supply for various classes of wood users. Among the more important of these are settlers under the reclamation act and other acts, for whom a cheap and accessible supply of timber for domestic uses is absolutely necessary; miners and prospectors, who are in serious danger of losing their timber supply by fire or through export by lumber companies when timber lands adjacent to their mines pass into private ownership;[148] lumbermen, transportation companies, builders, and commercial interests in general.

Although the wisdom of creating forest reserves is nearly everywhere heartily recognized, yet in a few localities there has been misunderstanding and complaint. The following statement is therefore desirable:

The forest-reserve policy can be successful only when it has the full support of the people of the West. It can not safely, and should not in any case, be imposed upon them against their will. But neither can we accept the views of those whose only interest in the forest is temporary; who are anxious to reap what they have not sown and then move away, leaving desolation behind them. On the contrary, it is everywhere and always the interest of the permanent settler and the permanent business man, the man with a stake in the country, which must be considered and which must decide.

The making of forest reserves within railroad and wagon-road land-grant limits will hereafter, as for the past three years, be so managed as to prevent the issue, under the act of June 4, 1897, of base for exchange or lieu selection (usually called scrip). In all cases where forest reserves within areas covered by land grants appear to be essential to the prosperity of settlers, miners, or others, the Government lands within such proposed forest reserves will, as in the recent past, be withdrawn from sale or entry pending the completion of such[149] negotiations with the owners of the land grants as will prevent the creation of so-called scrip.

It was formerly the custom to make forest reserves without first getting definite and detailed information as to the character of land and timber within their boundaries. This method of action often resulted in badly chosen boundaries and consequent injustice to settlers and others. Therefore this Administration adopted the present method of first withdrawing the land from disposal, followed by careful examination on the ground and the preparation of detailed maps and descriptions, before any forest-reserve is created.

I have repeatedly called attention to the confusion which exists in Government forest matters because the work is scattered among three independent organizations. The United States is the only one of the great nations in which the forest work of the Government is not concentrated under one department, in consonance with the plainest dictates of good administration and common-sense. The present arrangement is bad from every point of view. Merely to mention it is to prove that it should be terminated at once. As I have repeatedly recommended, all the forest work of the Government should be concentrated in the Department of Agriculture, where the larger part of that work is already done, where practically all of the trained foresters of the Government are employed, where chiefly in Washington there is comprehensive firsthand knowledge of the problems of the reserves[150] acquired on the ground, where all problems relating to growth from the soil are already gathered, and where all the sciences auxiliary to forestry are at hand for prompt and effective co-operation. These reasons are decisive in themselves, but it should be added that the great organizations of citizens whose interests are affected by the forest reserves, such as the National Live Stock Association, the National Wool Growers’ Association, the American Mining Congress, the National Irrigation Congress, and the National Board of Trade, have uniformly, emphatically, and most of them repeatedly, expressed themselves in favor of placing all Government forest work in the Department of Agriculture because of the peculiar adaptation of that Department for it. It is true, also, that the forest services of nearly all the great nations of the world are under the respective departments of agriculture, while in but two of the smaller nations and in one colony are they under the department of the interior. This is the result of long and varied experience, and it agrees fully with the requirements of good administration in our own case.

The creation of a forest service in the Department of Agriculture will have for its important results:

First. A better handling of all forest work, because it will be under a single head, and because the vast and indispensable experience of the Department in all matters pertaining to the forest reserves, to forestry in general, and to other forms of[151] production from the soil, will be easily and rapidly accessible.

Second. The reserves themselves, being handled from the point of view of the man in the field, instead of the man in the office, will be more easily and more widely useful to the people of the West than has been the case hitherto.

Third. Within a comparatively short time the reserves will become self-supporting. This is important, because continually and rapidly increasing appropriations will be necessary for the proper care of this exceedingly important interest of the Nation, and they can and should be offset by returns from the National forests. Under similar circumstances the forest possessions of other great nations form an important source of revenue to their Governments.

Every administrative officer concerned is convinced of the necessity for the proposed consolidation of forest work in the Department of Agriculture, and I myself have urged it more than once in former messages. Again I commend it to the early and favorable consideration of the Congress. The interests of the Nation at large and of the West in particular have suffered greatly because of the delay.

I call the attention of the Congress again to the report and recommendation of the Commission on the Public Lands forwarded by me to the second session of the present Congress. The Commission has prosecuted its investigations actively during[152] the past season, and a second report is now in an advanced stage of preparation.

In connection with the work of the forest reserves I desire again to urge upon the Congress the importance of authorizing the President to set aside certain portions of these reserves or other public lands as game refuges for the preservation of the bison, the wapiti, and other large beasts once so abundant in our woods and mountains and on our great plains, and now tending toward extinction. Every support should be given to the authorities of the Yellowstone Park in their successful efforts at preserving the large creatures therein; and at very little expense portions of the public domain in other regions which are wholly unsuited to agricultural settlement could be similarly utilized. We owe it to future generations to keep alive the noble and beautiful creatures which by their presence add such distinctive character to the American wilderness. The limits of the Yellowstone Park should be extended southward. The Canyon of the Colorado should be made a national park; and the national park system should include the Yosemite and as many as possible of the groves of giant trees in California.

The veterans of the Civil War have a claim upon the Nation such as no other body of our citizens possess. The Pension Bureau has never in its history been managed in a more satisfactory manner than is now the case.

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The progress of the Indians toward civilization, though not rapid, is perhaps all that could be hoped for in view of the circumstances. Within the past year many tribes have shown, in a degree greater than ever before, an appreciation of the necessity of work. This changed attitude is in part due to the policy recently pursued of reducing the amount of subsistence to the Indians, and thus forcing them, through sheer necessity, to work for a livelihood. The policy, though severe, is a useful one, but it is to be exercised only with judgment and with a full understanding of the conditions which exist in each community for which it is intended. On or near the Indian reservations there is usually very little demand for labor, and if the Indians are to earn their living and when work can not be furnished from outside (which is always preferable), then it must be furnished by the Government. Practical instruction of this kind would in a few years result in the forming of habits of regular industry, which would render the Indian a producer, and would effect a great reduction in the cost of his maintenance.

It is commonly declared that the slow advance of the Indians is due to the unsatisfactory character of the men appointed to take immediate charge of them, and to some extent this is true. While the standard of the employees in the Indian Service shows great improvement over that of bygone years, and while actual corruption or flagrant dishonesty is now the rare exception, it is, nevertheless,[154] the fact that the salaries paid Indian agents are not large enough to attract the best men to that field of work. To achieve satisfactory results the official in charge of an Indian tribe should possess the high qualifications which are required in the manager of a large business, but only in exceptional cases is it possible to secure men of such a type for these positions. Much better service, however, might be obtained from those now holding the places were it practicable to get out of them the best that is in them, and this should be done by bringing them constantly into closer touch with their superior officers. An agent who has been content to draw his salary, giving in return the least possible equivalent in effort and service, may, by proper treatment, by suggestion and encouragement, or persistent urging, be stimulated to greater effort and induced to take a more active personal interest in his work.

Under existing conditions an Indian agent in the distant West may be wholly out of touch with the office of the Indian Bureau. He may very well feel that no one takes a personal interest in him or his efforts. Certain routine duties in the way of reports and accounts are required of him, but there is no one with whom he may intelligently consult on matters vital to his work, except after long delay. Such a man would be greatly encouraged and aided by personal contact with some one whose interest in Indian affairs and whose authority in the Indian Bureau were greater than his own, and such[155] contact would be certain to arouse and constantly increase the interest he takes in his work.

The distance which separates the agents—the workers in the field—from the Indian Office in Washington is a chief obstacle to Indian progress. Whatever shall more closely unite these two branches of the Indian Service, and shall enable them to co-operate more heartily and more effectively, will be for the increased efficiency of the work and the betterment of the race for whose improvement the Indian Bureau was established. The appointment of a field assistant to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs would be certain to ensure this good end. Such an official, if possessed of the requisite energy and deep interest in the work, would be a most efficient factor in bringing into closer relationship and a more direct union of effort the Bureau in Washington and its agents in the field; and with the co-operation of its branches thus secured the Indian Bureau would, in measure fuller than ever before, lift up the savage toward that self-help and self-reliance which constitute the man.

In 1907 there will be held at Hampton Roads the tricentennial celebration of the settlement at Jamestown, Va., with which the history of what has now become the United States really begins. I commend this to your favorable consideration. It is an event of prime historic significance, in which all the people of the United States should feel, and should show, great and general interest.

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In the Post Office Department the service has increased in efficiency, and conditions as to revenue and expenditure continue satisfactory. The increase of revenue during the year was $9,358,181.10, or 6.9 per cent, the total receipts amounting to $143,382,624.34. The expenditures were $152,362,116.70, an increase of about 9 per cent over the previous year, being thus $8,979,492.36 in excess of the current revenue. Included in these expenditures was a total appropriation of $12,956,637.35 for the continuation and extension of the rural free-delivery service, which was an increase of $4,902,237.35 over the amount expended for this purpose in the preceding fiscal year. Large as this expenditure has been, the beneficent results attained in extending the free distribution of mails to the residents of rural districts have justified the wisdom of the outlay. Statistics brought down to the 1st of October, 1904, show that on that date there were 27,138 rural routes established, serving approximately 12,000,000 of people in rural districts remote from post offices, and that there were pending at that time 3,859 petitions for the establishment of new rural routes. Unquestionably some part of the general increase in receipts is due to the increased postal facilities which the rural service has afforded. The revenues have also been aided greatly by amendments in the classification of mail matter, and the curtailment of abuses of the second-class mailing privilege. The average increase in the volume of mail matter for[157] the period beginning with 1902 and ending June, 1905 (that portion for 1905 being estimated), is 40.47 per cent, as compared with 25.46 per cent for the period immediately preceding, and 15.92 for the four-year period immediately preceding that.

Our consular system needs improvement. Salaries should be substituted for fees, and the proper classification, grading, and transfer of consular officers should be provided. I am not prepared to say that a competitive system of examinations for appointment would work well; but by law it should be provided that consuls should be familiar, according to places for which they apply, with the French, German, or Spanish languages, and should possess acquaintance with the resources of the United States.

The collection of objects of art contemplated in Section 5586 of the Revised Statutes should be designated and established as a National Gallery of Art; and the Smithsonian Institution should be authorized to accept any additions to said collection that may be received by gift, bequest, or devise.

It is desirable to enact a proper National quarantine law. It is most undesirable that a State should on its own initiative enforce quarantine regulations which are in effect a restriction upon interstate and international commerce. The question should properly be assumed by the Government alone. The Surgeon-General of the National[158] Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service has repeatedly and convincingly set forth the need for such legislation.

I call your attention to the great extravagance in printing and binding Government publications, and especially to the fact that altogether too many of these publications are printed. There is a constant tendency to increase their number and their volume. It is an understatement to say that no appreciable harm would be caused by, and substantial benefit would accrue from, decreasing the amount of printing now done by at least one-half. Probably the great majority of the Government reports and the like now printed are never read at all, and furthermore the printing of much of the material contained in many of the remaining ones serves no useful purpose whatever.

The attention of the Congress should be especially given to the currency question, and that the standing committees on the matter in the two Houses charged with the duty take up the matter of our currency and see whether it is not possible to secure an agreement in the business world for bettering the system; the committees should consider the question of the retirement of the greenbacks and the problem of securing in our currency such elasticity as is consistent with safety. Every silver dollar should be made by law redeemable in gold at the option of the holder.

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I especially commend to your immediate attention the encouragement of our merchant marine by appropriate legislation.

The growing importance of the Orient as a field for American exports drew from my predecessor, President McKinley, an urgent request for its special consideration by the Congress. In his message of 1898 he stated:

“In this relation, as showing the peculiar volume and value of our trade with China and the peculiarly favorable conditions which exist for their expansion in the normal course of trade, I refer to the communication addressed to the Speaker of the House of Representatives by the Secretary of the Treasury on the 14th of last June, with its accompanying letter of the Secretary of State, recommending an appropriation for a commission to study the industrial and commercial conditions in the Chinese Empire and to report as to the opportunities for and the obstacles to the enlargement of markets in China for the raw products and manufactures of the United States. Action was not taken thereon during the last session. I cordially urge that the recommendation receive at your hands the consideration which its importance and timeliness merit.”

In his annual message of 1899 he again called attention to this recommendation, quoting it, and stated further:

“I now renew this recommendation, as the importance of the subject has steadily grown since it[160] was first submitted to you, and no time should be lost in studying for ourselves the resources of this great field for American trade and enterprise.”

The importance of securing proper information and data with a view to the enlargement of our trade with Asia is undiminished. Our consular representatives in China have strongly urged a place for permanent display of American products in some prominent trade centre of that Empire, under Government control and management, as an effective means of advancing our export trade therein. I call the attention of the Congress to the desirability of carrying out these suggestions.

In dealing with the questions of immigration and naturalization it is indispensable to keep certain facts ever before the minds of those who share in enacting the laws. First and foremost, let us remember that the question of being a good American has nothing whatever to do with a man’s birthplace any more than it has to do with his creed. In every generation from the time this Government was founded men of foreign birth have stood in the very foremost rank of good citizenship, and that not merely in one, but in every field of American activity; while to try to draw a distinction between the man whose parents came to this country and the man whose ancestors came to it several generations back is a mere absurdity. Good Americanism is a matter of heart, of conscience, of lofty aspiration, of sound common-sense, but not of birthplace[161] or of creed. The medal of honor, the highest prize to be won by those who serve in the Army and the Navy of the United States, decorates men born here, and it also decorates men born in Great Britain and Ireland, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in France, and doubtless in other countries also. In the field of statesmanship, in the field of business, in the field of philanthropic endeavor, it is equally true that among the men of whom we are most proud as Americans no distinction whatever can be drawn between those who themselves or whose parents came over in sailing ship or steamer from across the water and those whose ancestors stepped ashore into the wooded wilderness at Plymouth or at the mouth of the Hudson, the Delaware, or the James nearly three centuries ago. No fellow-citizen of ours is entitled to any peculiar regard because of the way in which he worships his Maker, or because of the birthplace of himself or his parents, nor should he be in any way discriminated against therefor. Each must stand on his worth as a man and each is entitled to be judged solely thereby.

There is no danger of having too many immigrants of the right kind. It makes no difference from what country they come. If they are sound in body and in mind, and, above all, if they are of good character, so that we can rest assured that their children and grandchildren will be worthy fellow-citizens of our children and grandchildren, then we should welcome them with cordial hospitality.

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But the citizenship of this country should not be debased. It is vital that we should keep high the standard of well-being among our wage-workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose standards of living and whose personal customs and habits are such that they tend to lower the level of the American wage-worker; and above all we should not admit any man of an unworthy type, any man concerning whom we can say that he will himself be a bad citizen, or that his children and grandchildren will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of the country. Similarly we should take the greatest care about naturalization. Fraudulent naturalization, the naturalization of improper persons, is a curse to our Government; and it is the affair of every honest voter, wherever born, to see that no fraudulent voting is allowed, that no fraud in connection with naturalization is permitted.

In the past year the cases of false, fraudulent, and improper naturalization of aliens coming to the attention of the executive branches of the Government have increased to an alarming degree. Extensive sales of forged certificates of naturalization have been discovered, as well as many cases of naturalization secured by perjury and fraud; and in addition, instances have accumulated showing that many courts issue certificates of naturalization carelessly and upon insufficient evidence.

Under the Constitution it is in the power of the Congress “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization,”[163] and numerous laws have from time to time been enacted for that purpose, which have been supplemented in a few States by State laws having special application. The Federal statutes permit naturalization by any court of record in the United States having common-law jurisdiction and a seal and clerk, except the police court of the District of Columbia, and nearly all these courts exercise this improper function. It results that where so many courts of such varying grades have jurisdiction, there is lack of uniformity in the rules applied in conferring naturalization. Some courts are strict and others lax. An alien who may secure naturalization in one place might be denied it in another, and the intent of the constitutional provision is in fact defeated. Furthermore, the certificates of naturalization issued by the courts differ widely in wording and appearance, and when they are brought into use in foreign countries are frequently subject to suspicion.

There should be a comprehensive revision of the naturalization laws. The courts having power to naturalize should be definitely named by national authority; the testimony upon which naturalization may be conferred should be definitely prescribed; publication of impending naturalization applications should be required in advance of their hearing in court; the form and wording of all certificates issued should be uniform throughout the country, and the courts should be required to make returns to[164] the Secretary of State at stated periods of all naturalizations conferred.

Not only are the laws relating to naturalization now defective, but those relating to citizenship of the United States ought also to be made the subject of scientific inquiry with a view to probable further legislation. By what acts expatriation may be assumed to have been accomplished, how long an American citizen may reside abroad and receive the protection of our passport, whether any degree of protection should be extended to one who has made the declaration of intention to become a citizen of the United States, but has not secured naturalization, are questions of serious import, involving personal rights and often producing friction between this Government and foreign Governments. Yet upon these questions our laws are silent. I recommend that an examination be made into the subjects of citizenship, expatriation, and protection of Americans abroad, with a view to appropriate legislation.

The power of the Government to protect the integrity of the elections of its own officials is inherent and has been recognized and affirmed by repeated declarations of the Supreme Court. There is no enemy of free government more dangerous and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate. No one defends or excuses corruption, and it would seem to follow that none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it. I recommend the enactment[165] of a law directed against bribery and corruption in Federal elections. The details of such a law may be safely left to the wise discretion of the Congress, but it should go as far as under the Constitution it is possible to go, and should include severe penalties against him who gives or receives a bribe intended to influence his act or opinion as an elector; and provisions for the publication not only of the expenditures for nominations and elections of all candidates, but also of all contributions received and expenditures made by political committees.

No subject is better worthy the attention of the Congress than that portion of the report of the Attorney-General dealing with the long delays and the great obstruction to justice experienced in the cases of Beavers, Green and Gaynor, and Benson. Were these isolated and special cases, I should not call your attention to them; but the difficulties encountered as regards these men who have been indicted for criminal practices are not exceptional; they are precisely similar in kind to what occurs again and again in the case of criminals who have sufficient means to enable them to take advantage of a system of procedure which has grown up in the Federal courts and which amounts in effect to making the law easy of enforcement against the man who has no money, and difficult of enforcement, even to the point of sometimes securing immunity, as regards the man who has money. In criminal[166] cases the writ of the United States should run throughout its borders. The wheels of justice should not be clogged, as they have been clogged in the case above-mentioned, where it has proved absolutely impossible to bring the accused to the place appointed by the Constitution for his trial. Of recent years there has been grave and increasing complaint of the difficulty of bringing to justice those criminals whose criminality, instead of being against one person in the Republic, is against all persons in the Republic, because it is against the Republic itself. Under any circumstances and from the very nature of the case it is often exceedingly difficult to secure proper punishment of those who have been guilty of wrongdoing against the Government. By the time the offender can be brought into court the popular wrath against him has generally subsided; and there is in most instances very slight danger indeed of any prejudice existing in the minds of the jury against him. At present the interests of the innocent man are amply safeguarded; but the interests of the Government, that is, the interests of honest administration, that is the interests of the people, are not recognized as they should be. No subject better warrants the attention of the Congress. Indeed, no subject better warrants the attention of the bench and the bar throughout the United States.

Alaska, like all our Territorial acquisitions, has proved resourceful beyond the expectations of those[167] who made the purchase. It has become the home of many hardy, industrious, and thrifty American citizens. Towns of a permanent character have been built. The extent of its wealth in minerals, timber, fisheries, and agriculture, while great, is probably not comprehended yet in any just measure by our people. We do know, however, that from a very small beginning its products have grown until they are a steady and material contribution to the wealth of the Nation. Owing to the immensity of Alaska and its location in the far north, it is a difficult matter to provide many things essential to its growth and to the happiness and comfort of its people by private enterprise alone. It should, therefore, receive reasonable aid from the Government. The Government has already done excellent work for Alaska in laying cables and building telegraph lines. This work has been done in the most economical and efficient way by the Signal Corps of the Army.

In some respects it has outgrown its present laws, while in others those laws have been found to be inadequate. In order to obtain information upon which I could rely I caused an official of the Department of Justice, in whose judgment I have confidence, to visit Alaska during the past summer for the purpose of ascertaining how government is administered there and what legislation is actually needed at present. A statement of the conditions found to exist, together with some recommendations and the reasons therefor, in which I strongly concur,[168] will be found in the annual report of the Attorney-General. In some instances I feel that the legislation suggested is so imperatively needed that I am moved briefly to emphasize the Attorney-General’s proposals.

Under the Code of Alaska as it now stands many purely administrative powers and duties, including by far the most important, devolve upon the district judges or upon the clerks of the district court acting under the direction of the judges, while the Governor, upon whom these powers and duties should logically fall, has nothing specific to do except to make annual reports, issue Thanksgiving Day proclamations, and appoint Indian policemen and notaries public. I believe it essential to good government in Alaska, and therefore recommend that the Congress divest the district judges and the clerks of their courts of the administrative or executive functions that they now exercise and cast them upon the Governor. This would not be an innovation; it would simply conform the government of Alaska to fundamental principles, making the Governorship a real instead of a merely nominal office, and leaving the judges free to give their entire attention to their judicial duties and at the same time removing them from a great deal of the strife that now embarrasses the judicial office in Alaska.

I also recommend that the salaries of the district judges and district attorneys in Alaska be increased so as to make them equal to those received by corresponding[169] officers in the United States after deducting the difference in the cost of living; that the district attorneys should be prohibited from engaging in private practice; that United States commissioners be appointed by the Governor of the Territory instead of by the district judges, and that a fixed salary be provided for them to take the place of the discredited “fee system,” which should be abolished in all offices; that a mounted constabulary be created to police the territory outside the limits of incorporated towns—a vast section now wholly without police protection; and that some provision be made to at least lessen the oppressive delays and costs that now attend the prosecution of appeals from the district court of Alaska. There should be a division of the existing judicial districts, and an increase in the number of judges.

Alaska should have a Delegate in the Congress. Where possible, the Congress should aid in the construction of needed wagon roads. Additional lighthouses should be provided. In my judgment, it is especially important to aid in such manner as seems just and feasible in the construction of a trunk line of railway to connect the Gulf of Alaska with the Yukon River through American territory. This would be most beneficial to the development of the resources of the Territory, and to the comfort and welfare of its people.

Salmon hatcheries should be established in many different streams, so as to secure the preservation of this valuable food fish. Salmon fisheries and[170] canneries should be prohibited on certain of the rivers where the mass of those Indians dwell who live almost exclusively on fish.

The Alaskan natives are kindly, intelligent, anxious to learn, and willing to work. Those who have come under the influence of civilization, even for a limited period, have proved their capability of becoming self-supporting, self-respecting citizens, and ask only for the just enforcement of law and intelligent instruction and supervision. Others, living in more remote regions, primitive, simple hunters and fisher folk, who know only the life of the woods and the waters, are daily being confronted with twentieth-century civilization with all of its complexities. Their country is being overrun by strangers, the game slaughtered and driven away, the streams depleted of fish, and hitherto unknown and fatal diseases brought to them, all of which combine to produce a state of abject poverty and want which must result in their extinction. Action in their interest is demanded by every consideration of justice and humanity.

The needs of these people are:

The abolition of the present fee system, whereby the native is degraded, imposed upon, and taught the injustice of law.

The establishment of hospitals at central points, so that contagious diseases that are brought to them continually by incoming whites may be localized and not allowed to become epidemic, to spread death and destitution over great areas.

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The development of the educational system in the form of practical training in such industries as will assure the Indians self-support under the changed conditions in which they will have to live.

The duties of the office of the Governor should be extended to include the supervision of Indian affairs, with necessary assistants in different districts. He should be provided with the means and the power to protect and advise the native people, to furnish medical treatment in time of epidemics, and to extend material relief in periods of famine and extreme destitution.

The Alaskan natives should be given the right to acquire, hold, and dispose of property upon the same conditions as given other inhabitants; and the privilege of citizenship should be given to such as may be able to meet certain definite requirements. In Hawaii Congress should give the Governor power to remove all the officials appointed under him. The harbor of Honolulu should be dredged. The Marine-Hospital Service should be empowered to study leprosy in the islands. I ask special consideration for the report and recommendations of the Governor of Porto Rico.

In treating of our foreign policy and of the attitude that this great Nation should assume in the world at large, it is absolutely necessary to consider the Army and the Navy, and the Congress, through which the thought of the Nation finds its expression,[172] should keep ever vividly in mind the fundamental fact that it is impossible to treat our foreign policy, whether this policy takes shape in the effort to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and of keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an attitude.

The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace[173] of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war. The goal to set before us as a Nation, the goal which should be set before all mankind, is the attainment of the peace of justice, of the peace which comes when each nation is not merely safeguarded in its own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and performs its duty toward others. Generally peace tells for righteousness; but if there is conflict between the two, then our fealty is due first to the cause of righteousness. Unrighteous wars are common, and unrighteous peace is rare; but both should be shunned. The right of freedom and the responsibility for the exercise of that right can not be divorced. One of our great poets has well and finely said that freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards. Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those too slothful, too dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise it. The eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty must be exercised, sometimes to guard against outside foes; although of course far more often to guard against our own selfish or thoughtless shortcomings.

