Homeward Bound Edition

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS
May 10, 1905, to April 12, 1906

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT


VOLUME IV

NEW YORK

THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY

MCMX

Mr. President and Gentlemen:

This country of ours is pre-eminently a business country, and we can succeed only if as a country we carry on the national business as the typical member of this association carries on his business; that is, in an entirely practical spirit, in a spirit which desires and commands success, but which desires it and commands it as an incident to acting with decency toward all our fellow-citizens. No business community can permanently succeed if the average member of it does not possess a certain quantity of high ideals; and, gentlemen, there is not a business man of large experience here who will not agree with me when I say that. Permanent success will come to the business community where the average man’s word can be trusted, where the average man himself can be trusted in dealing with his fellows. Just as that is true of the average business community, so it is true of the Nation as a whole.

The Nation must act in a spirit which gives full recognition to the national demands, which is not in the least Quixotic, which sees the need of working for the interests of the average individual of the Nation, but in a spirit which recognizes duties as well as rights, which recognizes this in our internal affairs, which recognizes it in our external affairs.

This leads me up to a subject concerning which[362] I wish not merely to congratulate, but on behalf of the Nation to thank those present; the part played by the Merchants’ Club in initiating, and with the aid of the Commercial Club in carrying to a successful conclusion, the movement which resulted in the establishment of a naval training station here on Lake Michigan. I need not say to those of you who know anything at all about me that I believe in a big navy; and I hope I need not say that I believe in it not as a provocative to war, but as a guarantee of peace. I want to see every section of this country realize that the navy stands for the whole country, and that the people of the seacoast are not a particle more interested in it than the people of the Mississippi Valley. There were two sides to the establishment of that naval station here, where it was established. In the first place, we get, as perhaps some of you know, a peculiarly valuable class of recruit for the navy from the Mississippi Valley and the region adjoining the Great Lakes. In the next place, I wanted to see part of the establishment of the navy have its local habitation and name here in the great West. So I feel that this organization conferred a favor not only upon the city of Chicago, but an advantage to the whole country in what it did toward securing the establishment of that station here where it has been established.

I do not think that it is now very necessary to make an argument for an efficient navy. We are so fortunate that in this country we can get along with a very small army, an army which relatively to the[363] population of the country is smaller than the police force of many of our great cities. With the navy the case is different We have not the choice, gentlemen, as to whether or not this country will play a great part in the world. We can not help playing a great part. All we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill. That is the decision we have to make. We can decide whether we will do badly or well, but we can not decide whether the part is to be played. We have got to play it. We can not abandon our position on the Monroe Doctrine. We can not abandon the Panama Canal. We can not abandon the duties that have come to us from the mere fact of our growth as a Nation, from the growth of our commercial interests in the East and in the West, on the Atlantic and in the Pacific. I earnestly hope that with the added responsibility will come not merely a growth of power to meet that responsibility, but a growth of mental attitude on our part toward these new duties. If there is one thing that ought to be more offensive to every good American than almost anything else it is the habit of speaking with a loose tongue, speaking offensively about foreign nations, or adopting an ill-considered and irritating attitude toward any one of them. In private life there is no one to whom we rightly object more than to the man who is continually offending and insulting his neighbors; except to the man who in addition to doing that then fails to make good. I hope to see our foreign policy conducted always in a spirit not merely of scrupulous[364] regard for the rights of others, but of scrupulous courtesy toward others; and at the same time to see us keep prepared so that there is no position that we take in either hemisphere that once taken we can not stand on. With this in order not only is it important that the Government officials should behave themselves, but it is also important that private citizens should. The public speaker, the writer in the press, the legislator, the public servant, all owe it to this country to behave with the courtesy toward others which we would like to have extended toward us; but to behave with that courtesy whether it is extended in return or not. Outsiders can not hurt us by being insolent so long as we behave ourselves. What they say is of no consequence to us compared to what we say to them. Hard words will not hurt us if we will only disregard them. Let them say anything; but let us go on and build up the navy. That will be a much greater provocative to friendship and respect than any amount of recrimination. I have a right to appeal to the men here before me, to the men who in so many different walks take the lead in this great city, to aid in consistently building up just that type of foreign policy, a foreign policy under which we shall make the name of the United States Government a symbol on the one hand, as it ought to be, for the just and proper insistence upon its own rights, but also a symbol for a disinterested and generous willingness to treat all other nations, all other powers, with just and with frank courtesy and good-will, and to make it evident[365] that in this country’s foreign policy it recognizes its duty toward the weak just as much as its responsibility to the strong.

Mr. President, Mr. Toastmaster, and you, my Hosts:

Our country is governed, and under existing circumstances can only be governed, under the party system, and that should mean, and that will mean, when we have a sufficient number of people who take the point of view that Judge Dickinson takes, that there shall be a frank and manly opposition of party to party, of party man to party man, combined with an equally frank refusal to conduct a party contest in any such way as to give good Americans cause for regret because of what is said before election, when compared with what is said after election. The frankest opposition to a given man or a given party on questions of public policy not only can be, but almost always should be, combined with the frankest recognition of the infinitely greater number of points of agreement than of the points of difference. I have accepted your kind and generous invitation to come before you this evening, because the longer I am in public life the more firmly I am convinced that the great bulk of the questions of most importance before us as a people are questions which we can best decide not from the standpoint of republicanism or democracy, but from the standpoint[366] of the interests of the average American citizen, whether Republican or Democrat.

This is true of both foreign and domestic questions. Our political differences should, and in the great majority of cases do, disappear at the water’s edge. When I had to choose a man to represent to a peculiar degree the interests of this Government in one of the most important foreign negotiations of recent years—that concerning the Alaskan boundary—I chose the best lawyer, one of the ablest public men, and one of the most fair-minded patriots that could be found in the country; and the fact that he was of opposite political faith did not interfere with Judge Dickinson’s doing that work well. That was a question that concerned the United States—all of the United States. Most questions that come up in Washington are questions that go much deeper than party, are questions that affect the whole country, and the man would be indeed unfit for the position of President who did not feel that when he held that office he held it in the most emphatic sense as the representative of all the people.

One of the works that Uncle Sam has on hand just at present is digging the Panama Canal; and it is going to be dug. It is going to be dug honestly and as cheaply as is compatible with efficiency; but with the efficiency first. I wanted Congress to give me power to remodel the commission. It did not do it. So I remodeled it anyhow, purely in the exercise of my executive functions. I made up my mind[367] this time that I was not going to make the slightest effort to represent different sections of the country on that commission, that I was going to have the whole country represented, by putting the best man I could get in any given position, without the slightest regard to where he came from; and while it was an accident, still I may mention it as a fortunate accident that the two most important positions were filled from Illinois—Shonts and Wallace are both from Illinois.

These are external questions, as regards which the interests of the whole country and not the interests of any party or any section of the country must be considered by the President. So it is with certain of our great internal policies.

Among the vital questions that have come up for solution, because of the extraordinary industrial development of this country, as of all the modern world, are the questions affecting capital and labor as regards each other, and the questions resulting from the effect upon the public of the organization into great masses of both capital and labor. I believe thoroughly in each kind of organization, but I recognize that if either kind of organization does what is wrong, the increase in its power for efficiency that has resulted from the combination means the increase in its power to do harm; and that, therefore, corporation—that is, organized capital—and union—that is, organized labor—must alike be held to a peculiar responsibility to the public at large, and that from each alike we have the right to[368] demand not only obedience to the law, but service to the public.

There are two sides to what I have said, and we are very apt to hear only insistence upon one side—sometimes insistence upon one side, sometimes insistence upon the other, but not as often as we should insistence upon both sides.

I take up first the question of organized capital. When this Nation was created, such a thing as a modern corporation not only did not exist, but could not be imagined. This is especially true of the great modern corporations engaged in interstate commerce. A century ago the highways of commerce were exactly such as they had been from the days of the dawn of civilization on the banks of the Nile and in Mesopotamia. All that could be done by waterways and by roads for wheeled vehicles drawn by animal power had been developed to a very marked degree; but sails, oars, wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden were, as they had been for many thousands of years, the only means of commerce, the only methods by which individuals or corporations engaged in commerce could act. Under such circumstances the fathers and founders of this Republic could not foresee, and therefore, doubly, could not provide for, the conditions of the present day. We now have the great highways of commerce of an entirely different kind. The waterway, the road for wheeled vehicles, have sunk into absolute insignificance compared with the railway. We therefore have for the first time in history a highway[369] for the commerce of all the people under the control of a private individual or private corporation. Now, gentlemen, let me in the first place insist upon this fact, that we should keep ever before us that the men who have built up the great railroad systems of this country, like the men who have built up the other great industries of this country, have as a rule (there are exceptions, but as a rule) made their fortunes as incidents to benefiting and not to harming the country. As a rule benefit and not harm has come from their efforts, and in making fortunes for themselves they have done good to all of us. We have all benefited by the talents of the great captains of industry. I am speaking, as I say, as a rule, with full knowledge of the exceptions to what I say, but disregarding those exceptions in making a general statement. We can not afford to do damage to those men or to those corporations, because in the first place we can not afford to do injustice to any man, rich or poor; in the next place, because to do such damage to them would mean widespread damage among the wage-workers and among the general public. All of this that I have said I wish kept in mind steadily in appreciating what I am about to say; for while acknowledging in the frankest manner the benefits that have come from the development of these great industrial enterprises, I also feel that we must recognize that the time has now come when it is essential in the interests of the public that there should be, and be exercised, an effective power of supervision[370] and regulation over them in the interests of the public.

The State can properly deal with the corporations doing business within its own limits. The State can not deal at all with corporations doing business in many different States, and it is an absurdity at once ludicrous and harmful to leave it in the power of one State to create a corporation of gigantic size which shall do all its work in a number of other States, and perhaps with the scantiest regard for their laws.

Personally, I believe that the Federal Government must take an increasing control over corporations. It is better that that control should increase by degrees than that it should be assumed all at once. But there should be, and I trust will be, no halt in the steady progress of assuming such national control. The first step toward it should be the adoption of a law conferring upon some executive body the power of increased supervision and regulation of the great corporations engaged primarily in interstate commerce of the railroads. My views on that subject could not have been better expressed than they were expressed yesterday by Secretary Taft in Washington, and as they were expressed by the Attorney-General in his communication to the Senate Committee a couple of weeks ago. I believe that the representatives of the Nation—that is, the representatives of all the people—should lodge in some executive body the power to establish a maximum rate, the power to have that rate go into effect practically[371] immediately, and the power to see that the provisions of the law apply in full to companies owning private cars and private tracks, just as much as the railroads themselves. The courts will retain, and should retain, no matter what the Legislature does, the power to interfere and upset any action that is confiscatory in its nature. I am well aware that the action of such a body as I have spoken of may stop far short of confiscation, and yet do great damage. In other words, I am well aware that to give this power means the possibility that the power may be abused. That possibility we must face. Any power strong enough, any power which could be granted sufficiently great to be efficient, would be sufficiently great to be harmful if abused. That is true of the power of taxation. It is perfectly possible for the body that has the power of taxation intrusted to it to use it viciously and harmfully against certain interests or certain classes. Nevertheless, the power must exist. The power must be lodged in the representatives of the people. So it is with the power of which I speak. It must exist; it must be lodged in some body which is to give expression to the needs of the people as a whole. The fact that it is possible that the power may be abused is not, and can not be, an argument against placing it where we shall have a right to expect that it will be used fairly toward all.

One thing I wish definitely understood. If the power is granted me to create such a board, such a commission, or to continue in power, if I so desire,[372] a commission or board with increased powers, I shall strive to appoint and retain men who will do exactly the same justice to the railroads as they will exact from the railroads. False hopes are always raised by any measure of reform, because there are always people who expect the impossible. If the measure which I advocate is enacted into law, a good many people will expect that it will bring the millennium considerably nearer than will prove to be the case. The men whom I appoint to execute that law will be, so far as my ability to choose them exists, men who will no more be frightened by an even sincere popular clamor into doing an act of injustice to any great corporation than they will be frightened, on the other hand, into refraining from doing an act of justice because it is against the interests of some great corporation. In other words, I shall strive to see that that branch of the Government with its increased power is administered as every branch of the Government ought to be administered—that is, in a spirit of striving to do exact justice to the men of great means just as much as, and no more than, to the man of small means.

Now for the other side of the question. There have been a great many republics before our time, and again and again these republics have split upon the rock of disaster. The greatest and most dangerous rock in the course of any republic is the rock of class hatred. Sometimes in the past the republic became a republic in which one class grew to dominate over another class, so that for loyalty to the republic[373] was substituted loyalty to a class. The result was in such case inevitable. It meant disaster and ultimately the downfall of the republic, and it mattered not one whit which class became dominant; it mattered not one whit whether the poor plundered the rich or the rich exploited the poor. In either case, just as soon as the republic became one in which one class substituted loyalty to that class for loyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand. No true patriot will fail to do everything in his power to prevent the growth of any such spirit in this country.

This Government is not and never shall be a government of a plutocracy. This Government is not, and never shall be, a Government of a mob. I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern industrialism; but I believe that they should be so supervised and regulated that they shall act for the interest of the community as a whole. So I believe in unions. I am proud of the fact that I am an honorary member of one union. But I believe that the union, like the individual, must be held to a strict accountability to the power of the law.

Mr. Mayor, as President of the United States, and therefore as representative of the people of this country, I give you, as a matter of course, my hearty support in upholding the law, in keeping order, in putting down violence, whether by a mob or by an individual. There need not be the slightest apprehension in the heart of the most timid that ever the mob spirit will triumph in this country. Those immediately[374] responsible for dealing with the trouble must, as I know you feel, exhaust every effort in so dealing with it before a call is made upon any outside body. But if ever the need arises, back of the city stands the State, and back of the State stands the Nation.

There, gentlemen, is a point upon which all good Americans are one. They are all one in the conviction, in the firm determination that this country shall remain in the future as it has been in the past, a country of liberty and justice expressed through the forms of law; a country in which the will of the people is supreme, but in which that will finds its expression as provided for in the Constitution of the United States, and of the several States that go to make up our Nation.

Mr. Shea:

We are here as a committee to present to you a statement stating our position in this controversy between the Employers’ Association and the Teamsters’ Association. We have understood that they had asked your aid for bringing troops into Chicago. We want to present our position to you. Mr. Quinn has the memorial.

Mr. Quinn:

It will take about ten minutes to read this. Perhaps we had better leave it with you.

[375]

The President, after reading the memorial:

Mr. Shea, Mr. Quinn, and Gentlemen:

I have read the petition you have presented to me, the conclusion of which is a request for a hearing before any action be taken by the Federal President, relating to the Chicago strike situation. As yet no suggestion of any kind has come to me from any source that I should take any action. Of the merits of the case I am wholly ignorant. I have no knowledge of what the situation is, or of what steps should properly be taken to end it. I feel, however, that in view of one statement, or series of statements, in your letter, I ought to say this: I regret that you should have in the letter spoken at all of the use of the Federal army as you have there spoken. No request has been made to me for action by the Federal Government, but at the same time, Mr. Shea, as you have in this communication to me brought up that fact, I want to say one thing with all the emphasis in my power. In upholding law and order, in doing what he is able to do to suppress mob violence in any shape or way, the Mayor of Chicago, Mayor Dunne, has my hearty support. I am glad to be able to say this to you gentlemen before I say it to any other body. Now let me repeat that I know nothing of the facts of the situation. I know nothing of the rights or wrongs of the points at issue. What I have to say is based purely upon what I regard as the unfortunate phrasing of a letter presented to the President of the United States. I have not been[376] called upon to interfere in any way, but you must not misunderstand my attitude. In every effort of Mayor Dunne to prevent violence by mobs or individuals, to see that the laws are obeyed and that order is preserved, he has the hearty support of the President of the United States, and in my judgment he should have that of every good citizen of the United States.

Now, gentlemen, it has been a great pleasure to see you, and I am glad to have had the chance to say this to you.

Mr. Quinn:

Mr. President, what prompted us to come to you with this statement is that for the past two or three weeks there has been a continual howl for the Federal army. I have known you long enough to know that you would not respond to a one-sided demand, that you will not respond until you have thoroughly investigated the case.

The President:

Mr. Quinn, as yet the Mayor has not made any appeal to the Governor, and therefore, of course, the Governor has made none to me; and as yet nothing in the situation has demanded action by me.

Mr. Shea:

Let me explain that. The Governor has been requested by the committee of the employers to demand Federal troops. The statement has been made in the papers. I immediately telegraphed Governor[377] Deneen that we would allow him to appoint a commission.

Regardless of that I want to make our position known to you in regard to mob violence. Every time a mob congregates, every act of violence performed by either a union man or a sympathizer, it reacts to our detriment. I believe that we are skilled workmen enough in our particular craft to demonstrate to our business men of Chicago that it is to their interest to employ us. There is nothing at stake but the re-employment of citizens of Chicago who have been forced out of their positions. Acts of violence meet with the condemnation of the officials, both local and national, of our organization. It does not meet with the sympathies of our organization. I simply want to say that we want to be fair, to preserve the business interests of Chicago, realizing that the prosperity of our employers is our prosperity.

The President:

Mr. Shea, I can only repeat what I have said. I am a believer in unions. I am an honorary member of one union. But the union must obey the law just as the corporation must obey the law, just as every man, rich or poor, must obey the law. As yet no action whatever has been called for by me, and most certainly if action is called for by me I shall try to do exact justice under the law to every man, so far as I have power. But the first essential is the preservation of law and order, the suppression of violence by mobs or individuals.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Commissioner, and you, my Fellow Citizens, and, above all, you who took part in the great war in which the man whose statue is raised to-day won for himself and his country renown and honor:

Day before yesterday I listened to a sermon in which the preacher, dwelling upon the exercises to be held throughout the Union to-day, preached on the text which tells of the altar raised by command of Moses to commemorate the victory gained by the children of Israel over the wild tribes of the desert who sought to bar their march toward the promised land. Amalek came out against Israel and they fought all day, while Aaron and Hur upheld the hands of Moses until as night fell the sun went down on Israel’s triumph. Then they raised an altar to “Jehovah is my banner”; to Jehovah, who stood as the exponent of the principle for which Israel warred. They raised it to the principle of righteousness, which alone can justify any war or any struggle. Mr. Mayor, that is the thought that you developed in the excellent address to which we have just listened; that we meet to-day to commemorate a great victory, the triumph of the cause of union and liberty, not primarily because it was a mere victory, but because it was a victory for righteousness[379] and for the peace and liberty and eternal spiritual welfare of mankind.

I see before me here men who won high honor serving as comrades in arms of General Slocum, and I know that there exists in the Union no men who will appreciate more the fact that now, forty years after the war, the crowning triumph of what they did is to be found in the fact that we have a genuinely reunited country, a country in which the man who wore the blue stretches out the hand of loyal friendship to his erstwhile foe, his now devoted friend and fellow-countryman, the man who wore the gray. A short while ago I passed through the great State of Texas. Wherever I stopped in that great State I was greeted by representatives of the Grand Army marching side by side with or intermingled with men clad in the gray uniform that showed that they had fought in the armies of the Confederacy. They had tested one another’s worth on the stricken fields, they knew each that the other had been ready when the hour of supreme appeal came to show his truth by his endeavors. Now these men, now you and those like you, now the men in blue and the men in gray, know that they leave to their children and their children’s children as a heritage of honor forever the memory of the great deeds done alike by those who fought under Grant and by those who fought under Lee; for we, because of the very fact that the Union triumphed now have the right to feel a like pride in the valor and devotion of those who valiantly fought against[380] the stars in their courses, no less than of those who finally saw their efforts and their sufferings crowned by triumph.

Think of it, my fellow-countrymen! Think of what a thrice-blessed fortune is ours, that the greatest war that the nineteenth century saw after the close of the Napoleonic struggles has left, not as most wars inevitably do and must leave, memories of bitterness and anger and shame to offset the memories of glory, memories which make the men of one side hang their heads because the men of the other side walk exultingly; that it has left not such dreadful memories, but instead to victor and vanquished alike, after the temporary soreness is over, the same right to feel the proudest satisfaction in the fact that the Union was saved, and the utmost pride in the honor, the gallantry, the devotion to the right as each side had given it the light to see the right, shown alike by those who warred under one banner and by those who warred under the other.

I congratulate the people of Brooklyn, not primarily upon raising this statue, because that they ought to do, but upon the opportunity, upon the chance of having it to raise. I congratulate them upon the good fortune of having a fellow-citizen who in war and in peace alike served his people so well as to make it their duty, not so much to him as to themselves, to erect this statue that it might serve as a lesson for the generations to come. And, my fellow-citizens, I am sure we all realize the peculiar appropriateness of having the statue of General[381] Slocum received on behalf of the city of New York by its chief magistrate, whose father was General Slocum’s illustrious commander.

Surely there is need for me to say but little in emphasis of what has been set forth before I began to speak as to the prime significance of General Slocum’s career. He was a fine soldier, a gallant and able commander. Once the war was over he turned as whole-heartedly to the pursuits of peace as he had during the war turned to the strife of arms. General Slocum was one of those men on whose career we are fortunately able to dwell in its entirety. We do not have to dwell with emphasis on part of it because we do not care to speak of another part of it. We are able to point to General Slocum as the type of what a decent American citizen should be, as a man who was an example in his family life, an example in his business relations, an honest and upright public servant, no less than a tried and fearless soldier.

Now I want our people to remember the two sides of the lesson taught by General Slocum’s life. A successful war for unrighteousness is the most dreadful of all things; it is the thing that sets back more than aught else the course of civilization. But no people worth preserving ever existed or will exist that was not able to fight well if the need arose. So it is with the individual. The man who possesses great ability and great courage unaccompanied by the moral sense, a courage and ability unguided by the stern purpose to do what is just and upright,[382] that man is rendered by the very fact of his courage and ability only so much the greater menace to the community in which he unfortunately dwells. We can not afford as a people ever to forget for one moment that ability, farsightedness, iron resolution, perseverance, willingness to do and dare, are qualities to be admired only if they are put at the service of the right, at the service of decency and of justice. The man who possesses those qualities and does not shape his course by a fundamental and underlying moral principle is a menace to each and all of us; and thrice foolish, thrice wicked is the other man who condones his moral shortcomings because of his intellectual or physical strength and prowess.

But it is equally important to remember that no amount of good intention, no amount of sweetness and light, no amount of appreciation of decency avails in the least in the rough work of the world as we find it, unless back of the honesty of purpose, back of the decency of life and thought, lies the power that makes a man a man. This is true of the individual and it is true of the Nation. It is absolutely essential that this Nation, if it is to hold the position in the future that it has held in the past, must act not only within but without its own borders in a spirit of justice and of large generosity toward all other peoples. We owe this as an obligation to ourselves, we owe it as an obligation to all mankind. More and more as we increase in strength I hope to see a corresponding increase in[383] the sober sense of responsibility which shall prevent us either injuring or insulting any other people. You may notice that I said “insulting” as well as “injuring.” If there is one quality sometimes shown among us which is not commendable it is the habit of speaking loosely about foreign powers, foreign races. You do not need any of you to be told that in private life you will often resent an insult quite as much as an injury; and our public speakers and writers need to steadily keep before their minds the thought that no possible good can come to us by speaking offensively of any one else; while trouble may come.

It has been well said that the surest way for a nation to invite disaster is to be opulent, aggressive, and unarmed. Now, we are opulent, and I hope we shall remain so. I trust that we shall never be aggressive unless aggression is not merely justified, but demanded; demanded either by our own self-respect or by the interests of mankind. But above all, let us remember that to be aggressive in speech or act, and not to be armed, invites not merely disaster, but the contempt of mankind.

Brooklyn not only furnished valiant soldiers to the Civil War, but it furnished in time of peace a most excellent Secretary of the Navy of the United States, General Tracy. If our navy is good enough, we have a long career of peace before us. The only likelihood of trouble ever coming to us as a nation will arise if we let our navy become too small or inefficient. A first-class navy—first-class in point[384] of size, above all first-class in point of efficiency of the individual units acting as units and in combination—is the surest and the cheapest guarantee of peace. I should think that any man looking at what is happening and what has happened abroad and in our own history during the past few years, must be indeed blind if he can not read that lesson clearly.

General Slocum did his first great public service when the crisis called not primarily for the softer and milder, but for the sterner and harder virtues; and we can not afford in this day of material luxury, in this day when civilization tends to make life easy, to ignore those hard and stern virtues. In the workaday world as it is, not only in war, but in private life and in public life alike, a man has to have toughness of fibre or he can not put into effect even the best of intentions. We can not afford to let the generation that is coming grow up with the feeling that any quality will serve as a substitute for the old, essential qualities of manliness in a man and womanliness in a woman.

Much, very much, has been done in this country by education. No one can overstate the debt that this country is under to the educators; but in taking advantage of all the improved methods let us not forget that there are certain qualities which are not new, which are eternal because they are eternally true, the failure to develop which will cause a loss that can not be offset by any merely intellectual or mental gain. A sound body is a first-class thing, a sound mind is an even better thing, but the thing[385] that counts for most in the individual as in the Nation is character—the sum of those qualities which make a man a good man and a woman a good woman. You men of the Civil War, you men to whom this country owes more than to any others, no matter how great the service of those others may be (because to you this country owes its life), you won the place you did, you won for this country its salvation, because you had in you those qualities which in the aggregate we know by the name of character, the qualities which made you put material gain, material well-being, not merely below, but immeasurably below devotion to an ideal, when the crisis called for showing your manhood.

You went to the war leaving those behind who would make more money, but carrying with you in your hearts the honor and the future of a mighty Nation. You had, in the first place, the right spirit, and then you had the quality of making that spirit evident in the time of need. If you had not had patriotism, devotion to the country and to the flag, you could have done nothing. But you could not have done much more if your patriotism, your devotion to the flag, had not been backed up by the power to show that your metal rang true in battle.

You showed in times that tried men’s souls what this country has a right to expect from its sons. You had the supreme good fortune to test your manhood in one of the two great crises of the Nation’s history, the great crisis in which the Nation was born in the days of 1776, and the no less great crisis[386] in which the Nation was saved by the men of 1861. You have left us not merely a reunited country, but you have left us the glorious heritage of the memory of the exploits, of the qualities by which the country was left reunited.

Our days have fallen, for our good fortune, in times of peace. We have not had to show the qualities that you showed in the dark years that closed in the sunburst of Appomattox; but if we are to leave undimmed to our children the heritage that you left to us, we must show in peace, and, should the need ever arise, in war also, the qualities that you showed; the qualities that make it now the pleasantest of all tasks for a public servant who appreciates the greatness of America to come on an occasion like this and see the people of a great city dedicate a monument in honor of a great citizen, who, at every point of his career, illustrated what the name American should be when it is used in its highest, its deepest, and its best significance.

Officers and Enlisted Men of the United States Navy; and you, Friends of the Navy, for if you are good Americans, you can be nothing else:

I made up my mind to-day that, although there were very many invitations extended to me in addition to that because of which I first agreed to come here, there was just one which I could not refuse,[387] and that was to come to this building and meet you here. I do not have to tell you that I believe in the navy of the United States with all my heart, and that I believe in that which counts most in the navy, the officers and enlisted men, the man behind the gun; the man in the conning tower, in the gun turret, in the engine room, the man, wherever he is, if he is doing his duty.

We owe a peculiar debt of gratitude to those who have taken the lead in securing this building. The people of the United States should make it their especial duty to see to the welfare, moral even more than physical, of the men upon whose exertions, upon whose skill, training, and prowess, upon whose character in time of crisis the honor of the entire Nation will depend. All respect is due to those who, led by Miss Gould, have erected this building, who have given expression to the spirit which lies behind the building up of everything of this nature. It shows that we are fortunately past the period when we are afraid that if we make a man too decent he will not fight well enough.

I have had a good deal of experience in civil life, and I have never yet found any job in civil life to which, other things being equal, I did not prefer to appoint a man who had seen service in the navy or army of the United States; because he has learned, if he is worth his salt, certain qualities which double and treble his value in whatever position he may be put. Therefore, not only for his sake do we owe it to him to see that he has every[388] chance to lead a wholesome and manly life, but we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the Nation of which we are all part, to see that that man’s capacities for good are given the fullest chance for development. And much though I believe in the Y. M. C. A., and in kindred organizations generally, I believe in them most when they take such shape as this.

Now, a special word to you upon whom so heavy a responsibility rests; because it depends upon the way you do your duty in peace as to whether or not, should ever the need for war arise, our flag will receive credit or discredit at your hands, or at the hands of your successors. I can not too often say, in speaking to civilians, what every naval man knows, that in battle those win who have prepared best for the battle beforehand. I have seen to-day men who fought at Manila and men who fought off Santiago. In both places we won, and we won hands down. We won because the shots that hit were those that counted; because the men on our ships knew how to handle them alone and in squadron, knew how to get the best speed out of them, and how to do decent shooting with them. I want you to notice I said decent shooting. I did not say it was first-class. I think most of you are doing first-class shooting now; and I would be mightily ashamed of you if you did not do better than was done seven years ago; and I shall be ashamed of you if you don’t do even better in the future.

Nothing has given Americans a better right to satisfaction than the way in which the target practice[389] of the average American ship has improved, until I think we can fairly say that there are certain gun crews and certain individual gun pointers who have reached as high a degree of excellence as it is possible for any man to reach. The gun crew counts for more than its individual pointer. You might have all the individual shots you could gather, and they would not be worth a rap if they could not act together, if they did not act so as to subordinate in the mind of each man the success of that particular man to the success for which they all stood.

More and more our people are waking up to the need of a navy. I think in view of events now happening all over the world that we can count upon having Congress continue to build up our navy. It is all-important that we should have ships, the best in hull, the best in armor, the best in armament, of any nation in the world. But there is something that is more important still, and that is the character of you men to whom I am speaking here, and of your comrades in the navy. You can do nothing without the proper training, but the training will not do very much if there is not the right stuff in you to train. I wish a big navy; but I wish still more a navy first class for its size. Every warship which is not first class in efficiency becomes in battle not a help to the Nation, but a menace to the national honor. If the officers and enlisted men are not trained to the highest point, then the best ships are useless; and it is better to have none than to have useless ships.

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I believe in the navy of the United States, primarily because I believe in the intelligence, the patriotism, and the fighting edge of the average man of the navy. Often it needs a tragedy to bring out the qualities that are in a man. You remember the dreadful accident aboard the battleship “Missouri” a year ago. Lamentable and terrible though it was, there were things connected with it that should make every American feel a sense of proud confidence in the officers and enlisted men in whom Uncle Sam confides his honor. When that accident occurred in the turret there were some twenty minutes when every man of that ship knew that any moment the ship might sink. But there was not a touch of nervousness among the crew. The men went quietly to their quarters and stayed there and waited, cool and resolute, to meet whatever was in store for them; while those whose duty had put them in the turret, or called them thither, showed genuine heroism. Each man showed the quality which makes us reasonably confident that in war the men at the quickfire guns can hit a torpedo boat; and which makes me reasonably confident that the greater the punishment suffered on the ship, the straighter you would shoot back. In other words, I believe you have the coolness, the courage, the endurance, the fighting edge. When the accident occurred on the “Missouri” it was the turn of the “Texas” to go out to target practice. The “Texas” sent her boats over to find out if the “Missouri” needed help, and found that she did not; then she steamed out to target[391] practice and made the best record at target practice that had been made by any ship in our fleet at that time. The men aboard her were not rattled; what had happened merely keyed them to a higher pitch of effort.

I feel that too much can not be said to impress upon you the all-importance of the work that you are doing. Even if you yourselves never go into battle, you create the spirit which makes those who come after you on the ships able to do their duty in battle. The time of peace is the time when we must make ready for war, should war come. I do not think we will have any war if we have a good enough navy; and I could appeal to any peace society in the land for support upon the ground that every first-class record of target practice in the American navy is a positive provocative of peace and not of war. I am speaking to the men who, more than any others in this country, do most for peace. You are doing it and you will continue to do it only by fitting yourselves in every way to be ready for war, if war should come.

While it is incumbent upon every citizen of this country to do the best that is in him, not only for his own sake, and the sake of those immediately connected with him, but for the sake of the people as[392] a whole, it is especially incumbent upon the graduates of such an institution of learning as this. Every man that graduates here has received something, and something big, for which he has made no return, and for which he can never make any return to the men giving it. It is given in part by those who are dead and in part by those who are living, but who can not ever receive any reward for that they have themselves done. You graduates can not pay back directly to the founder, to the trustees, to the president, to the professors, what they have done in money and effort for you. There is just one way and only one way in which you can give back to the college, to the university, what you have received from the college, from the university, and that is by so leading your lives in point of purpose and in point of efficiency as to reflect honor upon those who did so much for you, to show that they were right in doing what they did, and that their effort was not wasted when they gave you this great chance. Every college man owes a debt of gratitude to his college, which he can pay in but one way, and that is by the way in which through his life he makes that college stand in the estimation of the public.

It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer. Of course, if the dream is not followed by action, then it is a bubble; it has merely served to divert the man from doing something. But great action, action that is really great, can not take place if the man has it not in his brain to think great thoughts,[393] to dream great dreams. As has been so well pointed out to-day, the marvelous rise of Germany in the world of industry and of commerce, no less than of art and of letters, has been due to the fact that the German is trained to have high ideals, and yet to treat these ideals in practical fashion. I was immensely struck, as I think all of us must have been struck, by the way in which, a few weeks ago, our fellow-citizens of German birth or descent took part in commemorating the life and writings of Schiller. I feel strongly, as the president of Amherst has phrased it, that here in this country, where we are amalgamating into one people many different peoples of many different tongues, one of the great works to which we should devote our attention is trying to keep what each of these peoples can give of value to our composite national life. Each race that comes here, each element, can contribute something of value, can usually contribute very much of value; and it would be a good thing for all of our people if we should shape our development so that it would seem as natural to us as it does to the people of Germany to recognize the incalculable debt of a nation to a writer like Schiller, to a man who has done work for the public, for the nation, for all mankind, upon which no price can be put. From Germany this country has learned much. Germany has contributed a great element to the blood of our people, and it has given the most marked trend ever given to our scholastic and university system, to the whole system of training students[394] and scholars. In taking what we should from Germany, from this great kindred nation, I wish that we could take especially the idealism which renders it natural to them to celebrate such an event as Schiller’s life and writings; and also the keen, practical common-sense which enables them to turn their idealistic spirit into an instrument for producing the most perfect military and industrial organizations that this world has ever seen.

Mr. Mabie has said that character counts most; of course it counts most. I believe in a sound body, I believe in a sound mind. I believe in character a great deal more than in either; and I believe in both the body and the mind chiefly as the foundation for the character. I remember when I was Governor, and had some correspondence with President Hall, I found to my great pleasure that he took the views that I did on the subject of boxing, he feeling as strongly as I felt that we did not want to produce in institutions of learning a race of nice, clever, well-bred young men, who can not hold their own in the rough work of the world. I do not give a snap of my finger for the young fellow who is afraid of being hurt physically, or in any other way; he is not going to amount to anything in after life. Each of you as you lead your lives will be hurt a good deal; if you have any pluck in you at all you will face the punishment, take it, and win out in spite of it. I want to see the physical development, more because of its moral side than for any other reason. I want to see the intellect developed only in so far as it[395] is controlled by conscience, by a sense of right and wrong. The better educated a man is the more dangerous he is if he has no conscience. In these universities the benefit comes from the education of a man’s character as well as of his intellect.