If these self-evident truths are kept before us, and only if they are so kept before us, we shall have a clear idea of what our foreign policy in its larger aspects should be. It is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak, than an individual has to do injustice to another individual; that the same moral law applies in one case as in the other. But we must also remember that it is as much the[174] duty of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own interests as it is the duty of the individual so to do. Within the Nation the individual has now delegated this right to the State, that is, to the representative of all the individuals, and it is a maxim of the law that for every wrong there is a remedy. But in international law we have not advanced by any means as far as we have advanced in municipal law. There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing a right in international law. When one nation wrongs another, or wrongs many others, there is no tribunal before which the wrong-doer can be brought. Either it is necessary supinely to acquiesce in the wrong, and thus put a premium upon brutality and aggression, or else it is necessary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for its rights. Until some method is devised by which there shall be a degree of international control over offending nations, it would be a wicked thing for the most civilized powers, for those with most sense of international obligations and with keenest and most generous appreciation of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm. If the great civilized nations of the present day should completely disarm, the result would mean an immediate recrudescence of barbarism in one form or another. Under any circumstances a sufficient armament would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of international police; and until international cohesion and the sense of international duties and rights are far more advanced than at[175] present, a nation desirous both of securing respect for itself and of doing good to others must have a force adequate for the work which it feels is allotted to it as its part of the general world duty. Therefore it follows that a self-respecting, just, and far-seeing nation should on the one hand endeavor by every means to aid in the development of the various movements which tend to provide substitutes for war, which tend to render nations in their actions toward one another, and indeed toward their own peoples, more responsive to the general sentiment of humane and civilized mankind; and on the other hand it should keep prepared, while scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing itself, to repel any wrong, and in exceptional cases to take action which in a more advanced stage of international relations would come under the head of the exercise of the international police. A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil.

We are in every way endeavoring to help on, with cordial goodwill, every movement which will tend to bring us into more friendly relations with the rest of mankind. In pursuance of this policy I shall shortly lay before the Senate treaties of arbitration with all powers which are willing to enter into these treaties with us. It is not possible at this period of the world’s development to agree to arbitrate all matters, but there are many matters of possible difference between us and other nations[176] which can be thus arbitrated. Furthermore, at the request of the Interparliamentary Union, an eminent body composed of practical statesmen from all countries, I have asked the Powers to join with this Government in a second Hague conference, at which it is hoped that the work already so happily begun at The Hague may be carried some steps further toward completion. This carries out the desire expressed by the first Hague conference itself.

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise[177] of an international police power. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theatre of war in the Far East,[178] and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in which, while our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies. Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern ourselves with striving for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with trying to better the condition of things in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to put a stop to civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness and violent race prejudices here at home than by passing resolutions about wrongdoing elsewhere. Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justifiable. There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our brother’s eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our own. But in extreme cases action may be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it. The cases in which we could interfere by force of arms as we interfered[179] to put a stop to intolerable conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few. Yet it is not to be expected that a people like ours, which in spite of certain very obvious shortcomings, nevertheless as a whole shows by its consistent practice its belief in the principles of civil and religious liberty and of orderly freedom, a people among whom even the worst crime, like the crime of lynching, is never more than sporadic, so that individuals and not classes are molested in their fundamental rights—it is inevitable that such a nation should desire eagerly to give expression to its horror on an occasion like that of the massacre of the Jews in Kishineff, or when it witnesses such systematic and long-extended cruelty and oppression as the cruelty and oppression of which the Armenians have been the victims, and which have won for them the indignant pity of the civilized world.

Even where it is not possible to secure in other nations the observance of the principles which we accept as axiomatic, it is necessary for us firmly to insist upon the rights of our own citizens without regard to their creed or race; without regard to whether they were born here or born abroad. It has proved very difficult to secure from Russia the right for our Jewish fellow-citizens to receive passports and travel through Russian territory. Such conduct is not only unjust and irritating toward us, but it is difficult to see its wisdom from Russia’s standpoint. No conceivable good is accomplished[180] by it. If an American Jew or an American Christian misbehaves himself in Russia he can at once be driven out; but the ordinary American Jew, like the ordinary American Christian, would behave just about as he behaves here, that is, behave as any good citizen ought to behave; and where this is the case it is a wrong against which we are entitled to protest to refuse him his passport without regard to his conduct and character, merely on racial and religious grounds. In Turkey our difficulties arise less from the way in which our citizens are sometimes treated than from the indignation inevitably excited in seeing such fearful misrule as has been witnessed both in Armenia and Macedonia.

The strong arm of the Government in enforcing respect for its just rights in international matters is the Navy of the United States. I most earnestly recommend that there be no halt in the work of upbuilding the American Navy. There is no more patriotic duty before us as a people than to keep the Navy adequate to the needs of this country’s position. We have undertaken to build the Isthmian Canal. We have undertaken to secure for ourselves our just share in the trade of the Orient. We have undertaken to protect our citizens from improper treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a[181] mere boastful sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor deserve the slightest attention if we were impotent to make them good.

The war which now unfortunately rages in the Far East has emphasized in striking fashion the new possibilities of naval warfare. The lessons taught are both strategic and tactical, and are political as well as military. The experiences of the war have shown in conclusive fashion that while sea-going and sea-keeping torpedo destroyers are indispensable, and fast lightly armed and armored cruisers very useful, yet that the main reliance, the main standby, in any navy worthy the name must be the great battleships, heavily armored and heavily gunned. Not a Russian or Japanese battleship has been sunk by a torpedo boat, or by gunfire, while among the less protected ships, cruiser after cruiser has been destroyed whenever the hostile squadrons have gotten within range of one another’s weapons. There will always be a large field of usefulness for cruisers, especially of the more formidable type. We need to increase the number of torpedo-boat destroyers, paying less heed to their having a knot or two extra speed than to their capacity to keep the seas for weeks and, if necessary, for months at a time. It is wise to build submarine torpedo boats, as under certain[182] circumstances they might be very useful. But most of all we need to continue building our fleet of battleships, or ships so powerfully armed that they can inflict the maximum of damage upon our opponents, and so well protected that they can suffer a severe hammering in return without fatal impairment of their ability to fight and manœuvre. Of course ample means must be provided for enabling the personnel of the Navy to be brought to the highest point of efficiency. Our great fighting ships and torpedo boats must be ceaselessly trained and manœuvred in squadrons. The officers and men can only learn their trade thoroughly by ceaseless practice on the high seas. In the event of war it would be far better to have no ships at all than to have ships of a poor and ineffective type, or ships which, however good, were yet manned by untrained and unskilful crews. The best officers and men in a poor ship could do nothing against fairly good opponents; and, on the other hand, a modern warship is useless unless the officers and men aboard her have become adepts in their duties. The marksmanship in our Navy has improved in an extraordinary degree during the last three years, and on the whole the types of our battleships are improving; but much remains to be done. Sooner or later we shall have to provide for some method by which there will be promotions for merit as well as for seniority, or else retirement of all those who after a certain age have not advanced beyond a certain grade; while no effort must be spared to make the[183] service attractive to the enlisted men in order that they may be kept as long as possible in it. Reservation public schools should be provided wherever there are navy-yards.

Within the last three years the United States has set an example in disarmament where disarmament was proper. By law our Army is fixed at a maximum of one hundred thousand and a minimum of sixty thousand men. When there was insurrection in the Philippines we kept the Army at the maximum. Peace came in the Philippines, and now our Army has been reduced to the minimum at which it is possible to keep it with due regard to its efficiency. The guns now mounted require twenty-eight thousand men, if the coast fortifications are to be adequately manned. Relatively to the Nation, it is not now so large as the police force of New York or Chicago, relatively to the population of either city. We need more officers; there are not enough to perform the regular army work. It is very important that the officers of the Army should be accustomed to handle their men in masses, as it is also important that the National Guard of the several States should be accustomed to actual field manœuvring, especially in connection with the regulars. For this reason we are to be congratulated upon the success of the field manœuvres at Manassas last fall, manœuvres in which a larger number of Regulars and National Guard took part than was ever before assembled together in time of[184] peace. No other civilized nation has, relatively to its population, such a diminutive Army as ours; and while the Army is so small we are not to be excused if we fail to keep it at a very high grade of proficiency. It must be incessantly practiced; the standard for the enlisted men should be kept very high, while at the same time the service should be made as attractive as possible; and the standard for the officers should be kept even higher—which, as regards the upper ranks, can best be done by introducing some system of selection and rejection into the promotions. We should be able, in the event of some sudden emergency, to put into the field one first-class army corps, which should be, as a whole, at least the equal of any body of troops of like number belonging to any other nation.

Great progress has been made in protecting our coasts by adequate fortifications with sufficient guns. We should, however, pay much more heed than at present to the development of an extensive system of floating mines for use in all our more important harbors. These mines have been proved to be a most formidable safeguard against hostile fleets.

I earnestly call the attention of the Congress to the need of amending the existing law relating to the award of Congressional medals of honor in the Navy so as to provide that they may be awarded to commissioned officers and warrant officers as well as to enlisted men. These justly prized medals[185] are given in the Army alike to the officers and the enlisted men, and it is most unjust that the commissioned officers and warrant officers of the Navy should not in this respect have the same rights as their brethren in the Army and as the enlisted men of the Navy.

In the Philippine Islands there has been during the past year a continuation of the steady progress which has obtained ever since our troops definitely got the upper hand of the insurgents. The Philippine people, or, to speak more accurately, the many tribes, and even races, sundered from one another more or less sharply, who go to make up the people of the Philippine Islands, contain many elements of good, and some elements which we have a right to hope stand for progress. At present they are utterly incapable of existing in independence at all or of building up a civilization of their own. I firmly believe that we can help them to rise higher and higher in the scale of civilization and of capacity for self-government, and I most earnestly hope that in the end they will be able to stand, if not entirely alone, yet in some such relation to the United States as Cuba now stands. This end is not yet in sight, and it may be indefinitely postponed if our people are foolish enough to turn the attention of the Filipinos away from the problems of achieving moral and material prosperity, of working for a stable, orderly, and just government, and toward foolish and dangerous intrigues[186] for a complete independence for which they are as yet totally unfit.

On the other hand, our people must keep steadily before their minds the fact that the justification for our stay in the Philippines must ultimately rest chiefly upon the good we are able to do in the islands. I do not overlook the fact that in the development of our interests in the Pacific Ocean and along its coasts, the Philippines have played and will play an important part, and that our interests have been served in more than one way by the possession of the islands. But our chief reason for continuing to hold them must be that we ought in good faith to try to do our share of the world’s work, and this particular piece of work has been imposed upon us by the results of the war with Spain. The problem presented to us in the Philippine Islands is akin to, but not exactly like, the problems presented to the other great civilized powers which have possessions in the Orient. There are points of resemblance in our work to the work which is being done by the British in India and Egypt, by the French in Algiers, by the Dutch in Java, by the Russians in Turkestan, by the Japanese in Formosa; but more distinctly than any of these Powers we are endeavoring to develop the natives themselves so that they shall take an ever-increasing share in their own government, and as far as prudent we are already admitting their representatives to a governmental equality with our own. There are commissioners, judges, and governors[187] in the islands who are Filipinos and who have exactly the same share in the government of the islands as have their colleagues who are Americans, while in the lower ranks, of course, the great majority of the public servants are Filipinos. Within two years we shall be trying the experiment of an elective lower house in the Philippine legislature. It may be that the Filipinos will misuse this legislature, and they certainly will misuse it if they are misled by foolish persons here at home into starting an agitation for their own independence or into any factious or improper action. In such case they will do themselves no good, and will stop for the time being all further effort to advance them and give them a greater share in their own government. But if they act with wisdom and self-restraint, if they show that they are capable of electing a legislature which in its turn is capable of taking a sane and efficient part in the actual work of government, they can rest assured that a full and increasing measure of recognition will be given them. Above all they should remember that their prime needs are moral and industrial, not political. It is a good thing to try the experiment of giving them a legislature; but it is a far better thing to give them schools, good roads, railroads which will enable them to get their products to market, honest courts, an honest and efficient constabulary, and all that tends to produce order, peace, fair dealing as between man and man, and habits of intelligent industry and thrift. If[188] they are safeguarded against oppression, and if their wants, material and spiritual, are studied intelligently and in a spirit of friendly sympathy, much more good will be done them than by any effort to give them political power, though this effort may in its own proper time and place be proper enough.

Meanwhile our own people should remember that there is need for the highest standard of conduct among the Americans sent to the Philippine Islands, not only among the public servants, but among the private individuals who go to them. It is because I feel this so deeply that in the administration of these islands I have positively refused to permit any discrimination whatsoever for political reasons, and have insisted that in choosing the public servants consideration should be paid solely to the worth of the men chosen and to the needs of the islands. There is no higher body of men in our public service than we have in the Philippine Islands under Governor Wright and his associates. So far as possible these men should be given a free hand, and their suggestions should receive the hearty backing both of the Executive and of the Congress. There is need of a vigilant and disinterested support of our public servants in the Philippines by good citizens here in the United States. Unfortunately hitherto those of our people here at home who have specially claimed to be the champions of the Filipinos have in reality been their worst enemies. This will continue to be the case[189] as long as they strive to make the Filipinos independent, and stop all industrial development of the islands by crying out against the laws which would bring it on the ground that capitalists must not “exploit” the islands. Such proceedings are not only unwise, but are most harmful to the Filipinos, who do not need independence at all, but who do need good laws, good public servants, and the industrial development that can only come if the investment of American and foreign capital in the islands is favored in all legitimate ways.

Every measure taken concerning the islands should be taken primarily with a view to their advantage. We should certainly give them lower tariff rates on their exports to the United States; if this is not done it will be a wrong to extend our shipping laws to them. I earnestly hope for the immediate enactment into law of the legislation now pending to encourage American capital to seek investment in the islands in railroads, in factories, in plantations, and in lumbering and mining.

Theodore Roosevelt.

White House,
December 6, 1904.

[190]

ADDRESS TO THE FOREST CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 5, 1905

Mr. Secretary, Gentlemen and Ladies:

It is a pleasure to greet all of you here this afternoon, but of course especially the members of the American Forest Congress. You have made, by your coming, a meeting which is without parallel in the history of forestry. And, Mr. Secretary, I must take this opportunity of saying to you what you so amply deserve, that no man in this country has done so much as you have done in the last eight years to make it possible to take a business view from the standpoint of all the country of just such questions as this. It is not many years since such a meeting as this would have been regarded as chimerical; the thought of it would have been regarded as absolutely chimerical. In the old pioneer days the American had but one thought about a tree, and that was to cut it down; and the mental attitude of the Nation toward the forests was largely conditioned upon the fact that the life work of the earlier generations of our people had been of necessity to hew down the forests, for they had to make clearings on which to live; and it was not until half a century of our national life had passed that any considerable body of American citizens began to live under conditions where the tree ceased to be something to be cleared off the earth. It always takes time to get the mind of a people accustomed[191] to any change in conditions, and it took a long time to get the mind of our people, as a whole, accustomed to the fact that they had to alter their attitude toward the forests. For the first time the great business and the forest interests of the Nation have joined together, through delegates altogether worthy of the organizations they represent, to consider their individual and their common interests in the forest. This congress may well be called a meeting of forest users, for that the users of the forest come together to consider how best to combine use with preservation is the significant fact of the meeting, the fact full of powerful promise for the forests of the future.

The producers, the manufacturers, and the great common carriers of the Nation had long failed to realize their true and vital relation to the great forests of the United States, and the forests and industries both suffered from that failure. The suffering of the industries in such case comes after the destruction of the forests, but it is just as inevitable as that destruction. If the forest is destroyed it is only a question of a relatively short time before the business interests suffer in consequence. All of you know that there is opportunity in any new country for the development of the type of temporary inhabitant whose idea is to skin the country and go somewhere else. You all know, and especially those of you from the West, the individual whose idea of developing the country is to cut every stick of timber off of it and then leave a barren[192] desert for the homemaker who comes in after him. That man is a curse and not a blessing to the country. The prop of the country must be the business man who intends so to run his business that it will be profitable for his children after him. That is the type of business that it is worth while to develop. The time of indifference and misunderstanding has gone by. Your coming is a very great step toward the solution of the forest problem—a problem which can not be settled until it is settled right. And it can not be settled right until the forces which bring that settlement about come, not from the Government, not even from the newspapers and from public sentiment in general, but from the active, intelligent, and effective interest of the men to whom the forest is important from the business point of view, because they use it and its product and whose interest is therefore concrete instead of general and diffuse. I do not in the least underrate the power of an awakened public opinion; but in the final test it will be the attitude of the industries of the country which more than anything else will determine whether or not our forests are to be preserved. It is because of their recognition of that prime material fact that so much has been accomplished, Mr. Wilson, by those interested under you and in the other departments of the Government in the preservation of the forests. We want the active and zealous help of every man farsighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the Nation’s welfare in the future[193] of preserving the forests; but that help by itself will not avail. It will not even be the main factor in bringing about the result toward which we are striving; the main factor must come from the intelligence of the business interests concerned, so that the manufacturer, the railway man, the miner, the lumberman, the dealer in lumber, shall appreciate that it is of direct interest to them to preserve through use instead of waste, the great resources upon which they depend for the successful development of their business. This is true because by far the greater part of all our forests must pass into the hands of forest users, whether directly or through the Government, which will continue to hold some of them, but only as trustee. The forest is for use, and its users will decide its future. It was only a few years ago that the practical lumberman felt that the forest expert was a man who wished to see the forests preserved as bric-a-brac, and the American business man was not prepared to do much from the bric-a-brac standpoint. Now, I think, we have got a working agreement between the forester and the business man whose business is the use of the forest. We have got them to come together with the understanding that they must work for a common end, work to see the forest preserved for use. The great significance of this congress comes from the fact that henceforth the movement for the conservative use of the forest is to come mainly from within, not from without; from the men who are actively interested in the use[194] of the forest in one way or another, even more than from those whose interest is philanthropic and general. The difference means, as the difference in such a case always does mean, to a large extent the difference between mere agitation and actual execution, between the hope of accomplishment and the thing done. We believe that at last forces have been set in motion which will convert the once distant prospect of the conservation of the forest by wise use into the practical accomplishment of that great end; and of this most hopeful and significant fact the coming together of this congress is the sufficient proof.

I shall not pretend this afternoon to even describe to you the place of the forest in the life of any nation, and especially of its place in the United States. The great industries of agriculture, transportation, mining, grazing, and, of course, lumbering, are each one of them vitally and immediately dependent upon wood, water, or grass from the forest. The manufacturing industries, whether or not wood enters directly into their finished product, are scarcely, if at all, less dependent upon the forest than those whose connection with it is obvious and direct. Wood is an indispensable part of the material structure upon which civilization rests; and it is to be remembered always that the immense increase of the use of iron and substitutes for wood in many structures, while it has meant a relative decrease in the amount of wood used, has been accompanied by an absolute increase in[195] the amount of wood used. More wood is used than ever before in our history. Thus, the consumption of wood in shipbuilding is far larger than it was before the discovery of the art of building iron ships, because vastly more ships are built. Larger supplies of building lumber are required, directly or indirectly, for use in the construction of the brick and stone structures of great modern cities than were consumed by the comparatively few and comparatively small wooden buildings in the earlier stages of these same cities. It is as sure as anything can be that we will see in the future a steadily increasing demand for wood in our manufacturing industries. There is one point I want to speak about in addition to the uses of the forest to which I have already alluded. Those of us who have lived on the great plains, who are acquainted with the conditions in parts of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas, know that wood forms an immensely portentous element in helping the farmer on these plains battle against his worst enemy—wind. The use of forests as windbreaks out on the plains, where the tree does not grow unless men help it, is of enormous importance, and, Mr. Wilson, among the many services performed by the public-spirited statesman who once occupied the position that you now hold, none was greater than what the late Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Morton, did in teaching, by actual example as well as by precept, the people of the treeless regions the immense advantage of the cultivation of trees.[196] When wood, dead or alive, is demanded in so many ways, and when this demand will undoubtedly increase, it is a fair question, then, whether the vast demands of the future upon our forests are likely to be met. You are mighty poor Americans if your care for the well-being of this country is limited to hoping that that well-being will last out your own generation. No man, here or elsewhere, is entitled to call himself a decent citizen if he does not try to do his part toward seeing that our national policies are shaped for the advantage of our children and our children’s children. Our country, we have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable. The railroads must have ties, and the general opinion is that no efficient substitute for wood for this purpose has been devised. The miner must have timber or he can not operate his mine, and in very many cases the profit which mining yields is directly proportionate to the cost of timber supply. The farmer, East and West, must have timber for numberless uses on his farm, and he must be protected, by forest cover upon the headwaters of the streams he uses, against floods in the East, and the lack of water for irrigation in the West. The stockman must have fence posts, and very often he must have summer range for his stock in the national forest reserves.[197] In a word, both the production of the great staples upon which our prosperity depends and their movement in commerce throughout the United States are inseparably dependent upon the existence of permanent and suitable supplies from the forest at a reasonable cost.

If the present rate of forest destruction is allowed to continue, with nothing to offset it, a timber famine in the future is inevitable. Fire, wasteful and destructive forms of lumbering, and the legitimate use, taken together, are destroying our forest resources far more rapidly than they are being replaced. It is difficult to imagine what such a timber famine would mean to our resources. And the period of recovery from the injuries which a timber famine would entail would be measured by the slow growth of the trees themselves. Remember that you can prevent such a timber famine occurring by wise action taken in time, but once the famine occurs there is no possible way of hurrying the growth of the trees necessary to relieve it. You have got to act in time or else the Nation would have to submit to prolonged suffering after it had become too late for forethought to avail. Fortunately, the remedy is a simple one, and your presence here to-day is a most encouraging sign that there will be such forethought. It is the great merit of the Department of Agriculture in the forest work that its efforts have been directed to enlist the sympathy and co-operation of the users of wood, water, and grass, and to show that forestry[198] will and does pay, rather than to exhaust itself in the futile attempt to introduce conservative methods by any other means. I believe most emphatically in sentiment, but I want the sentiment to be put into co-operation with the business interests, and that is what is being done. The policy is one of helpfulness throughout, and never of hostility or coercion toward any legitimate interest whatsoever. In the very nature of things it can make little progress apart from you. Whatever it may be possible for the Government to accomplish, its work must ultimately fail unless your interest and support give it permanence and power. It is only as the producing and commercial interests of the country come to realize that they need to have trees growing up in the forest not less than they need the product of the trees cut down that we may hope to see the permanent prosperity of both safely secured.

This statement is true not only as to forests in private ownership, but as to the national forests as well. Unless the men from the West believe in forest preservation the Western forests can not be preserved. We here at the headquarters of the National Government recognize that absolutely. We believe, we know, that it is essential for the well-being of the people of the States of the great plains, the States of the Rockies, the States of the Pacific Slope, that the forests shall be preserved, and we know also that our belief will count for nothing unless the people of those States themselves wish to preserve[199] the forests. If they do we can help materially; we can direct their efforts, but we can not save the forests unless they wish them to be saved.

I ask, with all the intensity that I am capable, that the men of the West will remember the sharp distinction I have just drawn between the man who skins the land and the man who develops the country. I am going to work with, and only with, the man who develops the country. I am against the land skinner every time. Our policy is consistent to give to every portion of the public domain its highest possible amount of use, and of course that can be given only through the hearty co-operation of the Western people. I would like to add one word as to the creation of a national forest service which I have recommended repeatedly in messages to Congress, and especially in my last. I wish to see all the forest work of the Government concentrated in the Department of Agriculture. It is folly to scatter such work, as I have said over and over again, and the policy which this Administration is trying to carry out through the creation of such a service is that of making the national forests more actively and more permanently useful to the people of the West, and I am heartily glad to know that the Western sentiment supports more and more vigorously the policy of setting aside national forests, the creation of a national forest service, and especially the policy of increasing the permanent usefulness of these forest lands to all who come in contact with them. With what is rapidly getting to[200] be a practically unbroken sentiment in the West behind such a forest policy, with what is rapidly getting to be a practically unbroken support by the great stable interests behind the general policy of the conservative use of the forests, we have a right to feel that we have entered on an era of great and lasting progress. Only entered upon it; much, very much, remains to be done; and as in every other department of human activity our debt of gratitude will be due, not to the amiable but shortsighted optimist who thinks you have made a good beginning and the end may take care of itself; still less to the man who sits at one side and says how poorly the work is being done by those who are doing it; but to the men who try, each in his own place, practically to forward this great work. That is the type of man who is going to do the work, and it is because I believe that we have enlisted the active, practical sympathy of just that kind of man in this work that I believe the future of this policy to be bright and the permanence of our timber supplies more nearly assured than at any previous time in our history. To the men represented in this congress this great result is primarily due. In closing, I wish to thank you who are here, not merely for what you are doing in this particular movement, but for the fact that you are illustrating what I hope I may call the typically American method of meeting questions of great and vital importance to the Nation—the method of seeing whether the individuals particularly concerned can not by getting together and[201] co-operating with the Government do infinitely more for themselves than it would be possible for any Government under the sun to do for them. I believe in the future of this movement, because I think you have the right combination of qualities—the quality of individual initiative, the quality of individual resourcefulness, combined with the quality that enables you to come together for mutual help, and having so come, to work with the Government; and I pledge you in the fullest measure the support of the Government in what you are doing.

SPEECH AT THE DINNER OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS, AT THE ARLINGTON HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 11, 1905

Mr. President, Your Eminence, Gentlemen:

It is a great pleasure to have the chance of coming here this evening and saying a word of greeting to a body of men who are engaged in doing work for this Republic which is to count, not merely in the present generation, but during the lifetimes of many generations to come. We hear a great deal said about true Americanism. Now the real American, the American whom it is worth while to call such, is the man whose belief in and work for America are not merely for the America of to-day, but for the America of the future.

It is a comparatively easy thing to do work when the reward is to come in the present; but every great nation that has ever existed on this globe[202] has been great because its sons had in them the capacity to work for the well-being of generations yet unborn. Such a spirit is peculiarly necessary when the work that we desire to have done is essentially work of a non-remunerative type, non-remunerative in more than one way; non-remunerative in money, and it may be in fame. We do not know the names of the architects and builders of the great cathedrals whose magnificent beauty is an heirloom to civilization. We do not know the names of the builders of the great majority of the works to which every man with an aspiration after beauty naturally turns when he thinks of the past. We owe that beauty, we owe the elevation of thought, of mind and soul, that come with association and belief in it, to the fact that there were a sufficient number of men who worked in the spirit that Ruskin prayed for—the spirit of doing work not for the sake of the fee, but for the sake of the work itself.

There are things in a nation’s life more important than beauty; but beauty is very important. And in this Nation of ours, while there is very much in which we have succeeded marvelously, I do not think that if we look dispassionately at what we have done we will say that beauty has been exactly the strong point of the Nation. It rests largely with gatherings such as this, with the note that is set by men such as those I am addressing to-night, to determine whether or not this shall be true of the future. A very large percentage of the durable work, the work which is lasting, and therefore[203] the beauty of which, if it exists, is also lasting, must be done by the Government. Many great buildings and beautiful buildings will be created by private effort; but many of the greatest buildings must necessarily be erected by the Government, national, State, or municipal. Those in control of any branch of that Government necessarily have but an ephemeral lease of power. Administration succeeds administration; Congress succeeds Congress; Legislature succeeds Legislature; and even if all of the administrations, all of the Congresses, are actuated (a not necessarily probable supposition) by an artistic spirit, it would still remain true that there could not be coherence in their work if they had to rely on themselves alone. The best thing that any administration, that any executive department of the Government, can do—and if I may venture to make any suggestion to the co-ordinate branch, Senator Cockrell, I would say that the best thing that any elective legislative body could do—is in these matters to surrender itself, within reasonable limits, to the guidance of those who really do know what they are talking about. The only way in which we can hope to have worthy artistic work done for the Nation or for a State or for a municipality, is by having such a growth of popular sentiment as will render it incumbent upon successive administrations, successive legislative bodies, to carry out steadily a plan chosen for them, worked out for them by such a body of men as that gathered here this evening. What I have said does not[204] mean that we shall here in Washington, for instance, go into immediate and extravagant expenditures on public buildings. All that it means is that, whenever hereafter a public building is provided for and erected, it should be erected in accordance with a carefully thought out plan adopted long before; and that it should be not only beautiful in itself, but fitting in its relations to the whole scheme of the public buildings, the parks, the drives of the District.

Working through municipal commissions, very great progress has already been made in rendering more beautiful our cities, from New York to San Francisco. An incredible amount remains to be done. But a beginning has been made, and now I most earnestly hope that in the National Capital a better beginning will be made than anywhere else, and that can be made only by utilizing to the fullest degree the thought and the disinterested effort of the architects, the artists, the men of art, who stand foremost in their professions here in the United States, and who ask no other reward than the reward of feeling that they have done their full part to make as beautiful as it should be the capital city of the great Republic.

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ADDRESS AT LUTHER PLACE MEMORIAL CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 29, 1905

Dr. Butler:

It is a great pleasure to meet with you this morning and say a word of greeting on the occasion of the rededication of this church, coming as it does almost simultaneously with the entry of your pastor into his eightieth year.

From the standpoint from which I am obliged so continually to look at matters, there is a peculiar function to be played by the great Lutheran Church in the United States of America. This is a Church which had its rise to power in, and, until it emigrated to this side of the water, had always had its fullest development in the two great races of Northern and Northern Middle Europe—the German and the Scandinavian. The Lutheran Church came to the territory which is now the United States very shortly after the first permanent settlements were made within our limits; for when the earliest settlers came to dwell around the mouth of the Delaware they brought the Lutheran worship with them, and so with the earliest German settlers who came to Pennsylvania and afterward to New York and the mountainous region in the western part of Virginia and the States south of it. From that day to this the history of the growth in population of this Nation has consisted largely, in some respects mainly, of the arrival of successive waves of newcomers[206] to our shores; and the prime duty of those already in the land is to see that their own progress and development are shared by these newcomers. It is a serious and dangerous thing for any man to tear loose from the soil, from the religion in which he and his forbears have taken root, and to be transplanted into a new land. He should receive all possible aid in the new land; and the aid can be tendered him most effectively by those who can appeal to him on the ground of spiritual kinship. Therefore the Lutheran Church can do most in helping upward and onward so many of the newcomers to our shores; and it seems to me that it should be, I am tempted to say, wellnigh the prime duty of this Church to see that the immigrant, especially the immigrant of Lutheran faith from the Old World, whether he comes from Scandinavia or Germany, or whether he belonged to one of the Lutheran countries of Finland, or Hungary, or Austria, may be not suffered to drift off with no friendly hand extended to him out of all the church communion, away from all the influences that tend toward safeguarding and uplifting him, and that he find ready at hand in this country those eager to bring him into fellowship with the existing bodies. The Lutheran Church in this country is of very great power now numerically, and through the intelligence and thrift of its members, but it will grow steadily to even greater power. It is destined to be one of the two or three greatest and most important national churches in the United[207] States; one of the two or three churches most distinctively American, most distinctively among the forces that are to tell for making this great country even greater in the future. Therefore a peculiar load of responsibility rests upon the members of this Church. It is an important thing for the people of this Nation to remember their rights, but it is an even more important thing for them to remember their duties. In the last analysis the work of statesmen and soldiers, the work of the public men, shall go for nothing if it is not based upon the spirit of Christianity working in the millions of homes throughout this country, so that there may be that social, that spiritual, that moral foundation without which no country can ever rise to permanent greatness. For material well-being, material prosperity, success in arts, in letters, great industrial triumphs, all of them and all of the structures raised thereon will be as evanescent as a dream if they do not rest on “the righteousness that exalteth a nation.”

Let me congratulate you and congratulate all of us that we live in a land and at a time when we accept it as natural that there should be an interdenominational service of thanksgiving, such a ceremony as is to take place this afternoon, in which the pastors of other churches join to congratulate themselves and you upon the rebuilding of this church. One of the constant problems of life is to try to cultivate breadth without shallowness, just as we want to try to cultivate depth without narrowness. It seems to me that thanksgiving with[208] the combined earnestness, the liberty, of the great body of the pastors who, for our good fortune, are in the various churches of this country can be accepted as in a peculiar measure typifying the American spirit in religious thought; that for our good fortune those men have been able to combine fervor in doing the Lord’s work with charity toward their brethren who do it with certain differences in the non-essentials. The forces of evil are strong and mighty in this century and in this country as they are in other countries, as they have been in all the past centuries; and the people who sincerely wish to do the Lord’s work will find ample opportunity for all their labor in fighting the common enemy and in assuming toward their fellows of a different confession an attitude of generous rivalry in the effort to see how the most good can be done to our people as a whole.

I thank you for having given me the chance to speak to you this morning, to say a word of greeting to you and to wish you Godspeed with all my heart.

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ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF THE NAVAL ACADEMY AT ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, JAN. 30, 1905

Captain Brownson, Members of the Graduating Class, Governor Warfield, and to the other Midshipmen and their friends and kinsmen here gathered together:

I fail to see how any good American can be other than a better American when he comes here to Annapolis and sees the Academy as it is and as it soon will be, thanks to the wise munificence of Congress; and I am not surprised that you who graduate from this institution should make the kind of men that as a rule you do make afterward; should show the qualities of courage, of lofty fidelity to duty, of devotion to the flag, and of farsighted preparedness to meet possible future emergencies; should show the traits which I think, Captain Brownson, I can say without flattery, characterize the service to which you belong. I am not surprised that you should show those traits, for I should be heartily ashamed of you if you did not. More than any other people in this country, with the sole exception of those in the sister service who have had your advantages, you owe a peculiar fealty to the Nation which has trained you, which has given you a career in after life, a career in which, if you do your duty, you are sure to lead honorable lives, and to deserve well of the Republic; and a career in which there[210] is always the chance that you may spring into one of those few places to be occupied by the men of the Nation who win deathless fame for themselves by the way in which they serve the Nation in the hour of the Nation’s need. On the one hand we have the right to expect a peculiar measure of self-sacrificing service from you. On the other hand we have the right to expect from the representatives of the people a peculiar care for your interests. It is well that every public man should feel under a particular obligation to see to the welfare of the Army and the Navy. Governor Warfield, if you will pardon the personal allusion, I want to thank you for the way in which you have made evident your feeling toward this institution, for the reception you gave just the other night to these very men about to graduate. It is well that they should understand that because of the position they hold the Governor of the great State in which the institution is situated recognizes their possibilities of usefulness to the country, the obligations due them, and the obligations we have a right to feel that they will recognize to the whole Nation in return.

There are a good many baseless alarms which some worthy people feel from time to time in this country, and which other less worthy people affect to feel, but of all foolish crimes, of all baseless figments of a disturbed imagination, the cry of militarism in this country is the most foolish and the most baseless. Not only there does not exist now, but there never has existed in recent times, any nation[211] so wholly free as this is from any danger of excessive militarism, so wholly free from any danger of an undue growth of the military spirit. The danger is now, will be, and always has been, the exact reverse; the danger is lest we do not take sufficient thought in preparing the men and material which will make our attitude in claiming to be a great nation respectable. I would be sorry to see us content to assume the position of a nation unwilling and unable to play a great part in the world, unable to hold its own in the shock of arms, should it be ever necessary, which I most earnestly hope that in the lifetime of no man here present it will be necessary. Should it ever be necessary, and I hope it will not be, to appeal to arms, I should be sorry to see us take the position of avowed weakness, take the position that we did not intend to rank ourselves among the great powers of the earth. I should be sorry to see that; but I would a great deal rather see that than see us insist upon taking such a position and refuse to provide the means which would make such a position other than a sham. If this country believes in the Monroe Doctrine; if this country intends to hold the Philippines; if it intends, besides building, to police the Isthmian Canal; if it intends to do its duty on the side of civilization, on the side of law and order, and that duty can be done only by the just man armed; if this country intends to do that, then it must see to it that it is able to make good, if the necessity arises to make good. It is idle to talk of our faith in[212] the Monroe Doctrine if we are not able to make that faith evident. It is foolish to remain permanently in the Philippines unless we provide a base of military action for our fleets and army should it be necessary to defend the Philippines in time of war. It is foolish to assert our position as entitled to the respect of other great nations unless we are willing to build the ships, to build the guns, and to train the men who are to man the ships and handle the guns if the need arises. I should be ashamed to see this Nation play the part of a weakling. But I would rather see it play that part frankly than see it boast what it was and then so handle itself that if any one questioned the boast we should have to retreat from the position we assumed because we lacked the power to make our words good.

I earnestly hope that our foreign policy shall be continued absolutely without regard to change of Administration, to change of party, along the lines of treating every foreign nation with all possible respect, of avoiding all provocation for war, for trouble of any kind, of taking every step possible to minimize the chance of trouble occurring; and at the same time of taking every step possible to see to it that if by any chance trouble does occur we do not come out second best.

Just at this moment, to illustrate what I mean, we have negotiated certain arbitration treaties with the great foreign Powers. I most earnestly hope that those arbitration treaties will become part of the supreme law of the land. Every friend of peace[213] will join heartily in seeing that those arbitration treaties do become part of the supreme law of the land. By adopting them we will have taken a step, not a very long step, but undoubtedly a step in the direction of minimizing the chance for any trouble that might result in war; we will have in measurable degree provided for a method of substituting international disputes other than that of war as regards certain subjects, and as regards the particular nations with whom those treaties are negotiated. We can test the sincerity of those people devoted to peace largely by seeing whether this people does in effective fashion desire to have those treaties ratified, to have those treaties adopted. I have proceeded upon the assumption that this Nation was sincere when it said that it desired peace, that all proper steps to provide against the likelihood of war ought to be taken; and these arbitration treaties represent precisely those steps. But the adoption of those treaties by themselves would not bring peace. We are a good many years short of the millennium yet; and for the present and the immediate future we can rest assured that the word of the man who is suspected of desiring peace because he is afraid of war will count for but little. What we desire is to have it evident that this Nation seeks peace, not because it is afraid, but because it believes in the eternal and immutable laws of justice and of right living. Therefore, hand in hand with the negotiation of treaties of that character, hand in hand with the effort to put our foreign relations with every nation[214] on a better footing, must go the steady upbuilding of the Army and the Navy; above all the Navy, so that our national honor may be sure of an adequate safeguard should our national honor ever be actively menaced.

I want to say a word to you boys here in particular. I am about to have the good fortune to present a sword to the best gunner and certain medals also for gunnery. The sword is given by the class of ’71, given annually, so as to put a premium upon markmanship; and, Captain Brownson, I would like through you to thank the members of that class for the patriotic service they have done in making such a gift.

The one thing that you graduates here, and all of the others in this school, must remember, is that you ought to bend your entire energies to fitting yourselves as you can only be fitted by the most careful training in advance for the possible supreme day when upon your success or your failure will depend not only whether your own lives will be crowned with triumph or blasted with ruin, but whether the Nation will or will not write a page of glory or a page of shame on her history. There is not one of you who is not derelict in his duty to the whole Nation if he fails to prepare himself with all the strength that in him lies to do his duty should the occasion arise; and one of your great duties is to see that shots hit. The result is going to largely depend upon whether you or your adversary hits. I expect you to be brave. I rather take that for[215] granted. It is not that you are to be commended much for bravery. You would be condemned forever if you lacked it. If you lacked it in the highest form, courage physical and moral, the courage that will assume responsibility, no less than the courage that without a thought will face death, that we have a right to expect from every one of you, and I say that you are less to be commended for having it than to be condemned for failure to have it. But, in addition, you have got to prepare yourselves in advance. Every naval action that has taken place within the last twenty years in which our own ships have been engaged or in which any foreign ships have been engaged has shown, as a rule, that the defeated party has suffered not from lack of courage, but because it could not make the best use of its weapons, or had not been given the right weapons. Occasionally, of course, if the victor happened to be matched against people who did not show courage, the courage counted. But I want every one here to proceed upon the assumption that any foe he may meet will have the courage. Of course, you have got to show the highest degree of courage yourself or you will be beaten anyhow, and you will deserve to be; but in addition to that you must prepare yourselves by careful training so that you may make the best possible use of the delicate and formidable mechanism of a modern warship. The reason that you are trained here, the reason that you are put through this academy, the reason that your training goes on in the service is because without that training[216] no man can hope to do the work that is set before you to do. It is equally true that the training can not be given you only from without unless you actively and earnestly seek to get the best possible benefit from it yourselves; that the best teachers, the best superiors can not supply wholly or more than in very small part the lack of that which is within you. No other body of men of your age in our country owes so much to the United States, to the flag that symbolizes this Nation, as you do. No other body of young men has on the average as great a chance as each of you has to lead a life of honor to himself and of benefit to the country at large. Deep will be your shame if you fail to rise level to your opportunities and duties, and great will be the honor that I know you will win, because I know that, judging you by those who have gone before you in the service, you will rise level to your opportunities and keep untarnished the proud fame of the American officer.

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ADDRESS AT THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB, PHILADELPHIA, PA., JAN. 30, 1905

Mr. President; and Gentlemen of the Union League:

This club was founded to uphold the hands of Abraham Lincoln when he stood as the great leader in the struggle for union and liberty. We have a right, therefore, to appeal to this club for aid in every governmental or social effort made along the lines marked out by Lincoln. The great President taught many lessons which we who come after him should learn. Among the most important of these was the lesson that for weal or woe we are indissolubly bound together, in whatever part of the country we live, whatever our social standing, whatever our wealth or our poverty, whatever form of mental or physical activity our life work may assume. Lincoln, who was, more emphatically than any other President we have ever had, the President of the plain people, was yet as far removed as Washington himself from the slightest taint of demagogy. With his usual farsighted clearness of vision he saw that in a republic such as ours permanent prosperity of any part of our people was conditioned upon the prosperity of all; and that on the other hand any effort to raise the general level of happiness by striking at the well-being of a portion of the people could not be but in the end disastrous to all.

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The principles which Lincoln applied to the solution of the problems of his day are those which we must apply if we expect successfully to solve the different problems of our own day—problems which are so largely industrial. Exactly as it is impossible to develop a high morality unless we have as a foundation those qualities which give at least a certain minimum of material prosperity, so it is impossible permanently to keep material prosperity unless there is back of it a basis of right living and right thinking. In the last analysis, of course, the dominant factor in obtaining this good conduct must be the individual character of the average citizen. If there is not this condition of individual character in the average citizenship of the country, all effort to supply its place by the wisest legislation and administration will in the end prove futile. But given this average of individual character, then wise laws and the honest administration of the laws can do much to supplement it. If either the business world or the world of labor loses its head, then it has lost something which can not be made good by any governmental effort. Our faith in the future of the Republic is firm, because we believe that on the whole and in the long run our people think clearly and act rightly.

Unquestionably, however, the great development of industrialism means that there must be an increase in the supervision exercised by the Government over business enterprises. This supervision should not take the form of violent and ill-advised[219] interference; and assuredly there is danger lest it take such form if the business leaders of the business community confine themselves to trying to thwart the effort at regulation instead of guiding it aright. Such men as the members of this club should lead in the effort to secure proper supervision and regulation of corporate activity by the Government, not only because it is for the interest of the community as a whole that there should be this supervision and regulation, but because in the long run it will be in the interest above all of the very people who often betray alarm and anger when the proposition is first made.

Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the Government the still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole. Our peculiar form of government, a Government in which the Nation is supreme throughout the Union in certain respects, while each of nearly half a hundred States is supreme in its part of the Union in certain other respects, renders the task of dealing with these conditions especially difficult. No finally satisfactory result can be expected from merely State action. The action must come through the Federal Government. The business of the country is now carried[220] on in a way of which the founders of our Constitution could by no possibility have had any idea.

All great business concerns are engaged in interstate commerce, and it was beyond question the intention of the founders of our Government that interstate commerce in all its branches and aspects should be under national and not State control. If the courts decide that this intention was not carried out and made effective in the Constitution as it now stands, then in the end the Constitution, if not construed differently, will have to be amended so that the original undoubted intention may be made effective. But, of course, a constitutional amendment is only to be used as a last resort, if every effort of legislation and administration shall have been proved inadequate.

Meanwhile the men in public life and the men who direct the great business interests of the country should work not in antagonism but in harmony toward this given end. In entering a field where the progress must of necessity be so largely experimental it is essential that the effort to make progress should be tentative and cautious. We must grow by evolution, not by revolution. There must be no hurry, but there must also be no halt; and those who are anxious that there should be no sudden and violent changes must remember that precisely these sudden and violent changes will be rendered likely if we refuse to make the needed changes in cautious and moderate manner.

At the present moment the greatest need is for[221] an increase in the power of the National Government to keep the great highways of commerce open alike to all on reasonable and equitable terms. Less than a century ago these highways were still, as they had been since the dawn of history, either waterways, natural or artificial, or else ordinary roads for wheel vehicles drawn by animal power. The railroad, which was utterly unknown when our Government was formed and when the great principles of our jurisprudence were laid down, has now become almost everywhere the most important, and, in many large regions, the only form of highway for commerce. The man who controls its use can not be permitted to control it in his own interest alone.

It is not only just, but it is in the interest of the public, that this man should receive the amplest payment for the masterful business capacity which enables him to benefit himself while benefiting the public; but in return he must himself recognize his duty to the public. He will not and can not do this if our laws are so defective that in the sharp competition of the business world the conscientious man is put at a disadvantage by his less scrupulous fellows. It is in the interest of the conscientious and public-spirited railway man that there should be such governmental supervision of the railway traffic of the country as to require from his less scrupulous competitors, and from unscrupulous big shippers as well, that heed to the public welfare which he himself would willingly give, and which[222] is of vital consequence to the small shipper. Every important railroad is engaged in interstate commerce. Therefore, this control over the railroads must come through the National Government.

The control must be exercised by some governmental tribunal, and it must be real and effective. Doubtless there will be risk that occasionally, if an unfit President is elected, this control will be abused; but this is only another way of saying that any adequate governmental power, from the power of taxation down, can and will be abused if the wrong men get control of it.

The details must rest with the lawmakers of the two Houses of Congress; but about the principle there can be no doubt. Hasty or vindictive action would merely work damage; but in temperate, resolute fashion, there must be lodged in some tribunal the power over rates, and especially over rebates—whether secured by means of private cars, of private tracks, in the form of damages, or commissions, or in any other manner—which will protect alike the railroad and the shipper, and put the big shipper and the little shipper on an equal footing. Doubtless no law would accomplish all that enthusiasts hope; there is always disappointment over results of such a law among the oversanguine; but very real and marked good has come from the legislation and administration of the last few years; and now, as part of a coherent plan, it is entirely possible, and, indeed, necessary to enact an additional law which will mean further progress along[223] the same lines of definite achievement in the direction of securing fair dealing as between man and man.

In some such body as the Interstate Commerce Commission there must be lodged in effective shape the power to see that every shipper who uses the railroads and every man who owns or manages a railroad shall on the one hand be given justice and on the other hand be required to do justice. Justice—so far as it is humanly possible to give and to get justice—is the foundation of our Government. We are not trying to strike down the rich man; on the contrary, we will not tolerate any attack upon his rights. We are not trying to give an improper advantage to the poor man because he is poor, to the man of small means because he has not larger means; but we are striving to see that the man of small means has exactly as good a chance, so far as we can obtain it for him, as the man of larger means; that there shall be equality of opportunity for the one as for the other.

We do not intend that this Republic shall ever fail as those republics of olden times failed, in which there finally came to be a government by classes, which resulted either in the poor plundering the rich or in the rich exploiting and in one form or another enslaving the poor; for either event means the destruction of free institutions and of individual liberty. Ours is not a Government which recognizes classes. It is based on the recognition of the individual. We are not for the poor[224] man as such, nor for the rich man as such. We are for every man, rich or poor, provided he acts justly and fairly by his fellows, and if he so acts the Government must do all it can to see that inasmuch as he does no wrong, so he shall suffer no wrong.

ADDRESS AT THE LINCOLN DINNER OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, FEB. 13, 1905

Mr. President, and you, my Fellow-Members of the Republican Club, and you, my Fellow-Guests of the Republican Club:

In his second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long as the memory of this Nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by saying:

Immediately after his re-election he had already spoken thus:

This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up the Nation’s wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful passions provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all Americans should show now, when there is so little excuse for malice or rancor or hatred, when there is so little of vital consequence to divide brother from brother.

Lincoln, himself a man of Southern birth, did[226] not hesitate to appeal to the sword when he became satisfied that in no other way could the Union be saved, for high though he put peace he put righteousness still higher. He warred for the Union; he warred to free the slave; and when he warred he warred in earnest, for it is a sign of weakness to be half-hearted when blows must be struck. But he felt only love, a love as deep as the tenderness of his great and sad heart, for all his countrymen alike in the North and in the South, and he longed above everything for the day when they should once more be knit together in the unbreakable bonds of eternal friendship.

We of to-day, in dealing with all our fellow-citizens, white or colored, North or South, should strive to show just the qualities that Lincoln showed: His steadfastness in striving after the right, and his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw that right less clearly than he did; his earnest endeavor to do what was best, and yet his readiness to accept the best that was practicable when the ideal best was unattainable; his unceasing effort to cure what was evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad situation worse by any ill-judged or ill-timed effort to make it better.

The great Civil War in which Lincoln towered as the loftiest figure left us not only a reunited country, but a country which has the proud right to claim as its own glory won alike by those who wore the blue and by those who wore the gray, by those who followed Grant and by those who followed Lee; for[227] both fought with equal bravery and with equal sincerity of conviction, each striving for the light as it was given him to see the light; though it is now clear to all that the triumph of the cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the welfare of mankind. We are now one people, a people with failings which we must not blink, but a people with great qualities in which we have the right to feel just pride.

All good Americans who dwell in the North must, because they are good Americans, feel the most earnest friendship for their fellow-countrymen who dwell in the South, a friendship all the greater because it is in the South that we find in its most acute phase one of the gravest problems before our people: the problem of so dealing with the man of one color as to secure him the rights that no one would grudge him if he were of another color. To solve this problem it is, of course, necessary to educate him to perform the duties a failure to perform which will render him a curse to himself and to all around him.

Most certainly all clear-sighted and generous men in the North appreciate the difficulty and perplexity of this problem, sympathize with the South in the embarrassment of conditions for which she is not alone responsible, feel an honest wish to help her where help is practicable, and have the heartiest respect for those brave and earnest men of the South who, in the face of fearful difficulties, are doing all that men can do for the betterment alike of white[228] and of black. The attitude of the North toward the negro is far from what it should be and there is need that the North also should act in good faith upon the principle of giving to each man what is justly due him, of treating him on his worth as a man, granting him no special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor and the reward of labor. But the peculiar circumstances of the South render the problem there far greater and far more acute.

Neither I nor any other man can say that any given way of approaching that problem will present in our time even an approximately perfect solution, but we can safely say that there can never be such solution at all unless we approach it with the effort to do fair and equal justice among all men; and to demand from them in return just and fair treatment for others. Our effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color, equality of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law. As a people striving to shape our actions in accordance with the great law of righteousness we can not afford to take part in or be indifferent to the oppression or maltreatment of any man who, against crushing disadvantages, has by his own industry, energy, self-respect, and perseverance struggled upward to a position which would entitle him to the respect of his fellows, if only his skin were of a different hue.

Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrusting down instead of helping up[229] such a man. To deny any man the fair treatment granted to others no better than he is to commit a wrong upon him—a wrong sure to react in the long run upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men up,” not that of “some men down.” If in any community the level of intelligence, morality, and thrift among the colored men can be raised, it is, humanly speaking, sure that the same level among the whites will be raised to an even higher degree; and it is no less sure that the debasement of the blacks will in the end carry with it an attendant debasement of the whites.

The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of different ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor jeoparded; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter into the possession of true freedom, while the forward race is enabled to preserve unharmed the high civilization wrought out by its forefathers. The working out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not possible in offhand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boons of freedom, industrial efficiency, political capacity, and domestic morality. Nor is it only necessary to train the colored man; it is quite as necessary to train the white man, for on his shoulders rests a wellnigh unparalleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem demanding the best thought, the utmost patience, the most earnest effort, the broadest charity, of the statesman, the student, the philanthropist; of the leaders[230] of thought in every department of our national life. The Church can be a most important factor in solving it aright. But above all else we need for its successful solution the sober, kindly, steadfast, unselfish performance of duty by the average plain citizen in his everyday dealings with his fellows.