I hope most earnestly for the day when we shall see peace prevail among the nations of mankind; and peace, industrial as well as military, prevail within the nations themselves. No man in public position can, under penalty of forfeiting the right to the respect of those whose regard he most values, fail as the opportunity comes to do all that in him lies for peace. But peace of a valuable type comes not to the man who craves it because he is afraid, but to the man who demands it because it is right. The peace granted contemptuously to the weakling and the coward is but a poor boon after it has been granted.

We must keep our minds upon the essentials and not upon the non-essentials. In 1861 there were people who cried peace, peace, who said that any peace, no matter how shameful, was preferable to the worst of all wars—a fratricidal war; and if those people had had their way we should now be hanging our heads in shame. We should now be feeling that the country founded by Washington, the country that at that time was perpetuated by Lincoln, had gone down in the wreck of irretrievable disaster. We got peace then, peace forever, as I believe, in this country, because there were a sufficient number of men who felt as President Wright[396] felt and went to the war to fight for permanent peace. I have scant patience with the brawler, the quarreler, the swashbuckler, and I have a little less for the anæmic person, either of body or soul, who believes that a nation any more than an individual can afford to put peace before justice. Put justice first; it will generally lead to peace; but follow it wherever it leads.

In closing, let me say just one more thing. The same homely virtues apply in managing the life of a nation as in managing an individual’s life. All the statesman needs to do is to exercise common-sense and stick as close to the Decalogue and the Golden Rule as imperfect human nature will permit. In other words, he needs to carry himself in public life as he would in private life, and never permit the mistake being made of divorcing public from private morality any more than of divorcing domestic from business morality. The man is a poor citizen, no matter how high he stands in the church, whose allegiance to the teachings of the church is limited to his home and to Sunday, and is not carried into his work or his business. The man is a poor citizen who does not do his best to see that the affairs of his country, both as regards the country’s attitude to other nations, and as regards the country’s dealings with matters vital to its own citizens within its limits, are managed along the same lines—the old simple lines of honesty, courage, and common-sense.

Father, Bishop, Alumni of Holy Cross, and you, My Fellow-Citizens, men and women of Worcester, of Massachusetts:

It is a pleasure to me to be the guest of Holy Cross. It is eminently characteristic of your State, and of all our Nation, that we should have institutions of learning like this, in which the effort is constant to train not merely the body and the mind, but the soul of the man, so that he may be a good American, a good citizen of our great country.

In this country of ours we are developing a new type of nationality, a type kin to each of the various Old World races from which it in part springs, and yet separate from all. Each stock that comes here can furnish something of permanent value to the country as a whole; and from each stock we have the right to expect the furnishing of that element. Here in Holy Cross College I want to say one word spoken I trust to ears willing to hear it. During the last three years I have happened, by chance, to grow peculiarly interested in the great subject of Celtic literature, and I feel that it is not a creditable thing to the American Republic, which has in its citizenship so large a Celtic element, that we should leave it to the German scholars and students to be our instructors in Celtic literature. I want to see in Holy Cross, in Harvard, in all the other universities where we can get the chairs endowed, chairs for the[398] study of Celtic literature. A century and over ago the civilized world, which had been looking down upon old Norse poetry as the production of a barbarous race, suddenly awoke to the wealth of beauty contained in the Scandinavian sagas. If I am not greatly in error we are now about to see a similar awakening to the wealth of beauty contained in the Celtic sagas; and I wish to see American institutions of learning take the lead in that awakening.

Mr. President, and you of Williams:

It is a high honor that I have received at your hands, and I deeply appreciate it. I appreciate it particularly because it is my good fortune to find on the platform with me so many men to whom I am knit by the bonds of personal friendship and of work for a common end. I have listened with real pleasure to the three discourses to-day; and of course the first was in my line of business.

Before speaking of what I had intended to say here to-day, I want to say a word just suggested by that address on “idealism in politics.” I wish to see every graduate of this college, and every graduate of every other college in the land, feel (and I thank the speaker for the way he emphasized it) the need of ideals in business and in law, quite as much as in politics. I wish to see every graduate do all that in him lies to uphold a standard of practical[399] idealism in after life. I was struck and amused by the sentence in which the speaker said that at present if you spoke of ideals, you met with the answer, “Oh, yes, that is very pretty in theory, but it won’t work in Troy!” There are two sides to that. In the first place, it is a bad thing for Troy if Troy will not stand idealism; and in the next place it is a poor type of ideal that is of no use in Troy. I want you to remember the last just as much as the first. I want you to have high ideals, but practical ideals. I do not want you ever to get into a frame of mind which we see pretty often in the world at large, which believes that you can only have either high or fantastic ideals, or else low and practical ones. If you have to choose, of course I would a great deal rather see you choose high and fantastic ideals than low and practical ones, because the last are a detriment to the Nation at large, while the first are merely of no earthly consequence. If you have to choose between being noxious and being merely harmless, of course, choose to be harmless. But do not expect very great gratitude from any person interested in the country if you choose merely to be harmless. If you choose to have high ideals so fantastic that they are of no use when you try to apply them in practical life, do not for one moment delude yourself into the belief that to have these fantastic ideals shows that you are more virtuous than the man who has not got them. It merely shows that you are more foolish. Have a high ideal and try to realize it, measurably, within[400] your powers, as, immeasurably and with tremendous power, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington strove to realize their ideals. Have high ideals, and then try to realize them in practical shape. I do not want to see you go out of this institution of learning with an ideal impossible to put into effect, because I am afraid if you leave it with such an ideal and find that this ideal does not work, then instead of realizing that the fault lies in you for having chosen that kind of an ideal, you will think it lies with idealism itself, and will abandon idealism. What I desire to see you feel is that you must have a high ideal; that you must also apply that ideal in practice; and above all things to avoid the state of mind in which you preach an impossible idealism, and make amends for it by not practicing any idealism at all.

It is perfectly true that you want to avoid improper compromises, but you will not get any other, if you are not able to compromise in non-essential matters. I do not suppose there is one of these men on this platform—Mr. Root, Mr. Choate, Senator Crane—who has not disagreed with me on some pretty important points, ranging from the navy to corporations. But we have been able to come to a working agreement. We have been able to establish a basis for common action, not by surrendering on matters of principle, but by agreeing each to subordinate his views on certain points, so that we could secure the efficiency of action that can only come from united effort. I want you to feel that to[401] accomplish anything in after life, you men who are just going out into the great world, you must keep ever before your minds both the desire to work for betterment, and the power to work in combination with your fellows (who will not on all points agree with you) practically to achieve that betterment.

In striving to solve the immediate governmental problems that are before us, we have a right to expect leadership from the men who come out of Williams, who come out of the other colleges and universities of the land; we have a right to expect that leadership to be shown with practical efficiency, in seeing that this Nation does its duty abroad and at home. I wish to see this Nation not merely talk for peace and righteousness, but act for peace and righteousness; but I wish to see this Nation stand for righteousness first and then for peace. I wish to see the Nation stand for the peace of justice, for the righteousness in the attainment of which peace is normally a potent instrument, but for which we must stand, whether peace comes or not. In 1861, there were men who cried peace, peace, when there was no peace; and we have peace now combined with righteousness, and have secured it, as I believe, for ages to come on this continent, because men then dared to draw the sword for righteousness. We have no such terrible crisis as that of 1861 facing us now. On the contrary, we have a series of rather humdrum little crises which it is sometimes exasperating to have to face, but which we must.

The particular small crisis of which I am thinking[402] is that in Santo Domingo last year. I had done everything that in me lay to prevent that crisis coming. All I asked, on behalf of the people of the United States, of Santo Domingo was that it should be good and happy. Without entering into the ethical question, I shall merely say that it was not happy. Finally affairs grew into such shape down there that it was evident that the bonds of society were on the point of dissolution; and the Government of Santo Domingo made an earnest appeal to the Government of the United States and asked that this Nation, out of the abundance of its strength, should strive to help a weaker brother. Now do not forget that that was the appeal, and that it was because of this appeal that we took action. There were of course two motives that influenced us. One was the desire to help the people of Santo Domingo for their own sakes, and the other, and a legitimate one, was to try to fend off the possibility of trouble coming to Santo Domingo, which might bring the United States itself into trouble. The debts of Santo Domingo were so great and the impossibility of paying all those debts so patent that there was a threat of imminent interference by foreign nations to collect the debts due their own citizens. And as the only way of guaranteeing the collection of those debts was to seize the custom-houses, it inevitably meant the seizure nominally, temporarily, of a certain amount of Santo Domingo territory, which would almost inevitably produce a conflict between us and those foreign governments. So, in the interest of[403] the peace of the world, and in the interest of justice to Santo Domingo, we yielded to Santo Domingo’s request and have started to try to help her so to carry on her finances that she may be able to pay all that she can of what she justly owes. In taking that action the Government has proceeded upon the theory that you can not formulate a right, individual or national, without impliedly formulating a responsibility and obligation to go with that right.

We say that in our own interest and in the interest of the peoples of the Western Hemisphere we adhere to the Monroe Doctrine. With the promulgation of that doctrine must go the responsibility that ought by right to accompany it. We can not say that other peoples shall not do what ought to be done, unless we do it ourselves. People answer that trouble and bother will come if we do it. If this Nation refuses to do its duty because it thinks the duty will necessitate encountering some trouble, some bother, then let this Nation cease to claim to be great. I demand that the Nation do its duty, and accept the responsibility that must go with greatness. I ask that the Nation dare to be great, and that in daring to be great it show that it knows how to do justice to the weak no less than to exact justice from the strong. In order to take such a position of being a great Nation, the one thing that we must not do is to bluff. It is perhaps defensible, although I think improper, to say that we will not try to be a big Nation, will not try to play the part of a big Nation or act as such in the world. But the unpardonable[404] thing is to say we will act as a big Nation and then decline to take the necessary steps to make the words good. Therefore, gentlemen, see to it that the navy is built up, and kept at the highest point of efficiency. I ask that, not in the interest of war, but as a guarantee of peace. I believe in the Monroe Doctrine; I believe in the building and maintaining as an open highway for the nations of mankind the Panama Canal. But I had a great deal rather see this country abandon the Monroe Doctrine and give up all thought of building the Panama Canal than to see it attempt to maintain the one and construct the other while refusing to provide the means which can alone render our attitude as a Nation worthy of the respect of the other nations of mankind. Keep on building and maintaining at the highest point of efficiency the United States navy, or quit trying to be a big Nation. Do one or the other.

Now for our internal affairs. I am particularly glad to speak to an audience like this, because I do not know that I shall have the unqualified assent of everybody here. If I address an audience merely of men of very small means or wage-workers, then what I want to tell them, as the most important thing for them to learn, is to avoid an attitude of rancorous envy or hostility toward men of wealth, and above all to remember that the well-being of our social structure rests upon obedience to the law, upon the immediate suppression of mob violence, mob rule, in any form. There can be and must be[405] no paltering with any manifestation of that spirit. Any attempt to override the law by action of individuals or by the action of mobs, whether the attempt comes in connection with labor difficulties or in any other way, must in the interest of the Nation be met fearlessly at the earliest opportunity, and the lawlessness put down.

On the other side, just as we must never allow this Government to be changed into government by a mob, so we must never allow it to be changed into government by a plutocracy. The growth of our modern industrialism has resulted in an altogether disproportionate reward to the man who goes into money-making as his only career. Two evil results follow. One is the result to himself, for, unless he is a man of very strong character, there almost inevitably comes a certain arrogance, or at least a certain carelessness toward the rights of others. The other result is to breed in the minds of poor people an attitude of sullen envy toward men of wealth, which is infinitely more damaging to the people who hold it than any action of the man of wealth could be.

There must be a closer supervision by the Government of great industrial combinations, for of course wealth at present finds its expression through these great industrial combinations. I think it has been a mistake to act on the theory which has shaped most of our legislation, National and State, for the last thirty years, that it is possible to turn back the hands of the clock, to forbid combinations and to restore business to conditions which have absolutely[406] passed away. That can not be done. What we can do is to exercise an efficient supervision over the combinations, so as to see as far as possible that they are used in the interest of and not against the interest of the general public. I do not believe that such supervision can come effectively through the State, nor that it can effectively come through the municipality. Ultimately in the great majority of cases to be effective it must be exercised by the National Government. I trust that in the end means will be found by which the exercise of such control over all the great industrial corporations which are really engaged in and doing an interstate business will be lodged in the hands of the National Government. As the first step to that I hope to see the passage of legislation which will give as an executive, not as a judicial function, to the National Government the supervision of the railroads of the United States which are engaged in interstate commerce, with the power, when a rate is complained of as improper and unjust, to examine that rate, and if the rate should be changed to change it to a given rate, and to have that given rate take practically immediate effect. Now, I am perfectly well aware that there are objections to the proposed change, but in my judgment they are far outweighed by the objections attendant upon not making the change. The fear expressed by excellent people, who no doubt feel it genuinely, that we could not get a commission who would fix all the rates of the railroads of the country, is to my mind much as if they should express fear that[407] you could not get Supreme Court Justices who would be able to fix all the laws. I expect that the commission will be able to pass upon a given rate brought before it, just as the Supreme Court passes upon a given question of law brought before it; and one will prove to be as feasible as the other has proved feasible. That system should be, and in my judgment will be introduced. I believe it will work a measurable betterment for the public. Listen to what I say—a measurable betterment for the public. I do not believe that it will produce the millennium, or anything approaching it; and I am quite certain that some of its most ardent advocates will be disappointed with the results. But I think measurable good will come. It can only come if the officers intrusted with the administration of the law remember that it is exactly as much their duty to protect the railroad from the public as to protect the public from the railroad; to remember that when we say we want justice from the railroad we must, if we are honest, add also a pledge to do justice to the railroad.

The Harvard Spirit

Bishop Lawrence, Brothers, Men of Harvard:

We have just heard from a Harvard man speaking in behalf of the class of ’55. I now speak to you in behalf of the class of ’80. Mr. Choate, you can afford to be generous. A man whose life has been[408] passed in public service such as yours can freely praise those who come after him. I speak in behalf of the younger men here present when I say that we shall count ourselves more than happy if in the future we can approach the service of the men of Harvard in the past. I trust that if any great crisis come again—may Heaven forbid its coming—if ever a great crisis like that of ’61 should come, may the men of that day who have been brought up in Harvard rise level to it as you of the years from ’55 onward rose level to meet the crisis of your day. We heard from Mr. Agassiz what the class of his day did, how many of them went into the Union Army, how some of them went into the gallant Confederate Army, one of the members of which, the great justice from Louisiana, Mr. Justice White, has to-day become an adopted son of Harvard. In Kentucky, a number of years ago, I had a good friend, a man much older than I was, Colonel John Mason Brown. He came back from a trip to the Rocky Mountains just after Sumter had been fired on. His mother brought him the sword that his father had worn with honor in the Mexican War, and said to him, “My son, war has come, and you must draw this sword; I hope you will draw it for the flag under which your father fought; but draw it for one side or the other you must.” We Americans of to-day have the right to feel the same pride in the valor, the devotion, the fealty to the right as it was given them to see the right, of those who wore the gray no less than of those who wore the blue.

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In Bishop Lawrence’s introduction—an introduction which touched me deeply, not only because of the words used, but because of the high value which I put upon the friendship of the man using them—he spoke of the effort that I am making for peace throughout the world. Of course I am for peace. Of course every President who is fit to be President must be for peace. But I am for one thing before peace; I am for righteousness first, and then peace. I am for peace, because normally peace is the best instrument wherewith to obtain righteousness. But, Mr. Agassiz, when you and those like you faced 1861, you had to win peace by war, and you rendered us forever your debtors, because when the choice was between what was peaceful and what was right you chose what was right.

A great university like this has two especial functions. The first is to produce a small number of scholars of the highest rank, a small number of men who, in science and literature, or in art, will do productive work of the first class. The second is to send out into the world a very large number of men who never could achieve, and who ought not to try to achieve, such a position in the field of scholarship, but whose energies are to be felt in every other form of activity; and who should go out from our doors with the balanced development of body, of mind, and above all of character, which shall fit them to do work both honorable and efficient.

Much of the effort to accomplish the first function, that of developing men capable of productive[410] scholarship, as distinguished from merely imitative, annotative, or pedagogic scholarship, must come through the graduate school. The law school and medical school do admirable work in fitting men for special professions, but they in no shape or way supply any shortcomings in the graduate school any more than does the college proper, the college of the undergraduates. The ideal for the graduate school and for those undergraduates who are to go into it must be the ideal of high scholarly production, which is to be distinguished in the sharpest fashion from the mere transmittal of ready-made knowledge without adding to it. If America is to contribute its full share to the progress not alone of knowledge, but of wisdom, then we must put ever-increasing emphasis on university work done along the lines of the graduate school. We can best help the growth of American scholarship by seeing that as a career it is put more on a level with the other careers open to our young men. The general opinion of the community is bound to have a very great effect even upon its most vigorous and independent minds. If in the public mind the career of the scholar is regarded as of insignificant value when compared with that of a glorified pawnbroker, then it will with difficulty be made attractive to the most vigorous and gifted of our American young men. Good teachers, excellent institutions, and libraries are all demanded in a graduate school worthy of the name. But there is an even more urgent demand for the right sort of student. No first-class science,[411] no first-class literature or art, can ever be built up with second-class men. The scholarly career, the career of the man of letters, the man of arts, the man of science, must be made such as to attract those strong and virile youths who now feel that they can only turn to business, law, or politics. There is no one thing which will bring about this desired change, but there is one thing which will materially help in bringing it about, and that is to secure to scholars the chance of getting one of a few brilliant positions as prizes if they rise to the first rank in their chosen career. Every such brilliant position should have as an accompaniment an added salary, which shall help indicate how high the position really is; and it must be the efforts of the alumni which can alone secure such salaries for such positions.

As a people I think we are waking up to the fact that there must be better pay for the average man and average woman engaged in the work of education. But I am not speaking of this now; I am not speaking of the desirability, great though that is, of giving better payment to the average educator, I am speaking of the desirability of giving to the exceptional man the chance of winning an exceptional prize, just as he has the chance to do in law and business. In business at the present day nothing could be more healthy than an immense reduction in the money value of the exceptional prizes thus to be won; but in scholarship what is needed is the reverse. In this country we rightly go upon the theory that it is more important to care for the welfare[412] of the average man than to put a premium upon the exertions of the exceptional. But we must not forget that the establishment of such a premium for the exceptional, though of less importance, is nevertheless of very great importance. It is important even to the development of the average man, for the average of all of us is raised by the work of the great masters.

It is, I trust, unnecessary to say that I appreciate to the full the fact that the highest work of all will never be affected one way or the other by any question of compensation. And much of the work which is really best for the Nation must from the very nature of things be non-remunerative as compared with the work of the ordinary industries and vocations. Nor would it ever be possible or desirable that the rewards of transcendent success in scholarship should even approximate, from a monetary standpoint, the rewards in other vocations. But it is also true that the effect upon ambitious minds can not but be bad if as a people we show our very slight regard for scholarly achievement by making no provision at all for its reward. The chief use of the increased money value of the scholar’s prize would be the index thereby afforded of the respect in which it was popularly held. The American scientist, the American scholar, should have the chance at least of winning such prizes as are open to his successful brother in Germany, England, or France, where the rewards paid for first-class scholarly achievement are as much above those paid in this country as our[413] rewards for first-class achievement in industry or law are above those paid abroad.

But of course what counts infinitely more than any possible outside reward is the spirit of the worker himself. The prime need is to instil into the minds of the scholars themselves a true appreciation of real as distinguished from sham success. In productive scholarship, in the scholarship which adds by its work to the sum of substantial achievement with which the country is to be credited, it is only first-class work that counts. In this field the smallest amount of really first-class work is worth all the second-class work that can possibly be produced; and to have done such work is in itself the fullest and amplest reward to the man producing it. We outsiders should according to our ability aid him in every way to produce it. Yet all that we can do is but little compared to what he himself can and must do. The spirit of the scholar is the vital factor in the productive scholarship of the country.

So much for the first function of the university, the sending forth of a small number of scholars of the highest rank who will do productive work of the first class. Now turn to the second, and what may be called the normal function of the college, the function of turning out each year many hundreds of men who shall possess the trained intelligence, and especially the character, that will enable them to hold high the renown of this ancient seat of learning by doing useful service for the Nation. It is not my purpose to discuss at length what should be done in[414] Harvard to produce the right spirit among the men who go out of Harvard, but rather to speak of what this spirit should be. Nor shall I speak of the exceptions, the men to whom college life is a disadvantage. Randolph of Roanoke, he of the biting tongue, once remarked of an opponent that he reminded him of certain tracts of land “which were almost worthless by nature, and became entirely so by cultivation.” Of course, if, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of supercilious aloofness from the world of real men who do the world’s real work, then it has harmed that individual; but in such case there remains the abiding comfort that he would not have amounted to much anyway. Neither a college training nor anything else can do much good to the man of weak fibre or to the man with a twist in his moral or intellectual makeup. But the average undergraduate has enough robustness of nature, enough capacity for enthusiasm and aspiration, to make it worth while to turn to account the stuff that is in him.

There are, however, two points in the undergraduate life of Harvard about which I think we have a right to feel some little concern. One is the growth of luxury in the university. I do not know whether anything we can say will have much effect on this point, but just so far as the alumni have weight I hope to see that weight felt in serious and sustained effort against the growing tendency to luxury, and[415] in favor of all that makes for democratic conditions. One of our number, the one whom I think the rest of us most delight to honor—Colonel Higginson—has given to our Alma Mater the Harvard Union, than which no better gift, no gift meeting a more vital need, could have been given to the university. It is neither possible nor desirable to try to take away all social differences from the student life; but it is a good thing to show how unimportant these differences are compared to the differences of real achievement, and compared also to the bonds which should unite together all the men who are in any degree capable of such real achievement; bonds, moreover, which should also knit these capable men to their brethren who need their help.

The second point upon which I wish to speak is the matter of sport. Now I shall not be suspected of a tendency unduly to minimize the importance of sport. I believe heartily in sport. I believe in outdoor games, and I do not mind in the least that they are rough games, or that those who take part in them are occasionally injured. I have no sympathy whatever with the overwrought sentimentality which would keep a young man in cotton wool, and I have a hearty contempt for him if he counts a broken arm or collar bone as of serious consequence when balanced against the chance of showing that he possesses hardihood, physical address, and courage. But when these injuries are inflicted by others, either wantonly or of set design, we are confronted by the question, not of damage to one man’s body, but of[416] damage to the other man’s character. Brutality in playing a game should awaken the heartiest and most plainly shown contempt for the player guilty of it; especially if this brutality is coupled with a low cunning in committing it without getting caught by the umpire. I hope to see both graduate and undergraduate opinion come to scorn such a man as one guilty of base and dishonorable action, who has no place in the regard of gallant and upright men.

It is a bad thing for any college man to grow to regard sport as the serious business of life. It is a bad thing to permit sensationalism and hysteria to shape the development of our sports. And finally it is a much worse thing to permit college sport to become in any shape or way tainted by professionalism, or by so much as the slightest suspicion of money-making; and this is especially true if the professionalism is furtive, if the boy or man violates the spirit of the rule while striving to keep within the letter. Professional sport is all right in its way. I am glad to say that among my friends I number professional boxers and wrestlers, oarsmen, and baseball men, whose regard I value, and whom in turn I regard as thoroughly good citizens. But the college undergraduate who, in furtive fashion, becomes a semi-professional is an unmitigated curse, and that not alone to university life and to the cause of amateur sport; for the college graduate ought in after years to take the lead in putting the business morality of this country on a proper plane, and he can not do it if in his own college career his code[417] of conduct has been warped and twisted. Moreover, the spirit which puts so excessive a value upon his work as to produce this semi-professional is itself unhealthy. I wish to see Harvard win a reasonable proportion of the contests in which it enters, and I should be heartily ashamed of every Harvard athlete who did not spend every ounce there was in him in the effort to win, provided only he does it in honorable and manly fashion. But I think our effort should be to minimize rather than to increase that kind of love of athletics which manifests itself, not in joining in the athletic sports, but in crowding by tens of thousands to see other people indulge in them. It is a far better thing for our colleges to have the average student interested in some form of athletics than to have them all gather in a mass to see other people do their athletics for them.

So much for the undergraduates. Now for the alumni, the men who are at work out in the great world. Of course the man’s first duty is to himself and to those immediately dependent upon him. Unless he can pull his own weight he must be content to remain a passenger all his life. But we have a right to expect that the men who come out of Harvard will do something more than merely pull their own weight. We have a right to expect that they will count as positive forces for the betterment of their fellow-countrymen; and they can thus count only if they combine the power of devotion to a lofty ideal with practical common-sense in striving to realize this ideal.

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This Nation never stood in greater need than now of having among its leaders men of lofty ideals, which they try to live up to and not merely to talk of. We need men with these ideals in public life, and we need them just as much in business and in such a profession as the law. We can by statute establish only those exceedingly rough lines of morality the overpassing of which means that the man is in jeopardy of the constable or the sheriff. But the Nation is badly off if in addition to this there is not a very much higher standard of conduct, a standard impossible effectively to establish by statute, but one upon which the community as a whole, and especially the real leaders of the community, insist. Take such a question as the enforcement of the law. It is, of course, elementary to say that this is the first requisite in any civilization at all. But a great many people in the ranks of life from which most college men are drawn seem to forget that they should condemn with equal severity those men who break the law by committing crimes of mob violence and those who evade the law, or who actually break it, but so cunningly that they can not be discovered, the crimes they commit being not those of physical outrage, but those of greed and craft on the largest scale. The very rich man who conducts his business as if he believed that he were a law unto himself thereby immensely increases the difficulty of the task of upholding order when the disorder is a menace to men of property; for if the community feels that rich men disregard the law[419] where it affects themselves, then the community is apt to assume the dangerous and unwholesome attitude of condoning crimes of violence committed against the interests which in the popular mind these rich men represent. This last attitude is wholly evil; but so is the attitude which produces it. We have a right to appeal to the alumni of Harvard, and to the alumni of every institution of learning in this land, to do their part in creating a public sentiment which shall demand of all men of means, and especially of the men of vast fortune, that they set an example to their less fortunate brethren, by paying scrupulous heed not only to the letter but to the spirit of the laws, and by acknowledging in the heartiest fashion the moral obligations which can not be expressed in law, but which stand back of and above all laws. It is far more important that they should conduct their business affairs decently than that they should spend the surplus of their fortunes in philanthropy. Much has been given to these men and we have the right to demand much of them in return. Every man of great wealth who runs his business with cynical contempt for those prohibitions of the law which by hired cunning he can escape or evade is a menace to our community; and the community is not to be excused if it does not develop a spirit which actively frowns on and discountenances him. The great profession of the law should be that profession whose members ought to take the lead in the creation of just such a spirit. We all know that, as things actually are, many of the most influential[420] and most highly remunerated members of the bar in every centre of wealth make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious schemes by which their very wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade the laws which are made to regulate in the interest of the public the use of great wealth. Now, the great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly remunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in this country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy. Such a spirit may breed the demand that laws shall be made even more drastic against the rich, or else it may manifest itself in hostility to all laws. Surely Harvard has the right to expect from her sons a high standard of applied morality, whether their paths lead them into public life, into business, or into the great profession of the law, whose members are so potent in shaping the growth of the national soul.

But in addition to having high ideals it can not too often be said to a body such as is gathered here to-day, that together with devotion to what is right must go practical efficiency in striving for what is right. This is a rough, workaday, practical world, and if in it we are to do the work best worth doing, we must approach that work in a spirit remote from that of the mere visionary, and above all remote from that of the visionary whose aspirations after good find expression only in the shape of[421] scolding and complaining. It shall not help us if we avoid the Scylla of baseness of motive, only to be wrecked on the Charybdis of wrong-headedness, of feebleness and inefficiency. There can be nothing worse for the community than to have the men who profess lofty ideals show themselves so foolish, so narrow, so impracticable, as to cut themselves off from communion with the men who are actually able to do the work of governing, the work of business, the work of the professions. It is a sad and evil thing if the men with a moral sense group themselves as impractical zealots, while the men of action gradually grow to discard and laugh at all moral sense as an evidence of impractical weakness. Macaulay, whose eminently sane and wholesome spirit revolted not only at weakness, but at the censorious folly which masquerades as virtue, describes the condition of Scotland at the end of the seventeenth century in a passage which every sincere reformer should keep constantly before him.

“It is a remarkable circumstance that the same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of both extremes of human nature. Even in things indifferent the Scotch Puritan would hear of no compromise; and he was but too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand, the Scotchmen of that generation who made a figure in Parliament were the most dishonest and unblushing time-servers that the world has ever seen. Perhaps it is natural that the most[422] callous and impudent vice should be found in the near neighborhood of unreasonable and impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish conscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience should become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business.”

The men who go out from Harvard into the great world of American life bear a heavy burden of responsibility. The only way they can show their gratitude to their Alma Mater is by doing their full duty to the Nation as a whole; and they can do this full duty only if they combine the high resolve to work for what is best and most ennobling with the no less resolute purpose to do their work in such fashion that when the end of their days comes they shall feel that they have actually achieved results and not merely talked of achieving them.

Mr. Maxwell; Members of the National Educational Association:

I am glad to have the chance of greeting the National Educational Association; for in all this democratic land there is no more genuinely democratic association than this. It is truly democratic, because here each member meets every other member as his peer without regard to whether he is the president of[423] one of the great universities or the newest recruit to that high and honorable profession which has in its charge the upbringing and training of those boys and girls who in a few short years will themselves be settling the destinies of this Nation. It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the Republic is that done by the educators, for whatever our shortcomings as a Nation may be, we have at least firmly grasped the fact that we can not do our part in the difficult and all-important work of self-government, that we can not rule and govern ourselves, unless we approach the task with developed minds and trained characters. You teachers make the whole world your debtor. If you did not do your work well this Republic would not endure beyond the span of the generation. Moreover, as an incident to your avowed work, you render some wellnigh unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to the Republic the prime, the vital service of amalgamating into one homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish a common training and common ideals for the children of all the mixed peoples who are here being fused into one nationality. It is in no small degree due to you and your efforts that we are one people instead of a group of jarring peoples.

Moreover, where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere possession of wealth, the country is under heavy obligations to such a body[424] as this, which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating money the infinitely loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth doing simply for that work’s sake. I do not in the least underestimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization does not build a lofty superstructure on this basis, we can never rank among the really great peoples. A certain amount of money is of course a necessary thing, as much for the Nation as for the individual; and there are few movements in which I more thoroughly believe than in the movement to secure better remuneration for our teachers. But, after all, the service you render is incalculable, because of the very fact that by your lives you show that you believe ideals to be worth sacrifice, and that you are splendidly eager to do non-remunerative work if this work is of good to your fellow-men.

To furnish in your lives such a realized high ideal is to do a great service to the country. The chief harm done by the men of swollen fortune to the community is not the harm that the demagogue is apt to depict as springing from their actions, but the fact that their success sets up a false standard, and so serves as a bad example for the rest of us. If we did not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches, this rich man would have a most insignificant influence over us. It is generally our own fault if he does damage to us, for he damages us[425] chiefly by arousing our envy or by rendering us sour and discontented. In his actual business relations he is much more apt to benefit than harm the rest of us; and though it is eminently right to take whatever steps are necessary in order to prevent the exceptional members of his class from doing harm, it is wicked folly to let ourselves be drawn into any attack upon the man of wealth merely as such. Moreover, such an attack is in itself an exceptionally crooked and ugly tribute to wealth, and therefore the proof of an exceptionally ugly and crooked state of mind in the man making the attack. Venomous envy of wealth is simply another form of the spirit which in one of its manifestations takes the shape of cringing servility toward wealth, and in another the shape of brutal arrogance on the part of certain men of wealth. Each one of these states of mind, whether it be hatred, servility, or arrogance, is in reality closely akin to the other two; for each of them springs from a fantastically twisted and exaggerated idea of the importance of wealth as compared to other things. The clamor of the demagogue against wealth, the snobbery of the social columns of the newspapers which deal with the doings of the wealthy, and the misconduct of those men of wealth who act with brutal disregard of the rights of others, seem superficially to have no fundamental relation; yet in reality they spring from shortcomings which are fundamentally the same; and one of these shortcomings is the failure to have proper ideals.

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This failure must be remedied in large part by the actions of you and your fellow-teachers, your fellow-educators throughout this land. By your lives, no less than by your teachings, you show that while you regard wealth as a good thing, you regard other things as still better. It is absolutely necessary to earn a certain amount of money; it is a man’s first duty to those dependent upon him to earn enough for their support; but after a certain point has been reached money-making can never stand on the same plane with other and nobler forms of effort. The roll of American worthies numbers men like Washington and Lincoln, Grant and Farragut, Hawthorne and Poe, Fulton and Morse, St. Gaudens and MacMonnies; it numbers statesmen and soldiers, men of letters, artists, sculptors, men of science, inventors, explorers, roadmakers, bridge builders, philanthropists, moral leaders in great reforms; it numbers men who have deserved well in any one of countless fields of activity; but of rich men it numbers only those who have used their riches aright, who have treated wealth not as an end, but as a means, who have shown good conduct in acquiring it and not merely lavish generosity in disposing of it.

Thrice fortunate are you to whom it is given to lead lives of resolute endeavor for the achievement of lofty ideals, and, furthermore, to instil, both by your lives and by your teachings, these ideals into the minds of those who in the next generation will, as the men and women of that generation, determine[427] the position which this Nation will hold in the history of mankind.

In closing, I want to speak to you of how certain things, some of which have happened, and some of which have been suggested to me by what has happened, in the past week, emphasize what I have said to you as to the importance to this country of having within its limits men who put the realization of high ideals above any form of money-making.

Within a week this country has lost a great statesman, who was also a great man of letters; a man who occupied a peculiar and unique position in our country; a man of whose existence we could each of us be proud; for the United States as a whole was better because John Hay lived. John Hay entered the public service as a young man just come of age, as the secretary of President Lincoln. He served in the war and was a member of the Loyal Legion. He was trusted by and was intimate with Lincoln as hardly any other man was. He then went on rendering service after service; yet always able (this was one of his great advantages and great merits) at any moment to go back to private life unless he could continue in public life on his own terms. As the climax of his career he served as Secretary of State under two successive administrations, and by what he did and by what he was he contributed in no small degree to achieving for this Republic the respect of the nations of mankind. Such service as that could not have been rendered save by a man who had before him ideals as far[428] apart as the poles from those ideals which have in them any taint of what is base or sordid.

Now I wished to secure as John Hay’s successor the man whom I regarded as of all the men in the country that one best fitted to be such successor. In asking him to accept the position of Secretary of State I was asking him to submit to a very great pecuniary sacrifice; and I never even thought of that aspect of the question, for I knew he would not either. I knew that whatever other considerations he had to weigh for and against taking the position, the consideration of how it would affect his personal fortune would not be taken into account by Elihu Root; and he has accepted.