The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the ideal we should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day before we attain to it, and unless we show not only devotion to it, but also wisdom and self-restraint in the exhibition of that devotion, we shall defer the time for its realization still further. In striving to attain to so much of it as concerns dealing with men of different colors, we must remember two things.

In the first place, it is true of the colored man, as it is true of the white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far more upon his own effort than upon the efforts of any outside friend. Every vicious, venal, or ignorant colored man is an even greater foe to his own race than to the community as a whole. The colored man’s self-respect entitles him to do that share in the political work of the country which is warranted by his individual ability and integrity and the position he has won for himself. But the prime requisite of the race is moral and industrial uplifting.

Laziness and shiftlessness, these, and above all, vice and criminality of every kind, are evils more potent for harm to the black race than all acts of oppression of white men put together. The colored[231] man who fails to condemn crime in another colored man, who fails to co-operate in all lawful ways in bringing colored criminals to justice, is the worst enemy of his own people, as well as an enemy to all the people. Law-abiding black men should, for the sake of their race, be foremost in relentless and unceasing warfare against law-breaking black men. If the standards of private morality and industrial efficiency can be raised high enough among the black race, then its future on this continent is secure. The stability and purity of the home is vital to the welfare of the black race, as it is to the welfare of every race.

In the next place the white man who, if only he is willing, can help the colored man more than all other white men put together, is the white man who is his neighbor, North or South. Each of us must do his whole duty without flinching, and if that duty is national it must be done in accordance with the principles above laid down. But in endeavoring each to be his brother’s keeper it is wise to remember that each can normally do most for the brother who is his immediate neighbor. If we are sincere friends of the negro let us each in his own locality show it by his action therein, and let us each show it also by upholding the hands of the white man, in whatever locality, who is striving to do justice to the poor and the helpless, to be a shield to those whose need for such a shield is great.

The heartiest acknowledgments are due to the ministers, the judges and law officers, the grand[232] juries, the public men, and the great daily newspapers in the South, who have recently done such effective work in leading the crusade against lynching in the South; and I am glad to say that during the last three months the returns, as far as they can be gathered, show a smaller number of lynchings than for any other three months during the last twenty years. Let us uphold in every way the hands of the men who have led in this work, who are striving to do all their work in this spirit. I am about to quote from the address of the Right Reverend Robert Strange, Bishop Coadjutor of North Carolina, as given in the “Southern Churchman” of October 8, 1904.

The bishop first enters an emphatic plea against any social intermingling of the races; a question which must, of course, be left to the people of each community to settle for themselves, as in such a matter no one community—and indeed no one individual—can dictate to any other; always provided that in each locality men keep in mind the fact that there must be no confusing of civil privileges with social intercourse. Civil law can not regulate social practices. Society, as such, is a law unto itself, and will always regulate its own practices and habits. Full recognition of the fundamental fact that all men should stand on an equal footing, as regards civil privileges, in no way interferes with recognition of the further fact that all reflecting men of both races are united in feeling that race purity must be maintained. The bishop continues:

[233]

Surely we can all of us join in expressing our substantial agreement with the principles thus laid[234] down by this North Carolina bishop, this representative of the Christian thought of the South.

I am speaking on the occasion of the celebration of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and to men who count it their peculiar privilege that they have the right to hold Lincoln’s memory dear, and the duty to strive to work along the lines that he laid down. We can pay most fitting homage to his memory by doing the tasks allotted to us in the spirit in which he did infinitely greater and more terrible tasks allotted to him.

Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of locality than it does of class or of creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and greater throughout the ages.

I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I believe that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of this[235] mighty people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people. Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and not worse, and this is as true of one part of the country as it is of another. I believe in the Southerner as I believe in the Northerner. I claim the right to feel pride in his great qualities and in his great deeds exactly as I feel pride in the great qualities and deeds of every other American. For weal or for woe we are knit together, and we shall go up or go down together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the common-sense of all my countrymen.

The Southern States face difficult problems; and so do the Northern States. Some of the problems are the same for the entire country. Others exist in greater intensity in one section; and yet others exist in greater intensity in another section. But in the end they will all be solved; for fundamentally our people are the same throughout this land; the same in the qualities of heart and brain and hand which have made this Republic what it is in the great to-day; which will make it what it is to be in the infinitely greater to-morrow. I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the South as I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the North. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, can best prove[236] our fealty to the Nation’s past by the way in which we do the Nation’s work in the present; for only thus can we be sure that our children’s children shall inherit Abraham Lincoln’s single-hearted devotion to the great unchanging creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation.”

ADDRESS AT THE HUNGARIAN CLUB DINNER, NEW YORK CITY, FEB. 14, 1905

Mr. President, and you, my Fellow-Americans:

It is a peculiar pleasure to me to be with you this evening; and in greeting my hosts of the Hungarian Republican Club, I give utterance to the thought of my fellow-guest, Congressman Sulzer, when I say that whatever our differences before election, when once the election has taken place, all of us in public life or in private life, President, Congressmen, judges, legislators, alike are American citizens and nothing else.

It is nearly ten years ago that I first took dinner here in the immediate neighborhood of where I am dining now, and at that time, I remember perfectly, when I was first brought up here, it was by Mr. Jacob Riis and Mr. Jim Reynolds, and I was told that I would get a very good dinner and hear some very good music, and both prophecies proved true. It was about that time that I grew to be acquainted with so many of my hosts and fellow-guests of this evening. Others I had known before. With one of my fellow-guests, General Grant, I was then[237] working, and at different times I spoke at meetings presided over or held in the clubhouses of various of the gentlemen here present, sometimes on political subjects, much more often on matters of good citizenship affecting us all as good citizens.

I grew in those years, gentlemen, to have a very close feeling of sympathy and affection and regard for the men and women of the great East Side of this city. I needed no urging when I was invited to come and be a guest at a club of the East Side this evening. President Braun has described how the preliminary invitation took place. It was six years ago that this club gave me a dinner after I had been elected Governor, and they then said that they “intended to elect me President and that I must then come and take dinner with them again.” I told them that if they would carry out their part of the contract I would carry out my part. I am not perfectly certain that they anticipated that their offer would be closed with so soon, but you see, gentlemen, I have closed with it.

To-night I wish to greet you most warmly and to say that I doubt if we could find a more typically American gathering than this, for Americanism is not a matter of birthplace, of ancestry, of creed, of occupation. Americanism is a matter of the spirit that is within, of a man’s soul. From the time when we first became an independent Nation to the present moment there has never been a generation in which some of our most distinguished and most useful men were not born on the other side of the Atlantic.[238] It is peculiarly appropriate, and to me peculiarly pleasant that, in addressing this club of the men upon whose efforts so much of the future welfare of this city, of this State, of this Nation, depends, I should be addressing men who show by their actions that they know no difference between Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, native-born and foreign-born, provided only that the man, whatever his creed, whatever his birthplace, strives to live so as to do his full duty by his neighbor and by the community as a whole.

We can not keep too clearly before our minds the fact that for the success of our civilization what is needed is, not so much brilliant ability, not so much unusual genius, as the possession by the average man of the plain homely workaday virtues that make that man a good father, a good husband, a good friend and neighbor, a decent man with whom to deal in all relations of life. We need good laws. We need honest administration of the laws. And we can not afford to be contented with less. But more than all else we need that the average man shall have in him the root of righteous living; that the average man shall have in him the feeling that will make him ashamed to do wrong or to submit to wrong, and that will make him feel his bounden duty to help those that are weaker, to help those especially that are in any way dependent upon him, and while not in any way losing his power of individual initiative, to cultivate the further power of acting in combination with his fellows for the[239] common end of social uplifting and good government.

I shall not keep you very long this evening. I have come here not to make you a set speech, but if you will allow me to say so to speak as an old friend among his old friends. I have seen a good deal of your lives. I know the effort, the toil, the sorrow, the happiness, and the success. I have endeavored when I have been brought in contact with the East Side in the course of any work in which I have been engaged so to handle myself that the East Side might be a little better for it. I do not know whether I succeeded or not, but I do know that I have always been better myself for contact with it.

In closing I want to say one word upon success in life, upon the success that each of us should strive for. It is a great mistake, oh, such a great mistake, to measure success merely by that which glitters from without, or to speak of it in terms which will mislead those about us, and especially the younger people about us, as to what success really is. There must, of course, be for success a certain material basis. I should think ill of any man here who did not wish to leave his children a little better off and not a little worse off materially than he was. I should not feel that he was doing his duty by them; and if he can not do his duty by his own children he is not going to do his duty by any one else. But after that certain amount of material prosperity has been gained then the things that really count most are the things of the soul rather than the things of[240] the body, and I am sure that each of you here, if he will really think of what it is that has made him most happy, of what it is that has made him most respect his neighbors, will agree with me. Look back in your own lives; see what the things are that you are proudest of as you look back, and you will in almost every case find that those memories of pride are associated not with days of ease but with days of effort, with the day when you had to do all that was in you for some worthy end, and the worthiest of all worthy ends is to make those that are closest and nearest to you, your wife and children and those near you, happy and not sorry that you are alive; and after that has been done to be able so to handle yourself that you can feel when the end comes that on the whole your country, your fellow-men are a little better off and not a little worse off because you have lived. This kind of success is open to every one of us. The great prizes come more or less by accident, and no human being knows that better than the man who has won any of them. The great prizes come more or less by accident, but to each man there comes normally the chance so to lead his life that at the end of his days his children, his wife, those that are dear to him, shall rise up and call him blessed, and so that his neighbors and those brought into intimate association with him may feel that he has done his part as a man in a world which sadly needs that each man should play his part well.

Now, gentlemen, I have to say good-night. This[241] has been such a delightful dinner that I already find I am staying pretty nearly as late as I can stay and catch the train that is to take me back to my regular work at Washington. I thank you for your greeting, and I assure you that not one meeting which I have attended since I have been President has given me greater pleasure to attend than this dinner.

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, TRANSMITTING A PROTOCOL OF AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, PROVIDING FOR THE COLLECTION AND DISBURSEMENT BY THE UNITED STATES OF THE CUSTOMS REVENUES OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, SIGNED ON FEBRUARY 4, 1905

To the Senate:

I submit herewith a protocol concluded between the Dominican Republic and the United States.

The conditions in the Republic of Santo Domingo have been growing steadily worse for many years. There have been many disturbances and revolutions, and debts have been contracted beyond the power of the Republic to pay. Some of these debts were properly contracted and are held by those who have a legitimate right to their money. Others are without question improper or exorbitant, constituting claims which should never be paid in full and perhaps only to the extent of a very small portion of their nominal value.

Certain foreign countries have long felt themselves[242] aggrieved because of the non-payment of debts due their citizens. The only way by which foreign creditors could ever obtain from the Republic itself any guaranty of payment would be either by the acquisition of territory outright or temporarily, or else by taking possession of the custom-houses, which would of course in itself, in effect, be taking possession of a certain amount of territory.

It has for some time been obvious that those who profit by the Monroe Doctrine must accept certain responsibilities along with the rights which it confers; and that the same statement applies to those who uphold the doctrine. It can not be too often and too emphatically asserted that the United States has not the slightest desire for territorial aggrandizement at the expense of any of its southern neighbors, and will not treat the Monroe Doctrine as an excuse for such aggrandizement on its part. We do not propose to take any part of Santo Domingo, or exercise any other control over the island save what is necessary to its financial rehabilitation in connection with the collection of revenue, part of which will be turned over to the Government to meet the necessary expense of running it, and part of which will be distributed pro rata among the creditors of the Republic upon a basis of absolute equity. The justification for the United States taking this burden and incurring this responsibility is to be found in the fact that it is incompatible with international equity for the United States to refuse to allow other powers to take the only means at[243] their disposal of satisfying the claims of their creditors and yet to refuse, itself, to take any such steps.

An aggrieved nation can without interfering with the Monroe Doctrine take what action it sees fit in the adjustment of its disputes with American States, provided that action does not take the shape of interference with their form of government or of the despoilment of their territory under any disguise. But, short of this, when the question is one of a money claim, the only way which remains, finally, to collect it is a blockade, or bombardment, or the seizure of the custom-houses, and this means, as has been said above, what is in effect a possession, even though only a temporary possession, of territory. The United States then becomes a party in interest, because under the Monroe Doctrine it can not see any European power seize and permanently occupy the territory of one of these Republics; and yet such seizure of territory, disguised or undisguised, may eventually offer the only way in which the power in question can collect any debts, unless there is interference on the part of the United States.

One of the difficult and increasingly complicated problems, which often arise in Santo Domingo, grows out of the violations of contracts and concessions, sometimes improvidently granted, with valuable privileges and exemptions stipulated for upon grossly inadequate considerations which were burdensome to the State, and which are not infrequently disregarded and violated by the governing authorities. Citizens of the United States and of[244] other Governments holding these concessions and contracts appeal to their respective Governments for active protection and intervention. Except for arbitrary wrong, done or sanctioned by superior authority, to persons or to vested property rights, the United States Government, following its traditional usage in such cases, aims to go no further than the mere use of its good offices, a measure which frequently proves ineffective. On the other hand, there are Governments which do sometimes take energetic action for the protection of their subjects in the enforcement of merely contractual claims, and thereupon American concessionaries, supported by powerful influences, make loud appeal to the United States Government in similar cases for similar action. They complain that in the actual posture of affairs their valuable properties are practically confiscated, that American enterprise is paralyzed, and that unless they are fully protected even by the enforcement of their merely contractual rights, it means the abandonment to the subjects of other Governments of the interests of American trade and commerce through the sacrifice of their investments by excessive taxes imposed in violation of contract, and by other devices, and the sacrifice of the output of their mines and other industries, and even of their railway and shipping interests, which they have established in connection with the exploitation of their concessions. Thus the attempted solution of the complex problem by the ordinary methods of diplomacy reacts injuriously upon the United[245] States Government itself, and in a measure paralyzes the action of the Executive in the direction of a sound and consistent policy. The United States Government is embarrassed in its efforts to foster American enterprise and the growth of our commerce through the cultivation of friendly relations with Santo Domingo, by the irritating effects on those relations, and the consequent injurious influence upon that commerce, of frequent interventions. As a method of solution of the complicated problem arbitration has become nugatory, inasmuch as, in the condition of its finances, an award against the Republic is worthless unless its payment is secured by the pledge of at least some portion of the customs revenues. This pledge is ineffectual without actual delivery over of the custom-houses to secure the appropriation of the pledged revenues to the payment of the award. This situation again reacts injuriously upon the relations of the United States with other nations. For when an award and such security are thus obtained, as in the case of the Santo Domingo Improvement Company, some foreign Government complains that the award conflicts with its rights, as a creditor, to some portion of these revenues under an alleged prior pledge; and still other Governments complain that an award in any considerable sum, secured by pledges of the customs revenues, is prejudicial to the payment of their equally meritorious claims out of the ordinary revenues; and thus controversies are begotten between the United States and other creditor nations because of[246] the apparent sacrifice of some of their claims, which may be just or may be grossly exaggerated, but which the United States Government can not inquire into without giving grounds of offence to other friendly creditor nations. Still further illustrations might easily be furnished of the hopelessness of the present situation growing out of the social disorders and the bankrupt finances of the Dominican Republic, where for considerable periods during recent years the bonds of civil society have been practically dissolved.

Under the accepted law of nations foreign Governments are within their right, if they choose to exercise it, when they actively intervene in support of the contractual claims of their subjects. They sometimes exercise this power, and on account of commercial rivalries there is a growing tendency on the part of other Governments more and more to aid diplomatically in the enforcement of the claims of their subjects. In view of the dilemma in which the Government of the United States is thus placed, it must either adhere to its usual attitude of non-intervention in such cases—an attitude proper under normal conditions, but one which in this particular kind of case results to the disadvantage of its citizens in comparison with those of other States—or else it must, in order to be consistent in its policy, actively intervene to protect the contracts and con cessions of its citizens engaged in agriculture, commerce, and transportation in competition with the subjects and citizens of other States. This course[247] would render the United States the insurer of all the speculative risks of its citizens in the public securities and franchises of Santo Domingo.

Under the plan in the protocol herewith submitted to the Senate, ensuring a faithful collection and application of the revenues to the specified objects, we are well assured that this difficult task can be accomplished with the friendly co-operation and goodwill of all the parties concerned, and to the great relief of the Dominican Republic.

The conditions in the Dominican Republic not only constitute a menace to our relations with other foreign nations, but they also concern the prosperity of the people of the island, as well as the security of American interests, and they are intimately associated with the interests of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, the normal expansion of whose commerce lies in that direction. At one time, and that only a year ago, three revolutions were in progress in the island at the same time.

It is impossible to state with anything like approximate accuracy the present population of the Dominican Republic. In the report of the Commission appointed by President Grant in 1871, the population was estimated at not over 150,000 souls, but according to the Statesman’s Yearbook for 1904, the estimated population in 1888 is given as 610,000. The Bureau of the American Republics considers this the best estimate of the present population of the Republic. As shown by the unanimous report of the Grant Commission the public debt of[248] the Dominican Republic, including claims, was $1,565,831.59¼. The total revenues were $772,684.75¼. The public indebtedness of the Dominican Republic, not including all claims, was on September 12 last, as the Department of State is advised, $32,280,000; the estimated revenues under Dominican management of custom-houses were $1,850,000; the proposed budget for current administration was $1,300,000, leaving only $550,000 to pay foreign and liquidated obligations, and payments on these latter will amount during the ensuing year to $1,700,000, besides $900,000 of arrearages of payments overdue, amounting in all to $2,600,000. It is therefore impossible under existing conditions, which are chronic, and with the estimated yearly revenues of the Republic, which during the last decade have averaged approximately $1,600,000, to defray the ordinary expenses of the Government and to meet its obligations.

The Dominican debt owed to European creditors is about $22,000,000, and of this sum over $18,000,000 is more or less formally recognized. The representatives of European Governments have several times approached the Secretary of State setting forth the wrongs and intolerable delays to which they have been subjected at the hands of the successive Governments of Santo Domingo in the collection of their just claims, and intimating that unless the Dominican Government should receive some assistance from the United States in the way of regulating its finances, the creditor Governments[249] in Europe would be forced to resort to more effective measures of compulsion to secure the satisfaction of their claims.

If the United States Government declines to take action and other foreign Governments resort to action to secure payment of their claims, the latter would be entitled, according to the decision of The Hague tribunal in the Venezuelan cases, to the preferential payment of their claims; and this would absorb all the Dominican revenues and would be a virtual sacrifice of American claims and interests in the island. If moreover, any such action should be taken by them, the only method to enable them to secure the payment of their claims would be to take possession of the custom-houses, and considering the state of the Dominican finances this would mean a definite and very possibly permanent occupation of Dominican territory, for no period could be set to the time which would be necessarily required for the payment of their obligations and unliquidated claims. The United States Government could not interfere to prevent such seizure and occupation of Dominican territory without either itself proposing some feasible alternative in the way of action, or else virtually saying to European Governments that they would not be allowed to collect their claims. This would be an unfortunate attitude for the Government of the United States to be forced to maintain at present. It can not with propriety say that it will protect its own citizens and interests, on the one hand, and yet on the other[250] hand refuse to allow other Governments to protect their citizens and interests.

The actual situation in the Dominican Republic can not, perhaps, be more forcibly stated than by giving a brief account of the case of the Santo Domingo Improvement Company.

From 1869 to 1897 the Dominican Government issued successive series of bonds, the majority of which were in the hands of European holders. Successive issues bore interest at rates ranging from 2¾ to 6 per cent, and what with commissions and other deductions and the heavy discount in the market the Government probably did not receive over 50 to 75 per cent of their nominal value. Other portions of the debt were created by loans, for which the Government received only one-half of the amount it was nominally to repay, and these obligations bore interest at the rate of 1 to 2 per cent a month on their face, some of them compounded monthly.

The improvidence of the Government in its financial management was due to its weakness, to its impaired credit, and to its pecuniary needs occasioned by frequent insurrections and revolutionary changes, and by its inability to collect its revenues.

In 1888 the Government, in order to secure the payment of an issue of bonds, placed the custom-houses and the collection of its customs duties, which are substantially the only revenues of the Republic, in the hands of the Westendorps, bankers of Amsterdam, Holland. But the national debt[251] continued to grow and the Government finally intrusted the collection of its revenues to an American corporation, the Santo Domingo Improvement Company, which was to take over the bonds of the Westendorps. The Dominican Government finally became dissatisfied with this arrangement, and, in 1901, ousted the Improvement Company from its custom-houses and took into its own hands the collection of its revenues. The company thereupon appealed to the United States Government to maintain them in their position, but their request was refused. The Dominican Government then sent its minister of foreign affairs to Washington to negotiate a settlement. He admitted that the Improvement Company had equities which ought not to be disregarded, and the Department of State suggested that the Dominican Government and the Improvement Company should effect, by private negotiation, a satisfactory settlement between them. They accordingly entered into an arrangement for a settlement, which was mutually satisfactory to the parties. A similar arrangement was likewise made between the Dominican Government and the European bondholders. The latter arrangement was carried into execution by the Dominican Government and payments made toward the liquidation of the bonds held by the European holders. The Dominican Congress refused to ratify the similar arrangement made with the Improvement Company, and the Government refused to provide for the payment of the American claimants. In this[252] state of the case it was evident that a continuance of this treatment of the American creditors, and its repetition in other cases, would, if allowed to run its course, result in handing over the island to European creditors, and in time would ripen into serious controversies between the United States and other Governments, unless the United States should deliberately and finally abandon its interests in the island.

The Improvement Company and its allied companies held, besides bonds, certain banking and railway interests in the island. The Dominican Government, desirous to own and possess these properties, agreed with the companies that the value of their bonds and properties was $4,500,000, and they submitted to arbitration the question as to the instalments in which this sum should be paid and the security that should be given. The Hon. George Gray, judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Hon. Manuel de J. Galvan, both named by the Dominican Republic, and the Hon. John G. Carlisle, named by the United States, were the arbitrators, and rendered their award on July 14, 1904. By its terms the Dominican Government was to pay the above-mentioned sum of $4,500,000, with 4 per cent interest per annum, in monthly instalments of $37,500 each during two years and of $41,666.66 each month thereafter, beginning with the month of September, 1904, said award to be secured by the customs revenues and port dues of all the ports on the northern coast of Santo Domingo.[253] The award further provides for the appointment of a financial agent of the United States, who was authorized, in case of failure during any month to receive the sum then due, to enter into possession of the custom-house at Puerto Plata in the first instance and assume charge of the collection of customs duties and port dues, and to fix and determine these duties and dues and secure their payment; in case the sums collected at Puerto Plata should at any time be insufficient for the payment of the amounts due under the award, or in case of any other manifest necessity, or in case the Dominican Government should so request, the financial agent of the United States was authorized to have and exercise at any and all of the other ports above described all the rights and powers vested in him by the award in respect of Puerto Plata. Under the award the financial agent could only apply the revenues collected toward its payment after he had first paid the expenses of collection and certain other obligations styled “aparods,” which constituted prior charges on the revenues assigned. These prior charges are specified in the award. The Dominican Government defaulted in their payments; and in virtue of the award and the authority conferred by the Dominican Government, and at its request, possession was delivered of the custom-house of Puerto Plata to the fiscal agent appointed by the United States to collect the revenues assigned by the arbitrators for the payment of the award; and in virtue of the same authority possession of the custom-house[254] of Monte Cristi has also been handed over. I submit herewith a report of Mr. John B. Moore, agent of the United States in this case, and a copy of the award of the arbitrators.

During the past two years the European claimants except the English, whose interests were embraced in those of the American companies, have, with the support of their respective Governments, been growing more and more importunate in pressing their unsatisfied demands. The French and the Belgians, in 1901, had entered into a contract with the Dominican Government, but, after a few payments were made on account, it fell into neglect. Other Governments also obliged the Dominican Government to enter into arrangements of various kinds by which the revenues of the Republic were in large part sequestrated, and under one of the agreements, which was concluded with Italy in 1903, the minister of that Government was empowered directly to collect from the importers and exporters that portion of the customs revenues assigned to him as security. As the result of chronic disorders attended with a constant increase of debt, the state of things in Santo Domingo has become hopeless, unless the United States or some other strong Government shall interpose to bring order out of the chaos. The custom-houses, with the exception of the two in the possession of the financial agent appointed by the United States, have become unproductive for the discharge of indebtedness, except as to persons making emergency loans[255] to the Government or to its enemies for the purpose of carrying on political contests by force. They have, in fact, become the nuclei of the various revolutions. The first effort of revolutionists is to take possession of a custom-house so as to obtain funds, which are then disposed of at the absolute discretion of those who are collecting them. The chronic disorders prevailing in Santo Domingo have, moreover, become exceedingly dangerous to the interests of Americans holding property in that country. Constant complaints have been received of the injuries and inconveniences to which they have been subjected. As an evidence of the increasing aggravation of conditions, the fact may be mentioned that about a year ago the American railway, which had previously been exempt from such attacks, was seized, its tracks torn up, and a station destroyed by revolutionary bands.

The ordinary resources of diplomacy and international arbitration are absolutely impotent to deal wisely and effectively with the situation in the Dominican Republic, which can only be met by organizing its finances on a sound basis and by placing the custom-houses beyond the temptation of insurgent chieftains. Either we must abandon our duty under our traditional policy toward the Dominican people, who aspire to a republican form of government while they are actually drifting into a condition of permanent anarchy, in which case we must permit some other Government to adopt its own measures in order to safeguard its own interests,[256] or else we must ourselves take seasonable and appropriate action.