I am not speaking of Hay and Root as solitary exceptions. On the contrary, I am speaking of them as typical of a large class of men in public life. When we hear so much criticism of certain aspects of our public life and of certain of our public servants, criticism which I regret to state is in many cases deserved, it is well for us to remember also the other side of the picture, to remember that here in America we have and always have had at the command of the Nation in any crisis, in any emergency, the very best ability to be found within the Nation; and this ability has been given with the utmost freedom, given lavishly and generously, although at great pecuniary loss to the man giving it.

There is not in my Cabinet a man to whom it is not a financial disadvantage to stay in the Cabinet. There is not in my Cabinet a man who does not[429] have to give up something substantial, often very much that is substantial, sometimes what it is a very real hardship for him to give up, in order that he may continue in the service of the Nation; and the only reward for which he looks or for which he cares is the consciousness of doing service worth rendering. I hope to see more and more throughout this Nation the spirit grow which makes such service possible. I hope more and more to see the sentiment of the country as a whole become such that each man shall feel borne in on him, whether he is in public life or in private life (and, mind you, some of the greatest public services can be best rendered by those who are not in public life), that the chance to do good work is the greatest chance that can come to any man or any woman in our generation or in any other generation. Let each man feel that if such work can be well done it is in itself the amplest reward and the amplest prize.

Mr. President, Members of the Association, Friends and Neighbors:

I needed no invitation to come before you to-day. All I needed was permission. As soon as I learned that this association was to meet in our village I felt that I must take advantage of the opportunity to say a word of greeting to you in person.

Of course it is almost needless to say that there[430] is not and can not be any other lay profession the members of which occupy such a dual position, each side of which is of such importance—for the doctor has on the one hand to be the most thoroughly educated man in applied science that there is in the country, and on the other hand, as every layman knows, and as doubtless many a layman in the circle of acquaintance of each of you would gladly testify, the doctor gradually becomes the closest friend to more people than would be possible in any other profession. The feelings that a man has toward the one human being to whom he turns, either in time of sickness for himself, or, what is far more important, in the time of sickness of those closest and dearest to him, can not but be of a peculiar kind. He can not but have a feeling for him such as he has for no other man. The doctor must, therefore, to the greatest degree develop his nature along the two sides of his duties, although in the case of any other man you would call him a mighty good citizen if he developed only on one side. The scientific man who is really a first-class scientific man has a claim upon the gratitude of all the country; and the man who is a first-class neighbor, and is always called in in time of trouble by his neighbors, has an equal claim upon society at large. But the doctor has both claims. Yet in addition to filling both of those functions he may fill many other functions. He may have served in the Civil War; he may have rendered the greatest possible service to the community along any one of a dozen different lines.

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Take, for instance, just what is being done in one of the great works of this country at the present time—the digging of the Panama Canal. That is a work that only a big nation could undertake or that a big nation could do, and it is a work for all mankind. The condition precedent upon success in that work is having the proper type of medical work as a preliminary, as a basis. That is the first condition, upon the meeting of which must depend our success in solving the engineering and administrative problems of the work itself. I am happy to say that the work is being admirably done, and I am particularly glad to have this chance of saying it. Now and then some alarmist report will come from Panama. Just a couple of weeks ago there seemed to be a succession of people coming up from Panama, each one of whom had some tale of terror to tell. You will always find in any battle, even if it is a victorious battle, that in the rear you will meet a number of gentlemen who are glad that they are not at the front; who, if they have unfortunately gotten at the front, have come away, and who justify their absence from the front by telling tales of how everything has gone wrong there. Now the people that flee from Panama will carry up here just such stories as the people that flee from the forefront of a battle carry to the rear with them. The people to whom this country owes and will owe much are those who stay down there and do not talk, but do their work, and do it well. Of course, in doing a great work like that in the tropics, in a region which until this Government[432] took hold of it was accounted to be a region exceptionally unhealthy, we are going to have trouble, have some yellow fever, have a good deal of malarial fever, and suffer more from the latter than from the yellow fever, although we will hear nothing like the talk about it. We will have every now and then trouble as regards hygiene, just as we will have trouble in the engineering problems, just as occasionally we will have troubles in the administrative work. Whenever any of those troubles come there will be a large number of excellent but timid men who will at once say what an awful calamity it is, and express the deepest sorrow and concern, and be rather inclined to the belief that the whole thing is a failure. It will not be a failure. It will be a success; and it will be a success because we shall treat every little check, not as a reason for abandoning the work, but as a reason for altering and bettering our plans so as to make it impossible that that particular check shall happen again.

What is being done in Panama is but a sample of the things that this country has done during the last few years, of the things in which your profession has borne so prominent a part. Take what we did in Cuba, where we tried the experiment which had not been tried for four hundred years—of cleaning the cities. One of the most important items of the work done by our Government in Cuba was the work of hygiene, the work of cleaning and disinfecting the cities so as to minimize the chance for yellow fever, so as to do away with as many as possible[433] of the conditions that told for disease. This country has never had done for it better work, that is, work that reflected more honor upon the country, or for humanity at large, than the work done for it in Cuba. And the man who above all others was responsible for doing that work so well was a member of your profession, who when the call to arms came himself went as a soldier to the field—the present Major-General Leonard Wood. Leonard Wood did in Cuba just the kind of work that, for instance, Lord Cromer has done in Egypt. We have not been able to reward Wood in anything like the proportion in which services such as his would have been rewarded in any other country of the first rank; and there have been no meaner and more unpleasant manifestations in all our public history than the feelings of envy and jealousy manifested toward Wood. And the foul assaults and attacks made upon him, gentlemen, were largely because they grudged the fact that this admirable military officer should have been a doctor.

I am particularly glad to speak to this audience of miners and their wives and children, and especially to speak under the auspices of this great temperance society. In our country the happiness of all the rest of our people depends most of all upon the welfare of the wage-worker and the welfare of the farmer. If we can secure the welfare of these[434] two classes we can be reasonably certain that the community as a whole will prosper. And we must never forget that the chief factor in securing the welfare alike of wage-worker and of farmer, as of everybody else, must be the man himself.

The only effective way to help anybody is to help him help himself. There are exceptional times when any one of us needs outside help, and then it should be given freely; but normally each one of us must depend upon his own exertions for his own success. Something can be done by wise legislation and by wise and honest administration of the laws; that is, something can be done by our action taken in our collective capacity through the State and the Nation.

Something more can be done by combination and organization among ourselves in our private capacities as citizens, so long as this combination or organization is managed with wisdom and integrity, with insistence upon the rights of those benefited and yet with just regard for the rights of others.

But in the last analysis the factor most influential in determining any man’s success must ever be the sum of that man’s own qualities, of his knowledge, foresight, thrift, and courage. Whatever tends to increase his self-respect, whatever tends to help him overcome the temptations with which all of us are surrounded, is of benefit not only to him, but to the whole community.

No one society can do more to help the wage-worker than such a temperance society as that which I am now addressing. It is of incalculable consequence[435] to the man himself that he should be sober and temperate, and it is of even more consequence to his wife and his children; for it is a hard and cruel fact that in this life of ours the sins of the man are often visited most heavily upon those whose welfare should be his one especial care.

For the drunkard, for the man who loses his job because he can not control or will not control his desire for liquor and for vicious pleasure, we have a feeling of anger and contempt mixed with our pity; but for his unfortunate wife and little ones we feel only pity, and that of the deepest and tenderest kind.

Everything possible should be done to encourage the growth of that spirit of self-respect, self-restraint, self-reliance, which if it only grows enough is certain to make all those in whom it shows itself move steadily upward toward the highest standard of American citizenship. It is a proud and responsible privilege to be citizens of this great self-governing Nation; and each of us needs to keep steadily before his eyes the fact that he is wholly unfit to take part in the work of governing others unless he can first govern himself. He must stand up manfully for his own rights; he must respect the rights of others; he must obey the law, and he must try to live up to those rules of righteousness which are above and behind all laws.

This applies just as much to the man of great wealth as to the man of small means; to the capitalist as to the wage-worker. And as one practical point, let me urge that in the event of any[436] difficulty, especially if it is what is known as a labor trouble, both sides show themselves willing to meet, willing to consult, and anxious each to treat the other reasonably and fairly, each to look at the other’s side of the case and to do the other justice. If only this course could be generally followed, the chance of industrial disaster would be minimized.

Now, my friends, I want to read you an extract from a letter I have just received from a Catholic priest whom I know well and whom I know to be as stanch a friend of the laboring man as there is to be found in this country. Now and then—not too often—it is a good thing for all of us to hear what is not perhaps altogether palatable, provided only that the person who tells the truth is our genuine friend, knows what he is talking about (even though he may not see all sides of the case), and tells us what he has to say, not with a desire to hurt our feelings, but with the transparent purpose to do us good. With this foreword, here is a part of the letter:

“I would humbly recommend that you lend your entire weight to the cause which the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America represents, and especially so in its relation to the working classes of this country, for whom it is doing so much good. You know that the temperance movement is a potent auxiliary to the institutions of our country in building up a better manhood and a truer Christianity among our citizens. It played a very important part in the[437] two coal strikes of 1900 and 1902, respectively, by keeping the men sober, and thus removing the danger of riotous and unbecoming conduct. There is one discouraging feature connected with the upward tendency of the wage scale among the workmen of this country. The higher the wages, the more money they spend in saloons. The shorter the hours, the more they are inclined to absent themselves from home. An apparent disregard for family ties is growing among the poorer classes which will eventually lead to a disregard for the blessings our country affords them. Hence, with an increase of wages a corresponding movement for better manhood, nobler citizenship, and truer Christianity should be set on foot. The dignity of labor should be maintained, which can be done only through the love that a man should have for his work, and through the intelligence which he puts into it. A steady hand and sober mind are necessary for this. Hence, the necessity of the temperance cause and of the efforts which organized abstainers are putting into the movement.”

Now, in what is here written this priest does not mean that the tendency is to grow worse; but he means that with shorter hours and increased wages there is a tendency to go wrong which must be offset by movements such as this great temperance movement and similar efforts for social and civic betterment, or else the increase in leisure and money will prove a curse instead of a blessing. I strive never to tell any one what I do not thoroughly believe,[438] and I shall not say to you that to be honest, and temperate, and hardworking, and thrifty will always bring success.

The hand of the Lord is sometimes heavy upon the just as well as upon the unjust, and in the life of labor and effort which we must lead on this earth it is not always possible either by work, by wisdom, or by upright behavior to ward off disaster. But it is most emphatically true that the chance for leading a happy and prosperous life is immensely improved if only the man is decent, sober, industrious, and exercises foresight and judgment. Let him remember above all that the performance of duty is the first essential to right living, and that a good type of average family life is the cornerstone of national happiness and greatness. No man can be a good citizen, can deserve the respect of his fellows, unless first of all he is a good man in his own family, unless he does his duty faithfully by his wife and children.

I strongly believe in trades unions wisely and justly handled, in which the rightful purpose to benefit those connected with them is not accompanied by a desire to do injustice or wrong to others. I believe it the duty of capitalist and wage-worker to try to seek one another out, to understand each the other’s point of view, and to endeavor to show broad and kindly human sympathy one with the other.

I believe in the work of these great temperance organizations, of all kindred movements like the[439] Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, in short in every movement which strives to help a man by teaching him how to help himself. But most of all I believe in the efficacy of the man himself striving continually to increase his own self-respect by the way in which he does his duty to himself and to his neighbor.

To-day I wish to speak to you on one feature of our national foreign policy and one feature of our national domestic policy.

The Monroe Doctrine is not a part of international law. But it is the fundamental feature of our entire foreign policy so far as the Western Hemisphere is concerned, and it has more and more been meeting with recognition abroad. The reason why it is meeting with this recognition is because we have not allowed it to become fossilized, but have adapted our construction of it to meet the growing, changing needs of this hemisphere. Fossilization, of course, means death, whether to an individual, a government, or a doctrine.

It is out of the question to claim a right and yet shirk the responsibility for exercising that right. When we announce a policy such as the Monroe Doctrine we thereby commit ourselves to accepting the consequences of the policy, and these consequences from time to time alter.

Let us look for a moment at what the Monroe[440] Doctrine really is. It forbids the territorial encroachment of non-American powers on American soil. Its purpose is partly to secure this Nation against seeing great military powers obtain new footholds in the Western Hemisphere, and partly to secure to our fellow-republics south of us the chance to develop along their own lines without being oppressed or conquered by non-American powers. As we have grown more and more powerful our advocacy of this doctrine has been received with more and more respect; but what has tended most to give the doctrine standing among the nations is our growing willingness to show that we not only mean what we say and are prepared to back it up, but that we mean to recognize our obligations to foreign peoples no less than to insist upon our own rights.

We can not permanently adhere to the Monroe Doctrine unless we succeed in making it evident in the first place that we do not intend to treat it in any shape or way as an excuse for aggrandizement on our part at the expense of the republics to the south of us; second, that we do not intend to permit it to be used by any of these republics as a shield to protect that republic from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations; third, that inasmuch as by this doctrine we prevent other nations from interfering on this side of the water, we shall ourselves in good faith try to help those of our sister republics, which need such help, upward toward peace and order.

As regards the first point we must recognize the[441] fact that in some South American countries there has been much suspicion lest we should interpret the Monroe Doctrine in some way inimical to their interests. Now let it be understood once for all that no just and orderly government on this continent has anything to fear from us. There are certain of the republics south of us which have already reached such a point of stability, order, and prosperity that they are themselves, although as yet hardly consciously, among the guarantors of this doctrine. No stable and growing American republic wishes to see some great non-American military power acquire territory in its neighborhood. It is the interest of all of us on this continent that no such event should occur, and in addition to our own Republic there are now already republics in the regions south of us which have reached a point of prosperity and power that enables them to be considerable factors in maintaining this doctrine which is so much to the advantage of all of us. It must be understood that under no circumstances will the United States use the Monroe Doctrine as a cloak for territorial aggression. Should any of our neighbors, no matter how turbulent, how disregardful of our rights, finally get into such a position that the utmost limits of our forbearance are reached, all the people south of us may rest assured that no action will ever be taken save what is absolutely demanded by our self-respect; that this action will not take the form of territorial aggrandizement on our part, and that it will only be taken at all with[442] the most extreme reluctance and not without having exhausted every effort to avert it.

As to the second point, if a republic to the south of us commits a tort against a foreign nation, such, for instance, as wrongful action against the persons of citizens of that nation, then the Monroe Doctrine does not force us to interfere to prevent punishment of the tort, save to see that the punishment does not directly or indirectly assume the form of territorial occupation of the offending country. The case is more difficult when the trouble comes from the failure to meet contractual obligations. Our own Government has always refused to enforce such contractual obligations on behalf of its citizens by the appeal to arms. It is much to be wished that all foreign governments would take the same view. But at present this country would certainly not be willing to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt or to back up some one of our sister republics in a refusal to pay just debts; and the alternative may in any case prove to be that we shall ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as is possible of the just obligations shall be paid. Personally I should always prefer to see this country step in and put through such an arrangement rather than let any foreign country undertake it.

I do not want to see any foreign power take possession permanently or temporarily of the custom-houses of an American republic in order to enforce its obligations, and the alternative may[443] at any time be that we shall be forced to do so ourselves.

Finally, and what is in my view really the most important thing of all, it is our duty, so far as we are able, to try to help upward our weaker brothers. Just as there has been a gradual growth of the ethical element in the relations of one individual to another, so that with all the faults of our Christian civilization it yet remains true that we are, no matter how slowly, more and more coming to recognize the duty of bearing one another’s burdens, similarly I believe that the ethical element is by degrees entering into the dealings of one nation with another.

Under strain of emotion caused by sudden disaster this feeling is very evident. A famine or a plague in one country brings much sympathy and some assistance from other countries. Moreover, we are now beginning to recognize that weaker peoples have a claim upon us, even when the appeal is made, not to our emotions by some sudden calamity, but to our consciences by a long-continuing condition of affairs.

I do not mean to say that nations have more than begun to approach the proper relationship one to another, and I fully recognize the folly of proceeding upon the assumption that this ideal condition can now be realized in full—for, in order to proceed upon such an assumption, we would first require some method of forcing recalcitrant nations to do their duty, as well as of seeing that they are protected in their rights.

[444]

In the interest of justice, it is as necessary to exercise the police power as to show charity and helpful generosity. But something can even now be done toward the end in view. That something, for instance, this Nation has already done as regards Cuba, and is now trying to do as regards Santo Domingo. There are few things in our history in which we should take more genuine pride than the way in which we liberated Cuba, and then, instead of instantly abandoning it to chaos, stayed in direction of the affairs of the island until we had put it on the right path, and finally gave it freedom and helped it as it started on the life of an independent republic.

Santo Domingo has now made an appeal to us to help it in turn, and not only every principle of wisdom but every generous instinct within us bids us respond to the appeal. The conditions in Santo Domingo have for a number of years grown from bad to worse until recently all society was on the verge of dissolution. Fortunately just at this time a wise ruler sprang up in Santo Domingo, who, with his colleagues, saw the dangers threatening their beloved country, and appealed to the friendship of their great and powerful neighbor to help them. The immediate threat came to them in the shape of foreign intervention. The previous rulers of Santo Domingo had recklessly incurred debts, and owing to her internal disorders she had ceased to be able to provide means of paying the debts. The patience of her foreign creditors had become exhausted,[445] and at least one foreign nation was on the point of intervention and was only prevented from intervening by the unofficial assurance of this Government that it would itself strive to help Santo Domingo in her hour of need. Of the debts incurred some were just, while some were not of a character which really renders it obligatory on, or proper for, Santo Domingo to pay them in full. But she could not pay any of them at all unless some stability was assured.

Accordingly the Executive Department of our Government negotiated a treaty under which we are to try to help the Dominican people to straighten out their finances. This treaty is pending before the Senate, whose consent to it is necessary. In the meantime we have made a temporary arrangement which will last until the Senate has had time to take action upon the treaty. Under this arrangement we see to the honest administration of the custom-houses, collecting the revenues, turning over forty-five per cent to the Government for running expenses and putting the other fifty-five per cent into a safe deposit for equitable division among the various creditors, whether European or American, accordingly as, after investigation, their claims seem just.

The custom-houses offer wellnigh the only sources of revenue in Santo Domingo, and the different revolutions usually have as their real aim the obtaining possession of these custom-houses. The mere fact that we are protecting the custom-houses[446] and collecting the revenue with efficiency and honesty has completely discouraged all revolutionary movement, while it has already produced such an increase in the revenues that the Government is actually getting more from the forty-five per cent that we turn over to it than it got formerly when it took the entire revenue. This is enabling the poor harassed people of Santo Domingo once more to turn their attention to industry and to be free from the curse of interminable revolutionary disturbance. It offers to all bona fide creditors, American and European, the only really good chance to obtain that to which they are justly entitled, while it in return gives to Santo Domingo the only opportunity of defence against claims which it ought not to pay—for now if it meets the views of the Senate we shall ourselves thoroughly examine all these claims, whether American or foreign, and see that none that are improper are paid. Indeed, the only effective opposition to the treaty will probably come from dishonest creditors, foreign and American, and from the professional revolutionists of the island itself. We have already good reason to believe that some of the creditors who do not dare expose their claims to honest scrutiny are endeavoring to stir up sedition in the island, and are also endeavoring to stir up opposition to the treaty both in Santo Domingo and here, trusting that in one place or the other it may be possible to secure either the rejection of the treaty or else its amendment in such fashion as to be tantamount to rejection.

[447]

Under the course taken, stability and order and all the benefits of peace are at last coming to Santo Domingo, all danger of foreign intervention has ceased, and there is at last a prospect that all creditors will get justice, no more and no less. If the arrangement is terminated, chaos will follow; and if chaos follows, sooner or later this Government may be involved in serious difficulties with foreign governments over the island, or else may be forced itself to intervene in the island in some unpleasant fashion. Under the present arrangement the independence of the island is scrupulously respected, the danger of violation of the Monroe Doctrine by the intervention of foreign powers vanishes, and the interference of our Government is minimized, so that we only act in conjunction with the Santo Domingo authorities to secure the proper administration of the customs, and therefore to secure the payment of just debts and to secure the Santo Dominican Government against demands for unjust debts. The present method prevents there being any need of our establishing any kind of protectorate over the island and gives the people of Santo Domingo the same chance to move onward and upward which we have already given to the people of Cuba. It will be doubly to our discredit as a Nation if we fail to take advantage of this chance; for it will be of damage to ourselves, and, above all, it will be of incalculable damage to Santo Domingo. Every consideration of wise policy, and, above all, every consideration of large generosity, bids us meet the[448] request of Santo Domingo as we are now trying to meet it.

So much for one feature of our foreign policy. Now for one feature of our domestic policy. One of the main features of our national governmental policy should be the effort to secure adequate and effective supervisory and regulatory control over all great corporations doing an interstate business. Much of the legislation aimed to prevent the evils connected with the enormous development of these great corporations has been ineffective, partly because it aimed at doing too much, and partly because it did not confer on the Government a really efficient method of holding any guilty corporation to account. The effort to prevent all restraint of competition, whether harmful or beneficial, has been ill-judged; what is needed is not so much the effort to prevent combination as a vigilant and effective control of the combinations formed, so as to secure just and equitable dealing on their part alike toward the public generally, toward their smaller competitors, and toward the wage-workers in their employ.

Under the present laws we have in the last four years accomplished much that is of substantial value; but the difficulties in the way have been so great as to prove that further legislation is advisable. Many corporations show themselves honorably desirous to obey the law; but, unfortunately, some corporations, and very wealthy ones at that, exhaust every effort which can be suggested by the highest ability, or secured by the most lavish expenditure[449] of money, to defeat the purposes of the laws on the statute books.

Not only the men in control of these corporations, but the business world generally, ought to realize that such conduct is in every way perilous, and constitutes a menace to the Nation generally, and especially to the people of great property.

I earnestly believe that this is true of only a relatively small portion of the very rich men engaged in handling the largest corporations in the country; but the attitude of these comparatively few men does undoubtedly harm the country, and above all harm the men of large means, by the just, but sometimes misguided, popular indignation to which it gives rise. The consolidation, in the form of what are popularly called trusts, of corporate interests of immense value has tended to produce unfair restraints of trade of an oppressive character, and these unfair restraints tend to create great artificial monopolies. The violations of the law known as the anti-trust law, which was meant to meet the conditions thus arising, have more and more become confined to the larger combinations, the very ones against whose policy of monopoly and oppression the policy of the law was chiefly directed. Many of these combinations by secret methods and by protracted litigation are still unwisely seeking to avoid the consequences of their illegal action. The Government has very properly exercised moderation in attempting to enforce the criminal provisions of the statute; but it has become our conviction that in some cases, such[450] as that of at least certain of the beef packers recently indicted in Chicago, it is impossible longer to show leniency. Moreover, if the existing law proves to be inadequate, so that under established rules of evidence clear violations may not be readily proved, defiance of the law must inevitably lead to further legislation. This legislation may be more drastic than I would prefer. If so, it must be distinctly understood that it will be because of the stubborn determination of some of the great combinations in striving to prevent the enforcement of the law as it stands, by every device, legal and illegal. Very many of these men seem to think that the alternative is simply between submitting to the mild kind of governmental control we advocate and the absolute freedom to do whatever they think best. They are greatly in error. Either they will have to submit to reasonable supervision and regulation by the national authorities, or else they will ultimately have to submit to governmental action of a far more drastic type. Personally, I think our people would be most unwise if they let any exasperation due to the acts of certain great corporations drive them into drastic action, and I should oppose such action. But the great corporations are themselves to blame if by their opposition to what is legal and just they foster the popular feeling which calls for such drastic action.

Some great corporations resort to every technical expedient to render enforcement of the law impossible, and their obstructive tactics and refusal to acquiesce in the policy of the law have taxed to[451] the utmost the machinery of the Department of Justice. In my judgment Congress may well inquire whether it should not seek other means for carrying into effect the law. I believe that all corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be under the supervision of the National Government. I do not believe in taking steps hastily or rashly, and it may be that all that is necessary in the immediate future is to pass an interstate commerce bill conferring upon some branch of the executive government the power of effective action to remedy the abuses in connection with railway transportation. But in the end, and in my judgment at a time not very far off, we shall have to, or at least we shall find that we ought to, take further action as regards all corporations doing interstate business. The enormous increase in interstate trade, resulting from the industrial development of the last quarter of a century, makes it proper that the Federal Government should, so far as may be necessary to carry into effect its national policy, assume a degree of administrative control of these great corporations.

It may well be that we shall find that the only effective way of exercising this supervision is to require all corporations engaged in interstate commerce to produce proof satisfactory, say, to the Department of Commerce, that they are not parties to any contract or combination or engaged in any monopoly in interstate trade in violation of the anti-trust law, and that their conduct on certain other specified points is proper; and, moreover, that these[452] corporations shall agree, with a penalty of forfeiture of their right to engage in such commerce, to furnish any evidence of any kind as to their trade between the States whenever so required by the Department of Commerce.

It is the almost universal policy of the several States, provided by statute, that foreign corporations may lawfully conduct business within their boundaries only when they produce certificates that they have complied with the requirements of their respective States; in other words, that corporations shall not enjoy the privileges and immunities afforded by the State governments without first complying with the policy of their laws. Now the benefits which corporations engaged in interstate trade enjoy under the United States Government are incalculable; and in respect of such trade the jurisdiction of the Federal Government is supreme when it chooses to exercise it.

When, as is now the case, many of the great corporations consistently strain the last resources of legal technicality to avoid obedience to a law for the reasonable regulation of their business, the only way effectively to meet this attitude on their part is to give to the Executive Department of the Government a more direct and therefore more efficient supervision and control of their management.

In speaking against the abuses committed by certain very wealthy corporations or individuals, and of the necessity of seeking so far as it can safely be done to remedy these abuses, there is always danger[453] lest what is said may be misinterpreted as an attack upon men of means generally. Now it can not too often be repeated in a Republic like ours that the only way by which it is possible permanently to benefit the condition of the less able and less fortunate is so to shape our policy that all industrious and efficient people who act decently may be benefited; and this means, of course, that the benefit will come even more to the more able and more fortunate. If, under such circumstances, the less fortunate man is moved by envy of his more fortunate brother to strike at the conditions under which they have both, though unequally, prospered, he may rest assured that while the result may be damaging to the other man, it will be even more damaging to himself. Of course, I am now speaking of prosperity that comes under normal and proper conditions.

In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases the straight-dealing man who by ingenuity and industry benefits himself must also benefit others. The man of great productive capacity who gets rich through guiding the labor of hundreds or thousands of other men does so, as a rule, by enabling their labor to produce more than it would without his guidance, and both he and they share in the benefit, so that even if the share be unequal it must never be forgotten that they too are really benefited by his success.

A vital factor in the success of any enterprise is the guiding intelligence of the man at the top, and[454] there is need in the interest of all of us to encourage rather than to discourage the activity of the exceptional men who guide average men so that their labor may result in increased production of the kind which is demanded at the time. Normally we help the wage-worker, we help the man of small means, by making conditions such that the man of exceptional business ability receives an exceptional reward for that ability.

But while insisting with all emphasis upon this, it is also true that experience has shown that when there is no governmental restraint or supervision, some of the exceptional men use their energies, not in ways that are for the common good, but in ways which tell against this common good; and that by so doing they not only wrong smaller and less able men—whether wage-workers or small producers and traders—but force other men of exceptional abilities themselves to do what is wrong under penalty of falling behind in the keen race for success. There is need of legislation to strive to meet such abuses. At one time or in one place this legislation may take the form of factory laws and employers’ liability laws. Under other conditions it may take the form of dealing with the franchises which derive their value from the grant of the representatives of the people. It may be aimed at the manifold abuses, far-reaching in their effects, which spring from overcapitalization. Or it may be necessary to meet such conditions as those with which I am now dealing and to strive to procure proper supervision[455] and regulation by the National Government of all great corporations engaged in interstate commerce or doing an interstate business.

There are good people who are afraid of each type of legislation; and much the same kind of argument that is now advanced against the effort to regulate big corporations has been again and again advanced against the effort to secure proper employers’ liability laws or proper factory laws with reference to women and children; much the same kind of argument was advanced but five years ago against the franchise-tax law enacted in this State while I was Governor.

Of course there is always the danger of abuse if legislation of this type is approached in a hysterical or sentimental spirit, or, above all, if it is approached in a spirit of envy and hatred toward men of wealth.

We must not try to go too fast, under penalty of finding that we may be going in the wrong direction; and, in any event, we ought always to proceed by evolution and not by revolution. The laws must be conceived and executed in a spirit of sanity and justice, and with exactly as much regard for the rights of the big man as for the rights of the little man—treating big man and little man exactly alike.

Our ideal must be the effort to combine all proper freedom for individual effort with some guarantee that the effort is not exercised in contravention of the eternal and immutable principles of justice.

My Fellow-Citizens:

I want to congratulate you upon the showing your school-children have made, and further I wish as an American to congratulate the representatives of the colored race who have shown such progress in directing the industrial interests of this city. All they have done in that way means a genuine progress for the race. I am glad as an American for what you are doing. The standing of the bank which in this city is managed by colored men should give genuine pride to all the colored men of this country. Its record is an enviable one. You colored men who show in business life both ability and a high order of integrity are real benefactors not only of your race but of the whole country.

My Fellow-Citizens:

I trust I need hardly say how great is my pleasure at speaking in this historic capital of your historic State—the State than which no other has contributed a larger proportion to the leadership of the nation; for on the honor roll of those American worthies whose greatness is not only for the age[457] but for all time, not only for one nation but for all the world, on this honor roll Virginia’s name stands above all others. And in greeting all of you, I know that no one will grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment to the veterans of the Civil War. A man would indeed be but a poor American who could without a thrill witness the way in which, in city after city in the North as in the South, on every public occasion, the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray now march and stand shoulder to shoulder, giving tangible proof that we are all now in fact as well as in name a reunited people, a people infinitely richer because of the priceless memories left to all Americans by you men who fought in the great war. Last Memorial Day I spoke in Brooklyn, at the unveiling of the statue of a Northern general, under the auspices of the Grand Army of the Republic, and that great audience cheered every allusion to the valor and self-devotion of the men who followed Lee as heartily as they cheered every allusion to the valor and self-devotion of the men who followed Grant. The wounds left by the great civil war have long healed, but its memories remain. Think of it, oh, my countrymen, think of the good fortune that is ours! That whereas every other war of modern times has left feelings of rancor and bitterness to keep asunder the combatants, our great war has left to the sons and daughters of the men who fought, on whichever side they fought, the same right to feel the keenest pride in[458] the great deeds alike of the men who fought on one side and of the men who fought on the other. The proud self-sacrifice, the resolute and daring courage, the high and steadfast devotion to the right as each man saw it, whether Northerner or Southerner, these qualities render all Americans forever the debtors of those who in the dark days from ’61 to ’65 proved their truth by their endeavor. Here around Richmond, here in your own State, there lies battlefield after battlefield, rendered forever memorable by the men who counted death as but a little thing when weighed in the balance against doing their duty as it was given them to see it. These men have left us of the younger generation not merely the memory of what they did in war, but of what they did in peace. Foreign observers predicted that when such a great war closed it would be impossible for the hundreds of thousands of combatants to return to the paths of peace. They predicted ceaseless disorder, wild turbulence, the alternation of anarchy and despotism. But the good sense and self-restraint of the average American citizen falsified these prophecies. The great armies disbanded and the private in the ranks, like the officer who had commanded him, went back to take up the threads of his life where he had dropped them when the call to arms came. It was a wonderful, a marvelous thing, in a country consecrated to peace with but an infinitesimal regular army, to develop so quickly the huge hosts which confronted one another between the James[459] and the Potomac and along the Mississippi and its tributaries. But it was an even more wonderful, an even more marvelous thing, how these great hosts, once their work done, resolved themselves into the general fabric of the Nation.

Great though the meed of praise is which is due the South for the soldierly valor her sons displayed during the four years of war, I think that even greater praise is due to her for what her people have accomplished in the forty years of peace which followed. For forty years the South has made not merely a courageous, but at times a desperate struggle, as she has striven for moral and material well-being. Her success has been extraordinary, and all citizens of our common country should feel joy and pride in it; for any great deed done or any fine qualities shown by one group of Americans of necessity reflects credit upon all Americans. Only a heroic people could have battled successfully against the conditions with which the people of the South found themselves face to face at the end of the Civil War. There had been utter destruction and disaster, and wholly new business and social problems had to be faced with the scantiest means. The economic and political fabric had to be readjusted in the midst of dire want, of grinding poverty. The future of the broken, war-swept South seemed beyond hope, and if her sons and daughters had been of weaker fibre there would in very truth have been no hope. But the men and the sons of the men who had faced with unfaltering[460] front every alternation of good and evil fortune from Manassas to Appomattox, and the women, their wives and mothers, whose courage and endurance had reached an even higher heroic level—these men and these women set themselves undauntedly to the great task before them. For twenty years the struggle was hard and at times doubtful. Then the splendid qualities of your manhood and womanhood told, as they were bound to tell, and the wealth of your extraordinary natural resources began to be shown. Now the teeming riches of mine and field and factory attest the prosperity of those who are all the stronger because of the trials and struggles through which this prosperity has come. You stand loyally to your traditions and memories; you also stand loyally for our great common country of to-day and for our common flag, which symbolizes all that is brightest and most hopeful for the future of mankind; you face the new age in the spirit of the age. Alike in your material and in your spiritual and intellectual development you stand abreast of the foremost in the world’s progress.

And now, my fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, exactly as all of us, whether we live in the East or the West, in the North or the South, have the right merely as Americans to feel pride in every great deed done by any American in the past, and exactly as we are knit together by this common heritage of memories, so we are knit together, by the bond of our common duties in the present, our[461] common interest in the future. Many and great problems lie before us. If we treat the mighty memories of the past merely as excuses for sitting lazily down in the present, or for standing aside from the rough work of the world, then these memories will prove a curse instead of a blessing. But if we treat them as I believe we shall treat them, not as excuses for inaction, but as incentives to make us show that we are worthy of our fathers and of our fathers’ fathers, then in truth the deeds of the past will not have been wasted, for they shall bring forth fruit a hundred-fold in the present generation. We of this Nation, we, the citizens of this mighty and wonderful Republic, stretching across a continent between the two greatest oceans, enjoy extraordinary privileges, and as our opportunity is great, therefore our responsibility is great. We have duties to perform both abroad and at home, and we can not shirk either set of duties and fully retain our self-respect.

In foreign affairs we must make up our minds that, whether we wish it or not, we are a great people and must play a great part in the world. It is not open to us to choose whether we will play that great part or not. We have to play it; all we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill. And I have too much confidence in my countrymen to doubt what the decision will be. Our mission in the world should be one of peace, but not the peace of cravens, the peace granted contemptuously to those who purchase it by surrendering the right. No![462] Our voice must be effective for peace because it is raised for righteousness first and for peace only as the handmaiden of righteousness. We must be scrupulous in respecting the rights of the weak, and no less careful to make it evident that we do not act through fear of the strong. We must be scrupulous in doing justice to others and scrupulous in exacting justice for ourselves. We must beware equally of that sinister and cynical teaching which would persuade us to disregard ethical standards in international relations, and of the no less hurtful folly which would stop the whole work of civilization by a well-meant but silly persistency in trying to apply to peoples unfitted for them those theories of government and of national action which are only suited for the most advanced races. In particular, we must remember that in undertaking to build the Panama Canal we have necessarily undertaken to police the seas at either end of it; and this means that we have a peculiar interest in the preservation of order in the coasts and islands of the Caribbean. I firmly believe that by a little wise and generous aid we can help even the most backward of the peoples in these coasts and islands forward along the path of orderly liberty so that they can stand alone. If we decline to give them such help the result will be bad both for them and for us; and will in the end in all probability cause us to face humiliation or bloodshed.

The problems that face us abroad are important, but the problems that face us at home are even[463] more important. The extraordinary growth of industrialism during the last half century brings every civilized people face to face with the gravest social and economic questions. This is an age of combination among capitalists and combination among wage-workers. It is idle to try to prevent such combinations. Our efforts should be to see that they work for the good and not for the harm of the body politic. New devices of law are necessary from time to time in order to meet the changed and changing conditions. But after all we will do well to remember that, although the problems to be solved change from generation to generation, the spirit in which their solution must be attempted remains forever the same. It is in peace as it is in war. Tactics change and weapons change. The Continental troops in their blue and buff, who fought under Washington and Greene and Wayne, differed entirely in arms and in training from those who in blue or gray faced one another in the armies of Grant and of Lee, of Sherman and of Johnston. And now the sons of these same Union and Confederate veterans, who serve in our gallant little army of to-day, wear a different uniform, carry a different weapon, and practice different tactics. But the soul of the soldier has remained the same throughout, and the qualities which drove forward to victory or to death the men of ’76 and the men of ’61 are the very qualities which the men of to-day must keep unchanged if in the hour of need the honor of the Nation is to be kept untarnished.[464] So it is in civil life. This Government was formed with as its basic idea the principle of treating each man on his worth as a man, of paying no heed to whether he was rich or poor, no heed to his creed or his social standing, but only to the way in which he performed his duty to himself, to his neighbor, to the state. From this principle we can not afford to vary by so much as a hand’s breadth. Many republics have risen in the past, and some of them flourished long, but sooner or later they fell; and the cause most potent in bringing about their fall was in almost all cases the fact that they grew to be governments in the interest of a class instead of governments in the interest of all. It made no difference as to which class it was that thus wrested to its own advantage the governmental machinery. It was ultimately as fatal to the cause of freedom whether it was the rich who oppressed the poor or the poor who plundered the rich. The crime of brutal disregard of the rights of others is as much a crime when it manifests itself in the shape of greed and brutal arrogance on the one side, as when it manifests itself in the shape of envy and lawless violence on the other. Our aim must be to deal justice to each man; no more and no less. This purpose must find its expression and support not merely in our collective action through the agencies of the Government, but in our social attitude. Rich man and poor man must alike feel that on the one hand they are protected by law and that on the other hand they are responsible to the law; for[465] each is entitled to be fairly dealt with by his neighbor and by the State; and if we as citizens of this Nation are true to ourselves and to the traditions of our forefathers such fair measure of justice shall always be dealt to each man; so that as far as we can bring it about each shall receive his dues, each shall be given the chance to show the stuff there is in him, shall be secured against wrong, and in turn prevented from wronging others. More than this no man is entitled to, and less than this no man shall have.

Mr. Mayor, Governor, and you, my Hosts:

One among the very many great Virginians at the time when this Nation was born—Patrick Henry—said: “We are no longer New Yorkers or New Englanders, Pennsylvanians or Virginians, we are Americans.” And surely, Mr. Mayor, the man would be but a poor American who was not touched and stirred to the depths by the reception that I have met with to-day in this great historic city of America. Coming to-day by the statue of Stonewall Jackson, in the city of Lee, I felt what a privilege it is that I, as an American, have in claiming that you yourselves have no more right of kinship in Lee and Jackson than I have. I can claim to be a middling good American, because my ancestry was half Southern and half Northern; I was born in[466] the East and I have lived a good while in the West—so long in fact that I do not admit that any man can be a better Westerner than I am. In short, gentlemen, I claim to be neither Northerner nor Southerner, neither Easterner nor Westerner, but a good American, pure and simple.

Next only to a man’s having worn the blue comes the fact of the man’s having worn the gray, as entitling him to honor in my sight. Last year I told General Fitzhugh Lee that I wanted to add to my collection of autograph letters of great Americans—Lincoln, Grant, Clay, Jefferson (turning to the Governor), your namesake, Andrew Jackson—that of General Lee, with his photograph. I got from General Fitzhugh Lee a letter of General Lee and a photograph of him, handed to me after General Fitzhugh Lee’s death. I was not able to thank my old and valued friend, the father, but I put the son on my staff; and now I have the grandson of General Grant and the grandnephew of General Lee and the son of Phil Sheridan on my staff.

I noticed that the statue of Stonewall Jackson had been raised as a gift by certain Englishmen. The best biography of General Jackson was by an Englishman, Colonel Henderson. It is a curious and rather lamentable fact that he died just as he was about to undertake another biography which I had earnestly asked him to undertake. I had written him urging that he should finish his very remarkable military study of Stonewall Jackson by writing a military biography of General Lee, and he had[467] written me back that he intended to do so. Shortly afterward I learned of his death.

Gentlemen, I can not sufficiently express to you my deep appreciation of the way in which you have greeted me here to-day. You can not be nearly as glad to see me as I am to see you. Let me say once more what I said in my more formal address. Think of the good fortune that is ours, think of the good fortune that is ours as a people in having, each of us, whether we in our own persons or through our ancestors, wore the blue or the gray, the proud right to challenge as our own all of the valor, all of the self-devotion, all of the steadfast adherence to right as God gave to each man to see the right, shown alike by the man who wore the blue and by the man who wore the gray in the great contest that was waged from ’61 to ’65.

My Fellow-Citizens:

I am glad here at the capital of North Carolina to have a chance to greet so many of the sons and daughters of your great State. North Carolina’s part in our history has ever been high and honorable. It was in North Carolina that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence foreshadowed the course taken in a few short months by the representatives of the thirteen colonies assembled in Philadelphia. North Carolina can rightfully say that she pointed us the way which led to the formation[468] of the new Nation. In the Revolution she did many memorable deeds; and the battle of King’s Mountain marked the turning point of the Revolutionary War in the South. But I congratulate you not only upon your past, but upon your present. I congratulate you upon the great industrial activity shown in your Commonwealth—an industrial activity which, to mention but one thing, has placed this State second only to one other in the number of its textile factories. You are showing in practical fashion your realization of the truth that there must be a foundation of material well-being in order that any community may make real and rapid progress. And I am happy to say that you are in addition showing in practical fashion your understanding of the great truth that this material well-being, though necessary as a foundation, can only be the foundation, and that upon it must be raised the superstructure of a higher life, if the Commonwealth is to stand as it should stand. More and more you are giving care and attention to education; and education means the promotion not only of industry, but of that good citizenship which rests upon individual rights and upon the recognition by each individual that he has duties as well as rights—in other words, of that good citizenship which rests upon moral integrity and intellectual freedom. The man must be decent in his home life, his private life, of course; but this is not by itself enough. The man who fails to be honest and brave both in his political franchise and in his private business contributes[469] to political and social anarchy. Self-government is not an easy thing. Only those communities are fit for it in which the average individual practices the virtue of self-command, of self-restraint, of wise disinterestedness combined with wise self-interest; where the individual possesses common-sense, honesty, and courage.

And now I want to say a word to you on a special subject in which all the country is concerned, but in which North Carolina has a special concern. The preservation of the forests is vital to the welfare of every country. China and the Mediterranean countries offer examples of the terrible effect of deforestation upon the physical geography, and therefore ultimately upon the national well-being, of the nations. One of the most obvious duties which our generation owes to the generations that are to come after us is to preserve the existing forests. The prime difference between civilized and uncivilized peoples is that in civilized peoples each generation works not only for its own well-being, but for the well-being of the generations yet unborn, and if we permit the natural resources of this land to be destroyed so that we hand over to our children a heritage diminished in value we thereby prove our unfitness to stand in the forefront of civilized peoples. One of the greatest of these heritages is our forest wealth. It is the upper altitudes of the forested mountains that are most valuable to the Nation as a whole, especially because of their effects upon the water supply. Neither[470] State nor Nation can afford to turn these mountains over to the unrestrained greed of those who would exploit them at the expense of the future. We can not afford to wait longer before assuming control, in the interest of the public, of these forests; for if we do wait, the vested interests of private parties in them may become so strongly intrenched that it may be a most serious as well as a most expensive task to oust them. If the Eastern States are wise, then from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf we will see, within the next few years, a policy set on foot similar to that so fortunately carried out in the high Sierras of the West by the National Government. All the higher Appalachians should be reserved, either by the States or by the Nation. I much prefer that they should be put under National control, but it is a mere truism to say that they will not be reserved either by the States or by the Nation unless you people of the South show a strong interest therein.

Such reserves would be a paying investment, not only in protection to many interests, but in dollars and cents to the Government. The importance to the Southern people of protecting the Southern mountain forests is obvious. These forests are the best defence against the floods which in the recent past have, during a single twelvemonth, destroyed property officially valued at nearly twice what it would cost to buy the Southern Appalachian Reserve. The maintenance of your Southern water powers is not less important than the prevention[471] of floods, because if they are injured your manufacturing interests will suffer with them. The perpetuation of your forests, which have done so much for the South, should be one of the first objects of your public men. The two Senators from North Carolina have taken an honorable part in this movement. But I do not think that the people of North Carolina or of any other Southern State have quite grasped the importance of this movement to the commercial development and prosperity of the South.

The position of honor in your parade to-day is held by the Confederate veterans. They by their deeds reflect credit upon their descendants and upon all Americans, both because they did their duty in war and because they did their duty in peace. Now if the young men, their sons, will not only prove that they possess the same power of fealty to an ideal, but will also show the efficiency in the ranks of industrial life that their fathers, the Confederate veterans, showed that they possessed in the ranks of war, the industrial future of this great and typically American Commonwealth is assured.

The extraordinary development of industrialism during the last half century has been due to several causes, but above all to the revolution in the methods of transportation and communication; that is, to steam and to electricity, to the railroad and the telegraph.

When this Government was founded commerce was carried on by essentially the same instruments[472] that had been in use not only among civilized, but among barbarian, nations, ever since history dawned; that is, by wheeled vehicles drawn by animals, by pack trains, and by sailing ships and rowboats. On land this meant that commerce went in slow, cumbrous, and expensive fashion over highways open to all. Normally these highways could not compete with water transportation, if such was feasible between the connecting points.

All this has been changed by the development of the railroads. Save on the ocean or on lakes so large as to be practically inland seas, transport by water has wholly lost its old position of superiority over transport by land, while instead of the old highways open to every one on the same terms, but of a very limited usefulness, we have new highways—railroads—which are owned by private corporations and which are practically of unlimited, instead of limited, usefulness. The old laws and old customs which were adequate and proper to meet the old conditions need radical readjustment in order to meet these new conditions. The cardinal features in these changed conditions are, first, the fact that the new highway, the railway, is, from the commercial standpoint, of infinitely greater importance in our industrial life than was the old highway, the wagon road; and, second, that this new highway, the railway, is in the hands of private owners, whereas the old highway, the wagon road, was in the hands of the State. The management of the new highway, the railroad, or rather of the intricate[473] web of railroad lines which cover the country, is a task infinitely more difficult, more delicate, and more important than the primitively easy task of acquiring or keeping in order the old highway; so that there is properly no analogy whatever between the two cases. I do not believe in government ownership of anything which can with propriety be left in private hands, and in particular I should most strenuously object to government ownership of railroads. But I believe with equal firmness that it is out of the question for the Government not to exercise a supervisory and regulatory right over the railroads; for it is vital to the well-being of the public that they should be managed in a spirit of fairness and justice toward all the public. Actual experience has shown that it is not possible to leave the railroads uncontrolled. Such a system, or rather such a lack of system, is fertile in abuses of every kind, and puts a premium upon unscrupulous and ruthless cunning in railroad management; for there are some big shippers and some railroad managers who are always willing to take unfair advantage of their weaker competitors, and they thereby force other big shippers and big railroad men who would like to do decently into similar acts of wrong and injustice, under penalty of being left behind in the race for success. Government supervision is needed quite as much in the interest of the big shipper and of the railroad man who want to do right as in the interest of the small shipper and the consumer.

Experience has shown that the present laws are[474] defective and need amendment. The effort to prohibit all restraint of competition, whether reasonable or unreasonable, is unwise. What we need is to have some administrative body with ample power to forbid combination that is hurtful to the public, and to prevent favoritism to one individual at the expense of another. In other words, we want an administrative body with the power to secure fair and just treatment as among all shippers who use the railroads—and all shippers have a right to use them. We must not leave the enforcement of such a law merely to the Department of Justice; it is out of the question for the law department of the Government to do what should be purely administrative work. The Department of Justice is to stand behind and co-operate with the administrative body, but the administrative body itself must be given the power to do the work and then held to a strict accountability for the exercise of that power. The delays of the law are proverbial, and what we need in this matter is reasonable quickness of action.

The abuses of which we have a genuine right to complain take many shapes. Rebates are not now often given openly. But they can be given just as effectively in covert form; and private cars, terminal tracks, and the like must be brought under the control of the commission or administrative body which is to exercise supervision by the Government. But in my judgment the most important thing to do is to give to this administrative body power to make its findings effective, and this can[475] be done only by giving it power, when complaint is made of a given rate as being unjust or unreasonable, if it finds the complaint proper, then itself to fix a maximum rate which it regards as just and reasonable, this rate to go into effect practically at once, that is within a reasonable time, and to stay in effect unless reversed by the courts. I earnestly hope that we shall see a law giving this power passed by Congress. Moreover, I hope that by law power will be conferred upon representatives of the Government capable of performing the duty of public accountants carefully to examine into the books of railroads when so ordered by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which should itself have power to prescribe what books, and what books only, should be kept by railroads. If there is in the minds of the Commission any suspicion that a certain railroad is in any shape or way giving rebates or behaving improperly, I wish the Commission to have power as a matter of right, not as a matter of favor, to make a full and exhaustive investigation of the receipts and expenditures of the railroad, so that any violation or evasion of the law may be detected. This is not a revolutionary proposal on my part, for I only wish the same power given in reference to railroads that is now exercised as a matter of course by the national bank examiners as regards national banks. My object in giving these additional powers to the administrative body representing the Government—the Interstate Commerce Commission or whatever it may be—is[476] primarily to secure a real and not a sham control to the Government representatives. The American people abhor a sham, and with this abhorrence I cordially sympathize. Nothing is more injurious from every standpoint than a law which is merely sound and fury, merely pretence, and not capable of working out tangible results. I hope to see all the power that I think it ought to have granted to the Government; but I would far rather see only some of it granted, but really granted, than see a pretence of granting all in some shape that really amounts to nothing.

It must be understood, as a matter of course, that if this power is granted it is to be exercised with wisdom and caution and self-restraint. The Interstate Commerce Commissioner or other Government official who failed to protect a railroad that was in the right against any clamor, no matter how violent, on the part of the public, would be guilty of as gross a wrong as if he corruptly rendered an improper service to the railroad at the expense of the public. When I say a square deal I mean a square deal; exactly as much a square deal for the rich man as for the poor man; but no more. Let each stand on his merits, receive what is due him, and be judged according to his deserts. To more he is not entitled, and less he shall not have.

[477]

REMARKS IN PRESENTING THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP TO MR. JOHN CHARLES McNEILL, IN THE SENATE CHAMBER, RALEIGH, N. C., OCTOBER 19, 1905

Mr. McNeill:

I feel, and I am sure all good Americans must feel, that it is far from enough for us to develop merely a great material prosperity. I appreciate, and all of us must, that it is indispensable to have the material prosperity as a foundation, but if we think the foundation is the entire building, we never shall rank as among the nations of the world; and therefore, it is with peculiar pleasure that I find myself playing a small part in a movement, such as this, by which one of the thirteen original States, one of our great States, marks its sense of proper proportion in estimating the achievements of life, the achievements of which the Commonwealth has a right to be proud. It is a good thing to have the sense of historic continuity with the past, which we largely get through the efforts of just such historic societies as this, through which this cup is awarded to you. It is an even better thing to try to do what we can to show our pleasure in and approval of productive literary work in the present. Mr. McNeill, I congratulate you and North Carolina.

Mr. Mayor, People of Durham, and Undergraduates and Graduates of Trinity College:

I know that the citizens of Durham will not begrudge my making a special address to the representatives of a great typical Southern college, which, because it is a typical Southern college, is a typical American college. In speaking to-day to you undergraduates and graduates of Trinity (and when I speak to the graduates of Trinity, I speak to both the United States Senators of North Carolina—a pretty good showing for one college—) I speak not only to you, but through you to the college men of the South. I have been more impressed than I can well express by the first article in the constitution of Trinity—the article that sets forth the aims of the college. Not for your sake (for you are familiar with it), but for the sake of all college men, North and South, I am going to read that article:

“The aims of Trinity College are to assert a faith in the eternal union of knowledge and religion set forth in the teachings and character of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; to advance learning in all lines of truth; to defend scholarship against all false notions and ideals; to develop a Christian love of freedom and truth; to educate a sincere spirit of tolerance; to discourage all partisan and sectarian strife, and to render the largest permanent service to the individual,[479] the State, the Nation, and the Church. Unto these ends shall the affairs of this college always be administered.”

I know of no other college which has so nobly set forth as the object of its being the principles to which every college should be devoted, in whatever portion of this Union it may be placed. You stand for all those things for which the scholar must stand if he is to render real and lasting service to the state. You stand for academic freedom, for the right of private judgment, for the duty, more incumbent upon the scholar than upon any other man, to tell the truth as he sees it, to claim for himself and give to others the largest liberty in seeking after the truth. There must be no coercion of opinion if collegiate training is to bring forth its full fruit. You men of this college, you men throughout the South, who have had collegiate training, you men throughout the Union, who have had collegiate training, bear a peculiar burden of responsibility. I want you to have a good time, and I believe you do. I believe in play with all my heart. Play when you play, but work when you work; and remember that your having gone through college does not so much confer a special privilege as it imposes a special obligation on you. We have a right to expect a special quality of leadership from the men to whom much has been given in the way of a collegiate education. You are not entitled to any special privilege, but you are entitled to be held to a peculiar accountability; you have earned[480] the right to be held peculiarly responsible for what you do. Each one of you, if he is worth his salt, wishes, when he graduates, to pay some portion of the debt due to his alma mater. You have received from her, during your years of attendance in her halls, certain privileges in the way of scholarship, in the way of companionship, which makes it incumbent upon you to repay what you have been given. You can not repay that to the college save in one way: by the quality of your citizenship as displayed in the actual affairs of life you can make it an honor to the college to have sent you forth into the great world. That is the only way in which you can repay to the college what the college has done for you. I earnestly hope and believe that you and those like you in all the colleges of this land will make it evident to the generation that is rising that you are fit to take leadership, that the training has not been wasted, that you are ready to render to the state the kind of service which is invaluable, because it can not be bought, because there is no price that can be put upon it. We have the right to expect from college men not merely disinterested service, but intelligent service. The free peoples who exercise self-government always have to war not merely against the knavish man who deliberately does what he knows to be wrong, but against the foolish man, who may mean very well, but who in actual fact turns out the ally of the other man who does not mean well; and we must depend upon you men who have been given special facilities in education[481] to guide our people aright so that they shall neither fall into the pit of folly nor into the pit of knavery.

My Fellow-Citizens:

No man could fail to be made a better American by traveling through this great historic State of yours, where, throughout his journey, he sees place after place associated with the historic past, such as this city of yours near the Guilford battleground, commemorating by its name one of Washington’s great generals. North Carolina’s history has ever been high and honorable. It is right that we should remember that the mighty deeds of our forefathers are not to serve to us as excuses for inaction on our part, but as spurs to drive us forward to doing our duty in our turn. We respect the son of a worthy father if he feels that the fact that his father did well makes it incumbent upon him to strive to do better. We despise the boy who treats the fact that his father counted for something as being an excuse for his counting for nothing. So I am glad to note the care that you in this State are giving to education. The greatness of the country in the time immediately to come will depend upon the way in which the young generation of to-day is trained to citizenship in the future. I am sorry to say that there is probably no one here who is not acquainted with some kindly, well-meaning, and most foolish[482] father or mother who, because life has been hard with him or her in the past, takes the view that the children are not to have to face any difficulties. The worst thing that you can do for a child is to bring up him or her to dodge difficulties. The children who will rise up to call their parents blessed are those whom the parents have trained to meet difficulties, not to shirk them; to overcome obstacles, not to get out of the way for them. Neither the individual nor the community is worth anything if it seeks after that which is easy. The thing to do is to find out what is worth doing and do it—to show the manly quality that allows of this being done.

My Fellow-Citizens:

I have enjoyed more than I can say passing through this great State to-day. I entered your borders a pretty good American, and I leave them a better American. I have rejoiced in the symptoms of your abounding material prosperity. I am here in a great centre of cotton manufacturing. Within a radius of a hundred miles of this city probably half of the cotton manufacturing of the United States is done. I realize to the full, as every good citizen should realize, that there must be a foundation of material prosperity upon which to build the welfare of State or Nation; but I realize also, as every good citizen should, that material prosperity, material well-being, can never be anything but the[483] foundation. It is the indispensable foundation; but if we do not raise upon it the superstructure of a higher citizenship then we fail in bringing this country to the level to which it shall and will be brought.

So, though I congratulate you upon what you have done in the way of material growth, I congratulate you even more upon the great historic memories of your State. It is not so far from here that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was made; the declaration that pointed out the path along which the thirteen united colonies trod but a few months later. As I got off the train here I was greeted by one citizen of North Carolina (and I know that neither the Governor, the Mayor, nor the Senators will blame me for what I am going to say) whose greeting pleased and touched me more than the greeting of any man could have touched me. I was greeted by the widow of Stonewall Jackson. We, of this united country, have a right to challenge, as part of the heritage of honor and glory of each American, the renown bought by all Americans who fought in the Civil War, whether they wore the blue or whether they wore the gray. The valor shown alike by the men of the North and by the men of the South, as they battled for the right as God gave them to see the right, is now part of what we all of us keep with pride. It was my good fortune to appoint to West Point the grandson of Stonewall Jackson. As I came up your streets I saw a monument raised to a fellow-soldier[484] of mine who fell in the Spanish War at Santiago—Shipp, of North Carolina. We, who went to war in ’98, had the opportunity only to fight in a small war, and all that we would claim is that we hope we showed a spirit not entirely unworthy of the men who faced the mighty and terrible days from ’61 to ’65. If there again comes a war I know I can count on the men of the National Guard, like my escort, because the memory of what your fathers did will make you ashamed not to rise level to the demands of the new time as they rose level to the demands of their time.

In civil life each generation has its problems. The tremendous industrial development of the past half century, the very development which has produced cities such as this, has brought great problems with it; problems connected with corporations; problems connected with labor; problems connected with both the accumulation and the distribution of wealth. The problems are new, but the spirit in which we must approach their solution is old. We must face the work we have to do as our fathers faced their work, if we wish to be successful. This is an age of organization, the organization of capital, the organization of labor. Each type of organization should be welcomed when it does good, and fearlessly opposed when it does evil. Our aim should be to strive to keep the reign of justice alive in this country so that we shall above all things avoid the chance of ever dividing on the lines that separate one class from another, one occupation from another.[485] The man who would preach to either wage-worker or capitalist that the other was his foe is a bad citizen and faithless American. We can afford to divide along lines that represent honest difference of opinion, but we can not afford to divide on the fundamental lines of cleavage that separate good citizens from bad citizens. We must remember, if we intend to keep this Republic in its position of headship among the nations of mankind, that we can never afford to deviate from the old American doctrine of treating each man on his worth as a man, of paying heed, not to whether he is rich or poor, but only to whether he acts as a decent citizen.

Senator Clay; and you, My Friends, whom it is hard for me not to call My Neighbors, for I feel as if you were:

You can have no idea of how much it means to me to come back to Roswell, to the home of my mother and of my mother’s people, and to see the spot which I already know so well from what my mother and my aunt told me. It has been exactly as if I were revisiting some old place of my childhood.

I hardly like to say how deeply my heart is moved by coming back here among you. Among the earliest recollections I have as a child is hearing from my mother and my aunt (Miss Annie Bulloch, she then[486] was) about Roswell; of how the Pratts, and Kings, and Dunwoodys, and Bullochs came here first to settle; about the old homestead, the house on the hill; about the Chattahoochee; about all kinds and sorts of incidents that would not interest you, but interested me a great deal when I was a child. I wish I could spend hours here to look all through and see the different places about which I have heard all kinds of incidents. All those anecdotes, looking back now, I can see taught me an enormous amount, perhaps all the more because they were not intended to teach anything. I think we are very apt to learn most when neither we nor the people talking to us intend to teach anything. All those stories of the life of those days taught me what a real home life, a real neighbor life, was and should be. Looking back now at what I learned through those stories of the childhood of my mother, my aunts, my uncles, I can understand why the boys and girls of the Roswell of that time grew up to be men and women who were good servants of the community, who were good husbands, good fathers, good wives and mothers; how it was that they learned to do their duty aright in peace and in war also.

It is my very great good fortune to have the right to claim that my blood is half Southern and half Northern; and I would deny the right of any man here to feel a greater pride in the deeds of every Southerner than I feel. Of the children, the brothers and sisters of my mother who were born[487] and brought up in that house on the hill over there, my two uncles afterward entered the Confederate service, and served in the Confederate Navy. One, the younger man, served on the “Alabama” as the youngest officer aboard her. He was captain of one of her broadside 32-pounders in her final fight, and when at the very end the “Alabama” was sinking, and the “Kearsarge” passed under her stern and came up along the side that had not been engaged hitherto, my uncle, Irving Bulloch, shifted his gun from one side to the other and fired the last two shots fired from the “Alabama.” The other, the elder, James Dunwoody Bulloch, was an admiral in the Confederate service. Of all the people whom I have ever met he was the one that came nearest to that beautiful creation of Thackeray—Colonel Newcome.

Men and women, don’t you think that I have the ancestral right to claim a proud kinship with those who showed their devotion to duty as they saw the duty, whether they wore the gray or whether they wore the blue? All Americans who are worthy the name feel an equal pride in the valor of those who fought on one side or the other, provided only that each did with all his strength and soul and mind his duty as it was given him to see his duty.

Governor; Mr. Mayor; and you, My Valued Friend, Senator Clay; and you, Men and Women of Georgia; Men and Women of my Mother’s State; My Fellow-Citizens and Fellow-Americans:

I can not too strongly express the feeling of gratitude I have for the reception given to me to-day. I want to give you a word of explanation as to what the Senator last said. The Senator said quite truly that when I was in doubt as to the capacity or honesty of any man I was seeking to appoint, or the wisdom of any policy, I was in the habit of going to him. I will tell you why: because the Senator does what I hope I try to do and what I have preached. Whenever I go to the Senator I know I get a square deal. As I said once before to-day, the Senator comes in that group of men upon whose advice I, like every other American President who wishes to do what is best for the people, must rely. If you will come down to bed-rock fact, the party differences are mighty small compared to the common interests that all of us have as Americans. On the great majority of questions, on almost all the important questions that come up, what you want in public life is to find the public man who cares for the interests of the people, and who not only cares for them, but has the sense to know how to make that care effective. I have found that I[489] could consult Senator Clay with absolute freedom and absolute confidence in his good faith and sincere desire to do what was best for our people. All I had to do was to convince him that I was right. I was not always successful in convincing him; but if I did convince him I knew he would stand up for what he thought right.

Before speaking to all of you here together let me say just one word suggested by the generous and unexpected gift presented to me by the representatives of organized labor here in Atlanta. I am speaking in this mighty city, an industrial centre of the Union, in a great agricultural State. It is of course a mere truism to say that if the men who till the soil and the wage-workers are well off the rest of the people will be well off; and it is the part of wise statesmanship to try primarily to do all that can be done for the farmers, the men who live on the land, who work on the land, and for the wage-workers, the men who actually do the work with their hands. It has been my good fortune to be an honorary member of a union of wage-workers. There are few honors that I have ever had of which I am prouder than that. I believe in organized labor; and I will do all that in me lies for the wage-worker, except to do wrong, and if I was willing to do that I would not be his true friend or any one else’s.

Having spoken to the farmer and the wage-worker, let me say just one word to the men of the great Civil War, to the men who fought from ’61[490] to ’65. I am sure that you would be pleased if you could hear the applause that greets, in any audience in the North, any allusion to the valor, the self-devotion, the fealty to right as God gave them to see the right, of the men who wore the gray in the great contest forty years ago. We are indeed thrice fortunate as a people; because to us it has been given alone among peoples in modern times to pass through one of the most terrible contests of history; and, now that the bitterness has died away, to cherish as our most precious heritage the memories bequeathed to us alike by the men in blue and the men in gray, alike by those who followed Grant and those who followed Lee, because each man showed his readiness to sacrifice all, to sacrifice life itself, upon the altar of duty as he saw it.

It is eminently appropriate that the representatives of organized labor should be called upon to play a part in any ceremonies in a great industrial city like this; and that incident alone would justify my choice of subjects to-day.

Here in this great industrial centre, in this city which is a typical Southern city, and therefore a typical American city, it is natural to consider certain phases of the many-sided industrial problem which this generation has to solve. In this world of ours it is practically impossible to get success of any kind on a large scale without paying something for it. The exceptions to the rule are too few to warrant our paying heed to them; and as a rule it may be said that something must be paid as an[491] offset for everything we get and for everything we accomplish. This is notably true of our industrial life. The problems which we of America have to face to-day are very serious, but we will do well to remember that after all they are only part of the price which we have to pay for the triumphs we have won, for the high position to which we have attained. If we were a backward and stationary country we would not have to face these problems at all; but I think that most of us are agreed that to be backward and stationary would be altogether too heavy a price to pay for the avoidance of the problems in question. There are no labor troubles where there is no work to be done by labor. There are no troubles about corporations where the poverty of the community is such that it is not worth while to form corporations. There is no difficulty in regulating railroads where the resources of a region are so few that it does not pay to build railroads. There are many excellent people who shake their heads over the difficulties that as a nation we now have to face; but their melancholy is not warranted save in a very partial degree, for most of the things of which they complain are the inevitable accompaniments of the growth and greatness of which we are proud.

Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not for one moment mean to say that there are not many and serious evils with which we have to grapple, or that there are not unhealthy signs in the body social and politic; but I do mean to say[492] that while we must not show a foolish optimism we must no less beware of a mere blind pessimism. There is every reason why we should be vigilant in searching out what is wrong and unflinchingly resolute in striving to remedy it. But at the same time we must not blind ourselves to what has been accomplished for good, and above all we must not lose our heads and become either hysterical or rancorous in grappling with what is bad.

Take such a question, for instance, as the question, or rather the group of questions, connected with the growth of corporations in this country. This growth has meant, of course, the growth of individual fortunes. Undoubtedly the growth of wealth in this country has had some very unfortunate accompaniments, but it seems to me that much the worst damage that people of wealth can do the rest of us is not any actual physical harm, but the awakening in our breasts of either the mean vice of worshiping mere wealth, and the man of mere wealth, for the wealth’s sake, or the equally mean vice of viewing with rancorous envy and hatred the men of wealth merely because they are men of wealth. Envy is, of course, merely a kind of crooked admiration; and we often see the very man who in public is most intemperate in his denunciation of wealth, in his private life most eager to obtain wealth, in no matter what fashion, and at no matter what moral cost.

Undoubtedly there is need of regulation by the Government, in the interest of the public, of these[493] great corporations which in modern life have shown themselves to be the most efficient business implements, and which are, therefore, the implements commonly employed by the owners of large fortunes. The corporation is the creature of the State. It should always be held accountable to some sovereign, and this accountability should be real and not sham. Therefore, in my judgment, all corporations doing an interstate business, and this means the great majority of the largest corporations, should be held accountable to the Federal Government, because their accountability should be coextensive with their field of action. But most certainly we should not strive to prevent or limit corporate activity. We should strive to secure such effective supervision over it, such power of regulation over it, as to enable us to guarantee that its activity will be exercised only in ways beneficial to the public. The unwisdom of any well-meaning but misguided effort to check corporate activity has been shown in striking fashion in recent years by our experience in the Philippines and in Porto Rico. Our national legislators very properly determined that the islands should not be exploited by adventurers without regard to the interests of the people of the islands themselves. But unfortunately in their zeal to prevent the islands from being improperly exploited they took measures of such severity as to seriously, and in some respects vitally, to hamper and retard the development of the islands. There is nothing that the islands need more than[494] to have their great natural resources developed, and these resources can be developed only by the abundant use of capital, which, of course, will not be put into them unless on terms sufficiently advantageous to offer prospects of good remuneration. We have made the terms not merely hard, but often prohibitory, with the result that American capital goes into foreign countries, like Mexico, and is there used with immense advantage to the country in its development, while it can not go into our own possessions or be used to develop the lands under our own flag. The chief sufferers by this state of things are the people of the islands themselves.

It is impossible too strongly to insist upon what ought to be the patent fact, that it is not only in the interest of the people of wealth themselves, but in our interest, in the interest of the public as a whole, that they should be treated fairly and justly; that if they show exceptional business ability they should be given exceptional reward for that ability. The tissues of our industrial fabric are interwoven in such complex fashion that what strengthens or weakens part also strengthens or weakens the whole. If we penalize industry we will ourselves in the end have to pay a considerable part of the penalty. If we make conditions such that the men of exceptional ability are able to secure marked benefits by the exercise of that ability, then we shall ourselves benefit somewhat. It is our interest no less than our duty to treat them fairly. On the other hand, it is no less their interest to treat us fairly—by[495] “us” I mean the great body of the people, the men of moderate or small fortunes, the farmers, the wage-workers, the smaller business men and professional men. The man of great means who achieves fortune by crooked methods does wrong to the whole body politic. But he not merely does wrong to, he becomes a source of imminent danger to, other men of great means; for his ill-won success tends to arouse a feeling of resentment, which if it becomes inflamed fails to differentiate between the men of wealth who have done decently and the men of wealth who have not done decently.

The conscience of our people has been deeply shocked by the revelations made of recent years as to the way in which some of the great fortunes have been obtained and used, and there is, I think, in the minds of the people at large a strong feeling that a serious effort must be made to put a stop to the cynical dishonesty and contempt for right which have thus been revealed. I believe that something, and I hope that a good deal, can be done by law to remedy the state of things complained of. But when all that can be has thus been done, there will yet remain much which the law can not touch, and which must be reached by the force of public opinion. There are men who do not divide actions merely into those that are honest and those that are not, but create a third subdivision—that of law honesty; of that kind of honesty which consists in keeping clear of the penitentiary. It is hard to reach astute men of this type save by making them feel the[496] weight of an honest public indignation. But this indignation, if it is to be effective, must be intelligent. It is, of course, to the great advantage of dishonest men of wealth if they are denounced, not for being dishonest, but for being wealthy, and if they are denounced in terms so overstrained and hysterical as to invite a reaction in their favor. We can not afford in this country to draw the distinction as between rich man and poor man. The distinction upon which we must insist is the vital, deep-lying, unchangeable distinction between the honest man and the dishonest man, between the man who acts decently and fairly by his neighbor and with a quick sense of his obligations, and the man who acknowledges no internal law save that of his own will and appetite. Above all we should treat with a peculiarly contemptuous abhorrence the man who in a spirit of sheer cynicism debauches either our business life or our political life. There are men who use the phrase “practical politics” as merely a euphemism for dirty politics, and it is such men who have brought the word “politician” into discredit. There are other men who use the noxious phrase “business is business” as an excuse and justification for every kind of mean and crooked work; and these men make honest Americans hang their heads because of some of the things they do. It is the duty of every honest patriot to rebuke in emphatic fashion alike the politician who does not understand that the only kind of “practical politics” which a nation can with safety tolerate is that kind which[497] we know as clean politics, and that we are as severe in our condemnation of the business trickery which succeeds as of the business trickery which fails. The scoundrel who fails can never by any possibility be as dangerous to the community as the scoundrel who succeeds; and of all the men in the country, the worst citizens, those who should excite in our minds the most contemptuous abhorrence, are the men who have achieved great wealth, or any other form of success, in any save a clean and straightforward manner.