Again and again has the Dominican Government invoked on its own behalf the aid of the United States. It has repeatedly done so of recent years. In 1899 it sought to enter into treaty relations by which it would be placed under the protection of the United States Government. The request was refused. Again in January, 1904, its minister of foreign affairs visited Washington and besought the help of the United States Government to enable it to escape from its financial and social disorders. Compliance with this request was again declined, for this Government has been most reluctant to interfere in any way, and has finally concluded to take action only because it has become evident that failure to do so may result in a situation fraught with grave danger to the cause of international peace.

In 1903 a representative of a foreign Government proposed to the United States the joint fiscal control of the Dominican Republic by certain creditor nations, and that the latter should take charge of the custom-houses and revenues and give to the Dominican Government a certain percentage and apply the residue to the payment ratably of claims of foreign creditors. The United States Government declined to approve or to enter into such an arrangement. But it has now become evident that decided action of some kind can not be much longer delayed. In view of our past experience and our[257] knowledge of the actual situation of the Dominican Republic, a definite refusal of the United States Government to take any effective action looking to the relief of the Dominican Republic and to the discharge of its own duty under the Monroe Doctrine can only be considered as an acquiescence in some such action by another Government.

That most wise measure of international statesmanship, the Platt amendment, has provided a method for preventing such difficulties from arising in the new Republic of Cuba. In accordance with the terms of this amendment the Republic of Cuba can not issue any bonds which can be collected from Cuba save as a matter of grace, unless with the consent of the United States, which is at liberty at all times to take measures to prevent the violation of the letter and spirit of the Platt amendment. If a similar plan could now be entered upon by the Dominican Republic, it would undoubtedly be of great advantage to them and to all other peoples, for under such an arrangement no larger debt would be incurred than could be honestly paid, and those who took debts not thus authorized would, by the mere fact of taking them, put themselves in the category of speculators or gamblers, who deserved no consideration and who would be permitted to receive none; so that the honest creditor would on the one hand be safe, while on the other hand the Republic would be safeguarded against molestation in the interest of mere speculators.

But no such plan at present exists; and under[258] existing circumstances, when the condition of affairs becomes such as it has become in Santo Domingo, either we must submit to the likelihood of infringement of the Monroe Doctrine or we must ourselves agree to some such arrangement as that herewith submitted to the Senate. In this case, fortunately, the prudent and far-seeing statesmanship of the Dominican Government has relieved us of all trouble. At their request we have entered into the agreement herewith submitted. Under it the custom-houses will be administered peacefully, honestly, and economically, 45 per cent of the proceeds being turned over to the Dominican Government and the remainder being used by the United States to pay what proportion of the debts it is possible to pay on an equitable basis. The Republic will be secured against over-seas aggression. This in reality entails no new obligation upon us, for the Monroe Doctrine means precisely such a guarantee on our part.

It is perhaps unnecessary to state that no step of any kind has been taken by the Administration under the terms of the protocol which is herewith submitted.

The Republic of Santo Domingo has by this protocol wisely and patriotically accepted the responsibilities as well as the privileges of liberty, and is showing with evident good faith its purpose to pay all that its resources will permit of its obligations. More than this it can not do, and when it has done this we should not permit it to be molested.[259] We on our part are simply performing in peaceful manner, not only with the cordial acquiescence, but in accordance with the earnest request of the Government concerned, part of that international duty which is necessarily involved in the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine. We are bound to show that we perform this duty in good faith and without any intention of aggrandizing ourselves at the expense of our weaker neighbors or of conducting ourselves otherwise than so as to benefit both these weaker neighbors and those European Powers which may be brought into contact with them. It is in the highest degree necessary that we should prove by our action that the world may trust in our good faith and may understand that this international duty will be performed by us within our own sphere, in the interest not merely of ourselves, but of all other nations, and with strict justice toward all. If this is done a general acceptance of the Monroe Doctrine will in the end surely follow; and this will mean an increase of the sphere in which peaceful measures for the settlement of international difficulties gradually displace those of a warlike character.

We can point with just pride to what we have done in Cuba as a guaranty of our good faith. We stayed in Cuba only so long as to start her aright on the road to self-government, which she has since trod with such marked and distinguished success; and upon leaving the island we exacted no conditions save such as would prevent her from[260] ever becoming the prey of the stranger. Our purpose in Santo Domingo is as beneficent. The good that this country got from its action in Cuba was indirect rather than direct. So it is as regards Santo Domingo. The chief material advantage that will come from the action proposed to be taken will be to Santo Domingo itself and to Santo Domingo’s creditors. The advantages that will come to the United States will be indirect, but nevertheless great, for it is supremely to our interest that all the communities immediately south of us should be or become prosperous and stable, and therefore not merely in name but in fact independent and self-governing.

I call attention to the urgent need of prompt action on this matter. We now have a great opportunity to secure peace and stability in the island, without friction or bloodshed, by acting in accordance with the cordial invitation of the governmental authorities themselves. It will be unfortunate from every standpoint if we fail to grasp this opportunity; for such failure will probably mean increasing revolutionary violence in Santo Domingo, and very possibly embarrassing foreign complications in addition. This protocol affords a practical test of the efficiency of the United States Government in maintaining the Monroe Doctrine.

Theodore Roosevelt.

White House,
February 15, 1905.

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ADDRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA., FEB. 22, 1905

Mr. Provost, Members of the University, and my Fellow-Citizens:

As a Nation we have had our full share of great men, but the two men of pre-eminent greatness who, as the centuries go on, will surely loom above all others are Washington and Lincoln; and it is peculiarly fitting that their birthdays should be celebrated every year and the meaning of their lives brought home close to us.

No other city in the country is so closely identified with Washington’s career as Philadelphia. He served here in 1775 in the Continental Congress. He was here as commander of the Army at the time of the battles of Brandywine and Germantown; and it was near here that with that army he faced the desolate winter at Valley Forge, the winter which marked the turning point of the Revolutionary War. Here he came again as President of the Convention which framed the Constitution, and then as President of the United States, and finally as Lieutenant-General of the Army after he had retired from the Presidency.

One hundred and eight years ago, just before he left the Presidency, he issued his farewell address, and in it he laid down certain principles which he believed should guide the citizens of this Republic for all time to come, his own words being “which[262] appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.”

Washington, though in some ways an even greater man than Lincoln, did not have Lincoln’s wonderful gift of expression—that gift which makes certain speeches of the rail-splitter from Illinois read like the inspired utterances of the great Hebrew seers and prophets. But he had all of Lincoln’s sound common-sense, farsightedness, and devotion to a lofty ideal. Like Lincoln he sought after the noblest objects, and like Lincoln he sought after them by thoroughly practical methods. These two greatest Americans can fairly be called the best among the great men of the world, and greatest among the good men of the world. Each showed in actual practice his capacity to secure under our system the priceless union of individual liberty with governmental strength. Each was as free from the vices of the tyrant as from the vices of the demagogue. To each the empty futility of the mere doctrinaire was as alien as the baseness of the merely self-seeking politician. Each was incapable alike of the wickedness which seeks by force of arms to wrong others and of the no less criminal weakness which fails to provide effectively against being wronged by others.

Among Washington’s maxims which he bequeathed to his countrymen were the two following: “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations,” and “To be prepared for war is the most effective means to promote peace.” These two principles[263] taken together should form the basis of our whole foreign policy. Neither is sufficient taken by itself. It is not merely an idle dream, but a most mischievous dream, to believe that mere refraining from wrongdoing will ensure us against being wronged. Yet, on the other hand, a nation prepared for war is a menace to mankind unless the national purpose is to treat other nations with good faith and justice. In any community it is neither the conscientious man who is a craven at heart, nor yet the bold and strong man without the moral sense, who is of real use to the community; it is the man who to strength and courage adds a realizing sense of the moral obligation resting upon him, the man who has not only the desire but the power to do his full duty by his neighbor and by the State. So, in the world at large, the nation which is of use in the progress of mankind is that nation which combines strength of character, force of character, and insistence upon its own rights, with a full acknowledgment of its own duties toward others. Just at present the best way in which we can show that our loyalty to the teachings of Washington is a loyalty of the heart and not of the lips only is to see to it that the work of building up our Navy goes steadily on, and that at the same time our stand for international righteousness is clear and emphatic.

Never since the beginning of our country’s history has the Navy been used in an unjust war. Never has it failed to render great and sometimes vital service to the Republic. It has not been too[264] strong for our good, though often not strong enough to do all the good it should have done. Our possession of the Philippines, our interest in the trade of the Orient, our building the Isthmian Canal, our insistence upon the Monroe Doctrine, all demand that our Navy shall be of adequate size and for its size of unsurpassed efficiency. If it is strong enough I believe it will minimize the chance of our being drawn into foreign war. If we let it run down it is as certain as the day that sooner or later we shall have to choose between a probably disastrous foreign war or a peace kept on terms that imply national humiliation. Our Navy is the surest guaranty of peace and the cheapest insurance against war, and those who, in whatever capacity, have helped to build it up during the past twenty years have been in good faith observing and living up to one of the most important of the principles which Washington laid down for the guidance of his countrymen. Nor was Washington the only one of our great Presidents who showed farsighted patriotism by support of the Navy. When Andrew Jackson was in Congress he voted for the first warships we ever built as part of our regular Navy; and he voted against the grant of money to pay our humiliating tribute to the pirates of the Barbary States. Old Hickory was a patriot through and through, and there was not an ounce of timidity in his nature, and of course he felt only indignant contempt for a policy which purchased an ignoble peace by cowardice instead of exacting a just peace by showing we were as little[265] willing to submit to as to inflict aggression. Had a majority of Jackson’s colleagues and successors felt as he did about the Navy, had it been built up instead of being brought to a standstill, it would probably never have been necessary to fight the War of 1812.

Again Washington said: “Give to mankind the example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.” This feeling can be shown alike by our dealings within and without our own borders. Taft and Wright in the Philippines and Wood in Cuba have shown us exactly how to practice this justice and benevolence in dealing with other peoples—a justice and benevolence which can be shown, not by shirking our duty and abandoning to self-destruction those unfit to govern themselves, but by doing our duty by staying with them and teaching them how to govern themselves, by uplifting them spiritually and materially. Here at home we are obeying this maxim of Washington’s just so far as we help in every movement, whether undertaken by the Government, or as is, and should be, more often the case, by voluntary action among private citizens, for the betterment of our own people. Observe that Washington speaks both of justice and benevolence, and that he puts justice first. We must be generous, we must help our poorer brother, but above all, we must remember to be just; and the first step toward securing justice is to treat every man on his worth as a man, showing him no special favor, but so far as may be holding open for him the door of opportunity[266] so that reward may wait upon honest and intelligent endeavor.

Again Washington said: “Cherish public credit.” Just at the moment there is no attack on public credit, but if ever the temptation arises again let our people at the outset remember that the worst because the most insidious form of the appeal that would make a man a dishonest debtor is that which would persuade him that it is anything but dishonest for him to repudiate his debts.

Finally, it is peculiarly appropriate, when I have come to this city as the guest of the University of Pennsylvania, to quote another of Washington’s maxims: “Promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” Education may not make a man a good citizen, but most certainly ignorance tends to prevent his being a good citizen. Washington was far too much of a patriot, had far too much love for his fellow-citizens, to try to teach them that they could govern themselves unless they could develop a sound and enlightened public opinion. No nation can permanently retain free government unless it can retain a high average of citizenship; and there can be no such high average of citizenship without a high average of education, using the word in its broadest and truest sense to include the things of the soul as well as the things of the mind. School education[267] can never supplant or take the place of self-education, still less can it in any way take the place of those rugged and manly qualities which we group together under the name of character; but it can be of enormous use in supplementing both. It is a source of just pride to every American that our people have so consistently acted in accordance with Washington’s principle of promoting institutions for the diffusion of knowledge. There is nothing dearer to our hearts than our public school system, by which free primary education is provided for every one within our borders. The higher education, such as is provided by the University of Pennsylvania and kindred bodies, not only confers great benefits to those able to take advantage of it, but entails upon them corresponding duties.

The men who founded this Nation had to deal with theories of government and the fundamental principles of free institutions. We are now concerned with a different set of questions, for the Republic has been firmly established, its principles thoroughly tested and fully approved. To merely political issues have succeeded those of grave social and economic importance, the solution of which demands the best efforts of the best men. We have a right to expect that a wise and leading part in the effort to attain this solution will be taken by those who have been exceptionally blessed in the matter of obtaining an education. That college graduate is but a poor creature who does not feel when he has left college that he has received something[268] for which he owes a return. What he thus owes he can, as a rule, only pay by the way he bears himself throughout life. It is but occasionally that a college graduate can do much outright for his alma mater; he can best repay her by living a life that will reflect credit upon her, by so carrying himself as a citizen that men shall see that the years spent in training him have not been wasted. The educated man is entitled to no special privilege, save the inestimable privilege of trying to show that his education enables him to take the lead in striving to guide his fellows aright in the difficult task which is set to us of the twentieth century. The problems before us to-day are very complex, and are widely different from those which the men of Washington’s generation had to face; but we can overcome them surely, and we can overcome them only, if we approach them in the spirit which Washington and Washington’s great supporters brought to bear upon the problems of their day—the spirit of sanity and of courage, the spirit which combines hard common-sense with the loftiest idealism.

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INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1905

My Fellow-Citizens:

No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours, and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.

Much has been given to us, and much will rightfully[270] be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great Nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth; and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly desirous of securing their goodwill by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.

Our relations with the other Powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this Nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that[271] rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fibre of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centres. Upon the success of our experiment much depends; not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations; and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.

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Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children’s children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

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To the Senate:

I wish to call the attention of the Senate at this executive session to the treaty with Santo Domingo. I feel that I ought to state to the Senate that the condition of affairs in Santo Domingo is such that it is very much for the interest of that Republic that action on the treaty should be had at as early a moment as the Senate, after giving the matter full consideration, may find practicable.

I call attention to the following facts:

1. This treaty was entered into at the earnest request of Santo Domingo itself, and is designed to afford Santo Domingo relief and assistance. Its primary benefit will be to Santo Domingo. It offers the method most likely to secure peace and to prevent war in the island.

2. The benefit to the United States will consist chiefly in the tendency under the treaty to secure stability, order, and prosperity in Santo Domingo, and the removal of the apprehension lest foreign powers make aggressions on Santo Domingo in the course of collecting claims due their citizens; for it is greatly to our interest that all the islands in the Caribbean Sea should enjoy peace and prosperity and feel goodwill toward this country. The benefit to honest creditors will come from the fact that for the first time under this treaty a practicable method of attempting to settle the debts due them will be inaugurated.

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3. Many of the debts alleged to be due from Santo Domingo to outside creditors unquestionably on their face represent far more money than ever was actually given Santo Domingo. The proposed treaty provides for a process by which impartial experts will determine what debts are valid and what are in whole or in part invalid, and will apportion accordingly the surplus revenue available for the payment of the debts. This treaty offers the only method for preventing the collection of fraudulent debts, whether owed to Americans or to citizens of other nations.

4. This treaty affords the most practicable means of obtaining payment for the just claims of American citizens.

5. If the treaty is ratified creditors belonging to other nations will have exactly as good treatment as creditors who are citizens of the United States, and at the same time Santo Domingo will be protected against unjust and exorbitant claims. If it is not ratified the chances are that American creditors will fare ill as compared with those of other nations; for foreign nations, being denied the opportunity to get what is rightfully due their citizens under the proposed arrangement, will be left to collect debts due their citizens as they see fit, provided, of course, there is not permanent occupancy of Dominican territory. As in such case the United States will have nothing to say as to what debts should or should not be collected, and as Santo Domingo will be left without aid, assistance, or[275] protection, it is impossible to state that the sums collected from it will not be improper in amount. In such event, whatever is collected by means of forcible intervention will be applied to the creditors of foreign nations in preference to creditors who are citizens of the United States.

6. The correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Minister of Haiti, submitted to the Senate several days ago, shows that our position is explicitly and unreservedly that under no circumstances do we intend to acquire territory in or possession of either Haiti or Santo Domingo; it being stated in these letters that even if the two republics desired to become a part of the United States the United States would certainly refuse its assent.

7. Santo Domingo grievously needs the aid of a powerful and friendly nation. This aid we are able, and I trust that we are willing, to bestow. She has asked for this aid, and the expressions of friendship repeatedly sanctioned by the people and the Government of the United States warrant her in believing that it will not be withheld in the hour of her need.

Theodore Roosevelt.

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ADDRESS AT THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, AT GRACE REFORMED CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 12, 1905

Mr. Justice, Dr. Schick, and you, my Fellow-Members of this Congregation, and our Guests who are with us to-day:

I am glad, on behalf of this church, to say amen to the appeal that has been made by Dr. Swift on behalf of the great society to the account of whose work you have been listening. Mr. Justice, you quoted the advice of a poet “to be doers rather than dreamers.” In the Book of all books there is a sentence to the same effect, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only.” Let us show ourselves to-day doers of the word, upholders in fact of what has been preached to us by Dr. Swift.

He has set forth the needs of the society, and he has set forth the great field over which it works. I wish to touch only on a small portion of that field, but, after all, the portion that most concerns us—the need here at home, here in this country, of furthering in every way the work of the society, the work of all kindred societies, both among the native-born and among the thousands who come to these shores from abroad. And there is a peculiar propriety in such an appeal being made to this church, for, as I have said here before, this church more than most others should ever keep before it as part of its duty, as one of the chief parts of its duty, that of[277] caring in all ways, but especially in spiritual ways, for the people who come to us from abroad.

The United States Government does endeavor to do its duty by the immigrants who come to these shores; and I was glad, Dr. Swift, to listen to what you said as to the work that is being done on Ellis Island, for it is a just tribute to that work. But unless people have had some experience with the dangers and difficulties surrounding the newly arrived immigrant they can hardly realize how great they are. The immigrant comes here almost unprotected; he does not, as a rule, know our language; he is wholly unfamiliar with our institutions, our customs, our habits of life and ways of thought; and there are, I am sorry to say, great numbers of evil and wicked people who hope to make their livelihood by preying on him. He is exposed to innumerable temptations, innumerable petty oppressions, on almost every hand; and unless some one is on hand to help him he literally has no idea where to turn. No greater work can be done by a philanthropic or religious society than to stretch out the helping hand to the man and the woman who come here to this country to become citizens and the parents of citizens, and therefore to do their part in making up for weal or for woe the future of our land. If we do not take care of them, if we do not try to uplift them, then as sure as fate our own children will pay the penalty. If we do not see that the immigrant and the children of the immigrant are raised up, most assuredly the[278] result will be that our own children and children’s children are pulled down. Either they will rise or we shall sink. The level of well-being in this country will be a level for all of us. We can not keep that level down for a part and not have it sink more or less for the whole. If we raise it for a part we shall raise it to a certain extent for the whole. Therefore, it means much, not merely to the immigrants, but to every good American, that there should be at Ellis Island the colporteurs of this society, and the representatives of other religious and philanthropic societies to try to care for the immigrant’s body, and above all to try to care for the immigrant’s soul.

It is, of course, unnecessary to say that the things of the body must be cared for; that the first duty of any man, especially of the man who has others dependent upon him, is to take care of them, and to take care of himself. Nobody can help others if he begins by being a burden upon others. Each man must be able to pull his own weight, to carry his own weight; and, therefore, each man must show the capacity to earn for himself and his family enough to secure a certain amount of material well-being. That must be the foundation. But on that foundation he must build as a superstructure the spiritual life.

One of the best things done by this society, and by kindred religious and benevolent societies, is supplying in our American life of to-day the proper ideals. It is a good thing to have had the extraordinary[279] material prosperity which has followed so largely on the extraordinary scientific discoveries alluded to by Justice Brewer, if we use this material prosperity aright. It is not a good thing, it is a bad thing, if we treat it as the be-all and end-all of our life. If we make it the only ideal before this Nation, if we permit the people of this Republic to get before their minds the view that material well-being carried to an ever higher degree is the one and only thing to be striven for, we are laying up for ourselves not merely trouble but ruin. I, too, feel the faith and hope that have been expressed here to-day by the vice-president and the secretary of the society; but I so feel because I believe that we shall not permit mere material well-being to become the only ideal in this Nation, because I believe that more and more we shall accustom ourselves to looking at the great fortunes accumulated by certain men as being nothing in themselves, either to admire, to envy or to deplore, save as they are used well or ill. If the great fortune is used well, if the man who has accumulated it has the strength necessary to resist the temptations either to use it wrongfully, or what is nearly as bad, not to use it aright—for negation may be almost as harmful as positive wrongdoing—then he is entitled to the praise due to whoever employs great powers for the common good. If the man who accumulates that great fortune uses it ill or does not use it well, then so far from being an object of envy, still less an object of admiration, he should take his place among those whom we condemn and[280] pity—for usually, if we have the root of the matter in us, we will pity those we condemn.

Wonderful changes have come in the last half century. It may well be as Mr. Justice Brewer has said, that we tremble on the verge of still greater changes in the future. The railway, the telegraph, the telephone, steam, electricity, all the marvelous mechanical inventions of these last five decades, have changed much in the superficial aspect of the world, and have, therefore, produced certain great changes in the world itself. But after all, in glorying over and wondering at this extraordinary development, I think that we sometimes forget that compared to the deeper things it is indeed only superficial in its effect. The qualities that count most in man and woman now are the qualities that counted most two thousand years ago; and as a Nation we shall achieve success or merit failure accordingly as we do or do not display those qualities. Among the members of this congregation is a man who, in his prime, served as the fleet engineer of Farragut when Farragut went into Mobile Bay. That was forty-one years ago. The ships and the guns with which Farragut did that mighty feat are now almost as obsolete as the galleys that fought for the mastery of the Ægean Sea when Athens waged war on Sparta. They could no more stand against a modern ship than could the ships that fought against the Invincible Armada in 1588. But if the need ever comes for this Nation to call on its sons to face a foreign foe, the call will or will not be made in vain just exactly according[281] to whether we do or do not still retain the spirit which drove Farragut and the men under him onward to victory. The gun changes, the ship changes; but the qualities needed in the man behind the gun, in the man who handles the ship, are just the same as they ever were. So it is in our whole material civilization of to-day. The railroad, the telegraph, all these wonderful inventions, produce new problems, confer new benefits, and bring about new dangers. Cities are built up to enormous size, and, of course, with the upbuilding of the cities comes the growth of the terrible problems which confront all of us who have to do with city life. Outward circumstances change. New dangers spring up and old dangers vanish. But the spirit necessary to meet the new dangers, the spirit necessary to ensure the triumph that we must and shall win, is the same now that it has always been. This is the spirit which lies behind this society, and all kindred societies; and we owe to this society all the help we can afford to give; for it is itself giving to our people a service beyond price, a service of love, a service which no money could buy.

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ADDRESS BEFORE THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS, WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 13, 1905

Mrs. President:

In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relatively to the country; for the small landowners, the men who own their little homes, and therefore to a very large extent the men who till farms, the men of the soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting national life in every State; and, if the foundation becomes either too weak or too narrow, the superstructure, no matter how attractive, is in imminent danger of falling.

But far more important than the question of the occupation of our citizens is the question of how their family life is conducted. No matter what that occupation may be, as long as there is a real home and as long as those who make up that home do their duty to one another, to their neighbors and to the state, it is of minor consequence whether the man’s trade is plied in the country or the city, whether it calls for the work of the hands or for the work of the head.

But the Nation is in a bad way if there is no real home, if the family is not of the right kind; if the man is not a good husband and father, if he is brutal or cowardly or selfish, if the woman has[283] lost her sense of duty, if she is sunk in vapid self-indulgence or has let her nature be twisted so that she prefers a sterile pseudo-intellectuality to that great and beautiful development of character which comes only to those whose lives know the fulness of duty done, of effort made and self-sacrifice undergone.

In the last analysis the welfare of the state depends absolutely upon whether or not the average family, the average man and woman and their children, represent the kind of citizenship fit for the foundation of a great nation; and if we fail to appreciate this we fail to appreciate the root morality upon which all healthy civilization is based.

No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common-sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear, and to bring up as they should be brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind, and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.

There are certain old truths which will be true as long as this world endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the[284] homemaker, the breadwinner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the woman is to be the helpmeet, the housewife, and mother. The woman should have ample educational advantages; but save in exceptional cases the man must be, and she need not be, and generally ought not to be, trained for a lifelong career as the family breadwinner; and, therefore, after a certain point the training of the two must normally be different because the duties of the two are normally different. This does not mean inequality of function, but it does mean that normally there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I think the duty of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the more honorable of the two; on the whole I respect the woman who does her duty even more than I respect the man who does his.

No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day but often every hour of the night. She may have to get up night after night to take care of a sick child, and yet must by day continue to do all her household duties as well; and if the family means are scant she must usually enjoy even her rare holidays taking her whole brood of children with her. The birth pangs make all men the debtors of all women. Above all, our sympathy and regard are due to the struggling wives among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the[285] plain people, and whom he so loved and trusted; for the lives of these women are often led on the lonely heights of quiet, self-sacrificing heroism.

Just as the happiest and most honorable and most useful task that can be set any man is to earn enough for the support of his wife and family, for the bringing up and starting in life of his children, so the most important, the most honorable and desirable task which can be set any woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and self-sacrifice. Of course, there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great careers of outside usefulness in addition to—not as substitute for—their home work; but I am not speaking of exceptions; I am speaking of the primary duties, I am speaking of the average citizens, the average men and women who make up the Nation.

Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers I shall have nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work which is never ended. No mother has an easy time, and most mothers have very hard times; and yet what true mother would barter her experience of joy and sorrow in exchange for a life of cold selfishness, which insists upon perpetual amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often finds its fit dwelling-place[286] in some flat designed to furnish with the least possible expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury, but in which there is literally no place for children?

The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman; though neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long-continued ill-treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No wrongdoing is so abhorrent as wrongdoing by a man toward the wife and the children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature. Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.

I believe in the woman’s keeping her self-respect just as I believe in the man’s doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the man’s, and indeed a little more; and I regard marriage as a partnership in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the other as well as of his or her own. But I think that the duties are even more important than the rights; and in the long[287] run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done than for the insistence upon individual rights, necessary though this, too, must often be. Your duty is hard, your responsibility great; but greatest of all is your reward. I do not pity you in the least. On the contrary, I feel respect and admiration for you.

Into the woman’s keeping is committed the destiny of the generations to come after us. In bringing up your children you mothers must remember that while it is essential to be loving and tender it is no less essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as interchangeable terms; and besides training your sons and daughters in the softer and milder virtues you must seek to give them those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need. Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training; and some will go right even when their surroundings are most unfortunate; nevertheless an immense amount depends upon the family training. If you mothers through weakness bring up your sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the future. If you let your daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as you yourselves have had to work hard they shall know only enjoyment, you are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves. Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in avoiding difficulties[288] but to lives spent in overcoming difficulties. Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others, is not a curse but a blessing; seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but seek also to make them face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is thrice fortunate among women.

There are many good people who are denied the supreme blessing of children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great blessings of life. But the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these blessings, whether from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant—why, such a creature merits contempt as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle, or upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those dependent upon him, and who though able-bodied is yet content to eat in idleness the bread which others provide.

The existence of women of this type forms one of the most unpleasant and unwholesome features of modern life. If any one is so dim of vision as to fail to see what a thoroughly unlovely creature such a woman is I wish they would read Judge Robert Grant’s novel “Unleavened Bread,” ponder seriously the character of Selma, and think of the fate that[289] would surely overcome any nation which developed its average and typical woman along such lines. Unfortunately it would be untrue to say that this type exists only in American novels. That it also exists in American life is made unpleasantly evident by the statistics as to the dwindling families in some localities. It is made evident in equally sinister fashion by the census statistics as to divorce, which are fairly appalling; for easy divorce is now, as it ever has been, a bane to any nation, a curse to society, a menace to the home, an incitement to married unhappiness and to immorality, an evil thing for men and a still more hideous evil for women. These unpleasant tendencies in our American life are made evident by articles such as those which I actually read not long ago in the “Independent,” where a clergyman was quoted, seemingly with approval, as expressing the general American attitude when he said that the ambition of any save a very rich man should be to rear two children only, so as to give his children an opportunity “to taste a few of the good things of life.” This man, whose profession and calling should have made him a moral teacher, writing in what is professedly a religious paper, actually set before others the ideal, not of training children to do their duty, not of sending them forth with stout hearts and ready minds to win triumphs for themselves and their country, not of allowing them the opportunity and giving them the privilege of making their own place in the world, but, forsooth, of keeping the number of children so limited that they might “taste a few good things!” The way to give a child a fair[290] chance in life is not to bring it up in luxury, but to see that it has the kind of training that will give it strength of character. Even apart from the vital question of national life, and regarding only the individual interest of the children themselves, happiness in the true sense is a hundredfold more apt to come to any given member of a healthy family of healthy-minded children, well brought up, well educated, but taught that they must shift for themselves, must win their own way, and by their own exertions make their own positions of usefulness, than it is apt to come to those whose parents themselves have acted on and have trained their children to act on, the selfish and sordid theory that the whole end of life is “to taste a few good things.”

The intelligence of the remark is on a par with its morality, for the most rudimentary mental process would have shown the speaker that if the average family in which there are children contained but two children the Nation as a whole would decrease in population so rapidly that in two or three generations it would very deservedly be on the point of extinction, so that the people who had acted on this base and selfish doctrine would be giving place to others with braver and more robust ideals. Nor would such a result be in any way regrettable; for a race that practiced such doctrine—that is, a race that practiced race suicide—would thereby conclusively show that it was unfit to exist, and that it had better give place to people who had not forgotten the primary laws of their being.

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To sum up, then, the whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasures of mere effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. No man and no woman really worthy of the name can care for the life spent solely or chiefly in the avoidance of risk and trouble and labor. Save in exceptional cases the prizes worth having in life must be paid for, and the life worth living must be a life of work for a worthy end, and ordinarily of work more for others than for one’s self.

The man is but a poor creature whose effort is not rather for the betterment of his wife and children than for himself; and as for the mother, her very name stands for loving unselfishness and self-abnegation, and, in any society fit to exist, is fraught with associations which render it holy.

The woman’s task is not easy—no task worth doing is easy—but in doing it, and when she has done it, there shall come to her the highest and holiest joy known to mankind; and having done it, she shall have the reward prophesied in Scripture; for her husband and her children, yes, and all people who realize that her work lies at the foundation of all national happiness and greatness, shall rise up and call her blessed.

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ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDLY SONS OF ST. PATRICK, DELMONICO’S, NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 17, 1905

It is, of course, a matter of peculiar pleasure to me to come to my own city and to meet so many men with whom I have been associated for the last quarter of a century—for it was nearly that time ago, Judge, that you and I first met when we were both in the New York Legislature together—and to be greeted by you as you have greeted me to-night. I wish to express at the outset my special sense of obligation—and I know that the rest of you will not grudge my expressing it—my special sense of obligation to Colonel Duffy and the officers and men of the Sixty-ninth, who were my escort to-day. I shall write to Colonel Duffy later, to give him formal notice, and to ask him to give the regiment formal notice, of my appreciation, but I wish to express it thus publicly to-night.

And now, before I begin my speech proper, I wish to read a telegram which has been handed to me as a sop to certain of my well-known prejudices. It has been sent up to me by one of the members here to-night, who when we came into the dining-room was only a father, but who at this moment is a grandfather. This telegram runs as follows:

“Peter McDonnell, Friendly Sons’ Dinner, Delmonico’s. Patrick just arrived. Tired after parade. Sends his regards to the President. He is the first on record since the President attended the Friendly[293] Sons’ dinner. He is a fine singer. No race suicide in this family. Weighs eight pounds, looks like the whole family. The mother is doing well. Robert McDonnell.”

And, gentlemen, I want you to join with me in drinking the health of Patrick, Peter, Robert, and above all, of the best of the whole outfit, Mrs. McDonnell, the mother.

Now we will pass from the present to the past. The Judge has spoken to you of the formation of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Philadelphia, in colonial days. It was natural that it should have started in Philadelphia and at the time of which the Judge spoke. For we must not forget, in dealing with our history as a Nation, that long before the outbreak of the Revolution there had begun on the soil of the colonies, which afterward became the United States, that mixture of races which has been and still is one of the most important features in our history as a people. At the time, early in the eighteenth century, when the immigrants from Ireland first began to come in numbers to this country, the race elements were still imperfectly fused, and for some time the then new Irish strain was clearly distinguishable from the others. And there was one peculiarity about these immigrants who came from Ireland to the colonies in the eighteenth century which has never been paralleled in the case of any other immigrants whatsoever. In all other cases since the very first settlements, the pushing westward of the frontier,[294] the conquest of the Continent has been due primarily to the men of native birth. But the immigrants from Ireland in the eighteenth century, and those alone, pushed boldly through the settled districts and planted themselves as the advance guard of the conquering civilization on the borders of the Indian-haunted wilderness.

This was true in Northern Maine and New Hampshire, in Western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas alike. And, inasmuch as Philadelphia was the largest city which was in touch with that extreme Western frontier, it was most natural that the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick should first be formed in that city. We had, I wish to say, in New York, frequently during colonial days, dinners of societies of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, but apparently the society in New York did not take a permanent form; but we frequently had dinners on March 17 of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick here in New York City even in colonial days.

By the time the Revolution had broken out, the men of different race strains had begun to fuse together, and the Irish among those strains furnished their full share of leadership in the struggle. Among their number was Commodore John Barry, one of the two or three officers to whom our infant Navy owed most. I had the honor in the last session of Congress to recommend that a monument to Barry should be erected in Washington. I heartily believe in economy, but I think we can afford to let up enough to let that monument through.

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On land, the men of this strain furnished generals like Montgomery, who fell so gloriously at Quebec, and like Sullivan, the conqueror of the Iroquois, who came of a New Hampshire family, which furnished governors to three New England States. In her old age, the mother, Mrs. Sullivan, used to say that she had known what it was to work hard in the fields carrying in her arms the Governor of Massachusetts, with the Governors of New Hampshire and Vermont tagging on at her skirts.

I have spoken of the generals. Now for the rank and file. The Continental troops of the hardest fighter among Washington’s generals, Mad Anthony Wayne, were recruited so largely from this stock that Lighthorse Harry Lee of Virginia, the father of the great general, Robert Lee, always referred to them as “The Line of Ireland.” Nor must we forget that of this same stock there was a boy during the days of the Revolution who afterward became the chief American general of his time, and, as President, one of the public men who left his impress most deeply upon our Nation, Andrew Jackson, the victor of New Orleans.

The Revolution was the first great crisis of our history. The Civil War was the second. And in this second great crisis the part played by the men of Irish birth or parentage was no less striking than it had been in the Revolution. Among the three or four great generals who led the Northern Army in the war, stood Phil Sheridan. Some of those whom I am now addressing served in that immortal[296] brigade which on the fatal day of Fredericksburg left its dead closest to the stonewall which marked the limit that could not be overpassed even by the highest valor.

And, gentlemen, it was my good fortune when it befell me to serve as a regimental commander in a very small war—but all the war there was—to have under me more than one of the sons of those who served in Meagher’s brigade. Among them was one of my two best captains, both of whom were killed, Allen Capron, and this man Bucky O’Neill. Bucky O’Neill was killed at Santiago, showing the same absolute indifference to life, the same courage, the same gallant readiness to sacrifice everything on the altar of an ideal, that his father had shown when he died in Meagher’s brigade in the Civil War.

The people who have come to this country from Ireland have contributed to the stock of our common citizenship qualities which are essential to the welfare of every great nation. They are a masterful race of rugged character, a race the qualities of whose womanhood have become proverbial, while its men have the elemental, the indispensable virtues of working hard in time of peace and fighting hard in time of war.

And I want to say here, as I have said and shall say again elsewhere, as I shall say again and again, that we must never forget that no amount of material wealth, no amount of intellect, no artistic or scientific growth can avail anything to the nation which loses the elemental virtues. If the average[297] man can not work and fight, the race is in a poor way; and it will not have, because it will not deserve, the respect of any one.

Let us avoid always, either as individuals or as a Nation, brawling, speaking discourteously or acting offensively toward others, but let us make it evident that we wish peace, not because we are weak, but because we think it right; and that while we do not intend to wrong any one, we are perfectly competent to hold our own if any one wrongs us. There has never been a time in this country when it has not been true of the average American of Irish birth or parentage, that he came up to this standard, able to work and able to fight at need.

But the men of Irish birth or of Irish descent have been far more than soldiers—I will not say more than, but much in addition to, soldiers. In every walk in life in this country men of this blood have stood and now stand pre-eminent, not only as soldiers but as statesmen, on the bench, at the bar, and in business. They are doing their full share toward the artistic and literary development of the country.

And right here let me make a special plea to you, to this society and kindred societies: We Americans take a just pride in the development of our great universities, and more and more we are seeking to provide for creative and original work in these universities. I hope that an earnest effort will be made to endow chairs in American universities for the study of Celtic literature and for research in Celtic[298] antiquities. It is only of recent years that the extraordinary wealth and beauty of the old Celtic Sagas have been fully appreciated, and we of America, who have so large a Celtic strain in our blood, can not afford to be behindhand in the work of adding to modern scholarship by bringing within its ken the great Celtic literature of the past.

My fellow-countrymen, I have spoken to-night especially of what has been done for this Nation of ours by men of Irish blood. But, after all, in speaking to you, or, to any other body of my fellow-citizens, no matter from what Old World country they themselves or their forefathers may have come, the great thing is to remember that we are all of us Americans. Let us keep our pride in the stocks from which we have sprung, but let us show that pride, not by holding aloof from one another, least of all by preserving the Old World jealousies and bitternesses, but by joining in a spirit of generous rivalry to see which can do most for our great common country.

Americanism is not a matter of creed or birthplace or descent. That man is the best American who has in him the American spirit, the American soul. Such a man fears not the strong and harms not the weak. He scorns what is base or cruel or dishonest. He looks beyond the accidents of occupation or social condition and hails each of his fellow-citizens as his brother, asking nothing save that each shall treat the other on his worth as a man, and that they shall all join together to do what in them[299] lies for the uplifting of this mighty and vigorous people. In our veins runs the blood of many an Old World nation. We are kin to each of these nations and yet identical with none.

Our policy should be one of cordial friendship for them all, and yet we should keep ever before our eyes the fact that we are ourselves a separate people with our own ideals and standards, and destined, whether for better or for worse, to work out a wholly new national type. The fate of the twentieth century will in no small degree—I ask you to think of this from the standpoint of the world—the fate of the twentieth century as it bears on the world will in no small degree depend upon the type of citizenship developed on this Continent. Surely such a thought must thrill us with the resolute purpose so to bear ourselves that the name American shall stand as the symbol of just, generous, and fearless treatment of all men and all nations. Let us be true to ourselves, for we can not then be false to any man.

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ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 17, 1905

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am glad to greet not merely the Sons but the Daughters of the American Revolution, and it is indeed a pleasure to be with you and say a few words, partly of greeting to you and partly in reference to what I feel should be the work, the special work, of a society like this, the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. It ought to fulfil more than one function. In the first place, it should, of course, keep up our sense of historic continuity with the past. It is a good thing, pre-eminently a good thing, for this Nation never to lose sight of what has been done in the past by those who founded and those who preserved the Republic. It is eminently fit that there should be associations banded together for the special purpose of keeping fresh in the minds of all of us the great memories of the men of the past and of what these men did. But if we treat that merely as a relaxation, merely as a pleasant mental exercise, I think we come lamentably short of what we ought to do.

The way to pay effective homage to the men of the mighty past is to live decently and efficiently in the present. We have a right to expect that every society like this shall be a nucleus for patriotic endeavor in the affairs of the day. Now, in studying[301] the past I wish that societies like this would pay heed not only to what is pleasant for us to read about, but also to what is unpleasant. I do not think that a diet of all praise is good for any one, and it is no better for us as a body politic than for any one of us individually. Admiral Coghlan will tell you that the first step necessary in bringing the Navy up to its present standard of marksmanship was having the Navy understand that its marksmanship was not what it ought to be. I think the facts will bear me out.

The thing to do is to remember what Emerson says, that in the long run an unpleasant truth is a very much safer companion than even the pleasantest falsehood. Our pride in what was done in the past should not permit us to be led away into blindness by failure to appreciate whatever was wrong in the past. Read what Washington said about the average militia regiment of the Revolutionary War, and you will not find he used complimentary language. It was because our people declined to accept Washington’s judgment on the militia, and persisted in trying the experiment of fighting the War of 1812 with militia, that the first two years of that war resulted not merely disastrously, but shamefully, and among other things resulted in the burning of the city of Washington. We did not begin to win on land until we had evolved through mighty hard knocks a small army under Brown and Scott on the northern frontier, which, when evolved, proved able to do what no Continental army at that time could[302] do, that is, meet to advantage the best troops of Britain. We won at sea because we had a number of frigates and sloops which had been built more than fifteen years before and whose officers had been trained in the school of their profession at sea and in action. We won these victories because we had the fleet; and if the fleet had been bigger we would not have had to fight the war at all.

Now, I ask that societies like this teach the truth; teach the truth that helps, even if it hurts a little in the helping. Take our struggle in building up our Navy to its present strength. We were hampered in that struggle by the ignorant and unspeakably foolish belief that somehow or other America was so big and smart a Nation that we did not need a Navy, and could improvise one out of hand if the need ever arose.

Admiral Coghlan lived through the period which saw the United States at the close of the Civil War, with Farragut and his fellows as our admirals, loom up as one of the great naval Powers of the earth, which then saw us about the year 1882 reduced to a condition of effective sea-strength when it would have been flattery to call us a fifth-rate Power, and which then saw the building up of our Navy until at present, taking into account the ships built and authorized, and, above all, taking into account the way those ships are handled, singly and in squadrons—taking into the account the ships, the armor, the guns, and, above all, the men in the conning towers, in the engine rooms and behind the guns—we[303] rank as one of the big naval Powers of the earth. We rank as such, we occupy our present position and we are a power potent for peace because we deliberately faced the fact that we did not have a Navy worth anything in 1882.

I take immense interest in the Navy, because the Navy is the arm upon which this country must most depend for holding its own and upholding its honor so far as our international relations are concerned. We had to educate our people slowly up to the need of a Navy. We began by building some cruisers. We then built two or three fast vessels called commerce destroyers. We had quite a time for several years in persuading excellent people of good intentions, but not entirely clear minds, that it was rather less immoral to destroy commerce than to take life in battleships. Then we had to go through the stage of meeting and by degrees overcoming the arguments of those other excellent people who said we must have fighting ships, but only for defence; that we must only have coast defence ships; that is, we must win the fight not by hitting, but by parrying. If we had carried out that theory, Admiral Coghlan and his fellow-captains under Dewey would have been cooped up in coast defence vessels in San Francisco, while the hostile ships rested unharmed in Manila. That is the theory of coast defence; and in that case the war would never have had any end. We won because by that time our people had at last awakened to the fact that in a navy you want the very best type of ship; and that of all foolish things,[304] the most foolish is to hit soft. Do not hit at all if you can help it. Avoid trouble of every kind. Do not hit at all if you can help it, but never hit soft. When Dewey and the captains under him went into Manila Bay they went in in ships that had been built, not that year nor the year before. Some of them had been built as much as fifteen years before, twelve years, eight years; and the legislators who authorized the building of those ships, the men who built them, the captains who first took them out, the captains who trained the men aboard them, every man who did his part in bringing up the Navy to the standard of efficiency which it had reached in 1898 is justly entitled to his share of the credit in the victory won on that first day of May.

When you cheer for Dewey, when you think of Farragut, when you speak of the founders of the American Navy in the days of the Revolution, do not confine yourselves to cheers, do not confine yourselves to saying what a great man Washington was and how he was backed up by generals and statesmen of that day; but take example from what those men did, take warning from what their less wise fellows did, and prepare for victory in the only way in which victory can be prepared for, by preparing for it in advance.

I spoke to you of the difficulties to be met with in getting the Navy built up. Among these difficulties is the fact that there are some very good people who, whenever you say that you want a good Navy, say that “this is a lamentable illustration of the[305] jingo spirit, and that there is no reason why this country should ever have a war.” I know one excellent gentleman in Congress who said he preferred arbitration to battleships. So do I. But suppose the other man does not. I want to have the battleships as a provocative for arbitration so far as the other man is concerned.

We have now got our Navy up to a good point. We have built and are building forty armored ships. For a year or two, or two or three years, to come, what we need to do is to provide for the personnel of those ships, and to secure the very highest standard of efficiency in handling them, singly and in squadrons; above all, for handling the great guns. So much for the Navy.

Now a word for the Army. I was very sorry that this year Congress did not provide the means for having field manœuvres such as those General Grant and General Bell took part in last year. Those manœuvres are very useful. It is impossible to take National Guard regiments and put them into such manœuvres without causing them great discomfort, and it may be better to keep such manœuvres as were carried on last year for the Regular Army. But it is a great mistake not to continue them for the Regular Army. We have a small Regular Army. It is not advisable or necessary that we should have a large one. It is advisable, it is necessary, that the Army we have should be efficient as a whole as well as efficient in its individual parts. I firmly believe that given an equal chance, the officers and enlisted[306] men of the American Army offer material quite as good as any to be found in any army of the world. Because I believe that I think it not merely an iniquity but a crime not to give the officers and the enlisted men that equal chance. We have an Army now short of seventy thousand men. Deducting the men necessary for the manning of the coast defences, it would give us at the very outside figure a possible Army of fifty thousand men—that is, an Army about one-fourteenth the size of the forces that have been contending in the mighty death wrestle around Mukden. Surely we owe it to this Nation that we should have that Army of fifty thousand men able to manœuvre as an Army of fifty thousand men and able to render as good service as such as any army can render. We can never achieve that ideal unless we are willing as a Nation to spend the money so that the Army shall have the chance of being handled in time of peace in great masses by the men who will handle it in masses in time of war. If when war comes you set thirty thousand men, of whom no more than five or six hundred have ever served together, under officers who have never handled, any of them, more than five or six hundred men, you can not expect anything but disaster; unless perchance you go against a foe even more foolish than you are.

So I ask you of this society, the Sons of the American Revolution, to study the war of the Revolution, to study the War of 1812, to study the war with Mexico, and the Civil War, not only[307] from the standpoint of the victories, but from the standpoint of the defeats, and to try to see to it that in our policy at the present time we carry out the old policies that won the victories, and avoid the old policies that brought about the defeats.

I speak in the interest of peace when I ask for an efficient Army and Navy. This is a high-spirited people. This is a people that will not abandon the Monroe Doctrine, will not stop building the Isthmian Canal, will not surrender its hold upon the islands of the sea. Very good; then take such steps as are necessary to make your hold on those possessions, your backing of this doctrine, effective, and not empty bluster.

So it is in civic affairs. Study not only what Washington and Washington’s supporters did, but study what was done by those who brought the Continental Congress to absolute impotence. Study what was done by those who nearly undid the good work of Washington. Study what has been done in the past by the men who have made errors no less than by the men who have won triumphs, and profit alike by the study of the triumphs and by the study of the errors.

Talking among ourselves, man to man, each of us will admit to the other that there are things in our life that he does not like; but when one of us gets on his feet to address the rest he often seems to feel as if somehow he ought never to speak save in indiscriminate praise of all. The same man who will take an unwarrantably pessimistic view of all[308] our governmental matters in private will feel obliged to speak in unwarrantable praise of all these matters in public. We ought to avoid ignorant praise as much as ignorant blame. It is only by making a correct diagnosis that we can find out how to treat any given disease. A good physician in making a diagnosis is not either an optimist or a pessimist. He wants to find out the facts; for to take either too dark or too rosy a view may be fatal to the patient. Just so in our body politic. Try to find out what the facts really are, try to find out what the good qualities, what the defects; what the good side is in any portion of our Government, what the defect is in any portion of our Government. State the truth; do not hysterically exaggerate what is good; do not hysterically exaggerate what is evil. Find out the facts; and then with your whole heart set to work to preserve and make better the good and to cut out and do away with the evil.

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ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATES OF THE UNITED STATES NAVAL MEDICAL SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 25, 1905

Ladies and Gentlemen; and especially the Members of the Graduating Class:

I am glad to have the chance of saying a word of greeting to you this morning. You represent two professions, for you are members of the great medical body and you are also officers of the Navy of the United States, and therefore you have a double standard of honor up to which to live. I think that all of us laymen, men and women, have a peculiar appreciation of what a doctor means; for I do not suppose there is one of us who does not feel that the family doctor stands in a position of close intimacy with each of us, in a position of obligation to him under which one is happy to rest to an extent hardly possible with any one else; and those of us, I think most of us, who are fortunate enough to have a family doctor who is a beloved and intimate friend, realize that there can be few closer ties of intimacy and affection in the world. And while, of course, even the greatest and best doctors can not assume that very intimate relation with more than a certain number of people (though it is to be said that more than any other man, the doctor does commonly assume such a relation to many people)—while it is impossible this relation in its closest form shall obtain between a doctor and more than a certain number[310] of people, still with every patient with whom the doctor is thrown at all intimately he has this peculiar relation to a greater or less extent. The effect that the doctor has upon the body of the patient is in very many cases no greater than the effect that he has upon the patient’s mind. Each one of you here has resting upon him not only a great responsibility for the care of the body of the officer or enlisted man who will be under his supervision, but a care—which ought not to be too consciously shown, but which should be unconsciously felt—for the man’s spirit. The morale of the entire ship’s company, of the entire body of men with which you are to be thrown, will be sensibly affected by the way in which each of you does his duty.

Just as the great doctor, the man who stands high in his profession in any city, counts as one of the most valuable assets in that city’s civic work, so in the Navy or the Army the effect of having thoroughly well-trained men with a high and sensitive standard of professional honor and professional duty is wellnigh incalculable upon the service itself. I want you now, as you graduate, to feel that on your shoulders rests a great weight of responsibility; that your position is one of high honor, and that it is impossible to hold a position of high honor and not hold it under penalty of incurring the severest reprobation if you fail to live up to its requirements.

I am not competent to speak save in the most general terms of your professional duties. I do want, however, to call your attention to one or two[311] features connected with them. In the first place: In connection with the work you do for the service you have certain peculiar advantages in doing work that will be felt for the whole profession. For instance, it will fall to your lot to deal with certain types of tropical diseases. You will have to deal with them as no ordinary American doctor, no matter how great his experience, will have to deal with them, and you should fit yourselves by most careful study and preparation, so that you shall not only be able to grapple with the cases as they come up, but in grappling with them to make and record observations upon them that will be of permanent value to your fellows in civil life. You can there do what no civilian doctor can possibly do. There probably is not a branch of the profession into which, during your career, you will not have to go; no type of disease that you will not have to treat. But there are certain diseases you will have to treat that the ordinary man who stays at home, of course, does not; and it is of consequence to the entire medical profession that you should so fit yourself by study, by preparation, that you shall not only be able to deal with those cases, but to deal with them in a way that will be of advantage to your stay-at-home brethren.