So much for the general subject of industrialism. Now, just a word in reference to one of the great staples of this country, which is peculiarly a staple of the Southern States. Of course I mean cotton. I am glad to see diversifications of industry in the South, the growth of manufactures as well as the growth of agriculture, and the growing growth of diversification of crops in agriculture. Nevertheless, it will always be true that in certain of the Southern States cotton will be the basis of the wealth, the mainstay of prosperity in the future as in the past. The cotton crop is of enormous consequence to the entire country. It was the cotton crop of the South that brought four hundred million dollars of foreign gold into the United States last year, turning the balance of trade in our favor. The soil and climate of the South are such that she enjoys a practical monopoly in the production of raw cotton. No other clothing material can be accepted as a substitute for cotton. I welcome the action of[498] the planters in forming a cotton association, and every assistance shall be given them that can be given them by the National Government. Moreover, we must not forget that the work of the manufacturer in the South supplements the work of the planter. It is an advantage to manufacture the raw material here and sell to the world the finished goods. Under proper methods of distribution it may well be doubted whether there can be such a thing as overproduction of cotton. Last year’s crop was nearly fourteen million bales, and yet the price was sufficiently high to give a handsome profit to the planter. The consumption of cotton increases each year, and new uses are found for it.

This leads me to a matter of our foreign relations which directly concerns the cotton planter. At present our market for cotton is largely in China. The boycott of our goods in China during the past year was especially injurious to the cotton manufacturers. This Government is doing, and will continue to do, all it can to put a stop to the boycott. But there is one measure to be taken toward this end in which I shall need the assistance of the Congress. We must insist firmly on our rights; and China must beware of persisting in a course of conduct to which we can not honorably submit. But we in our turn must recognize our duties exactly as we insist upon our rights. We can not go into the international court of equity unless we go in with clean hands. We can not expect China to do us justice unless we do China justice. The chief[499] cause in bringing about the boycott of our goods in China was undoubtedly our attitude toward the Chinese who come to this country. This attitude of ours does not justify the action of the Chinese in the boycott, and especially some of the forms which that action has taken. But the fact remains that in the past we have come short of our duty toward the people of China. It is our clear duty, in the interest of our own wage-workers, to forbid all Chinese of the coolie class—that is, laborers, skilled or unskilled—from coming here. The greatest of all duties is national self-preservation, and the most important step in national self-preservation is to preserve in every way the well-being of the wage-worker. I am convinced that the well-being of our wage-workers demands the exclusion of the Chinese coolies, and it is therefore our duty to exclude them, just as it would be the duty of China to exclude American laboring men if they became in any way a menace to China by entering into her country. The right is reciprocal, and in our last treaty with China it was explicitly recognized as inhering in both nations. But we should not only operate the law with as little harshness as possible, but we should show every courtesy and consideration and every encouragement to all Chinese who are not of the laboring class to come to this country. Every Chinese traveler or student, business man or professional man, should be given the same right of entry to, and the same courteous treatment in, this country as are accorded to the student or traveler,[500] the business man or professional man, of any other nation. Our laws and treaties should be so framed as to guarantee to all Chinamen, save of the excepted coolie class, the same right of entry to this country and the same treatment while here as is guaranteed to citizens of any other nation. By executive action I am as rapidly as possible putting a stop to the abuses which have grown up during many years in the administration of this law. I can do a good deal, and will do a good deal, even without the action of the Congress; but I can not do all that should be done unless such action is taken, and that action I most earnestly hope will be taken. It is needed in our own interest, and especially in the interest of the Pacific Slope and of the South Atlantic and Gulf States; for it is short-sighted indeed for us to permit foreign competitors to drive us from the great markets of China. Moreover, the action I ask is demanded by considerations that are higher than mere interest, for I ask it in the name of what is just and right. America should take the lead in establishing international relations on the same basis of honest and upright dealing which we regard as essential as between man and man.

Mr. Graves, and My Hosts:

Surely it must be almost unnecessary for me to say not alone how I have enjoyed to-day, but how deeply[501] touched and moved I have been at your reception of me, at Georgia’s reception of its descendant. I told the Governor I had a kind of ancestral reversionary right to his chair; because the first revolutionary President of Georgia was my great-great-grandfather, Archibald Bulloch, after whom one of my boys is named. No man could meet with such a reception as you have given me to-day, no man could see your city, could see your people, could address such an audience as I have addressed, and not be a better citizen afterward. It means a great deal to me to meet all of you personally, with all that you gentlemen typify in the world of politics, the world of business, and that world of ethical effort which can alone render either business or politics noble.

Now, I am going to very illy repay the courtesy with which I have been greeted, by causing for a minute or two acute discomfort to a man of whom I am very fond—Uncle Remus. Presidents may come and Presidents may go; but Uncle Remus “stays put.” Georgia has done a great many things for the Union; but she has never done more than when she gave Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to American literature. I suppose he is one of those literary people who insist that art should have nothing to do with morals, and will condemn me as a Philistine for not agreeing with them; but I want to say that one of the great reasons why I like what he has written is because after reading it I rise up with the purpose of being a better man, a man who is bound to strive to do what is in him for the cause of[502] decency and for the cause of righteousness. Gentlemen, I feel too strongly to indulge in any language of mere compliment, of mere flattery. Where Mr. Harris seems to me to have done one of his greatest services is that he has written what exalts the South in the mind of every man who reads it, and yet what has not even a flavor of bitterness toward any other part of the Union. There is not an American anywhere who can read Mr. Harris’s stories—I am not speaking at the moment of his wonderful folk tales, but of his stories—who does not rise up a better citizen for having read them, who does not rise up with a more earnest desire to do his part in solving American problems aright. I can not too strongly express the obligations I am under to Mr. Harris; and one of those obligations is to feel as a principle that it is my duty (which if I have transgressed, I have not transgressed knowingly) never as an American to say anything that could be construed into an attack upon any portion of our common country.

Let me say one word on something entirely different, suggested by our talk here to-day. In speaking over with several of the gentlemen round about me their experiences in the Georgia Legislature and some of my experiences in the New York Legislature, the thing that struck me the most was the truth of Abraham Lincoln’s saying that “there is a deal of human nature in mankind.” The enemies we have to fight, the friends upon whom we have to rely, are substantially the same, in whatever part[503] of the Union we live. We have to war against the same evil tendencies in our own souls; we have to strive to give expression to the same aspirations toward righteousness, toward honor. In doing this there are two things that are necessary above all others. In the first place, the fearless condemnation of what is wrong; the standing up for what is decent, for what is straight; the refusing to palter with the eternal principles of truth; refusing to pardon any man who for any reason lapses from the law that teaches that the man who is to be of service must obey the great rule of truth, of courage, and of honor. In the second place, to remember that second only in iniquity, second only in the injury done to the Republic, to the wrong of the man who acts corruptly, comes the wrong of the man who wantonly accuses the honest man of corruption. Thief is an ugly name, because it denotes an ugly thing; liar is as ugly a name as thief and as little to be desired by any right-thinking man; and either to steal or to lie marks the man as unfit for association with decent men and an enemy of all that is best and most upright in our political life. Too often we have seen public sentiment condoning the acts both of the thief and the liar (I am using ugly words, gentlemen, and I am using them because I wish to denote in the sharpest and in the most ugly fashion ugly attributes), when these acts are shifted a little so that they can be hidden under other names. The man who in political life, the man who in business life, by chicanery or by corruption in any shape[504] or form, does or achieves what could not be done or achieved save by or through chicanery or corruption, stands on the same level with the man who in court is convicted of theft. The man who on no grounds, or on insufficient grounds, attacks the honest and upright man, whether in public or private life, as corrupt; who seeks to persuade men to believe that he is corrupt; who accuses him of corruption; this man stands on the same evil eminence of infamy with the corruptionist himself; and he is himself the greatest ally of the corruptionist he professes to denounce. The Republic will go down, our democratic institutions will be a failure, if the moral sense of the people grows so blunted that they will accept anything else, whether brilliancy or loyalty of party service, or any other deed or quality, as an offset to corruption. The minute that there arises a question of corruption in public life, if we have any sense of loyalty to the Union and its institutions, all political lines vanish at once. We can afford to consider in a public servant nothing but the question of his honesty or dishonesty when once that question is raised.

The surest way of blunting the public conscience in dealing with corruption is to confuse the public mind as to who is corrupt and who is not. There are plenty of men with whom we differ radically, plenty of men of whom we radically disapprove, as to whom it is right and necessary that we should express that disapprobation; but beware of expressing it in terms that imply moral reprobation. When[505] we express moral reprobation let us be sure that we know the facts and then that we say only exactly what is true. To accuse an honest man of being a thief is to gladden the heart of every thief in the Nation. In our legislative bodies, in our National Congress, if you find that any man is corrupt, you are not to be excused if you do not hunt him out of public life, whether he is of one party or whether he is of another. But if you accuse, either specifically or in loose general declamation, all men of being corruptionists, you by just so much weaken your own strength when it becomes necessary to assail the genuine corruptionist. So far from asking that you be lenient in your judgment of any public man, I hold that you are recreant to duty if you are thus lenient. Do not be lenient, but do be just. If you dislike a man’s policy, say so. If you think he is acting in a way so misguided that he will bring ruin to the State or Nation, say so. But do not accuse him of corruption unless you know that he is corrupt; and if you know that he is corrupt, if you have good reason to believe that he is corrupt, then refuse under any plea of party expediency, under any consideration, to refrain from smiting him with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

My Fellow-Citizens:

Here in Florida, the first of the Gulf States which I have visited upon this trip, I wish to say a special[506] word about the Panama Canal. I believe that the canal will be of great benefit to all of our people, but most of all to the States of the South Atlantic, the Gulf and the Pacific Slope. When completed the canal will stand as a monument to this Nation; for it will be the greatest engineering feat ever yet accomplished in the world. It will be a good thing for the world as a whole, and for the people of the Isthmus and of the northern portions of South America in particular. Because of our especial interest in it, and because of the position we occupy on this hemisphere, it is a matter of especial pride to us that our Nation, the American Nation, should have undertaken the performance of this world duty. A body of the most eminent engineers in the world, both Americans and foreigners, has been summoned to advise as to the exact type of canal which should be built. At no distant date I hope to be able to announce what their advice is, and also the action taken upon their advice. Meanwhile the work is already well under way, and has advanced sufficiently far to enable me to announce with certainty that it can surely be accomplished, and probably at rather less expense than was anticipated. But upon the last point, as well as upon the question of time, no positive statement can be made until the report of the commission of engineers as to the exact type of canal has been received. The work is as difficult as it is important; and it is of course inevitable that from time to time difficulties will occur and checks be encountered. Whenever such is the[507] case the men of little faith at home will lose that little faith, and the critics who confound hysteria with emphasis will act after their kind. But our people as a whole possess not only faith, but resolution, and are of too virile fibre to be swept one way or the other by mere sensationalism. No check that may come will be of more than trivial and passing consequence, will inflict any permanent damage, or cause any serious delay. The work can be done, is being done, and will be done. What has already been accomplished is a guaranty as to the future.

When any such work is undertaken there are always many mere adventurers who flock to where it is going on, and many men who think they are adventurers, but who are in reality either weak or timid, follow in their footsteps. Some of the first class will now and then cause trouble in one way or another. But every care will be taken to detect any misdeed on their part and to punish them as soon as the misdeed is detected. As for the second class, they will cause trouble chiefly by losing heart, returning home, or writing home, and raising a cry that they are not happy, and that the conditions of life are not easy, or that the work is not being done as they think it ought to be done. Now these men stand just as the stragglers and laggards stand who are ever to be found in the rear of even a victorious army. The veterans of the Civil War who are here present will tell you that the very rear of an army, even when it is victorious, is apt to look and behave[508] as if the victory were defeat. And just the same thing is true in any great enterprise in civil life; there are always weaklings who get trampled down or lose heart, and there are always people who listen to their complaints. They amount to nothing one way or the other, so far as achieving results is concerned; and their complaints and outcries need never detain us.

I call your attention specifically to the matter of health on the Isthmus. The climate was supposed to be deadly, and yellow fever, in especial, was supposed to be epidemic. Yet since we have assumed control there has been far less yellow fever than in our own country. The administration is steadily becoming better and more effective, from the hygienic as well as from every other standpoint. The work of building the canal is a great American work, in which the whole American people are interested. It has nothing to do with parties or partisanship, and is being carried on with absolute disregard to all merely political considerations; with regard only to efficiency, honesty, and economy.

The digging of the canal will, of course, greatly increase our interest in the Caribbean Sea. It will be our duty to police the canal, both in the interest of other nations and in our own interest. To do this it is, of course, indispensable to have an efficient navy (and I am happy to say that we are well on our way toward having one), and also to possess, as we already possess, certain strategic points to control the approach to the canal. In addition it[509] is urgently necessary that the insular and continental countries within or bordering upon the Caribbean Sea should be able to secure fair dealing and orderly liberty within their own borders. I need not say that the United States not only has no purpose of aggression upon any republic, continental or insular, to the south of us, but has the friendliest feeling toward them, and desires nothing save their progress and prosperity. We do not wish another foot of territory; and I think our conduct toward Cuba is a guaranty that this is our genuine attitude toward all our sister republics. If ever we should have to interfere in the affairs of any of our neighbors it would only be when we found it impossible longer to refrain from doing so without serious damage following; and even in such case it would only be with the sincere and effective purpose to make our interference beneficial to the peoples concerned. Of course, occupying the position we do, occasions may now and then arise when we can not refrain from such interference, save under penalty of seeing some other strong nation undertake the duty which we neglect; and such neglect would be unfortunate from more than one standpoint. Wherever possible we should gladly give any aid we can to a weaker sister republic which is endeavoring to achieve stability and prosperity. It is an ungenerous thing for us to refuse such aid; and it is foolish not to give it in a way that will make it really effective, and therefore of direct benefit to the people concerned—and of indirect benefit to us, simply because[510] it is a benefit to them. In the last resort, and only in the last resort, it may occasionally be necessary to interfere by exercising what is virtually an international police power, if only to avoid seeing some European power forced to exercise it. In short, while we must interfere always cautiously, and never wantonly, yet, on rare occasions, where the need is great, it may be necessary to interfere, unless we are willing to confess ourselves too feeble for the task that we have undertaken, and to avow that we are willing to surrender it into stronger hands; and such confession and avowal I know my countrymen too well to believe that they will ever make.

Mr. Councilman; Mr. Principal; and you, My Fellow-Citizens:

It is a very great pleasure to be here this afternoon and say a few words of greeting to you. Let me by way of beginning say a word of special greeting to my comrades of the Grand Army. I had a colored cavalry regiment in my brigade at Santiago, and they did well.

My friends, let me say what a pleasure it has been in driving along the streets to have the Governor and the Mayor point out to me house after house owned by colored citizens, who by their own industry, energy, and thrift had accumulated a small fortune honestly and were spending it wisely. Every[511] good American must be interested in seeing every other American citizen rise, help himself upward, so as to be better able to do his duty by himself and those dependent upon him and by the State at large. It seems to me that it is true of all of us that our duties are even more important than our rights. If we do our duties faithfully in spite of all difficulties, then sooner or later the rights will take care of themselves.

What I say to this body of my colored fellow-citizens is just exactly what I would say to any body of my white fellow-citizens. What we need in this country is typified by what I have been shown to-day as having been done by people of your race. We need education, morality, industry; we need intelligence, clean living, and the power to work hard and effectively. No man interested, as every President must be, in the welfare of all his fellow-Americans, could be otherwise than deeply pleased, not only at the evidences of thrift and prosperity among what must be evidently many hundreds of your number here in this city, as shown by the homes that I have seen, but interested also in seeing an educational institute like this carried on as this institute evidently is carried on. The costliest crop for any community is the crop of ignorance. It is perfectly true that education in mind alone won’t make a good citizen; but it is equally true that you can not get the best citizen without education. We need to have our people of every race educated, as the Principal said[512] in his words of introduction, in heart, mind, and hand; educated so that head and hand can do their several tasks, and so that there shall be behind head and hand also the heart, the conscience, the sense of clean and just living, which make the foundation of all good citizens. This is just as true for the white man as for the colored man. It is true of every man.

I want to say a special word of acknowledgment to the school teachers, men and women alike, who are doing the work of education; and in saying that word I also want to point out this: it is absolutely essential that we should have people do well in the professions; but there is only a limited amount of room in the professions and there is almost an unlimited amount of room in agriculture and in the mechanical trades. Do your very best to develop good teachers, good doctors, to develop good preachers—preachers who shall preach to the colored man as it should be preached to the white man, that “by their fruits you shall know them,” and that the truly religious man is the man who is decent and clean in his private life; who is orderly and law-abiding; the man who hunts down the criminal and does all he can to stop crime and wrong-doing; the man who treats his neighbor well; who is a good man in his own family and therefore a good man in the state. That is what we have a right to expect from the Christian leadership of the churches. All honor to the teacher, to the doctor, to the preacher; but remember that it is impossible[513] that the bulk of any people shall be teachers, or doctors, or lawyers, or preachers. The bulk have got to be men engaged in the trades, as mechanics, as wage-workers, as farmers. Every man who is a good farmer, a thrifty, progressive, saving mechanic, who owns his own house, who is free from debt, and able to bring up his children well, and to keep his wife as she should be kept, is not only a first-class citizen, but is doing a mighty work in helping to uplift his race.

Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens:

I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying that most of all I am touched by the sight of the men who wore the gray in the great war, parading here to-day. I have just been presented by Judge Semmes with this beautiful badge. I passed by the statue of Admiral Semmes as we drove up hither. Admiral Semmes had under him on the “Alabama” one of my uncles, and it was another uncle that built the “Alabama.” The Judge’s sister, the Admiral’s daughter, is the wife of that distinguished ex-Confederate who by his rule as Governor of the Philippines has held aloft the record of American rule for integrity, efficiency, and firmness.

In speaking before the citizens of this great seaport of the Gulf I naturally wish to say a word about the Panama Canal. I hold that as a matter[514] of public policy whatever helps part of our country helps the whole; and I did my best to bring about the construction of the canal in the interest of all our people; but if there is any one section to be most benefited by it, it is the section that includes the Gulf States. Originally I had been for the Nicaragua canal; but when Congress acted I abode by the decision of Congress. It became evident that we should either have no canal or the Panama Canal; and I am for a canal. If we had not acted as we have, all chance of building that canal would have vanished for half a century to come; and as it is we now are assured of having that canal within a comparatively short time. Gentlemen, I want to warn you not to be misled by interested clamor. Every man who had to do with bringing about the construction of the canal knows that for decades it was opposed and successfully opposed by great commercial interests which did not wish to see it completed, which did not wish to see a canal speedily dug through the Isthmus and communication between the Atlantic and Pacific established. It seems to me evident from certain things I see in a portion of the daily press that those enemies are still active, and that they are going to try to becloud the issue, with the hope of putting off for ten or fifteen years or over the digging of that canal. Their weapons will be and are every form of misrepresentation. But, gentlemen, they will fail. You need not have the slightest alarm. Uncle Sam has started to dig that canal and it will be dug, and soon. The people[515] who, largely by the circulation of false rumors and by direct misstatement, are seeking to create confusion such as will defer the building of the canal will be disappointed. We have as a people the right to feel genuine satisfaction with the progress that has already been made. Let me point out something of which you here will appreciate the significance: the sanitation of the Isthmus. Do you remember that a couple of years ago men said that you could not dig that canal because yellow fever was epidemic there? We are digging it, and with a cleaner bill of mortality than the Isthmus has ever known before. I am happy to be able to tell you that from information received this very day, I find that those who have just returned from the Isthmus are not only pleased but astonished at the excellent trim in which the project is; that it is going on well, and that it will go along even better in the future.

Of all the things said about me to-day in the over-kind allusions to me, I was especially pleased by what the Colonel said as to my attitude toward crooked public servants. I will take advice about appointing men; but if I find they are crooked I do not take any advice at all about removing them. We have Scriptural authority for saying that “offences must come”; but the Good Book adds, “woe to them through whom they come.” I can not guarantee, and no human being can, that there will not be an occasional man of an improper kind appointed, or an occasional well-meaning man who after being appointed goes wrong; but I can say that every[516] effort within the power of the Government will be made to hunt such a man out of the public service and to punish him to the full extent of the law.

Here in this seaboard city I want to say another word, and that is about the United States Navy. Again, Judge Semmes, in passing by the monument of your illustrious father I felt the thrill of pride that all Americans must feel that the names of the combatants in that famous ship duel are commemorated in the names of the “Kearsarge” and “Alabama” in the United States Navy now, and that if ever they have to go into action they will go into action side by side, manned by Americans, against a common foe. I know that an audience composed as this audience is of men who either themselves fought or whose fathers fought in the Civil War, appreciate to the full the sound national policy (if I may use the vernacular) of never bluffing unless you mean to make good. We undertook to build the Panama Canal because we said that owing to our position and interest and standing we were the only nation that could or should do it. That means that we have got to protect it and police it ourselves. We do not ask anybody else to help us do the work we have allotted to ourselves. We must therefore bring up and keep up our navy to the highest point of efficiency. We can afford to have a small army; although we must insist upon its being kept up to the high point of efficiency that I am glad to say our regular army in its individual units has now attained. In the event of war, however, which I hope[517] will never come, the American people in the future as in the past must on land rely mainly upon its volunteer soldiery. But while it is a comparatively simple task to turn a man of the proper character, physique and intelligence into a good soldier, you can not improvise either a battleship or the crew of a battleship. At sea the battle has to be fought with the ships and the crews that have been prepared before the war begins; and we wish to profit by the lessons of history by seeing that our navy is always kept adequate to our needs. It is not necessary to have a very large navy; but it is necessary that ship for ship it should be just a little the most efficient navy in the world. In battle the shots that count are the shots that hit. There are plenty of gallant fellows who will go down with their ships. That is all right; if there is nothing else to be done, go down with the ships rather than surrender. But try to make the other fellow’s ship go down first! I want our people to feel that in assuming to dig the Isthmian canal, in assuming the position we have assumed as regards this Western Hemisphere and in the Oriental seas, we bind ourselves to keep our navy at such a point of efficiency that there shall be no chance of humiliation at the hands of any foreign foe.

I appreciate immensely this mighty outpouring of people. The Mayor in his most gratifying and touching speech spoke of the fact of our agreement on the fundamental questions, without regard to our differences on what are really matters only of political[518] detail. The things that count are the things upon which we are all agreed and must be all agreed in our civic life. Whether President, Governor, Mayor, Congressman, or State Legislator, there are certain basic principles to which we must prove true if we are to make this country what it shall be made. We can perfectly well afford to differ about the currency or the tariff; but we can not afford to differ about such questions as honesty in public life, decency and cleanliness in private life. Those qualities and others like them go to the root of the whole question of citizenship. I believe in the future of this country; I believe that this great self-governing Republic will rise to a height never even dreamed of by any other nation, because I believe that the average American citizen, North or South, East or West, has the right stuff in him; that the average American citizen has the three fundamental virtues of honesty, courage, and common-sense.

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

It is indeed a peculiar pleasure to be here this morning and be greeted as you have greeted me. Mr. Mayor, I feel that those gathered here to greet me symbolize what we most like to think of as typically American in our national life. When you brought me here, Mr. Mayor, I was met on the platform[519] by the pastors of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the shade of an institution of the higher learning, in the presence of these students and of the children of the public schools; while at the same time I see the industries of the nation typified both by cotton being picked as I came up and also by the fact that I am speaking on the most valuable platform I have ever spoken on (cotton bales); and finally, I have as a guard of honor members of the National Guard, whom, as I look at, I feel to be my own comrades, for they are just the type I had in my own regiment in the Spanish war. These elements, as I say, typify what we hope and believe are the elements representing what is most vital in American life: the deep religious feeling of our people, the understanding of our people that material prosperity amounts to nothing if behind it and under it there is not the spiritual sense, the sense of moral obligation, the fealty to an ideal; the realization that in addition we must have, as the foundation of national prosperity, industry, energy, and thrift, and their fruits. There must be devotion to the arts and practices of peace, devotion to civic duty, and yet the readiness of the man who does his duty in civil life to do it in military life if ever the need arises; and finally the recognition of the fact that though a great many crops are important, the most important crop is the crop of children; and the one thing that this Nation can not afford to neglect is the education of the nation of the future. The Nation of the future will rise higher or not just as the boys[520] and girls of the present are or are not trained to do their duty as men and as women. So I take a particular pleasure in being here and greeting the children of the public schools and those past childhood who are studying in this college itself. The one all-essential thing in America, the thing that underlies everything else, is to have the average American a good man or a good woman. If there is any one thing that I respect more than a good man it is a good woman. I think she is just a trifle more useful, and she has a harder time in life; and so she is a little more entitled to our respect than even the best man; and there is not a man here who is worth his salt who does not agree with me. Of course it is a mere truism to say that the ultimate factor in determining the welfare of the nation is the life of the home; that is, the way in which the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, performs his or her ordinary duties of the most sacred and intimate kind. If the man is a good father, a good husband; if he is decent and clean in his domestic life; if he does his duty by his neighbor; if he is the kind of a man whom we are glad to have as a neighbor and to do business with, that man is a good citizen. It is just the same with the woman. If the woman is a good wife and mother, she is a good citizen; and not merely a good citizen, but she is the very best kind of citizen that this country can produce. What we need is not merely desire to perform heroic feats under altogether exceptional circumstances; but the steadfast determination to perform the rather commonplace[521] duties of every day, day by day, as they arise. Speaking broadly, the man who does that is the man whom you can trust if the need for heroism arises. Each of you boys here should remember that the way to fit yourself to be of the utmost possible use is so to act that your family likes to have you at home, instead of feeling a relief when you are gone; and it is the same way with the girl. We all of us know an occasional foolish mother who says, “I have had to work hard; I have had a pretty hard time, my daughter shall not have to work.” That is not kindness to the daughter. It is doing the very worst thing that can be done for her. Do not bring up your boys and girls to be useless, to avoid trouble, to get around trouble, to shirk work. The man or the woman who counts in life is the man or the woman, not who flinches from a task, but who does the task, who overcomes the obstacle. The boy or girl won’t turn out that kind of a man or woman if not brought up in that spirit from the beginning.

Mr. Washington; Friends, and Pupils of Tuskegee Institute:

To the white population as well as to the black, it is of the utmost importance that the negro be encouraged to make himself a citizen of the highest type of usefulness. It is to the interest of the white[522] people that this policy be conscientiously pursued, and to the interest of the colored people that they clearly realize that they have opportunities for economic development here in the South not now offered elsewhere. Within the last twenty years the industrial operations of the South have increased so tremendously that there is a scarcity of labor almost everywhere; so that it is the part of wisdom for all who wish the prosperity of the South to help the negro to become in the highest degree useful to himself, and therefore to the community in which he lives. The South has always depended, and now depends, chiefly upon her native population for her work. Therefore in view of the scarcity not only of common labor, but of skilled labor, it becomes doubly important to train every available man to be of the utmost use, by developing his intelligence, his skill, and his capacity for conscientious effort. Hence the work of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is a matter of the highest practical importance to both the white man and the black man, and well worth the support of both races alike in the South and in the North. Your fifteen hundred students are not only being educated in head and heart, but also trained to industrial efficiency, for from the beginning Tuskegee has placed especial emphasis upon the training of men and women in agriculture, mechanics, and household duties, Training in these three fundamental directions does not embrace all that the negro, or any other race, needs, but it does cover in a very large degree the[523] field in which the negro can at present do most for himself and be most helpful to his white neighbors. Every black man who leaves this institute better able to do mechanical or industrial work adds by so much to the wealth of the whole community and benefits all people in the community. The professional and mercantile avenues to success are overcrowded; for the present the best chance of success awaits the intelligent worker at some mechanical trade or on a farm; for this man will almost certainly achieve industrial independence. I am pleased, but not in the least surprised, to learn that many among the men and women trained at Tuskegee find immediate employment as leaders and workers among their own people, and that their services are eagerly sought by white people for various kinds of industrial work, the demand being much greater than the supply. Viewed from any angle, ignorance is the costliest crop that can be raised in any part of this Union. Every dollar put into the education of either white man or black man, in head, in hand, and in heart, yields rich dividends to the entire community. Merely from the economic standpoint it is of the utmost consequence to all our citizens that institutions such as this at Tuskegee should be a success. But there are other and even higher reasons that entitle it to our support. In the interest of humanity, of justice, and of self-protection, every white man in America, no matter where he lives, should try to help the negro to help himself. It is in the interest and for the protection[524] of the white man to see that the negro is educated. It is not only the duty of the white man, but it is to his interest, to see that the negro is protected in property, in life, and in all his legal rights. Every time a law is broken, every individual in the community has the moral tone of his life lowered. Lawlessness in the United States is not confined to any one section; lynching is not confined to any one section; and there is perhaps no body of American citizens who have deserved so well of the entire American people as the public men, the publicists, the clergymen, the countless thousands of high-minded private citizens, who have done such heroic work in the South in arousing public opinion against lawlessness in all its forms, and especially against lynching. I very earnestly hope that their example will count in the North as well as in the South, for there are just as great evils to be warred against in one region of our country as in another, though they are not in all places the same evils. And when any body of men in any community stands bravely for what is right, these men not merely serve a useful purpose in doing the particular task to which they set themselves, but give a lift to the cause of good citizenship throughout the Union. I heartily appreciate what you have done at Tuskegee; and I am sure you will not grudge my saying that it could not possibly have been done save for the loyal support you have received from the white people round about; for during the twenty-five years of effort to[525] educate the black man here in the midst of a white community of intelligence and culture, there has never been an outbreak between the races, or any difficulty of any kind. All honor is due to the white men of Alabama, to the white men of Tuskegee, for what they have done. And right here let me say that if in any community a misunderstanding between the races arises, over any matter, infinitely the best way out is to have a prompt, frank and full conference and consultation between representatives of the wise, decent, cool-headed men among the whites and the wise, decent, cool-headed colored men. Such a conference will always tend to bring about a better understanding, and will be a great help all round.

Hitherto I have spoken chiefly of the obligations existing on the part of the white man. Now let you remember on the other hand that no help can permanently avail you save as you yourselves develop capacity for self-help. You young colored men and women educated at Tuskegee must by precept and example lead your fellows toward sober, industrious, law-abiding lives. You are in honor bound to join hands in favor of law and order and to war against all crime, and especially against all crime by men of your own race; for the heaviest wrong done by the criminal is the wrong to his own race. You must teach the people of your race that they must scrupulously observe any contract into which they in good faith enter, no matter whether it is hard to keep or not. If you save money, secure[526] homes, become taxpayers, and lead clean, decent, modest lives, you will win the respect of your neighbors of both races. Let each man strive to excel his fellows only by rendering substantial service to the community in which he lives. The colored people have many difficulties to pass through, but these difficulties will be surmounted if only the policy of reason and common-sense is pursued. You have made real and great progress. According to the census the colored people of this country own and pay taxes upon something like three hundred million dollars’ worth of property, and have blotted out over fifty per cent of their illiteracy. What you have done in the past is an indication of what you will be able to accomplish in the future under wise leadership. Moral and industrial education is what is most needed, in order that this progress may continue. The race can not expect to get everything at once. It must learn to wait and bide its time; to prove itself worthy by showing its possession of perseverance, of thrift, of self-control. The destiny of the race is chiefly in its own hands, and must be worked out patiently and persistently along these lines. Remember also that the white man who can be of most use to the colored man is that colored man’s neighbor. It is the Southern people themselves who must and can solve the difficulties that exist in the South; of course what help the people of the rest of the Union can give them must and will be gladly and cheerfully given. The hope of advancement for the colored man in the South lies[527] in his steady, common-sense effort to improve his moral and material condition, and to work in harmony with the white man in upbuilding the Commonwealth. The future of the South now depends upon the people of both races living up to the spirit and letter of the laws of their several States and working out the destinies of both races, not as races, but as law-abiding American citizens.

Governor; Colonel Wiley; My Fellow-Citizens:

My friends and fellow-citizens, think what a privilege ours is; think what it means for this nation; that there is no place in this Union where the President of the Union can feel more at home, can feel more that he is indeed the President of all the Union, of a reunited and indissoluble Union, than here under the shadow of the first capitol of the Confederacy. Poor indeed would be the soul of the man who did not leave Montgomery a better American than he came into it, after being received as I have been received to-day.

In speaking to all of you I know that the younger—those of my own age and younger still—will not grudge my saying a special word of greeting to the veterans of the great war. Here again think how fortunate we are. There is no other people of which history tells, which, having passed through such a war as we passed through, after forty years finds not[528] only that the flag which had been rent in sunder is once again whole without a seam; finds all the people challenging as theirs the right to claim their part in the heritage of glory bequeathed to every American, alike by the Americans who wore the blue and the Americans who wore the gray in the great Civil War. In coming to your mighty and beautiful State, with its wealth of agriculture, its wealth of manufactures, I am more than ever impressed by the solidarity of our interests as a people. As the Governor pointed out, the greatest and most important single export of our people is the export of cotton; and the whole nation is concerned in the welfare of the cotton growers. It is not only important for Alabama and the rest of the Gulf States; it is important for the entire Union, because it is the cotton crop which determines the balance of trade as being in favor of this Nation. The business of any part of this Nation is the business of the entire Nation; and the National Government is bound to do everything it can in the interest of the cotton growers; to preserve your markets; to do everything that can possibly be done to see that the natural demand for cotton abroad is kept up and is met here under fair conditions by our own people. Perhaps no State in the Union is more interested than this in the performance of what is to be the greatest engineering feat the world has yet seen—the building of the Isthmian canal. The cotton crop largely goes to Asia. The canal will of course immensely shorten the water route to Asia. Our influence[529] in the Orient must be kept at such a pitch as will ensure our being able to guarantee fair treatment to our merchants and manufacturers by China. We must insist upon having fair treatment; and as a step toward getting it we must give fair treatment in return. I would demand that on ethical grounds alone; I would demand it also on grounds of self-interest.

Now I want to say a word about the children. Nothing pleases me more than to see the care you are devoting to education in this State; and among the many splendidly heroic deeds credited to the Southern people in peace as well as in war is the fact of having to face, as they did, the future in the midst of a broken and war-swept country, they not only built up their industrial prosperity, but they have provided steadily for the education of the coming generation.

The successful performance of political duty depends absolutely upon the successful performance of domestic, of social, duty. There never can be, there never will be a good government in which the average citizen is not a decent man in private life. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of a good government if the good government does not rest upon cleanliness and decency in the home, respect of husband and wife for one another, tenderness of the man for those dependent upon him, performance of duty by woman and by man, and the proper education of the children who are to make the next generation. The vital things in life are the things that[530] foolish people look upon as commonplace. The vital deeds of life are those things which it lies within the reach of each of us to do, and the failure to perform which means the destruction of the State.

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

I wish to say that I am stirred most deeply by this magnificent reception from what Mr. Rhodes has so well called the Magic City of the South. Alabama has made a wonderful record. At the close of the war, shattered, war-swept, it seemed that it was impossible for her people, in the grip of poverty as they were, to rally; and any people less strong than you of Alabama would have failed; but you had the stuff in you and you succeeded. About the year 1880 the tide turned, and the last quarter of a century has seen in Alabama a progress that would have been absolutely impossible in any other age or in any other nation than ours. The agriculture of the State went upward by leaps and bounds; but even more marvelous was your mechanical and industrial success. You have in this State coal and iron, the two basic elements in modern industrialism, and you have also a wealth of water power only partially used; and given that amount of natural resources and the right type of man to use them, the result will be what we have seen. But there is something that is ahead of any kind of natural resources, and that is the citizenship of the man[531] on the soil. Proud though I am of your extraordinary industrial prosperity, I am prouder yet of the men who have achieved it.

Think what it means for our nation to have the President of the United States greeted as he has been to-day, with on his right and his left hand as the guard of honor the veterans of the Civil War, the men who wore the blue, the men who wore the gray, united forever.

As I came up the street nothing pleased me as much as the sight of the school-children drawn up alongside the line of march. Remember that we shall leave this country in the hands of the children of to-day, and that the American of to-morrow will be what we train the boy or girl to be. If the children are not well educated, if they are not brought up as they should be, the State will go down. We of this generation have received a splendid heritage from you men of the years of ’60 to ’65. Honor to us if we treat your great deeds as spurring us onward; and shame to us if we treat your great deeds as excuses for our own idleness or folly. When I speak of education I do not mean only education in intelligence. That counts tremendously; but education in character counts more. It is character that determines the Nation’s progress in the long run.

In the organizations of veterans after the Civil War each hails the other as comrade. It makes no difference whether the man was a lieutenant-general or whether he was the youngest recruit that[532] served at the very end of the war. All that is asked is, did he do his duty in the place in which he was. If he did, you are for him. If he did not, you have no comradeship with him. I ask that the same lesson that you of the Civil War applied practically in your own persons during and since that war be applied by the rest of us in civil life. I ask that we scorn alike the base arrogance of the rich man who would look down on his poorer brother and the equally base envy of the poor man who would hate his richer brother; and that you apply to every citizen of this Republic just this one test—the test that gauges his worth as a man. Does he do his duty fairly by himself, his family, his neighbor, and the State and the Nation? If he does, be for him, whether he is rich or poor, because if you do not you are recreant in the spirit of Americanism.

Ladies; General:

I accept the two badges in the spirit in which they are offered; for your spirit here is that we are now indeed and forever reunited under the flag of the indissoluble Union; and that henceforth the only rivalry between the man whose father fought in the Union army and the man whose father fought in the Confederate army will be the generous rivalry of seeing who can do most for our common country.

Governor; Judge Trieber, and you, My Fellow-Citizens:

I am fortunate enough to have spoken all over the Union, and I have never said in any State or any section what I would not have said in any other State or in any other section. I am fortunate in being President of a nation where you do not have to praise one State by running down any other State. Arkansas, the New England States, the Western, the Eastern, the Northern, the Southern—they are all good States and I am for them all. The thing that has impressed me most as I have gone through this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to the Gulf, has been not the superficial differences of our people, but the essential likenesses of our people. The average American is a pretty good fellow; and all that is necessary, as you men of the honor guard, you men of the blue and gray know, is that he should know the other average American and they will get on all right. That is true as regards locality and locality, and true as regards occupation and occupation. Thank heaven, we are free now from all danger of sectional antagonism! We must now see that there never comes any spirit of class antagonism in this country, any spirit of hostility between capitalist and wage-worker, between employer and employed; and we[534] can avoid the upgrowth of any such feeling by remembering always to treat each man on his worth as a man. Do not hold it for him or against him that he is either rich or poor. If he is a crooked man and rich, hold it against him, not because he is rich, but because he is crooked. If he is not a rich man and crooked, hold it against him, still because he is crooked. If he is a square man, no matter how much or how little money he has, stand by him because he is a square man. Distrust more than any other man in this Republic the man who would try to teach Americans to substitute loyalty to any class for loyalty to the whole American people. Republics have flourished before now, and have fallen; and they have usually fallen because there arose within them parties that represented either the unscrupulous rich or the unscrupulous poor, and that persuaded the majority of the people to substitute loyalty to the one class for loyalty to the people as a whole.

Remember that the rancorous envy that hates the rich is only one side of the shield whose obverse is the insolence and arrogance that looks down on the poor. The two qualities are fundamentally the same. They only differ in their manifestations because it happens that the man showing one is in a different position from the man showing the other. You show me a rich man who is arrogant and insolent in his disregard of the man of less means, and I tell you that same man, if he loses his wealth, will want to plunder every rich man. In the same[535] way the man who preaches the gospel of hate and envy toward his fellows who are better off, if he becomes better off will oppress the men whom he once championed. Distrust the man who would persuade you that he would do you good by trying to do any other man harm. The man who is true to you will ultimately be the man who is true to the great fundamental principles of righteousness. In public life the man who seeks to persuade you that he will benefit you by wronging any one else, if the chance arises, will surely try to benefit himself by wronging you. What as a nation we need is to stand by the eternal, immutable principles of right and decency, the principle of fair dealing as between man and man, the principles that teach us to regard virtue with respect and vice with abhorrence wherever either the virtue or the vice may be found. If we substitute for the line that divides the decent man from the man who is not decent, the line dividing the rich man from the poor man, or the line making any other artificial division, we will have done irreparable wrong to the Nation itself.

Governor, you spoke of a hideous crime that is often hideously avenged. The worst enemy of the negro race is the negro criminal, and, above all, the negro criminal of that type; for he has committed not only an unspeakably dreadful and infamous crime against the victim, but he has committed a hideous crime against the people of his own color; and every reputable colored man, every colored man who wishes to see to the uplifting of his race, owes it[536] as his first duty to himself and to that race to hunt down that criminal with all his soul and strength. Now for the side of the white man. To avenge one hideous crime by another hideous crime is to reduce the man doing it to the bestial level of the wretch who committed the bestial crime. The horrible effects of lynch law are shown in the fact that three-fourths of the lynchings are not for that crime at all, but for other crimes. And above all other men, Governor, you and I and all who are exponents and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to the cause of civilization and humanity, to do everything in our power, officially and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law.

We can afford to be divided on questions of mere partisanship; they do not make any real difference compared to other questions. The questions of currency or the tariff are of no consequence compared to the fundamental questions, the questions upon which all good Americans should be one—the questions of decency in the life of the home and of honesty in public life. It makes very little difference in the long run whether it is a Democrat or a Republican who is President, compared to the importance of honesty and broad patriotism; it makes all the difference in the world that we shall have all our public officials honest, clean men, earnest to serve their countrymen wherever they may live. The candidate is the candidate of a party; but if the President[537] is worth his salt he is the President of the whole people. Remember, the stream does not rise any higher than its source. You can not have good public life unless you have as a basis good private life. The country is going to be all right if the average man is decent and clean in his home life; if he is a good husband, a good father, a good son; if he does his duty by his neighbor; if he is the kind of a man you are glad to have as a neighbor and glad to do business with. If that man is the average American, America is going to continue to be all right; and if the average goes below that you can not make the country right.

I have great respect for a good man. There is only one person I respect more, and that is a good woman; and if there is any man here who does not agree with me I do not think much of him. The foundation of our happiness and well-being lies in the preservation of the typical American home, the kind of home in which you veterans of the Civil War were raised, so that when you went to battle, on whichever side you fought, you had the memory of what your fathers and mothers had taught you to rest upon and to live up to. We of the younger generation—my comrades of the National Guard here and all of our time—inherited from these older men of the heroic days, these men of the great Civil War, this splendid country of ours; we inherited our position in the world. Let us see to it that we leave to our children unimpaired and improved the heritage we received from our fathers. Shame to[538] us if we treat the great deeds of the men of the past as excuses for laziness, or idleness, or shirking of duty on our part. Let us treat these great deeds as an incentive, as a spur; let us feel that we should hang our heads if we do not prove ourselves worthy representatives of the men who are before us—you men of the South here, whose heroism and valor for four years of war have been wellnigh surpassed by the heroism and valor you have displayed in the forty years of peace following it. Let us go on with the work of the material upbuilding of this country; and at the same time remember that, vital though it is to have a good foundation of material well-being, yet it is only the foundation and upon it must be built the superstructure of the moral and spiritual higher life of the Nation. We all honor you men of the Civil War here, you men of the blue and men of the gray. We honor you because when the call to arms came you treated material considerations as dross to be cast aside, not to be for one moment weighed in the balance, compared to the proud privilege of laying down everything, life itself, on the altar of your duty as light was given you to see your duty. Let us have that same spirit deep in our heart.

Mr. Toastmaster; Judge Rose; My Hosts:

Let me at the outset say a word of thanks to the Arkansas Consistory for its generous hospitality, and say how much I appreciate it.

[539]

I want to say just one word suggested by the fact that Judge Rose was President of the American Bar Association and stands to-day as one of that group of eminent American citizens, eminent for their services to the whole country, whom we know as the leaders of the American bar. I want to speak as a layman about certain services that the learned profession, of which Judge Rose is so eminent a member, can render to an even greater degree than they now render to the American people. I know that there is a good deal of distrust, rightly, for the layman who speaks of law or of theology. But I am going to say just a few words on a matter that concerns good citizenship, in which the layman has a right to expect leadership both from lawyer and from theologian. Very naturally in any profession there come to be men who treat the profession as an end instead of as a means (I am not now speaking from the standpoint of the individual, but from the standpoint of the Nation, of the State). Just as we have a right to judge the man of religious profession by the output that comes as a result of that profession, so we have a right to expect from the great profession of the law, from that which is perhaps the leading among the liberal lay professions, a peculiar quantity and quality of service to the public. There are certain abuses in connection with our whole system of law to-day which the laymen can not remedy, but which I earnestly hope that the men of the law will themselves remedy. I speak merely to my fellow laymen and invite correction. I am speaking before[540] Gamaliel, and shall expect correction from Gamaliel if I go wrong. But our law comes down from the time when the state, the government, was all-powerful as compared to the individual; when the government acted as a plaintiff and it was necessary that every possible safeguard should be thrown around the defendant, that he should be given every chance, and the fear of injustice was a synonym for fear of injustice to the private citizen against whom the state proceeded. It comes from a time, if my memory of history is right, when about five per cent of any given number of children born in England were punished by hanging, when people were hanged for the most trivial offences, and when all the machinery of the law was in the hands of the government and directed against the individual; so that the one thing that had to be done was to protect the individual. Circumstances in the past three or four centuries have wholly changed; but the law has not changed nearly as rapidly or completely. At present there is not the slightest question as to the individual’s rights being preserved. They are amply guarded. Of course there is the possibility of error in every human affair; but speaking generally, the man accused of criminal wrong, especially the man accused of criminal wrong against the public, has every possible chance secured him; but the public has by no means the chance it ought to have. No greater service is being rendered the American public to-day than by those members of the legal profession whose great good fortune it has been to stand forth[541] as prominently identified with the prosecution of crimes against the state. When I say crimes against the state I not only refer to crimes like those of bribery and corruption committed by any public official, but I mean such a crime as murder, as any similar hideous misdeed, where the offence is not merely against the individual, but against the entire community. It is right to remember the interests of the individual, but it is right also to remember the interests of that great mass of individuals embodied in the public, in the government. It is unfortunate that we have permitted practices that were necessary three hundred years ago for the protection of innocent people to be elaborated, to be perverted, so that they become a means for allowing criminals to escape the punishment of their criminality. We urgently need in this country methods for expediting punishment, methods for doing away with delay, methods which will secure to the public an even chance with the criminal. I do not ask any more; if we can get an average of just fifty per cent of the criminals we will be pretty nearly all right; for that will give the public an even chance with the criminal whose offence is against the public. At present the right of appeal is in certain cases so abused as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to ultimately punish a man sufficiently rich or sufficiently influential to command really good legal talent. I am speaking of what I know, for I am speaking with very keenly in my mind experiences during the past three years in trying to get at[542] certain public offenders who have been indicted, and some of whom it has been almost impossible to get into the jurisdiction of the courts in Washington in order to try them. There are others whose cases are still on appeal who profit by interminable delays. I feel that the man who offends against the state occupies a position rather worse than that of any other criminal, from the very fact that he is a man who attacks everybody instead of just one person, so that it is not the special business of any one to get at him. In consequence, if he can keep the forces of justice at bay long enough—if he can secure one or two mistrials—gradually the popular interest evaporates and the criminal gets off.

As the Judge has so well said, the minute a man becomes President he ceases being the President of a party and is the President of every man, woman, and child within the confines of the Nation. But I permit myself one particular bit of party discrimination. I am just a trifle more intent on punishing the Republican offender than the Democrat; because he is my own scoundrel, and I feel a certain sense of responsibility for him, and I intend to discharge that responsibility if I can. Of course, as we all know, offences must come; but I have endeavored to carry out the Scriptural injunction and to make it a matter of woe unto him by whom they come. I am happy to say that we have a reasonable proportion of the offenders in question with stripes on; but not up to the fifty per cent average[543] that I would like; and I want to go a little further than we have yet gone.

If the law is reasonably speedy and reasonably sure it takes away one great excuse for lawlessness. If some horrible crime is committed and the people feel that under the best circumstances there will be an indefinite delay in the punishment of the criminal, and that the punishment will be uncertain even when the time for administering it comes, then a premium is put upon that kind of law-breaking which more than any other is a menace to the law. Long delays of justice, abuses of the pardoning power, the sluggishness with which either court or attorney moves; all of those things count in bringing about the condition of affairs which produces lynch law.

Now, a layman can do but little more than to give utterance to the feeling that so many laymen have. I earnestly hope that the bench and the bar of the United States will in all proper ways see to it that the customs—for some of these things of which I complain are merely customs and not laws—inherited from the past when conditions were totally different, shall not be perverted so as to wrong the whole public by giving the criminal an advantage to which he is not entitled, and that some substantial improvement shall be made in the direction of securing greater expedition and greater certainty in the administration of justice, and especially in the administration of criminal justice.

Comrades:

I want to thank you for coming here to greet me. I can not say how much it means to me to be greeted as I have been greeted by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray in this trip through the Southland. At Little Rock my escort was composed of Union and Confederate soldiers, riding side by side, in pairs.

As I said at Richmond, second only to the man who wore the blue, I hold the man who wore the gray, and we should indeed consider ourselves fortunate as a Nation that, forty years after the Civil War, we find all of our people can challenge as the possession of all every memory of valor left by both sides in the great contest. Now we know but one rivalry—the rivalry to see which of us can do most for the flag of a united country.

Gentlemen: Rather, if you will allow one who took part in a very small war to call you so, Comrades:

I accept your gift with pleasure. Although sometimes we have difficulties in this country that we have to battle against, and sometimes things that we are not quite satisfied with, yet we are pretty good[545] people. I have felt this almost as never before during the past weeks. Now think what it means in a Nation for the President of that Nation, forty years after one of the greatest wars of all time, to be able to come and speak as I spoke in the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and to feel that I was addressing a people as loyal to the flag of our reunited country as can be found in this broad land of ours.

I passed in the shadow of the monument of Admiral Semmes in Mobile—under whom one of my uncles fired the last gun that was discharged from the “Alabama,” which another uncle built. The daughter of that admiral is now the wife of our Governor in the Philippines.

Gentlemen, this is an honor I appreciate. I thank you not only for the gift and the words which accompany it, but for the spirit which lies behind the words.

Governor; Mr. Mayor; and You, My Hosts:

Let me, at the outset, express through you my profound gratitude, my deeply moved appreciation of the way in which the people of New Orleans and of Louisiana have greeted me to-day. Gentlemen, no President of the United States could be greeted as I have been greeted to-day and not go back to take up the duties of his office with a stronger and more earnest purpose to try faithfully to represent all the people whom he serves. And, Governor,[546] as you have so well said, when a man is President, when he holds any public office, questions of a merely partisan character sink into absolute insignificance compared with the mighty questions upon which all good Americans should be united.

And now, gentlemen, as you have greeted me so well, you have given me the opportunity to indulge myself in a luxury. There have been moments in the past when I was afraid of saying how well I thought of the Senators and Representatives in the National Congress from Louisiana for fear I might damage them! I did not know but that, may be, the best service I could do them was to keep still about my feeling for them. Now, I am emboldened by your generous kindness and confidence to say that it has been indeed a pleasure to deal with Louisiana’s representatives in the Senate and in the Lower House of Congress, because whenever I had to do with a great question of national importance I could go to them, convinced that if I could show them that it was really for the good of the Nation they would stand for it. That is all I ask of any man. I do not want any Senator or any Congressman to vote for anything I favor just because I favor it; but I do not want him to vote against it just because I favor it. There have been certain very worthy men in both Houses of Congress among the colleagues of the Louisiana representatives who instantly strove to prevent the realization of their most cherished projects as soon as I strove to bring it about! Now, from the representatives of Louisiana[547] I was sure of support in such matters, whether it was a question of building up and keeping at a high point of efficiency the United States Navy, or whether it was a question of building the Panama Canal. And mind you, gentlemen, the two things go together. One thing that, as President of this country, I will not do, is to make a bluff that I can not make good. I do not intend, on behalf of the Nation, to take any position until I have carefully thought out whether that position will be advantageous to the Nation, but if I take it I am going to keep it, and I am going to keep it no matter what outsider goes the other way. And I am sure that you, gentlemen, know that it has been an utter mistake to think of me as a man desirous of seeing this Nation quarrelsome; this Nation eager to get into trouble. I have no respect either for the nation or for the individual that brawls, that invites trouble. I want to see this Nation do as the individual men in the Nation, who respect themselves, should do, that is be scrupulously regardful of the rights of others and honestly endeavor to avoid all cause of difficulty with any one. But I want, on behalf of this Nation, the peace that comes, not to the coward who cringes for it, but to the just man armed who asks it as a right.

Listening to the greeting of the Governor and the Mayor this afternoon, I felt at once very proud and very humble. I have been greeted with words far above my worth, far above what is merited by what I have done. (Cries of “No, No!”) I did not say[548] that for the purpose of asking your dissent from it. I do not say anything unless I mean it, and I do not say anything to flatter any audience or speak well of them unless I think well of them, and would speak well of them anywhere.

I come down to see you of this State and city with a heart full of gratitude to you for having displayed, through the trials of the hard summer that has passed, those qualities of heroism which we like to think of as distinctly American. Gentlemen, in coming among you this afternoon, I have the feeling of a man who, having been at headquarters, but not in action, goes to see a regiment that has been in action. I know that you understand, gentlemen, that the Governor and Mayor, at any time during the past summer, had but to request my presence, and I would have come down here at once, at any time when I could have been of the slightest assistance to you in the magnificent struggle you were waging. I wish to express the profound appreciation and gratitude of all Americans toward you, our fellow-Americans, who have borne the heat and burden of the contest during the long day that is now passing. In actual war there can be no greater or more effective heroism than was shown by those who stayed here at their posts; by those who, being away, came back; and by those who, having planned to go away, instantly gave up going away and stayed here to aid in the fight for their fellows in distress. You have had your martyrs, among them my lamented friend, Archbishop Chappelle; but you[549] have also your proud memories of service rendered, and the thrill that comes with the victory you have already won. I have been both amused and irritated at the criticisms sometimes made on you, by people who lived in other communities that were not in danger. Among the younger men here are some who when younger still have played football, and they will remember how very much easier it was to play the game from the side lines than on the field. Now, Louisiana and New Orleans, this summer, did what, so far as I remember, has never before been done in the case of a similar epidemic of yellow fever in the United States. They took hold of it after it had started and when it had got well under way, and they controlled and conquered it without waiting for the frost to come. The highest gratitude is due to the officials of the State, to the officials of the city, and to the private individuals, clergymen, educators, philanthropists, and business men, who have spent their time and money and risked their lives freely in organizing and achieving success. It was the greatest privilege to me to contribute what I was able to the work. Mr. Mayor, Governor, you can hardly realize the pleasure I felt when a request was made upon me that gave me the chance of doing something for you; and I am glad to find how well you think of the work that was done by the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service under Dr. White. It gives me pleasure now to announce that in response to the request of the Governor and[550] Mayor I have told them that Dr. White shall be detailed down here just as long as his services are needed. Now, just one word of warning to you, Dr. White. We have excellent Scriptural authority for the statement that it is well to beware when all men speak well of you; because it is an unfortunate feature of human nature that when they have appreciated a man up to the very last limit, they tend to go a little bit the other way, after a while. The time when one is praised very much is the time one should walk guardedly and carefully and work with all one’s soul and strength. Gentlemen, that applies to Presidents quite as much as to doctors!

The Governor spoke of the Panama Canal. It is a very big work, and it is only a very big nation that can do that kind of work. I expect soon to have a report from the engineers as to the exact shape the work will take. I will then be able to make more definite forecasts as to the time, but of this I can assure you, the work will be done well, it will be done as speedily as possible, and it will absolutely and surely be done.

One more point: New Orleans and Louisiana are vitally interested in the levee system. The Mississippi, which flows through the State, drains portions of twenty odd other States, and the control of that river must, in my opinion, be, in good part, a national object. The National Government now does something toward the erection and care of the levees. In my judgment it should do not only more, but very much more.

[551]

I was greeted to-day by your school-children, clustered around the monument erected to that pure and upright man and mighty General, Robert E. Lee; and as we drove away from the square in which his statue stands we passed by a house in this old Confederate city in which there was prominently displayed a picture of Abraham Lincoln, and underneath it the words, “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.” I have been greeted by a special guard of honor, composed of men who, in the great war, wore the Confederate uniform. I have also been greeted by men who, in that war, wore the blue. I saw before me many of my comrades of the lesser war. I had in my own regiment, from Louisiana as well as from many other States, men whose fathers had worn the gray, just as I had other men whose fathers had worn the blue, all united forever in loyalty to one indissoluble union, and acknowledging only the rivalry of trying to see which could do the most for the flag of our common country. Oh, my fellow-countrymen, think what a fortune is ours, that we belong to this Nation, which, having fought one of the mightiest wars of all times, is now reunited forever, in an indissoluble union, under one flag; so that we claim as ours the heritage of honor and glory, left by every man who, on whichever side he stood, when the days came which tried men’s souls, did all that in him lay—did his whole duty—according to the light that was given him to see that duty.

Admiral, Captain, Officers and Ship’s Company of the “West Virginia”:

It is a privilege for any President to come on board a squadron of American warships such as these, not alone to see the ships, but to see the men who handle them. From the admiral down through the entire ship’s company, every American should be proud of what I have seen aboard this ship; the discipline, the ready subordination of each man, whether officer or enlisted man, to duty; the care taken of the men, and in return the eager, intelligent, self-respecting zeal of each man in doing his work. What must impress especially any observer is how essential it is that every individual on a ship like this should do his whole duty, and in any crisis more than his duty. The result as I see it in this ship is a triumph not only of organization and discipline, but of the ready zeal with which each individual performs his allotted task. At any time some emergency may arise in which the safety of the entire ship will depend upon the vigilance, intelligence, and cool courage of some one man among you, perhaps an officer, perhaps an enlisted man. Any man in the whole ship’s company who does his full duty can claim as his own the honor and repute of the ship and has the right to feel a personal pride in all she does. You and your fellows in the Navy[553] and in its sister service, the Army, occupy a position different from that of any other set of men in our country. Going through the ship yesterday, in the engine rooms, storerooms, turrets, everywhere the thing that impressed me most was the all-importance of each man in his place: the all-importance of that man both knowing his work and feeling it a matter of keen personal pride to do it as well as it could possibly be done. All through the ship I have seen the same purpose, the purpose to learn exactly what the duty to be done was and then to do it; and the power to do presupposes the possession by each of you of intelligence, courage, and physical address. I believe that this attitude of yours is typical of the attitude of the men of our Navy generally and of the Army also. Now on the one hand this should make our country feel toward Uncle Sam’s men in the Army and in the Navy a sense of obligation and gratitude such as they feel toward no others; and on the other hand it should make you feel that no other Americans rest under so great an obligation to do their duty well; for in your hands lies the credit, the honor, and the interest of the entire Nation. You are doing your duty well and faithfully in peace. Remember that if ever, which may Heaven forbid, war comes, it will depend upon you and those like you whether the people of this country are to hold their heads even higher or to hang them in shame. I hope that no such crisis will ever occur, but I have entire faith that if it ever does occur, you will rise level to any demand[554] that may be made upon you, and that by the way you train yourselves and are trained in time of peace, you will fit yourselves to do well should war arise.

Now a special word to the officers. Captain Arnold, as a boy you witnessed a great fight of the “Merrimac” when she came out to Hampton Roads, sank the “Congress” and the “Cumberland,” and the next day met her match in the “Monitor.” That was a fight fraught with great honor for our people. The “Cumberland” sank with her flags flying and her guns firing while her decks were awash, and as the water was shallow, her flag still floated from the mast above them after she had gone down. The captain of the “Congress” met his death in the fight, winning an epitaph which deserves to be remembered forever in the American Navy. His name was Joe Smith, and his father, an old naval officer, was in Washington. When word was brought to him that his son’s ship had surrendered, he answered simply: “Then Joe is dead.” To have earned the right to have his death assumed as a matter of course in such conditions is of itself enough to crown any life, and every American officer should keep ever before him all that is implied therein. Let each of you officers remember, in the event of war, that while a surrender must always be justifiable, yet that a surrender must always be explained, while it is never necessary to explain the fact that you don’t surrender, no matter what the conditions may be.

A tragedy occurred this morning. A man was lost from the “Colorado.” Such cases are from time[555] to time inevitable in a service like ours. Under such circumstances, everything must always be done, as in this instance everything was done, for the rescue of the man. But you men are fitted for fighting because you have the fighting edge. This means that you are willing at all times to face death in the performance of your duty. The man who died this morning was an excellent seaman who had done his duty faithfully and who died in the performance of that duty. Therefore he died in the service of his country exactly as much as if he had died in battle, and deserves as much honor.

What I have said so far applies to the whole Navy. Now a word especially to this squadron and to this ship. No other nation can boast of a better squadron, a squadron composed of more formidable vessels. In the matter of the officers and men, we have no cause to shrink from comparison with any other nation. So far, the “Colorado” has been the one ship that has had the chance to show what she could do in gunnery practice, and her record has been so astonishingly good that the other ships of the squadron will have to do their level best if they expect even to equal it. I need not tell you to remember that battles are decided by gunfire, and that the only shots that count are the shots that hit.

Men, I am glad to have seen you, and I don’t think that anywhere under our flag there could be found a better set of clean-cut, vigorous, self-respecting American citizens of the very type that makes one proudest to be an American.

[556]

REMARKS TO A DELEGATION OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES’ ORDERS—EXECUTIVE OFFICE, WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 14, 1905

Gentlemen:

I have just a word that I want to say to you. In the first place, I trust I need hardly say that no delegation will ever be more welcome at the White House than such a delegation as this. The interests of the wage-worker and the interests of the tiller of the soil must be peculiarly close to all American public men; among other reasons for the reason that if they prosper all other classes will prosper likewise as a matter of course. As I said the other day to the representatives of organized labor at Atlanta, I shall do everything in my power for the laboring man except to do anything wrong; for the man who will do anything wrong in the nominal interest of another man will also do wrong against this same other man if ever it becomes to his own interest to do so. Your associations deserve peculiar regard because you have developed to a marked degree the very qualities that all bodies of wage-workers should develop: the intelligence, the regard for the future, the self-respect mingled with the respect for others, the power of self-restraint, which are absolutely essential to any body of men which is to move upward and onward. Remember always that every man of us must in some shape or other have his passions and appetites governed; and[557] the less of that government there is from within the more there will have to be from without.

With most of the general statements that you make I agree, but I am not sure that I agree with your application of them. There has been comparatively little complaint to me of the railroad rates being as a whole too high. The most serious complaints that have been made to me have been of improper discrimination in railroad rates. For instance, in two recent cases affecting great corporations the complaints that have been made to me have been that they are too low as regards certain big shippers; the complaint in both these cases is about the differential, the difference of treatment of two sets of users of the railways, the difference in favor of one set of shippers as against another set of shippers. Whether this is just or not I am not prepared to say. I very deeply appreciate and sympathize with the feeling you express as to the community of interest between the man who actually does the handling of the trains, at the brakes, in the engine cab, as a fireman, as a conductor, and the man who has to do, as a capitalist or as the higher employee of the capitalist, with the general management of the road. I feel that one of the lessons that can not be overinculcated is the lesson of the identity of interest among our people as a whole. I do not have to tell a body like this something that I do have to tell some other bodies, and that is if you have not got at the head of a railroad a man who can make a success of it, the wage-workers on[558] that railroad can not prosper. You must have at the head the type of ability which can do well; just as you, comrade of the Civil War (turning to an engineer who wore the button of the Grand Army) needed a general who knew his business, or your valor did not avail. You remember that the valor of the best enlisted man that ever was (of course he was the basis of everything; the man who carried the gun and made the army; and you could not get the right stuff out of him if it was not in him) was of no value if there was not a directing power to see that the valor was used aright. The Union Army could have accomplished nothing if the feeling of the enlisted men had been the wish to down Grant and Sherman instead of supporting them heartily in achieving the common work for which all in common were striving.

If you will look at my Raleigh speech and my other recent utterances you will see my principles clearly set forth. I have said again and again that I would not tolerate for one moment any injustice to a railroad any more than I would tolerate any injustice by a railroad. I have said again and again that I would remove a public official who improperly yielded to any public clamor against a railroad, no matter how popular that clamor might be, just as quickly as I would remove a public official who rendered an improper service to the railroad at the expense of the public. But I am convinced that there must be an increased regulatory and supervisory power exercised by the Government[559] over the railways. Indeed, I would like it exercised to a much greater extent than I have any idea of pressing at the moment. For instance, I would greatly like to have it exercised in the matter of overcapitalization. I am convinced that the “wages fund” would be larger if there was no fictitious capital upon which dividends had to be paid. I need hardly say that this does not mean hostility to wealth. If you gentlemen here, in whom I believe so strongly, were all a unit in demanding that some improper action should be taken against certain men of wealth, then, no matter whether I did or did not like those same men of wealth, I would defend them against you, no matter how much I cared for you; and in so doing I would really be acting in your own interest. I would be false to your interest if I failed to do justice to the capitalist as much as to the wage-worker. But I shall act against the abuses of wealth just as against all other abuses. The outcry against rate regulation is of much the same character as that I encountered when I was engaged in putting through that car-coupling business; or in endeavoring to secure certain legislation in which you have all been interested, such as the employers’ liability law.

Most certainly I will join with you in resisting to the uttermost any movement to hurt or damage any railroads which act decently, for I would hold that such damage was not merely to the capitalist, not merely to the wage-worker engaged on the railroads, but to all the country. My aim is to secure[560] the just and equal treatment of the public by those (I trust and believe a limited number) who do not want to give it, just as much as by the larger number who do want to give it. All I want in any rate legislation is to give the Government an efficient supervisory power which shall be exercised as scrupulously to prevent injustice to the railroads as to prevent their doing injustice to the public. Our endeavor is to see that those big railroad men and big shippers who are not responsive to the demands of justice are required to do what their fellows who are responsive to the demands of justice would be glad to do of their own accord.

MESSAGE COMMUNICATED TO THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE FIFTY-NINTH CONGRESS, DECEMBER 5, 1905.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

The people of this country continue to enjoy great prosperity. Undoubtedly there will be ebb and flow in such prosperity, and this ebb and flow will be felt more or less by all members of the community, both by the deserving and the undeserving. Against the wrath of the Lord the wisdom of man can not avail; in times of flood or drought human ingenuity can but partially repair the disaster. A general failure of crops would hurt all of us. Again, if the folly of man mars the general well-being, then those who are innocent of the folly will have to pay part of the penalty incurred by those who are guilty of[561] the folly. A panic brought on by the speculative folly of part of the business community would hurt the whole business community. But such stoppage of welfare, though it might be severe, would not be lasting. In the long run the one vital factor in the permanent prosperity of the country is the high individual character of the average American worker, the average American citizen, no matter whether his work be mental or manual, whether he be farmer or wage-worker, business man or professional man.

In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases a straight-dealing man who by his efficiency, by his ingenuity and industry, benefits himself must also benefit others. Normally the man of great productive capacity who becomes rich by guiding the labor of many other men does so by enabling them to produce more than they could produce without his guidance; and both he and they share in the benefit, which comes also to the public at large. The superficial fact that the sharing may be unequal must never blind us to the underlying fact that there is this sharing, and that the benefit comes in some degree to each man concerned. Normally the wage-worker, the man of small means, and the average consumer, as well as the average producer, are all alike helped by making conditions such that the man of exceptional business ability receives an exceptional reward for his ability. Something can be done by legislation to help the general prosperity; but no such help of[562] a permanently beneficial character can be given to the less able and less fortunate, save as the results of a policy which shall inure to the advantage of all industrious and efficient people who act decently; and this is only another way of saying that any benefit which comes to the less able and less fortunate must of necessity come even more to the more able and more fortunate. If, therefore, the less fortunate man is moved by envy of his more fortunate brother to strike at the conditions under which they have both, though unequally, prospered, the result will assuredly be that while damage may come to the one struck at, it will visit with an even heavier load the one who strikes the blow. Taken as a whole, we must all go up or go down together.

Yet, while not merely admitting, but insisting upon this, it is also true that where there is no governmental restraint or supervision some of the exceptional men use their energies not in ways that are for the common good, but in ways which tell against this common good. The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign—that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole—some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to ensure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough[563] to control its conduct. I am in no sense hostile to corporations. This is an age of combination, and any effort to prevent all combination will be not only useless, but in the end vicious, because of the contempt for law which the failure to enforce law inevitably produces. We should, moreover, recognize in cordial and ample fashion the immense good effected by corporate agencies in a country such as ours, and the wealth of intellect, energy, and fidelity devoted to their service, and therefore normally to the service of the public, by their officers and directors. The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be favored so long as it does good. But each should be sharply checked where it acts against law and justice.