There is one other point. Every effort should, of course, be made to provide you with ample means to do your work. Every effort ought to be made to persuade the National Legislature to take that view of the situation; to remember that in case of war[312] it is out of the question to improvise a great medical service for the Army and the Navy. The need of the increase would be more keenly felt in the Army than in the Navy, because it is always the Army that undergoes the greatest expansion in time of war. But it is felt in both services. And when, as is perfectly certain to be the case if ever a war comes, and if we have made no greater preparation than at present, there is fever in the camps, there is sickness among the volunteer forces, it will be mere dishonest folly for the public men, and especially for the public press, to shriek against the people who happen to be in power at that time. Let them, if ever such occasion arises, solemnly think over and repent of the fact that they have not made their representatives provide adequately in advance for the medical system in its personnel and its material, for the organization, and for the physical instruments necessary to make that organization effective. Only adequate preparation in advance will obviate the trouble which otherwise is certain to come if we have a war. Let critics remember not to blame the people in power when such a breakdown comes, but to blame themselves, the people of the United States, because they have not had the forethought to take the steps in advance which would prevent such breakdown from occurring.

Means ought to be provided in advance. That is part of our duty. If we fail in it then it is our responsibility, not yours. But now for your duty. I want to impress, with all the strength[313] that in me lies, upon every medical man in either the Army or the Navy, to remember always that in any time of crisis the chances are that you will have to work with imperfect implements. And your conduct will then afford a pretty good test of your worth. If you sit down and do nothing but say you could have done excellently if only you had had the right implements to work with, you will show your unfitness for your position. Your business will be to do the very best you can do, if you have nothing in the world but a jack-knife to do it with. Keep before your minds all the time that when the crisis occurs it is almost sure to be the case that you will have to do no small part of your work with make-shifts; to do it, as I myself saw at Santiago the Army physicians do their work, roughly and hastily, when worn out with fatigue and having but one-fourth or one-fifth of the appliances that they would expect normally to have. Make up your mind that while you will do all you can to get the best material together in advance, you will not put forward the lack of that material as an excuse for not doing the best work possible with imperfect tools. Make it a matter of pride to do your utmost, without regard to the inadequacy of your instruments.

I am sure that all of us outsiders here realize the weight of responsibility resting upon those who now join the great and honorable body of men who in the Navy and in the Army have by their actions upheld not only the standard of honor of the[314] medical profession, but the standard of honor of the officers of the Army and the Navy of the United States.

I greet you on your entrance into the service. I welcome you as servants of the Nation, and I wish you every success in the great and honorable calling which you have chosen as yours.

AT OUTDOOR MEETING AT DALLAS, TEX., APRIL 5, 1905

Mr. Mayor; and you, My Fellow-Americans:

It has been indeed a pleasure for me to come to-day within the limits of your mighty and beautiful State. This afternoon I have been traveling through a veritable garden of the Lord. It is only a few weeks ago that I did my part in helping on the growth here when I signed the bill under which the Trinity River will be improved, which I was mighty glad to do. For I think that we Americans have learned the lesson that whatever is good for some of us is good for all of us. We are all going to go up, and not down, because we are going to go together. I have been impressed even more than by the beauty and fertility of your State by the character of its people. Surely no President could be more touched by any greeting than by a greeting such as this; and above all (I know the others of you will not mind my saying) to be greeted by the men who, when the hour of trial came in 1861, sprang to arms, and whether they wore the blue, or whether they wore the gray, proved the sincerity[315] of their devotion by the valor with which they risked their lives. Oh, my fellow-countrymen, think what a blessed thing it is that now every man in this land can feel the same pride in the valor and devotion of those who fought for one side and of those who fought for the other! I can, in a sense, claim to be, by blood at least, a typical President, for I am half Southern and half Northern; I was born in the East and I have lived much in and learned much from the West.

The Civil War has left us as a heritage of honor not merely the memory of the mighty deeds done in it alike by the men of the North and the men of the South; it has left us also as an inspiration and a memory the way in which when the war was over those men turned to the works of peace, and wrought out in peace success exactly as they had wrought it out in war.

I come to Texas not for the first time. Seven years ago, again there was a call to arms, a call to arms against a foreign foe. It then fell to my lot to come here to help in raising a regiment, a regiment in which I think over half of the men had fathers who served in the Confederate army, and about one-third, perhaps somewhat more, fathers who served in the Union army. We were the sons of the men who wore the blue, the sons of the men who wore the gray, and our only desire was to show ourselves not wholly unworthy of the mighty men of the years that are past.

You of this State of Texas have behind you a[316] history containing the deeds of which not only you but all of the country must be forever proud. My regiment was raised under the walls of that historic building of which it was said that “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none.” You, the men of Texas, like the men of Oregon and California, like the men of Kentucky and Tennessee in a previous generation, did your part in changing this Nation from a string of Atlantic seaboard commonwealths into a people bounded only by a continent. No people more than the Texans have rendered it impossible for this country to be anything but great. It is not open to us to choose whether we shall play a small part or a great part. Your fathers helped to make that choice impossible. Play a great part we must. All that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill; and I know too well, oh, my fellow-countrymen, not to know what your decision will be.

The problems change. One generation faces different difficulties from the difficulties faced by its predecessors. But the spirit in which those problems must be faced is forever the same. You, the men of the Civil War, who wrought deeds of deathless fame, who left memories of honor that will last as long as this Nation endures, fought with muzzle-loading, percussion-cap muskets and rifles, with cannon that you could afford to put out in the open when you wanted to shoot at the foe. You fought still in the shoulder-to-shoulder tactics. Nowadays men must fight with different weapons; men must[317] fight with different tactics; but the spirit in which they must fight if they are to win must be the spirit that sustained you alike in triumph and defeat. The outward problem changes, the outward means of solving that problem changes, but the heart of the man who is to solve it can not be changed. We must show as a Nation now the same spirit that has been shown by the mighty men of times past under penalty of failure; show it in war if the need arises; and we must also show it in peace; show it in the days that are with us all the time instead of waiting for the heroic days that may never come.

Just as in time of war the man who does his duty in camp, on the march, who does not throw away his blanket at noon because it is heavy, and then wishes that he had two at midnight, is the type of man who makes the best soldier in the long run; so it is true that in civil life the man who does his duty as a citizen in the long run is the man who does his ordinary work day by day, doing each day’s duty, great or small, behaving as he should toward his wife, toward his children, toward his neighbor, in his business, in his home; and if he does those duties well the sum of the duties performed means that he is a good citizen.

I want you men of Texas, you men of my age, to see to it that exactly as you lift your heads higher because of what your fathers have done, so your children have the right to hold their heads higher because of the way in which you handle yourselves. A glorious memory is the best of all things for a[318] nation if it spurs that nation on to try to rise level with that memory. It is a poor thing for a nation if it uses the memory of the past to excuse it for inaction or failure in the present. Keep it before yourselves ever that the very fact that you are proud of those who have gone before makes it incumbent upon you to leave a heritage of honor to those who are to come after you, and to train up those who are to come after you so that they can do their work in the world. One of the things that has pleased me most in passing through the part of your State that I have passed through this afternoon was to see the care that you are giving to the education of the children, to see the public schools and the private schools that you have built and in which your boys and girls are being trained. Do not forget that besides the training of the school must come the training in the family. Take care the next generation is able to rise level to its duty. You can not make it rise level if you do not give it the proper training. Remember always that this life is certain to contain much that is hard, much that is unpleasant. It is not a kindness to the children, it is a curse, if you train them so that they can not meet any need that arises. I do not believe that we ought ever to try to delude ourselves with the thought that we can make life easy, effortless, and yet keep it worth having. For a nation as for an individual the life is the life of effort. You have made this great State of Texas what it is because your forefathers had in them the spirit which recognized in a difficulty[319] something not to be flinched from, but to be overcome.

I can not sufficiently thank you for the way you have greeted me to-day. I am more touched than I can express by it. I come to the soil of this State, hallowed by the great deeds of great men, I come knowing your people already and believing in them with my heart and soul. A couple of years ago I went from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I have now come down to this mighty State, this wonderful commonwealth, which borders on the Gulf, and I shall go away with the feeling that after all, while there are small differences among us, the fundamental fact is that wherever you find the average American, the average American is a pretty good man. It is our unity, not our divergency, that is the great fundamental fact of our national life. I shall go away a stronger and better American for having been in this State of strong and good Americans, this mighty commonwealth of Texas.

AT THE BANQUET AT DALLAS, TEX., APRIL 5, 1905

Mr. Toastmaster, and you, My Hosts:

Before I came to Texas I knew the generous hospitality which is one of your chief characteristics, and I anticipated a good reception, but neither I nor any one else could have anticipated such a reception, and it has touched me and pleased me more than I can well say. I think I was a middling good American before I came here, but I go away an even better one.

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Mr. Simpson spoke of the fact that nearly seven years ago I came to this State to take part in raising a volunteer regiment. Many among you who served on one side or the other in the Civil War will remember the number of things that you did not know at the beginning. If you will take that lack of knowledge and multiply it by two you will get a fair estimate of what I and the regiment did not know when we started. That we learned something I hope is true.

I want to say a word of serious thanks to you, and a word as to my accountability as a steward to you. No man is fit to hold the position of President of the United States at all unless as President he feels that he represents no party but the people as a whole. So far as in me lies I have tried and shall try so to handle myself that every decent American citizen can feel that I have at least made the effort. Each man has got to carry out his own principles in his own way. If he tries to model himself on some one else he will make a poor show of it. My own view has been that if I must choose between taking risks by not doing a thing or by doing it, I will take the risks of doing it.

I have been a very close student of Texan history. The history of your State has always held a peculiar fascination for me. I had begun certain historic studies connected with the growth of our Western people many years ago, before I took much of a part in public life.

However little some of you may now agree with[321] me, when you come to take into account what I have done in the Caribbean Sea, in future you will find that I have been carrying out the doctrine of the Texans who made Texas what it is. Especially as regards what was done in Panama, I want to say that while I was most anxious to deserve the approval of my countrymen, and while I was very glad to be elected President, I would without one moment’s hesitation have given up the second term in the Presidency rather than not to have begun the Panama Canal.

Now in the same way with our internal affairs; take what the toastmaster was kind enough to say as to my standing for a square deal. I want that understood literally. I do not want it exaggerated on one side or the other. When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean, and nobody who speaks the truth can mean, that he believes it possible to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall not be any crookedness in the dealing. In other words, it is not in the power of any human being to devise legislation or administration by which each man shall achieve success and have happiness; it not only is not in the power of any man to do that, but if any man says that he can do it, distrust him as a quack. If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon any man, if misfortune comes upon him, he may be unable to win; or even if fortune favors him and he lacks the[322] courage, the nerve, the common-sense, the ability, to do the best with the chance given him, then he will fail. All any of us can pretend to do is to come as near as our imperfect abilities will allow to securing through governmental agencies an equal opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him; and that must be done with no more intention of discrimination against the rich man than the poor man, or against the poor man than the rich man; with the intention of safeguarding each man, rich or poor, poor or rich, in his rights, and giving him as nearly as may be a fair chance to do what his powers permit him to do; always provided he does not wrong his neighbor.

This is not in the least a partisan question. It is one of those questions that affect all our citizens, a question that goes to the root of our citizenship; and when it comes to a question like that you citizens of this country have the right to expect your representatives in public life to join hands and work for the common good and without regard to any mere party differences. As to the details of carrying out those general principles we can not expect everybody to agree. My own views are pretty definite, both about foreign and domestic policies. In foreign policies, for instance, I have this strong belief, which I am sure will appeal to every cow-man present—never draw, unless you mean to shoot; and that implies, of course, that when you draw it shall not be an empty gun. Do not speak impolitely, disrespectfully of other nations. Always treat them with courtesy.[323] Remember that nobody likes to be insulted. One would rather be wronged than insulted; and this is just as true internationally as among individuals. Always speak courteously; be dead sure you are right before going into trouble; being in, see it through.

As a corollary to that, if you need a weapon which you can not possibly improvise, get it ready in advance. The individual who gets into trouble and then thinks he will go and buy a six-shooter is left. He does not want to get into trouble unless he has the six-shooter. It is just so with us. We have built up and are building up a pretty good navy. If we had not done that and were not doing it, I for one would not have recommended going into the Panama business, and I would not advocate the Monroe Doctrine, for I do not intend to go into anything and make a bluff and then have the bluff called and not be able to make good.

In the same way when you come to internal affairs; I have advocated giving the Interstate Commerce Commission increased power; power that will enable it to work effectively and quickly. I should not do that for one moment if I believed that there would be injustice done to the railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission. I wish it understood definitely that if I find any subordinate of mine doing an injustice against a railroad, or doing an injustice for it, I will cinch him just as quickly in one case as in the other. I shall expect him to do the square thing, both by the railroad and by the[324] public. If the railroad wants more than it is entitled to have, then he must decide against it; if the public ignorantly demands that the railroad shall do more than it can with propriety do, then just as fearlessly he must antagonize public sentiment, even if the public sentiment is unanimous.

These are the general principles. It is much easier to lay down general principles than it is to work out those principles in detail. But I have told you substantially what are, as I regard them, the main features of the platform upon which I stand, and I think that you agree with me that it is a pretty straight American platform.

TO THE LEGISLATURE OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, TEX., APRIL 6, 1905

Governor, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President pro tem., Senators, and Members of the House of Representatives, and all of you, men and women of Texas, those whom I am so proud to call my Fellow-Americans:

No President of the United States, no good American proud of his country, could enter this Capitol and stand in this hall without feeling a certain thrill of pride in his citizenship, and in the history of the country’s past. This building in which we are now is not only one of the largest but one of the most beautiful of its kind throughout the world. It is eminently fitting that so great a State should have so fine a capitol building.

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There are one or two things that I would like particularly to say in this chamber, and to the members of the Texas Legislature. I received a copy of the resolution passed by your body, introduced, I understand, by ex-Minister Terrell, in reference to the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act. I wish to thank you most heartily for what you did. I think, Governor, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen, that the longer our experience in public office is, the more we realize that at least ninety-five per cent, if not more, in importance, of the work done by any public officer who is worth his salt has nothing whatever to do with partisan politics. The things that concern us all as good citizens are infinitely larger than the matters concerning which we are divided one from the other along party lines. Fundamentally our attitude in our foreign affairs and in reference to foreign nations must in the long run, if we are to be successful as a people, be based upon certain common-sense rules of conduct, the identical rules upon which every self-respecting citizen must base his private actions.

This is equally true as regards all questions dealing with capital and labor; and especially with those dealings with the great aggregates of capital usually to be found in corporate form through which so much of our business at the present day is conducted. It is essential, in dealing thus by legislative action with corporate wealth, or indeed with wealth in any form, that we remember and act upon certain rules simple enough and commonplace[326] enough to state, but not always easy to act upon. Most emphatically we can not as good Americans bear hostility to any rich man as such any more than to any poor man as such. My experience has been that the man who talks over-loudly of his hostility to corporate wealth can not be trusted even to antagonize corporate wealth when it is wrong. Let us be moderate in our statements; but let us make our deeds bear out absolutely our words.

With this preliminary I would like to say in brief just what my position is as regards the particular question with which I had to deal and as regards which the Texas Legislature took the action I so much appreciate.

On the whole there have been few instruments in the economic development of the country which have done more for the country than the railroads. I do not wish in any shape or way to interfere with the legitimate gain of any of the big men whose special industrial capacity enables them to handle the railroads so as to be of profit to themselves and of advantage to all of us. I should be most reluctant—I will put it stronger than that—I should absolutely refuse to be a party to any measure, to any proposition, that interfered with the proper and legitimate prosperity of those men; and I should feel that such a measure was aimed not only at them, but at all of us, for any attack upon the legitimate prosperity of any of us is in the long run sure to turn into an attack upon all. With that proviso (as to which I ask you to remember that I mean literally[327] every word) let me further add that the public has the right (not a privilege, but in my view a duty) to see that there is on its behalf exercised such supervisory and regulatory power over the railroads as will ensure that while they get fair treatment themselves, they give it in return. The proper exercise of that power is conditioned upon the securing of proper legislation, which will enable the representatives of the public to see to it that any unjust or oppressive or discriminating rate is altered, so as to be a just and fair rate, and is altered immediately.

I know well that when you give that power there is a chance of its being occasionally abused. There is no power that can be given to the representatives of the people which it is not possible to abuse. As every one knows, the power of taxation, which must of course be given to the representatives of the people, is the power of death, for it is possible to kill any industry by excessive taxation. There must be a certain trust placed in the common-sense and common honesty of those who are to enforce the law. If it ever falls, and I think it will, to my lot to nominate a board to carry out such a law, I shall nominate men, as far as I am able, on whose ability, courage, and integrity I can count, men who will not be swayed by any influence whatever, direct or indirect, social, political, or any other, to show improper favoritism to any railroad, and who, on the other hand, if a railroad is unjustly attacked, no matter if that attack has behind it the feeling of[328] prejudice of ninety-nine per cent of the people, will stand up against that attack. That is my interpretation of the doctrine of the square deal.

I want to say just one word more on an entirely different subject. I have always taken a very great interest in the National Guard in this country. It is our pride that we have the smallest possible regular army. There is not another first-class power, there is not a second or third class power in the world that has not got relatively to its population and wealth a very much larger regular army than we have. We do not need anything but a small regular army. We need and must and shall have the very best regular army of its size that is to be found anywhere. We do not need a large regular army, because of the possibilities of our people in raising volunteer troops. Those possibilities are largely conditioned upon the excellence of the National Guard. Since I have been in Texas, at almost every stopping place there have been members of the National Guard, companies of the National Guard out to do duty in connection with keeping the crowds in order, in preventing any trouble of any kind, keeping the whole proceedings orderly and proper. I have been immensely struck with their soldier-like efficiency. It is only what I ought to expect. When I was last in Texas I was engaged with certain others in raising a volunteer regiment, and as I think I know a good thing when I see it, I got just as many Texans as possible in that regiment.

Your whole history, from the days of Austin and[329] Houston and Davy Crockett, right to the present time, shows what fighting material the average Texan makes. But I do not care how good the material, it is not going to amount to much if it is not given a chance. It is a most important thing for all of us, if we desire to keep the regular army small, that we shall have the militia, the National Guard of the several States, kept up to a proper point. Last year, I am happy to be able to say, that, at the manœuvres of the regulars, your Texan troops did admirably. I have been told again and again how well they did. I want to congratulate you upon the excellent law for the administration of the National Guard that has recently been passed by the Texas Legislature. With that law backed up by a sufficient appropriation to make it available, you can count upon having the Texas National Guard a model for the National Guard of the country.

I feel very much at home here: I have been Governor, and I have served in the Legislature, so I have a good deal of fellow-feeling with all of you. I have had for a good many years to grapple with just about the problems you are grappling with from time to time here; and I know, as any man who has taken part in active work must know, how easy it is for the outsider to say that everything should be managed perfectly, and how difficult it is in practice to get even fairly good results. There is a heap of difference between the critic, the onlooker on one side, and on the other the doer, the man who does the job.

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OUTSIDE OF CAPITOL BUILDING, AUSTIN, TEX., APRIL 6, 1905

Mr. Governor; and you, My Fellow-Citizens:

I have been particularly pleased to be greeted wherever I have gone by the great masses of school children, the children from the public schools and the children from the higher institutions of learning, State and private. It is a mere truism to say that the prime work of any State should be to keep up and raise ever higher its standard of citizenship. Texas has a right to be proud of its industrial development and of its wonderful natural resources, but I tell you the best crop for any State to rear after all is the crop of men and women. I believe in the future of Texas so heartily because I believe that you are steadily taking measures for the uptraining of the children, for the uptraining of the generations that in a very few years will take our places and rule the destinies of the State.

No State can be great without paying the penalty of responsibility that comes with greatness. That is true of the Nation; it is true likewise of the States that go to make up the Nation. You have here in Texas a commonwealth which in area and diversification of resources already stands unequaled, which in population and wealth will soon be one of the three or four first in the entire land. That means that besides feeling exaltation about it you ought to have a very heavy sense of responsibility entailed upon you thereby. No man can do any work worth[331] doing except at the cost of effort, of self-restraint, of forcing himself to achieve things. No State can do anything except by possessing just those qualities, because the State is of course simply the aggregate of the individuals within it. If Texas fails in any way the failure will be felt by the entire country, because its influence and its power are so great. There is no royal road to good government; and I think all those interested in managing your public affairs will agree with me that what we need in our public officials is not genius, not even brilliancy, so much as the exercise of the ordinary rather commonplace qualities of honesty, courage, and common-sense—the qualities that make a man a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor; that make it advantageous to have dealings with him in business, or make it worth while having him as a friend. These are the qualities which are fundamental, which should be shown by the man who has to do with public life; and do not forget that each one of you here has to do his share in governing this commonwealth. It is not a figure of speech, it is the literal fact that in the United States every man is a sovereign. Remember that the fate of the sovereign who does not do his duty is to get dethroned; and if the average man who is sovereign does not do his duty he will get ousted from his sovereignty. If a man can not govern himself he will find a boss or some one else who can govern him, and then do not blame the boss, blame yourself for not having the self-control, the resolution, the forethought,[332] and the sense of civic duty which would make you do your full part in the work of governing this country. We will not lose our birthright of citizenship unless by our own fault. If the average man keeps his head and his wits, and if he takes a little pains, he will be governed just about the way he desires to be governed. If he is not governed that way do not let him sit down and blame the politicians, let him blame himself, for it is in his power to get any government that he seriously desires to have. My fellow-citizens, together with expressing the exultation that we have a right to express about our country, we need to have impressed upon us a sense of our own responsibility, and of the shortcomings of which we are guilty if we do not rise level to that responsibility. It is a very good thing that we should gather together on state occasions, on the 4th of July, and at public festivals, and hear speakers say how big a country we have. But it is a better thing if we will go home and think over certain of the shortcomings that all of us have and make up our minds to remedy them in the future. What I ask of you and what I most firmly believe you will give is a patriotic perseverance in doing each his average round of duties, in doing the duties both of private life and as a citizen in public affairs each day. Do not wait for some special time when heroism will be called for, but do unweariedly the humdrum work that comes to every man. If we will do that, we will find that the affairs of state will be settled as we desire to have them settled.[333] There is no use sitting at home finding fault with the way in which public affairs are handled, and then every four years, in a burst of animosity against some person, voting to turn him out. What you need to do is, month in and month out, year in and year out, to do your ordinary political duties as those political duties come up, and only under such conditions can you get really good public servants.

Let me say one more word of warning. In public life you will sometimes encounter a man who will endeavor to lead you to do something which down at bottom you doubt being right, which he tells you will be to your advantage to do, usually something that looks like wronging some one else. But the man who will wrong some one else for your advantage will, when the chance comes, be sure to wrong you for his own advantage.

My fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, I address you here under the shadow of your beautiful capitol of this great and wonderful State, with its heroic memories of Austin, of Sam Houston, of Davy Crockett, of all the men who in picture or in statue are commemorated on these walls; and my strongest feeling is that, proud though you are of Texas, you can not be prouder of it than I am. One of the great and splendid features of our American life is that each American has a right to be proud of the deeds of every other American, no matter from what part of the country his fellow-American may come. Your honor, your glory, are[334] the honor and the glory of every man of our great country. All that is necessary for our people is that they should get to know one another in order to appreciate how slight are the divergencies and how vital and fundamental is the union among them.

IN FRONT OF THE ALAMO, SAN ANTONIO, TEX., APRIL 7, 1905

Mr. Mayor; Mr. Kirkpatrick; and you, My Fellow-Americans of this mighty Commonwealth:

I thank you for the way in which I have been greeted to-day. You can hardly imagine how much it means to me to come back to San Antonio in this way, and to be received as you have received me. I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment to two sets among your citizens; first to the men of the great war, to the men who wore the blue or wore the gray in the days that tried men’s souls. My fellow-citizens, infinitely more important than any President, infinitely more important even than the reception to any President, is what is symbolized by seeing the men who fought in the Union army and the men who fought in the Confederate army standing mingled together, fellow-Americans, one in devotion and honor and loyalty to the country, shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the mightiest republic upon which the sun has ever shone. Indeed the man would have a poor heart, a poor spirit, who would not be thrilled by such a meeting as this, by such a[335] sight as you accord me to-day, you of the gray, you of the blue, all one under the flag of this reunited country.

I suppose you must know it, but I want to tell you that it was of course the memory of the valor, the self-sacrifice, the endurance you displayed in the great war, that made us of the younger generation feel that when the lesser war came we wished to emulate your course. The regiment which I had the honor to command, and which was raised and organized in this city, took part in what were only skirmishes compared with the campaigns in which you did your share; and all that we claim is that while it was not given to us to have the chance to do great deeds, yet we hope we made you feel that the old spirit was not altogether lost. This regiment served under men who had themselves fought in the Civil War, both under Grant and under Lee. The commander of the cavalry division was that gallant ex-Confederate soldier, Major-General Joseph Wheeler; and our immediate commander, our brigade commander, was an ex-Union soldier, who entered the Union army as a private, and to whom for my great good fortune it befell me to sign the commission as Lieutenant-General of the army of the United States—Lieutenant-General Young. Afterward at San Juan the cavalry served under General Sumner, from whom I took my orders.

I can not say how much it meant to me to be able to take part in raising that regiment under the shadow of the Alamo. My admiration for Texas[336] and Texans is no new thing. Since I have been a boy and first studied the history of this country my veins have thrilled and tingled as I read of the mighty deeds of Houston, of Bowie, of Crockett, of Travis, of the men who were victorious at the fight at San Jacinto, of the even more glorious men who fell in the fight of the Alamo, of which it was said, “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none.”

I remember so well seven years ago when we were raising this regiment, riding in here one day to see the Alamo, and going away feeling that come what would I was going to try to handle myself so that there should no disgrace come to the memory of the Americans who died there. I want you to remember that ours was a volunteer regiment and a small war, and that we do not claim any credit for what we did more than falls to the lot of any number of other people. All we ask of you is to believe that we tried to show the spirit which would have made us do the kind of a job that you of the Civil War did, if the need had arisen.