So long as the finances of the Nation are kept upon an honest basis no other question of internal economy with which the Congress has the power to deal begins to approach in importance the matter of endeavoring to secure proper industrial conditions under which the individuals—and especially the great corporations—doing an interstate business are to act. The makers of our National Constitution provided especially that the regulation of interstate commerce should come within the sphere of the General Government. The arguments in favor of their taking this stand were even then overwhelming. But they are far stronger to-day, in view of the enormous development of great business[564] agencies, usually corporate in form. Experience has shown conclusively that it is useless to try to get any adequate regulation and supervision of these great corporations by State action. Such regulation and supervision can only be effectively exercised by a sovereign whose jurisdiction is coextensive with the field of work of the corporations—that is, by the National Government. I believe that this regulation and supervision can be obtained by the enactment of law by the Congress. If this proves impossible, it will certainly be necessary ultimately to confer in fullest form such power upon the National Government by a proper amendment of the Constitution. It would obviously be unwise to endeavor to secure such an amendment until it is certain that the result can not be obtained under the Constitution as it now is. The laws of the Congress and of the several States hitherto, as passed upon by the courts, have resulted more often in showing that the States have no power in the matter than that the National Government has power; so that there at present exists a very unfortunate condition of things, under which these great corporations doing an interstate business occupy the position of subjects without a sovereign, neither any State government nor the National Government having effective control over them. Our steady aim should be by legislation, cautiously and carefully undertaken, but resolutely persevered in, to assert the sovereignty of the National Government by affirmative action.

[565]

This is only in form an innovation. In substance it is merely a restoration; for from the earliest time such regulation of industrial activities has been recognized in the action of the lawmaking bodies; and all that I propose is to meet the changed conditions in such manner as will prevent the Commonwealth abdicating the power it has always possessed, not only in this country but also in England before and since this country became a separate Nation.

It has been a misfortune that the national laws on this subject have hitherto been of a negative or prohibitive rather than an affirmative kind, and still more that they have in part sought to prohibit what could not be effectively prohibited, and have in part in their prohibitions confounded what should be allowed and what should not be allowed. It is generally useless to try to prohibit all restraint on competition, whether this restraint be reasonable or unreasonable; and where it is not useless it is generally hurtful. Events have shown that it is not possible adequately to secure the enforcement of any law of this kind by incessant appeal to the courts. The Department of Justice has for the last four years devoted more attention to the enforcement of the anti-trust legislation than to anything else. Much has been accomplished; particularly marked has been the moral effect of the prosecutions; but it is increasingly evident that there will be a very insufficient beneficial result in the way of economic change. The successful prosecution of one device[566] to evade the law immediately develops another device to accomplish the same purpose. What is needed is not sweeping prohibition of every arrangement, good or bad, which may tend to restrict competition, but such adequate supervision and regulation as will prevent any restriction of competition from being to the detriment of the public, as well as such supervision and regulation as will prevent other abuses in no way connected with restriction of competition. Of these abuses, perhaps the chief, although by no means the only one, is overcapitalization—generally itself the result of dishonest promotion—because of the myriad evils it brings in its train; for such overcapitalization often means an inflation that invites business panic; it always conceals the true relation of the profit earned to the capital actually invested, and it creates a burden of interest payments which is a fertile cause of improper reduction in or limitation of wages; it damages the small investor, discourages thrift, and encourages gambling and speculation; while perhaps worst of all is the trickiness and dishonesty which it implies—for harm to morals is worse than any possible harm to material interests, and the debauchery of politics and business by great dishonest corporations is far worse than any actual material evil they do the public. Until the National Government obtains, in some manner which the wisdom of the Congress may suggest, proper control over the big corporations engaged in interstate commerce—that is, over the great majority of the big corporations—it[567] will be impossible to deal adequately with these evils.

I am well aware of the difficulties of the legislation that I am suggesting, and of the need of temperate and cautious action in securing it. I should emphatically protest against improperly radical or hasty action. The first thing to do is to deal with the great corporations engaged in the business of interstate transportation. As I said in my Message of December 6 last, the immediate and most pressing need, so far as legislation is concerned, is the enactment into law of some scheme to secure to the agents of the Government such supervision and regulation of the rates charged by the railroads of the country engaged in interstate traffic as shall summarily and effectively prevent the imposition of unjust or unreasonable rates. It must include putting a complete stop to rebates in every shape and form. This power to regulate rates, like all similar powers over the business world, should be exercised with moderation, caution, and self-restraint; but it should exist, so that it can be effectively exercised when the need arises.

The first consideration to be kept in mind is that the power should be affirmative and should be given to some administrative body created by the Congress. If given to the present Interstate Commerce Commission or to a reorganized Interstate Commerce Commission, such commission should be made unequivocally administrative. I do not believe in the Government interfering with private business[568] more than is necessary. I do not believe in the Government undertaking any work which can with propriety be left in private hands. But neither do I believe in the Government flinching from overseeing any work when it becomes evident that abuses are sure to obtain therein unless there is governmental supervision. It is not my province to indicate the exact terms of the law which should be enacted; but I call the attention of the Congress to certain existing conditions with which it is desirable to deal. In my judgment the most important provision which such law should contain is that conferring upon some competent administrative body the power to decide, upon the case being brought before it, whether a given rate prescribed by a railroad is reasonable and just, and if it is found to be unreasonable and unjust, then, after full investigation of the complaint, to prescribe the limit of rate beyond which it shall not be lawful to go—the maximum reasonable rate, as it is commonly called—this decision to go into effect within a reasonable time and to obtain from thence onward, subject to review by the courts. It sometimes happens at present, not that a rate is too high but that a favored shipper is given too low a rate. In such case the Commission would have the right to fix this already established minimum rate as the maximum; and it would need only one or two such decisions by the Commission to cure railroad companies of the practice of giving improper minimum rates. I call your attention to the fact that my proposal is not to give[569] the Commission power to initiate or originate rates generally, but to regulate a rate already fixed or originated by the roads, upon complaint and after investigation. A heavy penalty should be exacted from any corporation which fails to respect an order of the Commission. I regard this power to establish a maximum rate as being essential to any scheme of real reform in the matter of railway regulation. The first necessity is to secure it; and unless it is granted to the Commission there is little use in touching the subject at all.

Illegal transactions often occur under the forms of law. It has often occurred that a shipper has been told by a traffic officer to buy a large quantity of some commodity and then after it has been bought an open reduction is made in the rate to take effect immediately, the arrangement resulting to the profit of the one shipper and the one railroad and to the damage of all their competitors; for it must not be forgotten that the big shippers are at least as much to blame as any railroad in the matter of rebates. The law should make it clear so that nobody can fail to understand that any kind of commission paid on freight shipments, whether in this form or in the form of fictitious damages, or of a concession, a free pass, reduced passenger rate, or payment of brokerage, is illegal. It is worth while considering whether it would not be wise to confer on the Government the right of civil action against the beneficiary of a rebate for at least twice the value of the rebate; this would help stop what is really blackmail.[570] Elevator allowances should be stopped, for they have now grown to such an extent that they are demoralizing and are used as rebates.

The best possible regulation of rates would, of course, be that regulation secured by an honest agreement among the railroads themselves to carry out the law. Such a general agreement would, for instance, at once put a stop to the efforts of any one big shipper or big railroad to discriminate against or secure advantages over some rival; and such agreement would make the railroads themselves agents for enforcing the law. The power vested in the Government to put a stop to agreements to the detriment of the public should, in my judgment, be accompanied by power to permit, under specified conditions and careful supervision, agreements clearly in the interest of the public. But, in my judgment, the necessity for giving this further power is by no means as great as the necessity for giving the Commission or administrative body the other powers I have enumerated above; and it may well be inadvisable to attempt to vest this particular power in the Commission or other administrative body until it already possesses and is exercising what I regard as by far the most important of all the powers I recommend—as indeed the vitally important power—that to fix a given maximum rate, which rate, after the lapse of a reasonable time, goes into full effect, subject to review by the courts.

All private-car lines, industrial roads, refrigerator[571] charges, and the like should be expressly put under the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission or some similar body so far as rates, and agreements practically affecting rates, are concerned. The private-car owners and the owners of industrial railroads are entitled to a fair and reasonable compensation on their investment, but neither private cars nor industrial railroads nor spur tracks should be utilized as devices for securing preferential rates. A rebate in icing charges, or in mileage, or in a division of the rate for refrigerating charges is just as pernicious as a rebate in any other way. No lower rate should apply on goods imported than actually obtains on domestic goods from the American seaboard to destination except in cases where water competition is the controlling influence. There should be publicity of the accounts of common carriers; no common carrier engaged in interstate business should keep any books or memoranda other than those reported pursuant to law or regulation, and these books or memoranda should be open to the inspection of the Government. Only in this way can violations or evasions of the law be surely detected. A system of examination of railroad accounts should be provided similar to that now conducted into the national banks by the bank examiners; a few first-class railroad accountants, if they had proper direction and proper authority to inspect books and papers, could accomplish much in preventing wilful violations of the law. It would not be necessary for them to examine[572] into the accounts of any railroad unless for good reasons they were directed to do so by the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is greatly to be desired that some way might be found by which an agreement as to transportation within a State intended to operate as a fraud upon the Federal interstate commerce laws could be brought under the jurisdiction of the Federal authorities. At present it occurs that large shipments of interstate traffic are controlled by concessions on purely State business, which of course amounts to an evasion of the law. The Commission should have power to enforce fair treatment by the great trunk lines of lateral and branch lines.

I urge upon the Congress the need of providing for expeditious action by the Interstate Commerce Commission in all these matters, whether in regulating rates for transportation or for storing or for handling property or commodities in transit. The history of the cases litigated under the present commerce act shows that its efficacy has been to a great degree destroyed by the weapon of delay, almost the most formidable weapon in the hands of those whose purpose it is to violate the law.

Let me most earnestly say that these recommendations are not made in any spirit of hostility to the railroads. On ethical grounds, on grounds of right, such hostility would be intolerable; and on grounds of mere national self-interest we must remember that such hostility would tell against the welfare not merely of some few rich men, but of a multitude of[573] small investors, a multitude of railway employees, wage-workers; and most severely against the interest of the public as a whole. I believe that on the whole our railroads have done well and not ill; but the railroad men who wish to do well should not be exposed to competition with those who have no such desire, and the only way to secure this end is to give to some Government tribunal the power to see that justice is done by the unwilling exactly as it is gladly done by the willing. Moreover, if some Government body is given increased power the effect will be to furnish authoritative answer on behalf of the railroad whenever irrational clamor against it is raised, or whenever charges made against it are disproved. I ask this legislation not only in the interest of the public, but in the interest of the honest railroad man and the honest shipper alike, for it is they who are chiefly jeoparded by the practices of their dishonest competitors. This legislation should be enacted in a spirit as remote as possible from hysteria and rancor. If we of the American body politic are true to the traditions we have inherited we shall always scorn any effort to make us hate any man because he is rich, just as much as we should scorn any effort to make us look down upon or treat contemptuously any man because he is poor. We judge a man by his conduct—that is, by his character—and not by his wealth or intellect. If he makes his fortune honestly, there is no just cause of quarrel with him. Indeed, we have nothing but the kindliest feelings of admiration for[574] the successful business man who behaves decently, whether he has made his success by building or managing a railroad or by shipping goods over that railroad. The big railroad men and big shippers are simply Americans of the ordinary type who have developed to an extraordinary degree certain great business qualities. They are neither better nor worse than their fellow-citizens of smaller means. They are merely more able in certain lines and therefore exposed to certain peculiarly strong temptations. These temptations have not sprung newly into being; the exceptionally successful among mankind have always been exposed to them; but they have grown amazingly in power as a result of the extraordinary development of industrialism along new lines, and under these new conditions, which the lawmakers of old could not foresee and therefore could not provide against, they have become so serious and menacing as to demand entirely new remedies. It is in the interest of the best type of railroad man and the best type of shipper no less than of the public that there should be governmental supervision and regulation of these great business operations, for the same reason that it is in the interest of the corporation which wishes to treat its employees aright that there should be an effective employers’ liability act, or an effective system of factory laws to prevent the abuse of women and children. All such legislation frees the corporation that wishes to do well from being driven into doing ill, in order to compete with its rival, which prefers[575] to do ill. We desire to set up a moral standard. There can be no delusion more fatal to the Nation than the delusion that the standard of profits, of business prosperity, is sufficient in judging any business or political question—from rate legislation to municipal government. Business success, whether for the individual or for the Nation, is a good thing only so far as it is accompanied by and develops a high standard of conduct—honor, integrity, civic courage. The kind of business prosperity that blunts the standard of honor, that puts an inordinate value on mere wealth, that makes a man ruthless and conscienceless in trade and weak and cowardly in citizenship, is not a good thing at all, but a very bad thing for the Nation. This Government stands for manhood first and for business only as an adjunct of manhood.

The question of transportation lies at the root of all industrial success, and the revolution in transportation which has taken place during the last half century has been the most important factor in the growth of the new industrial conditions. Most emphatically we do not wish to see the man of great talents refused the reward for his talents. Still less do we wish to see him penalized; but we do desire to see the system of railroad transportation so handled that the strong man shall be given no advantage over the weak man. We wish to ensure as fair treatment for the small town as for the big city; for the small shipper as for the big shipper. In the old days the highway of commerce, whether by[576] water or by road on land, was open to all; it belonged to the public and the traffic along it was free. At present the railway is this highway, and we must do our best to see that it is kept open to all on equal terms. Unlike the old highway it is a very difficult and complex thing to manage, and it is far better that it should be managed by private individuals than by the Government. But it can only be so managed on condition that justice is done the public. It is because, in my judgment, public ownership of railroads is highly undesirable and would probably in this country entail far-reaching disaster, that I wish to see such supervision and regulation of them in the interest of the public as will make it evident that there is no need for public ownership. The opponents of Government regulation dwell upon the difficulties to be encountered and the intricate and involved nature of the problem. Their contention is true. It is a complicated and delicate problem, and all kinds of difficulties are sure to arise in connection with any plan of solution, while no plan will bring all the benefits hoped for by its more optimistic adherents. Moreover, under any healthy plan, the benefits will develop gradually and not rapidly. Finally, we must clearly understand that the public servants who are to do this peculiarly responsible and delicate work must themselves be of the highest type both as regards integrity and efficiency. They must be well paid, for otherwise able men can not in the long run be secured; and they must possess a lofty probity which will revolt[577] as quickly at the thought of pandering to any gust of popular prejudice against rich men as at the thought of anything even remotely resembling subserviency to rich men. But while I fully admit the difficulties in the way, I do not for a moment admit that these difficulties warrant us in stopping in our effort to secure a wise and just system. They should have no other effect than to spur us on to the exercise of the resolution, the even-handed justice, and the fertility of resource, which we like to think of as typically American, and which will in the end achieve good results in this as in other fields of activity. The task is a great one and underlies the task of dealing with the whole industrial problem. But the fact that it is a great problem does not warrant us in shrinking from the attempt to solve it. At present we face such utter lack of supervision, such freedom from the restraints of law, that excellent men have often been literally forced into doing what they deplored because otherwise they were left at the mercy of unscrupulous competitors. To rail at and assail the men who have done as they best could under such conditions accomplishes little. What we need to do is to develop an orderly system; and such a system can only come through the gradually increased exercise of the right of efficient Government control.

In my annual Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress, at its third session, I called attention to the necessity for legislation requiring the use of block[578] signals upon railroads engaged in interstate commerce. The number of serious collisions upon unblocked roads that have occurred within the past year adds force to the recommendation then made. The Congress should provide, by appropriate legislation, for the introduction of block signals upon all railroads engaged in interstate commerce at the earliest practicable date, as a measure of increased safety to the traveling public.

Through decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and the lower Federal courts in cases brought before them for adjudication the safety-appliance law has been materially strengthened, and the Government has been enabled to secure its effective enforcement in almost all cases, with the result that the condition of railroad equipment throughout the country is much improved and railroad employees perform their duties under safer conditions than heretofore. The Government’s most effective aid in arriving at this result has been its inspection service, and that these improved conditions are not more general is due to the insufficient number of inspectors employed. The inspection service has fully demonstrated its usefulness, and in appropriating for its maintenance the Congress should make provision for an increase in the number of inspectors.

The excessive hours of labor to which railroad employees in train service are in many cases subjected is also a matter which may well engage the serious attention of the Congress. The strain, both[579] mental and physical, upon those who are engaged in the movement and operation of railroad trains under modern conditions is perhaps greater than that which exists in any other industry, and if there are any reasons for limiting by law the hours of labor in any employment, they certainly apply with peculiar force to the employment of those upon whose vigilance and alertness in the performance of their duties the safety of all who travel by rail depends.

In my annual Message to the Fifty-seventh Congress, at its second session, I recommended the passage of an Employers’ Liability Law for the District of Columbia and in our navy yards. I renewed that recommendation in my Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress, at its second session, and further suggested the appointment of a commission to make a comprehensive study of employers’ liability, with a view to the enactment of a wise and constitutional law covering the subject, applicable to all industries within the scope of the Federal power. I hope that such a law will be prepared and enacted as speedily as possible.

The National Government has as a rule but little occasion to deal with the formidable group of problems connected more or less directly with what is known as the labor question, for in the great majority of cases these problems must be dealt with by the State and municipal authorities and not by the[580] National Government. The National Government has control of the District of Columbia, however, and it should see to it that the City of Washington is made a model city in all respects, both as regards parks, public playgrounds, proper regulation of the system of housing so as to do away with the evils of alley tenements, a proper system of education, a proper system of dealing with truancy and juvenile offenders, a proper handling of the charitable work of the District. Moreover, there should be proper factory laws to prevent all abuses in the employment of women and children in the District. These will be useful chiefly as object lessons, but even this limited amount of usefulness would be of real national value.

There has been demand for depriving courts of the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes. Such special limitation of the equity powers of our courts would be most unwise. It is true that some judges have misused this power; but this does not justify a denial of the power any more than an improper exercise of the power to call a strike by a labor leader would justify the denial of the right to strike. The remedy is to regulate the procedure by requiring the judge to give due notice to the adverse parties before granting the writ, the hearing to be ex parte if the adverse party does not appear at the time and place ordered. What is due notice must depend upon the facts of the case: it should not be used as a pretext to permit violation of the law, or the jeopardizing of life or property. Of course, this[581] would not authorize the issuing of a restraining order or injunction in any case in which it is not already authorized by existing law.

I renew the recommendation I made in my last annual Message for an investigation by the Department of Commerce and Labor of general labor conditions, especial attention to be paid to the conditions of child labor and child-labor legislation in the several States. Such an investigation should take into account the various problems with which the question of child labor is connected. It is true that these problems can be actually met in most cases only by the States themselves, but it would be well for the Nation to endeavor to secure and publish comprehensive information as to the conditions of the labor of children in the different States, so as to spur up those that are behindhand, and to secure approximately uniform legislation of a high character among the several States. In such a Republic as ours the one thing that we can not afford to neglect is the problem of turning out decent citizens. The future of the Nation depends upon the citizenship of the generations to come; the children of to-day are those who to-morrow will shape the destiny of our land, and we can not afford to neglect them. The Legislature of Colorado has recommended that the National Government provide some general measure for the protection from abuse of children and dumb animals throughout the United States. I lay the matter before you for what I trust will be your favorable consideration.

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The Department of Commerce and Labor should also make a thorough investigation of the conditions of women in industry. Over five million American women are now engaged in gainful occupations; yet there is an almost complete dearth of data upon which to base any trustworthy conclusions as regards a subject as important as it is vast and complicated. There is need of full knowledge on which to base action looking toward State and municipal legislation for the protection of working women. The introduction of women into industry is working change and disturbance in the domestic and social life of the Nation. The decrease in marriage, and especially in the birth rate, has been coincident with it. We must face accomplished facts, and the adjustment to factory conditions must be made; but surely it can be made with less friction and less harmful effects on family life than is now the case. This whole matter in reality forms one of the greatest sociological phenomena of our time; it is a social question of the first importance, of far greater importance than any merely political or economic question can be; and to solve it we need ample data, gathered in a sane and scientific spirit in the course of an exhaustive investigation.

In any great labor disturbance not only are employer and employee interested, but also a third party—the general public. Every considerable labor difficulty in which interstate commerce is involved should be investigated by the Government and the facts officially reported to the public.

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The question of securing a healthy, self-respecting, and mutually sympathetic attitude as between employer and employee, capitalist and wage-worker, is a difficult one. All phases of the labor problem prove difficult when approached. But the underlying principles, the root principles, in accordance with which the problem must be solved are entirely simple. We can get justice and right dealing only if we put as of paramount importance the principle of treating a man on his worth as a man rather than with reference to his social position, his occupation, or the class to which he belongs. There are selfish and brutal men in all ranks of life. If they are capitalists their selfishness and brutality may take the form of hard indifference to suffering, greedy disregard of every moral restraint which interferes with the accumulation of wealth, and cold-blooded exploitation of the weak; or, if they are laborers, the form of laziness, of sullen envy of the more fortunate, and of willingness to perform deeds of murderous violence. Such conduct is just as reprehensible in one case as in the other, and all honest and far-seeing men should join in warring against it wherever it becomes manifest. Individual capitalist and individual wage-worker, corporation and union, are alike entitled to the protection of the law, and must alike obey the law. Moreover, in addition to mere obedience to the law, each man, if he be really a good citizen, must show broad sympathy for his neighbor and genuine desire to look at any question arising between them from the standpoint of that[584] neighbor no less than from his own; and to this end it is essential that capitalist and wage-worker should consult freely one with the other, should each strive to bring closer the day when both shall realize that they are properly partners and not enemies. To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish. In the past the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit, the growth of the spirit which tends to make a man subordinate the welfare of the public as a whole to the welfare of the particular class to which he belongs, the substitution of loyalty to a class for loyalty to the Nation. This inevitably brings about a tendency to treat each man not on his merits as an individual, but on his position as belonging to a certain class in the community. If such a spirit grows up in this Republic it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has proved fatal to every community in which it has become dominant. Unless we continue to keep a quick and lively sense of the great fundamental truth that our concern is with the individual worth of the individual man, this Government can not permanently hold the place which it has achieved among the nations. The vital lines of cleavage among our people do not correspond, and indeed run at right angles, to the lines of cleavage which divide occupation from occupation, which divide[585] wage-workers from capitalists, farmers from bankers, men of small means from men of large means, men who live in the towns from men who live in the country; for the vital line of cleavage is the line which divides the honest man who tries to do well by his neighbor from the dishonest man who does ill by his neighbor. In other words, the standard we should establish is the standard of conduct, not the standard of occupation, of means, or of social position. It is the man’s moral quality, his attitude toward the great questions which concern all humanity, his cleanliness of life, his power to do his duty toward himself and toward others, which really count; and if we substitute for the standard of personal judgment which treats each man according to his merits, another standard in accordance with which all men of one class are favored and all men of another class discriminated against, we shall do irreparable damage to the body politic. I believe that our people are too sane, too self-respecting, too fit for self-government, ever to adopt such an attitude. This Government is not and never shall be government by a plutocracy. This Government is not and never shall be government by a mob. It shall continue to be in the future what it has been in the past, a government based on the theory that each man, rich or poor, is to be treated simply and solely on his worth as a man, that all his personal and property rights are to be safeguarded, and that he is neither to wrong others nor to suffer wrong from others.

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The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult. We who possess this priceless boon, and who desire to hand it on to our children and our children’s children, should ever bear in mind the thought so finely expressed by Burke: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society can not exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there be within the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

The great insurance companies afford striking examples of corporations whose business has extended so far beyond the jurisdiction of the States which created them as to preclude strict enforcement of supervision and regulation by the parent States. In my last annual Message I recommended “that the Congress carefully consider whether the power of the Bureau of Corporations can not constitutionally be extended to cover interstate transactions in insurance.” Recent events have emphasized the importance of an early and exhaustive consideration of this question, to see whether it is not possible to furnish better safeguards than the several[587] States have been able to furnish against corruption of the flagrant kind which has been exposed. It has been only too clearly shown that certain of the men at the head of these large corporations take but small note of the ethical distinction between honesty and dishonesty; they draw the line only this side of what may be called law-honesty, the kind of honesty necessary in order to avoid falling into the clutches of the law. Of course the only complete remedy for this condition must be found in an aroused public conscience, a higher sense of ethical conduct in the community at large, and especially among business men and in the great profession of the law, and in the growth of a spirit which condemns all dishonesty, whether in rich man or in poor man, whether it takes the shape of bribery or of blackmail. But much can be done by legislation which is not only drastic but practical. There is need of a far stricter and more uniform regulation of the vast insurance interests of this country. The United States should in this respect follow the policy of other nations by providing adequate national supervision of commercial interests which are clearly national in character. My predecessors have repeatedly recognized that the foreign business of these companies is an important part of our foreign commercial relations. During the Administrations of Presidents Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley the State Department exercised its influence, through diplomatic channels, to prevent unjust discrimination by foreign countries against American insurance[588] companies. These negotiations illustrated the propriety of the Congress recognizing the national character of insurance, for in the absence of Federal legislation the State Department could only give expression to the wishes of the authorities of the several States, whose policy was ineffective through want of uniformity.

I repeat my previous recommendation that the Congress should also consider whether the Federal Government has any power or owes any duty with respect to domestic transactions in insurance of an interstate character. That State supervision has proved inadequate is generally conceded. The burden upon insurance companies, and therefore their policy-holders, of conflicting regulations of many States, is unquestioned, while but little effective check is imposed upon any able and unscrupulous man who desires to exploit the company in his own interest at the expense of the policy-holders and of the public. The inability of a State to regulate effectively insurance corporations created under the laws of other States and transacting the larger part of their business elsewhere is also clear. As a remedy for this evil of conflicting, ineffective, and yet burdensome regulations there has been for many years a widespread demand for Federal supervision. The Congress has already recognized that interstate insurance may be a proper subject for Federal legislation, for in creating the Bureau of Corporations it authorized it to publish and supply useful information concerning interstate corporations, “including[589] corporations engaged in insurance.” It is obvious that if the compilation of statistics be the limit of the Federal power, it is wholly ineffective to regulate this form of commercial intercourse between the States, and as the insurance business has outgrown in magnitude the possibility of adequate State supervision, the Congress should carefully consider whether further legislation can be had. What is said above applies with equal force to fraternal and benevolent organizations which contract for life insurance.

There is more need of stability than of the attempt to attain an ideal perfection in the methods of raising revenue; and the shock and strain to the business world certain to attend any serious change in these methods render such change inadvisable unless for grave reason. It is not possible to lay down any general rule by which to determine the moment when the reasons for will outweigh the reasons against such a change. Much must depend, not merely on the needs, but on the desires, of the people as a whole; for needs and desires are not necessarily identical. Of course no change can be made on lines beneficial to, or desired by, one section or one State only. There must be something like a general agreement among the citizens of the several States, as represented in the Congress, that the change is needed and desired in the interest of the people as a whole; and there should then be a sincere, intelligent, and disinterested effort to make[590] it in such shape as will combine, so far as possible, the maximum of good to the people at large with the minimum of necessary disregard for the special interests of localities or classes. But in time of peace the revenue must on the average, taking a series of years together, equal the expenditures, or else the revenues must be increased. Last year there was a deficit. Unless our expenditures can be kept within the revenues then our revenue laws must be readjusted. It is as yet too early to attempt to outline what shape such a readjustment should take, for it is as yet too early to say whether there will be need for it. It should be considered whether it is not desirable that the tariff laws should provide for applying as against or in favor of any other nation maximum and minimum tariff rates established by the Congress, so as to secure a certain reciprocity of treatment between other nations and ourselves. Having in view even larger considerations of policy than those of a purely economic nature, it would, in my judgment, be well to endeavor to bring about closer commercial connections with the other peoples of this continent. I am happy to be able to announce to you that Russia now treats us on the most-favored-nation basis.

I earnestly recommend to the Congress the need of economy and to this end of a rigid scrutiny of appropriations. As examples merely, I call your attention to one or two specific matters. All unnecessary offices should be abolished. The Commissioner[591] of the General Land Office recommends the abolishment of the office of receiver of public moneys for United States land offices. This will effect a saving of about a quarter of a million dollars a year. As the business of the Nation grows it is inevitable that there should be from time to time a legitimate increase in the number of officials, and this fact renders it all the more important that when offices become unnecessary they should be abolished. In the public printing also a large saving of public money can be made. There is a constantly growing tendency to publish masses of unimportant information. It is probably not unfair to say that many tens of thousands of volumes are published at which no human being ever looks and for which there is no real demand whatever.

Yet, in speaking of economy, I must in no wise be understood as advocating the false economy which is in the end the worst extravagance. To cut down on the Navy, for instance, would be a crime against the Nation. To fail to push forward all work on the Panama Canal would be as great a folly.

In my Message of December 2, 1902, to the Congress I said:

“Interest rates are a potent factor in business activity, and in order that these rates may be equalized to meet the varying needs of the seasons and of widely separated communities, and to prevent the recurrence of financial stringencies which injuriously[592] affect legitimate business, it is necessary that there should be an element of elasticity in our monetary system. Banks are the natural servants of commerce, and upon them should be placed, as far as practicable, the burden of furnishing and maintaining a circulation adequate to supply the needs of our diversified industries and of our domestic and foreign commerce; and the issue of this should be so regulated that a sufficient supply should be always available for the business interests of the country.”

Every consideration of prudence demands the addition of the element of elasticity to our currency system. The evil does not consist in an inadequate volume of money, but in the rigidity of this volume, which does not respond as it should to the varying needs of communities and of seasons. Inflation must be avoided; but some provision should be made that will ensure a larger volume of money during the fall and winter months than in the less active seasons of the year; so that the currency will contract against speculation, and will expand for the needs of legitimate business. At present the Treasury Department is at irregularly recurring intervals obliged, in the interest of the business world—that is, in the interest of the American public—to try to avert financial crises by providing a remedy which should be provided by Congressional action.

At various times I have instituted investigations into the organization and conduct of the business of the Executive Departments. While none of these[593] inquiries have yet progressed far enough to warrant final conclusions, they have already confirmed and emphasized the general impression that the organization of the Departments is often faulty in principle and wasteful in results, while many of their business methods are antiquated and inefficient. There is every reason why our executive governmental machinery should be at least as well planned, economical, and efficient as the best machinery of the great business organizations, which at present is not the case. To make it so is a task of complex detail and essentially executive in its nature; probably no legislative body, no matter how wise and able, could undertake it with reasonable prospect of success. I recommend that the Congress consider this subject with a view to provide by legislation for the transfer, distribution, consolidation, and assignment of duties and executive organizations or parts of organizations, and for the changes in business methods, within or between the several Departments, that will best promote the economy, efficiency, and high character of the Government work.

In my last annual Message I said:

“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[594] seem to follow that none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it. I recommend the enactment 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.”

I desire to repeat this recommendation. In political campaigns in a country as large and populous as ours it is inevitable that there should be much expense of an entirely legitimate kind. This, of course, means that many contributions, and some of them of large size, must be made, and, as a matter of fact, in any big political contest such contributions are always made to both sides. It is entirely proper both to give and receive them, unless there is an improper motive connected with either gift or reception. If they are extorted by any kind of pressure or promise, express or implied, direct or indirect, in the way of favor or immunity, then the giving or receiving becomes not only improper but criminal. It will undoubtedly be difficult as a matter of practical detail to shape an act which shall guard with reasonable certainty against such misconduct; but[595] if it is possible to secure by law the full and verified publication in detail of all the sums contributed to and expended by the candidates or committees of any political parties the result can not but be wholesome. All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders’ money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts. Not only should both the National and the several State legislatures forbid any officer of a corporation from using the money of the corporation in or about any election, but they should also forbid such use of money in connection with any legislation save by the employment of counsel in public manner for distinctly legal services.

The first Conference of Nations held at The Hague in 1899, being unable to dispose of all the business before it, recommended the consideration and settlement of a number of important questions by another conference to be called subsequently and at an early date. These questions were the following: (1) The rights and duties of neutrals; (2) the limitation of the armed forces on land and sea, and of military budgets; (3) the use of new types and calibres of military and naval guns: (4) the inviolability of private property at sea in times of war; (5) the bombardment of ports, cities, and villages by[596] naval forces. In October, 1904, at the instance of the Interparliamentary Union, which, at a conference held in the United States and attended by the lawmakers of fifteen different nations, had reiterated the demand for a second Conference of Nations, I issued invitations to all the Powers signatory to The Hague Convention to send delegates to such a conference and suggested that it be again held at The Hague. In its note of December 16, 1904, the United States Government communicated to the representatives of foreign governments its belief that the conference could be best arranged under the provisions of the present Hague treaty.

From all the Powers acceptance was received, coupled in some cases with the condition that we should wait until the end of the war then waging between Russia and Japan. The Emperor of Russia, immediately after the treaty of peace which so happily terminated this war, in a note presented to the President on September 13, through Ambassador Rosen, took the initiative in recommending that the conference be now called. The United States Government in response expressed its cordial acquiescence and stated that it would, as a matter of course, take part in the new conference and endeavor to further its aims. We assume that all civilized governments will support the movement, and that the conference is now an assured fact. This Government will do everything in its power to secure the success of the conference to the end that[597] substantial progress may be made in the cause of international peace, justice, and good-will.

This renders it proper at this time to say something as to the general attitude of this Government toward peace. More and more war is coming to be looked upon as in itself a lamentable and evil thing. A wanton or useless war, or a war of mere aggression—in short, any war begun or carried on in a conscienceless spirit—is to be condemned as a peculiarly atrocious crime against all humanity. We can, however, do nothing of permanent value for peace unless we keep ever clearly in mind the ethical element which lies at the root of the problem. Our aim is righteousness. Peace is normally the handmaiden of righteousness; but when peace and righteousness conflict then a great and upright people can never for a moment hesitate to follow the path which leads toward righteousness, even though that path also leads to war. There are persons who advocate peace at any price; there are others who, following a false analogy, think that because it is no longer necessary in civilized countries for individuals to protect their rights with a strong hand, it is therefore unnecessary for nations to be ready to defend their rights. These persons would do irreparable harm to any nation that adopted their principles, and even as it is they seriously hamper the cause which they advocate by tending to render it absurd in the eyes of sensible and patriotic men. There can be no worse foe of mankind in general, and of his own country in particular, than the demagogue of[598] war, the man who in mere folly or to serve his own selfish ends continually rails at and abuses other nations, who seeks to excite his countrymen against foreigners on insufficient pretexts, who excites and inflames a perverse and aggressive national vanity, and who may on occasions wantonly bring on conflict between his nation and some other nation. But there are demagogues of peace just as there are demagogues of war, and in any such movement as this for The Hague conference it is essential not to be misled by one set of extremists any more than by the other. Whenever it is possible for a nation or an individual to work for real peace, assuredly it is failure of duty not so to strive; but if war is necessary and righteous, then either the man or the nation shrinking from it forfeits all title to self-respect. We have scant sympathy with the sentimentalist who dreads oppression less than physical suffering, who would prefer a shameful peace to the pain and toil sometimes lamentably necessary in order to secure a righteous peace. As yet there is only a partial and imperfect analogy between international law and internal or municipal law, because there is no sanction of force for executing the former, while there is in the case of the latter. The private citizen is protected in his rights by the law, because the law rests in the last resort upon force exercised through the forms of law. A man does not have to defend his rights with his own hand, because he can call upon the police, upon the sheriff’s posse, upon the militia, or in certain extreme cases upon the[599] Army, to defend him. But there is no such sanction of force for international law. At present there could be no greater calamity than for the free peoples, the enlightened, independent, and peace-loving peoples, to disarm while yet leaving it open to any barbarism or despotism to remain armed. So long as the world is as unorganized as now, the armies and navies of those peoples who on the whole stand for justice offer not only the best, but the only possible, security for a just peace. For instance, if the United States alone, or in company only with the other nations that on the whole tend to act justly, disarmed, we might sometimes avoid bloodshed, but we would cease to be of weight in securing the peace of justice—the real peace for which the most law-abiding and high-minded men must at times be willing to fight. As the world is now, only that nation is equipped for peace that knows how to fight and that will not shrink from fighting if ever the conditions become such that war is demanded in the name of the highest morality.