I wish to express my acknowledgments for the greeting which I have received here in San Antonio and which I have received throughout the length and breadth of Texas. This is the third time I have visited this beautiful city—and it is such a beautiful city. I wonder if you yourselves, proud though you are of it, appreciate the charm it has to an outsider coming here. It is fifteen years ago that I first came here, simply passing through as any number of other[337] travelers pass through, and saw it. Seven years ago when I came here I was here strictly on business. When we got back that year from Santiago I said to the officers of the regiment, “Now we have got to have a reunion of the regiment in San Antonio.” All kinds of things happened in between. I have led a middling busy life myself since; and now at last the chance has come to make good the promise and to have those of the regiment who are able to come together here in the city where the regiment was raised to greet one another and talk over the past. In a sense we can claim that that regiment was a typical American body. The men composing it were raised chiefly in the Southwest, but some from the North, some from the East, so that we had the Northerner and the Southerner, the Easterner and the Westerner in that regiment; we had men in it who worshiped their Creator some according to one creed, some according to another, for almost every religious body of any size in the United States was represented within our ranks. We had men who had been born abroad and men who were born here, whose ancestors came to what is now the United States at the time of the landing of the first colonists at the mouth of the James or at Plymouth. We had men of inherited wealth and men who all their lives long had earned each day’s bread by that day’s toil. We had men of every grade socially; men who worked with their heads; men who worked with their hands; men of all the types that our country produces; but each of them glad to get in on his[338] worth as a man only, and content to be judged purely by what he could show himself to be.

It has always seemed to me that one of the greatest lessons taught by the Civil War was the lesson of brotherhood. You, my friends, who wore the blue; you, my friends, who wore the gray, what each of you when he went forward to battle was concerned with about the man on his right hand and the man on his left was not what that man’s ancestry was, not as to how he worshiped his Maker, not as to what his profession was, or his means; what you wanted to know was whether he would stay put. If he did you were for him, and if he did not you were against him.

The same thing that was true in the great war is true in time of peace. This Government is emphatically a government by the people, for the people, of the people. Now, besides applauding that sentiment, let us live up to it. It has two sides to it. In the first place, it applies in a dozen different directions. It applies, for instance, in reference to creed. We have a right to ask that our neighbor do his duty toward God and man; but we have no business to dictate to him how he shall worship his Maker, and no business to discriminate for or against him because of the way in which he does it. In the same way, if a man is a decent citizen, he is a decent citizen, whether rich or poor. To judge from some of the talk you occasionally hear, a man can not be a square man if he is rich. Remember always that you listen at your peril to any man who would seek[339] to inflame you against your fellow-citizen because he is better off. Again, in the Civil War, come back to the consideration about your bunkie. You did not care whether he was a banker or bricklayer. If he was a banker he was all right if he was a good fellow, if he did his duty in camp, if he did not straggle on the march, if he did not drop his share of the joint provisions on the march, and then expect you to share yours with him at the end of the day. You wanted him to do his part, and if he did it you were for him. Now, apply that in civil life. If the rich man does not his duty, cinch him, and I will help you just as far as I can. But don’t cinch him because he is a rich man. If you do you are a mighty mean creature yourself; you are not a good American yourself. Give him a perfectly fair show. If he is a poor man and does his duty, help him, stand by him. If he whines about his poverty and says that he ought to be carried, you may just as well make up your mind to drop him then and there. Every man of us stumbles at times. Every man of us at times needs a helping hand stretched out to him; and shame to any man who will not stretch out that helping hand to his brother if that brother needs it. But if the brother lies down, you can do mighty little in carrying him. You can help him up; but once up he has got to walk himself. The only way in which you can ever really help any man is to help him to help himself.

That brings me to the second set of people here whom I have been most especially glad to see and[340] to greet—the children. In the first place, I believe in them, as you know, and judging by the showing that San Antonio has made to-day, San Antonio is all right as regards both quality and quantity. As I like your stock I am glad that it does not seem likely to die out. In passing through Texas I have been more impressed than by anything else by the evident care you are giving to education, the evident care given to training your children, the school facilities, both for primary and higher education, and the way in which those facilities are being taken advantage of. Of course it is a mere truism to say that the care of the children is the most important task of any generation. You have a wonderful empire here in Texas. It is literally larger than most Old World empires. Your diversification of soil and climate, the marvelous fertility of your soil, your natural advantages, ensure you a phenomenal future agriculturally and industrially, ensure this State a wonderful growth in population and wealth. All that is essential. You must have the material basis upon which to build as a foundation, but I need not say to you to remember that it is only a foundation. The material counts for nothing if you do not build upon it the spiritual, if you do not build upon it the things of the soul, of the mind.

Let me again take an example from the war. We need arms and equipment, but the best rifle ever made does not make a soldier if it has not got the right man behind it. You may take the finest modern weapon, put it in the hands of a weakling or a[341] coward, and a good man will beat him with a club. If the other man is a good man too, you want a mighty good weapon, or you will get beaten. But the weapon does not in any shape or way serve as a substitute for the spirit of the soldier. That is what counts in the last resort. Tactics change, weapons change, but the soul that drives a man forward to victory does not change as the ages go by. The men of the Civil War, alike the men who wore the gray and the men who wore the blue, made a record which remains forever a heritage of honor and of glory for all this people. They did that because they had in them the spirit which from time immemorial has made the soldiers of whom the world is proud, the spirit for the lack of which no other quality in man or in nation will atone. We of to-day, we who, if a war should come, will have to fight under new conditions, with new arms, will win (as assuredly I believe we shall win) only because our men still have in them the spirit that made their forefathers do well in battle. So you must train your children up so that in addition to having what counts for material prosperity in a State, you must have the things that tell most for greatness, the things that make for the soul of the Nation.

Here in San Antonio what is the building you are proudest of?—the Alamo. It is not exactly up to date. Other buildings are more useful. But you are proud of it because it commemorates forever the spirit of those who made its fame immortal. So in the State itself, important though it is to provide for[342] the industrial welfare of the commonwealth, the thing that is most important is to take care of the really vital crop—the crop of citizens. The thing which the State most needs to care for is the welfare, not merely material, but moral and intellectual as well, of the children who are going to make up the State fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years hence; and that is why I am so glad to see the care which you of Texas are taking in the training of the generation that is now coming up.

A thing that is distressing to me to see is when sometimes the man and woman who have done well in life show a curious inability to train their own children in the way that has resulted successfully for themselves. I think that all of us know people who, because they have worked hard and triumphed, feel that somehow or other they will spare their children the acquisition of the very qualities which have made the parents triumph. Too often you see the man, and I am sorry to say the woman, who says, “I have had to work hard; my sons and my daughters shall have an easy time.” Such a man or woman is preparing ruin for the children about whom this is said. Of course, you want to give your children all the love possible; but it is not right to mistake folly for affection. When you spare the child that which alone will enable it to conquer in after life, you are not giving it a blessing; you are doing it the greatest wrong in your power. Bring up the boy and girl alike with the understanding that life is not generally soft, is not[343] generally easy, that there will be plenty of rough times, and that what they have to show is not the spirit that avoids difficulties and flinches from them, but the spirit which overcomes them. Let each of the older among you look back upon your lives. You men of the Civil War; what are the times of which you are proudest? What are the memories you are most glad to hand down to your children and your children’s children? The times that were easy? No. You are proud to remember and have them remember the days of toil, of peril, of effort, the days when you had to risk life and endure every form of hardship and of labor, when you had in you the spirit that made you endure it, that made you rise level to the great need. Surely you must not rob your sons of the right to feel in their turn the same pride that you now feel in the power to overcome difficulty, the power to work, the power of wresting triumph out of danger.

There is only one of my fellow-citizens to whom I will touch my hat quicker than to the soldier; and that is the mother, because I think she has a little harder time of it. The mother who has brought up as they should be brought up a family of young children is entitled to such respect as no other person in the community is entitled to. When the end of her life comes she has endured any amount of hardship, the sitting up by beds of sick children, the endless taking care of them, for a mother is not allowed to know the difference between night and day as far as the ending of the day’s task is concerned;[344] but, after all, when her life is done she can look back upon it with a prouder sense of satisfaction than any one else, if she has done her duty, for her children and her husband shall rise up and call her blessed. The worthy life for the Nation, for the individual, for the man, for the woman, is the life of effort for the things worth striving for; and our whole aim should be not to teach those who are to come after us to shirk difficulties, and to strive to have an easy time in life, but to strive to do their duty, whether that duty is hard or not, and to feel that no success is so great as the success of duty worth doing which is well done.

Of course, that is my conception of the life for the Nation as well as for the individual. I am not going to develop my theory about that; in the first place, because I want to keep clear of anything that you might think touched in the faintest degree upon politics, and in the next place because I believe you know pretty well how I feel anyway. I feel that this Nation, whether it wishes to or not, can not help being a great Nation. You of Texas by what your forefathers did and what you have done have helped in making this Nation so that it is impossible not to be great. We can not decide whether we will be great or not. The only thing we can decide is whether, being great, we will do well or do ill. We have got our duty in the world. We must do our duty to others, and we must do our duty to ourselves. We must so handle ourselves that no weak power which is behaving itself shall have cause to[345] fear us; and no strong power of any kind shall be able to oppress or wrong us. We all believe in the Monroe Doctrine. I have a little difficulty in getting some of my friends to accept my interpretation of it; but they will in time, because that interpretation has come to stay. We are building the Panama Canal. While that will be a benefit to all the country, it will be of most benefit to the Gulf States. We have duties in connection with the great position we have taken. We can not shirk these duties. We can do them well or do them ill, but do them we must That is one reason why I want to see a good navy; and we have got a good navy. I am going to use a simile that I used a couple of nights ago at Dallas. In the old days in Texas I understand that there used to be a proverb that while you would not generally want a gun at all, if you did want it you wanted it quick and you wanted it awfully bad. That is just the way I feel about the navy. I feel that if we have it the chances are that we will not need it; but that if we do not have it, we might find that our need for it was vital.

TO THE CONGREGATION ASSEMBLED AT THE BLUE SCHOOLHOUSE ON UPPER DIVIDE CREEK, COLO., SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 1905

Friends:

It is hard for me not to call you neighbors, for during a number of years my neighbors were just such men and women as those I now see before me, and they were as good friends as I ever had. I do[346] not intend to say more than a few words to-day, but I do wish to tell you how thoroughly at home I feel with you, how much I have enjoyed my stay here, and how I have appreciated the kind and thoughtful hospitality with which I have been treated.

Here, as elsewhere in almost every gathering in the West, I see men wearing the button which shows that they served in the Grand Army of the Republic, and carrying the flag which they more than any other men in this Nation have the right to carry because it is owing to them that this Nation has a flag at all. The few words which I have to say are to be on success, and I wish to illustrate what I mean by taking these veterans of the Civil War as examples; and what I am about to say was suggested by a conversation I had with the Dominie here, when he was with me the other day on a bear hunt. The Grand Army in its organization is typically and fundamentally American, because in the Grand Army every man from lieutenant-general to drummer boy is judged not by his position, but by the way he discharges or discharged his duty while in that position. In other words, to the Grand Army man success, in the highest and truest acceptation of the word, means the full performance of duty in whatever position Providence has assigned the man to whom the duty comes. Success from the soldier’s standpoint, if an army is to rank as one of the great armies of all time, must mean that whether the man carries sword or musket, whether he looks after the mules or the commissary, he does his duty[347] up to the handle. If the soldier feels that he has done that, then he has a right to feel that his career has been honorable and successful, and that his children’s children will be proud of him. Success had this meaning from 1861 to 1865.

So it is in civil life. Real success consists in doing one’s duty well in the path where one’s life is led. Of course, you must remember that to do your duty you must in the first place do it to yourself and to those that are nearest you. There is no use whatever in having lofty ambitions or great schemes for helping mankind if you are not able in the first place to keep yourself and your own family decently fed, clothed, and housed. You must pull your own weight first before you can do more than be a passenger in the boat. You must do what is right to your family and your neighbors before you can help the State. If, however, you have the ordinary humdrum qualities, the workaday qualities, you can win real success; for real success in civil life means that the man is able to make a living for himself and his family, to educate his children, to do his duty by his neighbors, and when the end of his life comes, to be able to feel that the world has been a little better and not a little worse off because he has lived.

When it comes to the great prizes of life there must always be more or less accident in winning. No man who has made what the world at large calls a great success can fail to recognize, if he is sincere with himself, that there has been much of chance,[348] of fortune, in his triumph; and surely this should prevent arrogance on his part, and should also prevent any feeling of mean envy toward him on the part of others. Carry yourself so that if accident puts great opportunities in your way you will be able to take advantage of them, and so that, at any rate, even if the exceptional opportunities do not come, you can do the things that count most for real happiness in life, the things that in their sum mean the life that is successful, because they make up a happy and healthy home. No amount of skill, perseverance, energy, or genius can win either the great or the small prizes of life unless back of them lie character and the courage of moral convictions. With this character, whether the great opportunity comes or not, you can count upon so bearing yourselves that your children will bless you for having done all that was in your power to bring them up to an honored name.

So much for success in private life. Now for the success from the national standpoint. In this country of ours the Government can no more rise higher than those who make it than a stream can rise higher than its source. No one leader, no set of leaders, can make the Government. It will be made by the average citizen, and whether it stands high or low will and must depend upon the character of the average citizenship. Only this average citizen can make or unmake it. The right type of leader can guide and help him—in short, can lead him; but he must himself be trusted to see to it that his[349] leadership is right, and if he has not the right stuff in him, then no leadership will avail him or any of us. In the Civil War, Grant and Sherman and Farragut rendered incalculable service; but in the last analysis it was the average man in the ranks who made the army. If that man had not had the right stuff in him not all the generalship of the greatest leaders would have availed to win victory. So it is now. The man who carries the hod or the axe or the coupling-pin; the man who holds the plow or the hammer; the average man who does the average work of the Nation, is the man upon whom our whole political and social fabric rests. If he continues to have the right stuff in him, then as a Nation we shall continue to go up. If he surrenders himself to idleness and ignorance, to mean envy and mean hate; if he is not thrifty, industrious, energetic and intelligent; above all, if his moral fibre weakens—then the Republic will be in a bad way. There is no secret about good citizenship. The qualities that make a good citizen are those that the humblest man or woman, girl or boy, can have; but they are the qualities upon which the foundations of the State rest. Dishonesty, especially if accompanied by that unpleasant type of ability without conscientiousness which some people deify under the name of “smartness,” is a curse and a disgrace to the individual and to the community. Honesty is the first quality for the individual and for the Nation; and it must be backed up by courage—the courage which does not wait before showing[350] itself until the heroic days which may never come, but which unflinchingly does each day that day’s duty, be it easy or hard; and finally it must be backed up by the common-sense without which courage and honesty are of so little avail. The man who is a good husband; the woman who is a good wife and mother; the son who so carries himself that the family are glad to have him at home instead of earnestly wishing he were away; the daughter who as she grows up is a help to her mother instead of an added burden; the family in which tenderness and consideration are shown for one another, together with the strong, fearless qualities absolutely necessary both for man and for woman in this rough, workaday world of ours—such men and women, such families, have won the success that most counts, and in their aggregate make up the Nation that is really successful.

AT THE BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND BOARD OF TRADE, DENVER, COLO., MAY 9, 1905

Mr. President; Mr. Toastmaster; and you, Men of Denver; Men of Colorado:

I hope I need not say how glad I am to be your guest to-night. Let me say just one word in reference to the work of this organization of which I am not only the guest, but to which I owe my most sincere thanks for having elected me to honorary membership. You have done a great work for the material prosperity of this city, of this State. I[351] fully appreciate, as every sensible man must, the great, the vital importance of that work. We must have a basis of material prosperity before any community, whether State, municipality, or nation, can develop itself, can rise in any degree. There must in the community as in the individual be first as a basis the material prosperity; but woe to the community, woe to the individual, that accepts such material prosperity as the be-all and the end-all of its life. In the world at large, and especially in this Nation, we have been passing through an era of materialism. It has had its good side, and it has had its poor side; and we of this country will never rise level to the standard that should be set here until we not only understand but apply the truth that material prosperity is only the foundation, and that its worth depends entirely upon the kind of moral superstructure of good citizenship that we build upon it. No wealth, no material well-being, shall avail the Nation where class hatreds flourish, where man looks upon his brother with envy and hatred or with arrogance and contempt, according to his position, where the average man fails to understand that the supreme good for any man is the granting him the opportunity and training him to the power to do service to the community at large. I believe in material well-being, of course; I should be a fool if I did not. I believe in material well-being; I believe in those who have built it up; but I believe also that it is a curse if it is not accompanied by the lift toward higher things. We of this country; we[352] who have enjoyed the marvelous prosperity that this country has possessed in a degree pre-eminent above all other nations of earth, must in the future show our understanding of this doctrine, or we shall fail to make of the Republic what it must and shall be made—an example for all the nations of mankind.

But do not think that I fail to understand the importance of our material well-being. I congratulate Denver with all my heart that it is the centre of the great mining and livestock industries. It is of enormous consequence to all our people that any section of this country should do well. Do not forget that. So far from its being a hurt to any one section to see another section prosper, we can on the contrary count it as certain that if a part of this country prospers much the rest of the country will as a whole feel some good effects from the result of the prosperity. As Senator Patterson was just saying to me, when three years ago we succeeded in getting through that law which I am so very proud should have been enacted during my administration, the law by which the Nation undertook to do its share in the great work of reclamation of the arid lands of the West; when we got through that law there were certain shortsighted people, representing as they believed the interests of the non-arid Eastern lands, who objected to its passage on the ground that it would help build up their rivals; whereas, they ought to have seen that whatever built up the inter-mountain States would add to the prosperity of all the United States. There is just one safe motto[353] for Americans to act on; that is, the motto of all men up; not some men down.

In a very small way I am trying to build up an other industry for the benefit of the whole country, which we are starting here in Colorado. Through Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture, in connection with your Agricultural College, we are starting the development of a breed of American horse which may be called the general utility horse. If I have any influence with this Administration I am going to have this work continued! Also, incidentally (if any of you have come from Vermont you will appreciate this), I think that for this end we should develop the old breed of Morgan horse, because we have in the Morgan horse a type which is not surpassed in any country for the purpose to be served by the breed of horse most important for us to develop. I do not think that the perpetuation of that fine old stock should be left to private breeders. I think the Government should take part in it. The reason we have started this horse breeding by the Government here in Colorado is that we find, for reasons that I am not wholly able to explain, that the stoutest forelegs in horses are developed here in Colorado; and so I hope the Senators from Colorado will help me to develop the Morgan horse in Colorado.

Gentlemen, I want to say a word as to a governmental policy in which I feel that this whole country ought to take a great interest and which is itself but part of a general policy into which I think our Government[354] must go. I speak of the policy of extending the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, of giving them the power to fix rates and to have the rates that they fix go into effect practically at once. As I say, that represents in my mind part of what should be the general policy of this country, the policy of giving not to the State but to the National Government an increased supervisory and regulatory power over corporations. The first step and to my mind the most important step in this general policy is to give the Nation in effective form this power over the great transportation corporations of this country. In the days of the fathers of the older among you the highways of commerce for civilized nations were what they had always been—waterways and roads. Therefore they were open to all who chose to travel upon them. Within the last two generations we have seen a system grow up under which the old methods were completely revolutionized, and now the typical highway of commerce is the railroad. Compared to the railroad the ordinary road for wheeled vehicles, and the waterway, whether natural or artificial, have lost their importance. Here in Colorado, for instance, it is the railroads which, of course, are the only highways that you need take into account in dealing with the question of commerce in the State or outside of the State. Therefore, under this changed system, we see highways of commerce grow up each of which is controlled by a single corporation or individual; sometimes several of them being controlled[355] in combination by corporations or a few individuals. When such is the case, in my judgment it is absolutely necessary that the Nation (for the separate States can not possibly do it) should assume a supervisory and regulatory function over the great corporations which practically control the highways of commerce.

Now fix clearly in your minds two facts at the outset. As with everything else mundane, when you get that supervisory and regulatory power on behalf of the Nation you will not have cured all the evils that existed and you will not equal the expectations of the amiable but ill-regulated enthusiast who thinks that you ought to have cured all those evils. A measure of good will come, some good will be done, some injustice will have been prevented; but we shall be a long way from the millennium. Get that fact clear in your mind or you will be laying up for your selves a store of incalculable disappointment in the future. That is the first thing.

Now the second and even more important matter: When you give the Nation that power, remember that harm and not good will come unless you give it with the firm determination not only to get justice for yourselves, but to do justice to others. You must be as jealous to do justice to the railroads as to exact justice from them. We can not afford in any shape or way in this country to encourage a feeling which would do injustice to a man of property, any more than to submit to injustice from a man of property. Whether the man owns the biggest[356] railroad or the greatest outside corporation in the land, or whether he makes each day’s bread by the sweat of that day’s toil, he is entitled to justice and fair dealing, to no more and to no less. A spirit of envy on the part of those less well off against the better off is as bad as and no worse than a spirit of arrogant disregard for the rights of the man of small means on the part of the man of large means. The arrogance and the envy are not two different qualities; they are the same quality shown by men under different circumstances.

We must make up our minds that nothing but harm will come from any scheme to exercise such supervision as that I advocate over corporations, and especially over the common carriers, unless we have it clearly fixed in our minds that the scheme is to be one of substantial justice alike to the common carrier and to the public. If I have the appointment or retention of any commission and power to administer a law of such increased powers I shall neither appoint nor retain the man who would fail to do justice to the railroads any more than I would appoint or retain the man who would fail to exact justice from the railroads. I want that understood as a preliminary. If I have the appointment of any of those men, or their retention, they will give a square deal all around or else their shrift will be short.

But with that statement as a preliminary I wish to urge with all the earnestness I possess, not only upon the public, but upon those interested in the[357] great railway corporations, the absolute need of acquiescence in the enactment of such law. As has been well set forth by the Attorney-General, Mr. Moody, in his recent masterly argument presented to the committee of the Senate which is investigating the matter, the Legislators have the right and as I believe the duty to confer these powers upon some executive body. It can not confer them upon any court, nor can it take away the court’s power to interfere if the law is administered in a way that amounts to confiscation of property. Of course, it would be possible to come much short of such confiscation and yet do great damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to the great corporations engaged in interstate commerce. We must remember always that most of the men who are responsible for the management of these great corporations, and who have profited thereby, have made their fortunes not as incidental to damaging, but to benefiting the community as a whole. We must be careful that nothing is done that would jeopardize their industries and that would therefore work harm of the most far-reaching kind not only to all, from the humblest to the highest, engaged in these industries, but to the business community as a whole. We must be careful to see that the law is administered with sanity and conservatism. But the power must exist, if justice is to be done as between the public and the common carrier, in some governmental executive tribunal, not only to fix rates and alter them, when convinced that existing rates do injustice, but to[358] see that the rate thus fixed goes into effect practically at once.

I do not ascribe it to any moral culpability of the men engaged in handling these great corporations that they can not see some of the bad effects of certain things they do. It is most natural for a man who is trying to carry on his business in competition with some other business to think that whatever he does that would beat his competitor is a pretty good thing for the community at large; and often I do not blame him for what he does; but I intend to prevent his doing it when it is against the public weal.

I can not attempt to speak in detail of all that should be put into the law as I hope it will be enacted at the next session of the National Congress. Not only should this power over rates go in, but in my belief we should at the same time deal with the private car question, which, as regards certain industries, offers an even greater menace than is offered by the present system of fixing rates. I do not think that the law will have to deal with many subjects, but I do feel that with the two I have mentioned and with perhaps one or two others it should deal effectively. There will be the argument made on the other side (doubtless the argument being made in their own minds by certain of my hearers) that such power is liable to abuse. Of course it is. The power of taxation is liable to grave abuse, and yet it must exist in the appropriate legislative body. You can not give any[359] needed power to the representatives of the people without exposing yourselves to the danger of that power being abused. There must be the possibility of abuse or there can not be the possibility of effective use.

In closing I wish to mention one governmental project which I have been instrumental, I think, in having started which will have a certain bearing upon this question, and that is the Panama Canal. It is perhaps unnecessary for me to say that I am perfectly aware that many most admirable gentlemen disagreed with me in my action toward the Panama Canal. But I am in a wholly unrepentant frame of mind in reference thereto. The ethical conception upon which I acted was that I did not intend that Uncle Sam should be held up while he was doing a great work for himself and all mankind. But without regard to that, when the canal comes into operation I think it will have a very important regulatory effect in connection with the transcontinental commerce of the great railroads. I think when such is the case those great railroads will have to revise their way of looking at the interests of certain inland cities.

Let me repeat. I have told you my views as to what I regard to be the most important matter of internal national legislation that in the immediate future will be before this people. I wish to say again that, important though that legislation is, it is nothing like as important as the spirit in which we approach it. If we approach it in the spirit of demagogy,[360] if we permit ourselves as a people to be deluded into the belief that permanent good will come to us as a mass, if we attack unjustly the proper rights of others because they are wealthy, we shall do ourselves just as much damage as if we permitted an attack upon those who are poor because they are poor. In time past republic after republic has existed in this world and has gone down to destruction, sometimes because the republic was turned into a government of the poor who plundered the rich, sometimes because it was turned into a government of the rich who exploited the poor. It made no difference whatever to the fate of the republic which form its fall took. That fall was just as certain in one case as in the other. It was just as certain to follow the triumph of a class which plundered another class, whether the class thus given mastery was the class of the poor who plundered the rich, or the class of the rich who exploited the poor. The destruction was as inevitable in one instance as in the other.

We have the right to look forward with confident hope to the future of this Republic because it will not and shall not become the Republic of any class, either poor or rich, because it will and shall remain as its founders intended it to be, and as its rescuers under Abraham Lincoln intended it to be, a government where every man, rich or poor, so long as he does his duty to his neighbor, is given his full rights, is guaranteed justice and has justice exacted from him in return.