So much it is emphatically necessary to say in order both that the position of the United States may not be misunderstood, and that a genuine effort to bring nearer the day of the peace of justice among the nations may not be hampered by a folly which, in striving to achieve the impossible, would render it hopeless to attempt the achievement of the practical. But while recognizing most clearly all above set forth, it remains our clear duty to strive in every practicable way to bring nearer the time when the[600] sword shall not be the arbiter among nations. At present the practical thing to do is to try to minimize the number of cases in which it must be the arbiter, and to offer, at least to all civilized powers, some substitute for war which will be available in at least a considerable number of instances. Very much can be done through another Hague conference in this direction, and I most earnestly urge that this Nation do all in its power to try to further the movement and to make the result of the decisions of The Hague conference effective. I earnestly hope that the conference may be able to devise some way to make arbitration between nations the customary way of settling international disputes in all save a few classes of cases, which should themselves be as sharply defined and rigidly limited as the present governmental and social development of the world will permit. If possible, there should be a general arbitration treaty negotiated among all the nations represented at the conference. Neutral rights and property should be protected at sea as they are protected on land. There should be an international agreement to this purpose and a similar agreement defining contraband of war.

During the last century there has been a distinct diminution in the number of wars between the most civilized nations. International relations have become closer, and the development of The Hague tribunal is not only a symptom of this growing closeness of relationship, but is a means by which the growth can be furthered. Our aim should be from[601] time to time to take such steps as may be possible toward creating something like an organization of the civilized nations, because as the world becomes more highly organized the need for navies and armies will diminish. It is not possible to secure anything like an immediate disarmament, because it would first be necessary to settle what peoples are on the whole a menace to the rest of mankind, and to provide against the disarmament of the rest being turned into a movement which would really chiefly benefit these obnoxious peoples; but it may be possible to exercise some check upon the tendency to swell indefinitely the budgets for military expenditure. Of course, such an effort could succeed only if it did not attempt to do too much; and if it were undertaken in a spirit of sanity as far removed as possible from a merely hysterical pseudo-philanthropy. It is worth while pointing out that since the end of the insurrection in the Philippines this Nation has shown its practical faith in the policy of disarmament by reducing its little army one-third. But disarmament can never be of prime importance; there is more need to get rid of the causes of war than of the implements of war.

I have dwelt much on the dangers to be avoided by steering clear of any mere foolish sentimentality because my wish for peace is so genuine and earnest; because I have a real and great desire that this second Hague conference may mark a long stride forward in the direction of securing the peace of justice throughout the world. No object is better[602] worthy the attention of enlightened statesmanship than the establishment of a surer method than now exists of securing justice as between nations, both for the protection of the little nations and for the prevention of war between the big nations. To this aim we should endeavor not only to avert bloodshed, but, above all, effectively to strengthen the forces of right. The Golden Rule should be, and as the world grows in morality it will be, the guiding rule of conduct among nations as among individuals; though the Golden Rule must not be construed, in fantastic manner, as forbidding the exercise of the police power. This mighty and free Republic should ever deal with all other states, great or small, on a basis of high honor, respecting their rights as jealously as it safeguards its own.

One of the most effective instruments for peace is the Monroe Doctrine as it has been and is being gradually developed by this Nation and accepted by other nations. No other policy could have been as efficient in promoting peace in the Western Hemisphere and in giving to each nation thereon the chance to develop along its own lines. If we had refused to apply the Doctrine to changing conditions it would now be completely outworn, would not meet any of the needs of the present day, and indeed would probably by this time have sunk into complete oblivion. It is useful at home, and is meeting with recognition abroad because we have adapted our application of it to meet the growing and changing[603] needs of the Hemisphere. When we announce a policy, such as the Monroe Doctrine, we thereby commit ourselves to the consequences of the policy, and those consequences from time to time alter. It is out of the question to claim a right and yet shirk the responsibility for its exercise. Not only we, but all American Republics who are benefited by the existence of the Doctrine, must recognize the obligations each nation is under as regards foreign peoples no less than its duty to insist upon its own rights.

That our rights and interests are deeply concerned in the maintenance of the Doctrine is so clear as hardly to need argument. This is especially true in view of the construction of the Panama Canal. As a mere matter of self-defence we must exercise a close watch over the approaches to this canal; and this means that we must be thoroughly alive to our interests in the Caribbean Sea.

There are certain essential points which must never be forgotten as regards the Monroe Doctrine. In the first place, we must as a nation make it evident that we do not intend to treat it in any shape or way as an excuse for aggrandizement on our part at the expense of the republics to the south. We must recognize the fact that in some South American countries there has been much suspicion lest we should interpret the Monroe Doctrine as in some way inimical to their interests, and we must try to convince all the other nations of this continent once and for all that no just and orderly government[604] has anything to fear from us. There are certain republics to the south of us which have already reached such a point of stability, order, and prosperity that they themselves, though as yet hardly consciously, are among the guarantors of this Doctrine. These republics we now meet not only on a basis of entire equality, but in a spirit of frank and respectful friendship, which we hope is mutual. If all the republics to the south of us will only grow as those to which I allude have already grown, all need for us to be the especial champions of the Doctrine will disappear, for no stable and growing American Republic wishes to see some great non-American military power acquire territory in its neighborhood. All that this country desires is that the other republics on this Continent shall be happy and prosperous; and they can not be happy and prosperous unless they maintain order within their boundaries and behave with a just regard for their obligations toward outsiders. It must be understood that under no circumstances will the United States use the Monroe Doctrine as a cloak for territorial aggression. We desire peace with all the world, but perhaps most of all with the other peoples of the American Continent. There are of course limits to the wrongs which any self-respecting nation can endure. It is always possible that wrong actions toward this Nation, or toward citizens of this Nation, in some state unable to keep order among its own people, unable to secure justice from outsiders, and unwilling to do justice to those outsiders[605] who treat it well, may result in our having to take action to protect our rights; but such action will not be taken with a view to territorial aggression, and it will be taken at all only with extreme reluctance and when it has become evident that every other resource has been exhausted.

Moreover, we must make it evident that we do not intend to permit the Monroe Doctrine to be used by any nation on this Continent as a shield to protect it from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations. If a republic to the south of us commits a tort against a foreign nation, such as an outrage against a citizen of that nation, then the Monroe Doctrine does not force us to interfere to prevent punishment of the tort, save to see that the punishment does not assume the form of territorial occupation in any shape. The case is more difficult when it refers to a contractual obligation. Our own Government has always refused to enforce such contractual obligations on behalf of its citizens by an appeal to arms. It is much to be wished that all foreign governments would take the same view. But they do not; and in consequence we are liable at any time to be brought face to face with disagreeable alternatives. On the one hand, this country would certainly decline to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt; on the other hand, it is very inadvisable to permit any foreign power to take possession, even temporarily, of the custom-houses of an American Republic in order to enforce the payment of its obligations;[606] for such temporary occupation might turn into a permanent occupation. The only escape from these alternatives may at any time be that we must ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as possible of a just obligation shall be paid. It is far better that this country should put through such an arrangement, rather than allow any foreign country to undertake it. To do so ensures the defaulting republic from having to pay debts of an improper character under duress, while it also ensures honest creditors of the republic from being passed by in the interest of dishonest or grasping creditors. Moreover, for the United States to take such a position offers the only possible way of ensuring us against a clash with some foreign power. The position is, therefore, in the interest of peace as well as in the interest of justice. It is of benefit to our people; it is of benefit to foreign peoples; and most of all it is really of benefit to the people of the country concerned.

This brings me to what should be one of the fundamental objects of the Monroe Doctrine. We must ourselves in good faith try to help upward toward peace and order those of our sister republics which need such help. Just as there has been a gradual growth of the ethical element in the relations of one individual to another, so we are, even though slowly, more and more coming to recognize the duty of bearing one another’s burdens, not only as among individuals, but also as among nations.

[607]

Santo Domingo, in her turn, has now made an appeal to us to help her, and not only every principle of wisdom but every generous instinct within us bids us respond to the appeal. It is not of the slightest consequence whether we grant the aid needed by Santo Domingo as an incident to the wise development of the Monroe Doctrine, or because we regard the case of Santo Domingo as standing wholly by itself, and to be treated as such, and not on general principles or with any reference to the Monroe Doctrine. The important point is to give the needed aid, and the case is certainly sufficiently peculiar to deserve to be judged purely on its own merits. The conditions in Santo Domingo have for a number of years grown from bad to worse until a year ago all society was on the verge of dissolution. Fortunately, just at this time a ruler sprang up in Santo Domingo, who, with his colleagues, saw the dangers threatening their country and appealed to the friendship of the only great and powerful neighbor who possessed the power and, as they hoped, also the will to help them. There was imminent danger of foreign intervention. The previous rulers of Santo Domingo had recklessly incurred debts, and owing to her internal disorders she had ceased to be able to provide means of paying the debts. The patience of her foreign creditors had become exhausted, and at least two foreign nations were on the point of intervention, and were only prevented from intervening by the unofficial assurance of this Government that it would itself strive[608] to help Santo Domingo in her hour of need. In the case of one of these nations, only the actual opening of negotiations to this end by our Government prevented the seizure of territory in Santo Domingo by a European power. Of the debts incurred some were just, while some were not of a character which really renders it obligatory on, or proper for, Santo Domingo to pay them in full. But she could not pay any of them unless some stability was assured her Government and people.

Accordingly the Executive Department of our Government negotiated a treaty under which we are to try to help the Dominican people to straighten out their finances. This treaty is pending before the Senate. In the meantime a temporary arrangement has been made which will last until the Senate has had time to take action upon the treaty. Under this arrangement the Dominican Government has appointed Americans to all the important positions in the customs service, and they are seeing to the honest collection of the revenues, turning over 45 per cent to the Government for running expenses and putting the other 55 per cent into a safe depositary for equitable division in case the treaty shall be ratified, among the various creditors, whether European or American.

The custom-houses offer wellnigh the only sources of revenue in Santo Domingo, and the different revolutions usually have as their real aim the obtaining possession of these custom-houses. The mere fact that the collectors of customs are Americans,[609] that they are performing their duties with efficiency and honesty, and that the treaty is pending in the Senate, gives a certain moral power to the Government of Santo Domingo which it has not had before. This has completely discouraged all revolutionary movement, while it has already produced such an increase in the revenues that the Government is actually getting more from the 45 per cent that the American collectors turn over to it than it got formerly when it took the entire revenue. It is enabling the poor harassed people of Santo Domingo once more to turn their attention to industry and to be free from the curse of interminable revolutionary disturbance. It offers to all bonâ fide creditors, American and European, the only really good chance to obtain that to which they are justly entitled, while it in return gives to Santo Domingo the only opportunity of defence against claims which it ought not to pay, for now if it meets the views of the Senate we shall ourselves thoroughly examine all these claims, whether American or foreign, and see that none that are improper are paid. There is, of course, opposition to the treaty from dishonest creditors, foreign and American, and from the professional revolutionists of the island itself. We have already reason to believe that some of the creditors who do not dare expose their claims to honest scrutiny are endeavoring to stir up sedition in the island and opposition to the treaty. In the meantime I have exercised the authority vested in me by the joint resolution[610] of the Congress to prevent the introduction of arms into the island for revolutionary purposes.

Under the course taken, stability and order and all the benefits of peace are at last coming to Santo Domingo, danger of foreign intervention has been suspended, and there is at last a prospect that all creditors will get justice, no more and no less. If the arrangement is terminated by the failure of the treaty chaos will follow; and if chaos follows, sooner or later this Government may be involved in serious difficulties with foreign governments over the island, or else may be forced itself to intervene in the island in some unpleasant fashion. Under the proposed treaty the independence of the island is scrupulously respected, the danger of violation of the Monroe Doctrine by the intervention of foreign powers vanishes, and the interference of our Government is minimized, so that we shall only act in conjunction with the Santo Domingo authorities to secure the proper administration of the customs, and therefore to secure the payment of just debts and to secure the Dominican Government against demands for unjust debts. The proposed method will give the people of Santo Domingo the same chance to move onward and upward which we have already given to the people of Cuba. It will be doubly to our discredit as a nation if we fail to take advantage of this chance; for it will be of damage to ourselves, and it will be of incalculable damage to Santo Domingo. Every consideration of wise policy, and, above all, every consideration[611] of large generosity, bids us meet the request of Santo Domingo as we are now trying to meet it.

We can not consider the question of our foreign policy without at the same time treating of the Army and Navy. We now have a very small army—indeed, one wellnigh infinitesimal when compared with the army of any other large nation. Of course the Army we do have should be as nearly perfect of its kind and for its size as is possible. I do not believe that any army in the world has a better average of enlisted man or a better type of junior officer; but the Army should be trained to act effectively in a mass. Provision should be made by sufficient appropriations for manœuvres of a practical kind so that the troops may learn how to take care of themselves under actual service conditions; every march, for instance, being made with the soldier loaded exactly as he would be in an active campaign. The generals and colonels would thereby have opportunity of handling regiments, brigades, and divisions, and the commissary and medical departments would be tested in the field. Provision should be made for the exercise at least of a brigade and by preference of a division in marching and embarking at some point on our coast and disembarking at some other point and continuing its march. The number of posts in which the Army is kept in time of peace should be materially diminished and the posts that are left made correspondingly larger. No local interests should be allowed to[612] stand in the way of assembling the greater part of the troops which would at need form our field armies in stations of such size as will permit the best training to be given to the personnel of all grades, including the high officers and staff officers. To accomplish this end we must have not company or regimental garrisons, but brigade and division garrisons. Promotion by mere seniority can never result in a thoroughly efficient corps of officers in the higher ranks unless there accompanies it a vigorous weeding-out process. Such a weeding-out process—that is, such a process of selection—is a chief feature of the four years’ course of the young officer at West Point. There is no good reason why it should stop immediately upon his graduation. While at West Point he is dropped unless he comes up to a certain standard of excellence, and when he graduates he takes rank in the Army according to his rank of graduation. The results are good at West Point; and there should be in the Army itself something that will achieve the same end. After a certain age has been reached the average officer is unfit to do good work below a certain grade. Provision should be made for the promotion of exceptionally meritorious men over the heads of their comrades and for the retirement of all men who have reached a given age without getting beyond a given rank; this age of retirement of course changing from rank to rank. In both the Army and the Navy there should be some principle of selection, that is, of promotion for merit, and there[613] should be a resolute effort to eliminate the aged officers of reputable character who possess no special efficiency.

There should be an increase in the coast artillery force, so that our coast fortifications can be in some degree adequately manned. There is special need for an increase and reorganization of the Medical Department of the Army. In both the Army and Navy there must be the same thorough training for duty in the staff corps as in the fighting line. Only by such training in advance can we be sure that in actual war field operations and those at sea will be carried on successfully. The importance of this was shown conclusively in the Spanish-American and the Russo-Japanese wars. The work of the medical departments in the Japanese army and navy is especially worthy of study. I renew my recommendation of January 9, 1905, as to the Medical Department of the Army and call attention to the equal importance of the needs of the staff corps of the Navy. In the Medical Department of the Navy the first in importance is the reorganization of the Hospital Corps, on the lines of the Gallinger Bill (S. 3984, February 1, 1904), and the reapportionment of the different grades of the medical officers to meet service requirements. It seems advisable also that medical officers of the Army and Navy should have similar rank and pay in their respective grades, so that their duties can be carried on without friction when they are brought together. The base hospitals of the Navy should be put in[614] condition to meet modern requirements and hospital ships be provided. Unless we now provide with ample forethought for the medical needs of the Army and Navy, appalling suffering of a preventable kind is sure to occur if ever the country goes to war. It is not reasonable to expect successful administration in time of war of a department which lacks a third of the number of officers necessary to perform the medical service in time of peace. We need men who are not merely doctors; they must be trained in the administration of military medical service.

Our Navy must, relatively to the navies of other nations, always be of greater size than our Army. We have most wisely continued for a number of years to build up our Navy, and it has now reached a fairly high standard of efficiency. This standard of efficiency must not only be maintained, but increased. It does not seem to me necessary, however, that the Navy should—at least in the immediate future—be increased beyond the present number of units. What is now clearly necessary is to substitute efficient for inefficient units as the latter become worn-out or as it becomes apparent that they are useless. Probably the result would be attained by adding a single battleship to our Navy each year, the superseded or outworn vessels being laid up or broken up as they are thus replaced. The four single-turret monitors built immediately after the close of the Spanish war, for instance, are vessels which would be of but little use in the event of[615] war. The money spent upon them could have been more usefully spent in other ways. Thus it would have been far better never to have built a single one of these monitors and to have put the money into an ample supply of reserve guns. Most of the smaller cruisers and gunboats, though they serve a useful purpose so far as they are needed for international police work, would not add to the strength of our Navy in a conflict with a serious foe. There is urgent need of providing a large increase in the number of officers, and especially in the number of enlisted men.

Recent naval history has emphasized certain lessons which ought not to, but which do, need emphasis. Sea-going torpedo boats or destroyers are indispensable, not only for making night attacks by surprise upon an enemy, but even in battle for finishing already crippled ships. Under exceptional circumstances submarine boats would doubtless be of use. Fast scouts are needed. The main strength of the Navy, however, lies and can only lie in the great battleships, the heavily-armored, heavily-gunned vessels which decide the mastery of the seas. Heavy-armed cruisers also play a most useful part, and unarmed cruisers, if swift enough, are very useful as scouts. Between antagonists of approximately equal prowess the comparative perfection of the instruments of war will ordinarily determine the fight. But it is of course true that the man behind the gun, the man in the engine room, and the man in the conning tower, considered not only individually,[616] but especially with regard to the way in which they work together, are even more important than the weapons with which they work. The most formidable battleship is of course helpless against even a light cruiser if the men aboard it are unable to hit anything with their guns; and thoroughly well-handled cruisers may count seriously in an engagement with much superior vessels if the men aboard the latter are ineffective, whether from lack of training or from any other cause. Modern warships are most formidable mechanisms when well handled, but they are utterly useless when not well handled; and they can not be handled at all without long and careful training. This training can under no circumstance be given when once war has broken out. No fighting ship of the first class should ever be laid up save for necessary repairs; and her crew should be kept constantly exercised on the high seas, so that she may stand at the highest point of perfection. To put a new and untrained crew upon the most powerful battleship and send it out to meet a formidable enemy is not only to invite but to ensure disaster and disgrace. To improvise crews at the outbreak of a war, so far as the serious fighting craft are concerned, is absolutely hopeless. If the officers and men are not thoroughly skilled in, and have not been thoroughly trained to, their duties, it would be far better to keep the ships in port during hostilities than to send them against a formidable opponent, for the result could only be that they would be either sunk or captured.[617] The marksmanship of our Navy is now on the whole in a gratifying condition, and there has been a great improvement in fleet practice. We need additional seamen; we need a large store of reserve guns; we need sufficient money for ample target practice, ample practice of every kind at sea. We should substitute for comparatively inefficient types—the old third-class battleship “Texas,” the single-turreted monitors above mentioned, and indeed all the monitors and some of the old cruisers—efficient, modern, sea-going vessels. Sea-going torpedo-boat destroyers should be substituted for some of the smaller torpedo boats. During the present Congress there need be no additions to the aggregate number of units of the Navy. Our Navy, though very small relatively to the navies of other nations, is for the present sufficient in point of numbers for our needs, and while we must constantly strive to make its efficiency higher, there need be no additions to the total number of ships now built and building, save in the way of substitution as above outlined. I recommend the report of the Secretary of the Navy to the careful consideration of the Congress, especially with a view to the legislation therein advocated.

During the past year evidence has accumulated to confirm the expressions contained in my last two annual Messages as to the importance of revising by appropriate legislation our system of naturalizing aliens. I appointed last March a commission[618] to make a careful examination of our naturalization laws, and to suggest appropriate measures to avoid the notorious abuses resulting from the improvident or unlawful granting of citizenship. This commission, composed of an officer of the Department of State, of the Department of Justice, and of the Department of Commerce and Labor, has discharged the duty imposed upon it, and has submitted a report, which will be transmitted to the Congress for its consideration, and, I hope, for its favorable action.

The distinguishing recommendations of the Commission are:

First. A Federal bureau of naturalization, to be established in the Department of Commerce and Labor, to supervise the administration of the naturalization laws and to receive returns of naturalizations pending and accomplished.

Second. Uniformity of naturalization certificates, fees to be charged, and procedure.

Third. More exacting qualifications for citizenship.

Fourth. The preliminary declaration of intention to be abolished and no alien to be naturalized until at least ninety days after the filing of his petition.

Fifth. Jurisdiction to naturalize aliens to be confined to United States district courts and to such State courts as have jurisdiction in civil actions in which the amount in controversy is unlimited; in cities of over 100,000 inhabitants the United[619] States district courts to have exclusive jurisdiction in the naturalization of the alien residents of such cities.

In my last Message I asked the attention of the Congress to the urgent need of action to make our criminal law more effective; and I most earnestly request that you pay heed to the report of the Attorney-General on this subject. Centuries ago it was especially needful to throw every safeguard round the accused. The danger then was lest he should be wronged by the state. The danger is now exactly the reverse. Our laws and customs tell immensely in favor of the criminal and against the interests of the public he has wronged. Some antiquated and outworn rules, which once safeguarded the threatened rights of private citizens, now merely work harm to the general body politic. The criminal law of the United States stands in urgent need of revision. The criminal process of any court of the United States should run throughout the entire territorial extent of our country. The delays of the criminal law, no less than of the civil, now amount to a very great evil.

There seems to be no statute of the United States which provides for the punishment of a United States attorney or other officer of the Government who corruptly agrees to wrongfully do or wrongfully refrain from doing any act when the consideration for such corrupt agreement is other than one[620] possessing money value. This ought to be remedied by appropriate legislation. Legislation should also be enacted to cover, explicitly, unequivocally, and beyond question, breach of trust in the shape of prematurely divulging official secrets by an officer or employee of the United States, and to provide a suitable penalty therefor. Such officer or employee owes the duty to the United States to guard carefully and not to divulge or in any manner use, prematurely, information which is accessible to the officer or employee by reason of his official position. Most breaches of public trust are already covered by the law, and this one should be. It is impossible, no matter how much care is used, to prevent the occasional appointment to the public service of a man who when tempted proves unfaithful; but every means should be provided to detect and every effort made to punish the wrongdoer. So far as in my power lies each and every such wrongdoer shall be relentlessly hunted down; in no instance in the past has he been spared; in no instance in the future shall he be spared. His crime is a crime against every honest man in the Nation, for it is a crime against the whole body politic. Yet in dwelling on such misdeeds, it is unjust not to add that they are altogether exceptional, and that on the whole the employees of the Government render upright and faithful service to the people. There are exceptions, notably in one or two branches of the service; but at no time in the Nation’s history has the public service of the Nation taken as a[621] whole stood on a higher plane than now, alike as regards honesty and as regards efficiency.

Once again I call your attention to the condition of the public-land laws. Recent developments have given new urgency to the need for such changes as will fit these laws to actual present conditions. The honest disposal and right use of the remaining public lands is of fundamental importance. The iniquitous methods by which the monopolizing of the public lands is being brought about under the present laws are becoming generally known, but the existing laws do not furnish effective remedies. The recommendations of the Public Lands Commission upon this subject are wise and should be given effect.

The creation of small irrigated farms under the Reclamation Act is a powerful offset to the tendency of certain other laws to foster or permit monopoly of the land. Under that act the construction of great irrigation works has been proceeding rapidly and successfully, the lands reclaimed are eagerly taken up, and the prospect that the policy of national irrigation will accomplish all that was expected of it is bright. The act should be extended to include the State of Texas.

The Reclamation Act derives much of its value from the fact that it tends to secure the greatest possible number of homes on the land, and to create communities of freeholders, in part by settlement on public lands, in part by forcing the subdivision of[622] large private holdings before they can get water from Government irrigation works. The law requires that no right to the use of water for land in private ownership shall be sold for a tract exceeding 160 acres to any one land owner. This provision has excited active and powerful hostility, but the success of the law itself depends on the wise and firm enforcement of it. We can not afford to substitute tenants for freeholders on the public domain.

The greater part of the remaining public lands can not be irrigated. They are at present and will probably always be of greater value for grazing than for any other purpose. This fact has led to the grazing homestead of 640 acres in Nebraska and to the proposed extension of it to other States. It is argued that a family can not be supported on 160 acres of arid grazing land. This is obviously true; but neither can a family be supported on 640 acres of much of the land to which it is proposed to apply the grazing homestead. To establish universally any such arbitrary limit would be unwise at the present time. It would probably result on the one hand in enlarging the holdings of some of the great land owners, and on the other in needless suffering and failure on the part of a very considerable proportion of the bonâ fide settlers who give faith to the implied assurance of the Government that such an area is sufficient. The best use of the public grazing lands requires the careful examination and classification of these lands in order to give each settler land enough to support his family and[623] no more. While this work is being done, and until the lands are settled, the Government should take control of the open range, under reasonable regulations suited to local needs, following the general policy already in successful operation on the forest reserves. It is probable that the present grazing value of the open public range is scarcely more than half what it once was or what it might easily be again under careful regulations.

The forest policy of the Administration appears to enjoy the unbroken support of the people. The great users of timber are themselves forwarding the movement for forest preservation. All organized opposition to the forest reserves in the West has disappeared. Since the consolidation of all Government forest work in the National Forest Service there has been a rapid and notable gain in the usefulness of the forest reserves to the people and in public appreciation of their value. The national parks within or adjacent to forest reserves should be transferred to the charge of the Forest Service also.

The National Government already does something in connection with the construction and maintenance of the great system of levees along the lower course of the Mississippi; in my judgment it should do much more.

To the spread of our trade in peace and the defence of our flag in war a great and prosperous merchant[624] marine is indispensable. We should have ships of our own and seamen of our own to convey our goods to neutral markets, and in case of need to reinforce our battle line. It can not but be a source of regret and uneasiness to us that the lines of communication with our sister republics of South America should be chiefly under foreign control. It is not a good thing that American merchants and manufacturers should have to send their goods and letters to South America via Europe if they wish security and despatch. Even on the Pacific, where our ships have held their own better than on the Atlantic, our merchant flag is now threatened through the liberal aid bestowed by other governments on their own steam lines. I ask your earnest consideration of the report with which the Merchant Marine Commission has followed its long and careful inquiry.

I again heartily commend to your favorable consideration the tercentennial celebration of the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Appreciating the desirability of this commemoration, the Congress passed an act, March 3, 1905, authorizing in the year 1907, on and near the waters of Hampton Roads, in the State of Virginia, an international naval, marine, and military celebration in honor of this event. By the authority vested in me by this act, I have made proclamation of said celebration, and have issued, in conformity with its instructions, invitations to all the nations of the earth to[625] participate, by sending their naval vessels and such military organizations as may be practical. This celebration would fail of its full purpose unless it were enduring in its results and commensurate with the importance of the event to be celebrated, the event from which our Nation dates its birth. I earnestly hope that this celebration, already indorsed by the Congress of the United States, and by the legislatures of sixteen States since the action of the Congress, will receive such additional aid at your hands as will make it worthy of the great event it is intended to celebrate, and thereby enable the Government of the United States to make provision for the exhibition of its own resources, and likewise enable our people who have undertaken the work of such a celebration to provide suitable and proper entertainment and instruction in the historic events of our country for all who may visit the exposition and to whom we have tendered our hospitality.

It is a matter of unmixed satisfaction once more to call attention to the excellent work of the Pension Bureau; for the veterans of the Civil War have a greater claim upon us than any other class of our citizens. To them, first of all among our people, honor is due.

Seven years ago my lamented predecessor, President McKinley, stated that the time had come for the Nation to care for the graves of the Confederate dead. I recommend that the Congress take[626] action toward this end. The first need is to take charge of the graves of the Confederate dead who died in Northern prisons.

The question of immigration is of vital interest to this country. In the year ending June 30, 1905, there came to the United States 1,026,000 alien immigrants. In other words, in the single year that has just elapsed there came to this country a greater number of people than came here during the one hundred and sixty-nine years of our colonial life which intervened between the first landing at Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence. It is clearly shown in the report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration that, while much of this enormous immigration is undoubtedly healthy and natural, a considerable proportion is undesirable from one reason or another; moreover, a considerable proportion of it, probably a very large proportion, including most of the undesirable class, does not come here of its own initiative, but because of the activity of the agents of the great transportation companies. These agents are distributed throughout Europe, and by the offer of all kinds of inducements they wheedle and cajole many immigrants, often against their best interest, to come here. The most serious obstacle we have to encounter in the effort to secure a proper regulation of the immigration to these shores arises from the determined opposition of the foreign steamship lines, who have no interest whatever in the matter[627] save to increase the returns on their capital by carrying masses of immigrants hither in the steerage quarters of their ships.

As I said in my last Message to the Congress, we can not have too much immigration of the right sort, and we should have none whatever of the wrong sort. Of course it is desirable that even the right kind of immigration should be properly distributed in this country. We need more of such immigration for the South; and special effort should be made to secure it. Perhaps it would be possible to limit the number of immigrants allowed to come in any one year to New York and other Northern cities, while leaving unlimited the number allowed to come to the South; always provided, however, that a stricter effort is made to see that only immigrants of the right kind come to our country anywhere. In actual practice it has proved so difficult to enforce the immigration laws where long stretches of frontier marked by an imaginary line alone intervene between us and our neighbors that I recommend that no immigrants be allowed to come in from Canada and Mexico, save natives of the two countries themselves. As much as possible should be done to distribute the immigrants upon the land and keep them away from the congested tenement-house districts of the great cities. But distribution is a palliative, not a cure. The prime need is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens. The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be[628] strengthened. Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United States. Moreover, there should be a sharp limitation imposed upon all vessels coming to our ports as to the number of immigrants in ratio to the tonnage which each vessel can carry. This ratio should be high enough to ensure the coming hither of as good a class of aliens as possible. Provision should be made for the surer punishment of those who induce aliens to come to this country under promise or assurance of employment. It should be made possible to inflict a sufficiently heavy penalty on any employer violating this law to deter him from taking the risk. It seems to me wise that there should be an international conference held to deal with this question of immigration, which has more than a merely national significance; such a conference could among other things enter at length into the methods for securing a thorough inspection of would-be immigrants at the ports from which they desire to embark before permitting them to embark.

In dealing with this question it is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and to discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man’s fitness for citizenship. It is our right and duty to consider his moral and social quality. His standard of living should be such that he will[629] not, by pressure of competition, lower the standard of living of our own wage-workers; for it must ever be a prime object of our legislation to keep high their standard of living. If the man who seeks to come here is from the moral and social standpoint of such a character as to bid fair to add value to the community he should be heartily welcomed. We can not afford to pay heed to whether he is of one creed or another, of one nation or another. We can not afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav, or Magyar. What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man. In my judgment, with this end in view, we shall have to prepare through our own agents a far more rigid inspection in the countries from which the immigrants come. It will be a great deal better to have fewer immigrants, but all of the right kind, than a great number of immigrants, many of whom are necessarily of the wrong kind. As far as possible we wish to limit the immigration to this country to persons who propose to become citizens of this country, and we can well afford to insist upon adequate scrutiny of the character of those who are thus proposed for future citizenship. There should be an increase in the stringency of the laws to keep out insane, idiotic, epileptic, and pauper immigrants. But this is by no means enough. Not merely the anarchist, but every man of anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly[630] people, all people of bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the vicious, the physically unfit, defective, or degenerate should be kept out. The stocks out of which American citizenship is to be built should be strong and healthy, sound in body, mind, and character. If it be objected that the Government agents would not always select well, the answer is that they would certainly select better than do the agents and brokers of foreign steamship companies, the people who now do whatever selection is done.

The questions arising in connection with Chinese immigration stand by themselves. The conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, legitimately come under the head of undesirable immigrants to this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they work, and their low standard of living. Not only is it to the interest of this country to keep them out, but the Chinese authorities do not desire that they should be admitted. At present their entrance is prohibited by laws amply adequate to accomplish this purpose. These laws have been, are being, and will be thoroughly enforced. The violations of them are so few in number as to be infinitesimal and can be entirely disregarded. There is no serious proposal to alter the immigration law as regards the Chinese laborer, skilled or unskilled, and there is no excuse for any man feeling or affecting to feel the slightest alarm on the subject.

But in the effort to carry out the policy of excluding[631] Chinese laborers, Chinese coolies, grave injustice and wrong have been done by this Nation to the people of China, and therefore ultimately to this Nation itself. Chinese students, business and professional men of all kinds—not only merchants, but bankers, doctors, manufacturers, professors, travelers, and the like—should be encouraged to come here and treated on precisely the same footing that we treat students, business men, travelers, and the like of other nations. Our laws and treaties should be framed, not so as to put these people in the excepted classes, but to state that we will admit all Chinese, except Chinese of the coolie class, Chinese skilled or unskilled laborers. There would not be the least danger that any such provision would result in any relaxation of the law about laborers. These will, under all conditions, be kept out absolutely. But it will be more easy to see that both justice and courtesy are shown, as they ought to be shown, to other Chinese, if the law or treaty is framed as above suggested. Examinations should be completed at the port of departure from China. For this purpose there should be provided a more adequate consular service in China than we now have. The appropriations, both for the officers of the consuls and for the office forces in the consulates, should be increased.

As a people we have talked much of the open door in China, and we expect, and quite rightly intend to insist, upon justice being shown us by the Chinese. But we can not expect to receive equity unless[632] we do equity. We can not ask the Chinese to do to us what we are unwilling to do to them. They would have a perfect right to exclude our laboring men if our laboring men threatened to come into their country in such numbers as to jeopardize the well-being of the Chinese population; and as, mutatis mutandis, these were the conditions with which Chinese immigration actually brought this people face to face, we had and have a perfect right, which the Chinese Government in no way contests, to act as we have acted in the matter of restricting coolie immigration. That this right exists for each country was explicitly acknowledged in the last treaty between the two countries. But we must treat the Chinese student, traveler, and business man in a spirit of the broadest justice and courtesy if we expect similar treatment to be accorded to our own people of similar rank who go to China. Much trouble has come during the past summer from the organized boycott against American goods which has been started in China. The main factor in producing this boycott has been the resentment felt by the students and business people of China, by all the Chinese leaders, against the harshness of our law toward educated Chinamen of the professional and business classes.

This Government has the friendliest feelings for China and desires China’s well-being. We cordially sympathized with the announced purpose of Japan to stand for the integrity of China. Such an attitude tends to the peace of the world.

[633]

The civil service law has been on the statute books for twenty-two years. Every President and a vast majority of heads of departments who have been in office during that period have favored a gradual extension of the merit system. The more thoroughly its principles have been understood, the greater has been the favor with which the law has been regarded by administrative officers. Any attempt to carry on the great executive departments of the Government without this law would inevitably result in chaos. The Civil Service Commissioners are doing excellent work; and their compensation is inadequate, considering the service they perform.

The statement that the examinations are not practical in character is based on a misapprehension of the practice of the Commission. The departments are invariably consulted as to the requirements desired and as to the character of questions that shall be asked. General invitations are frequently sent put to all heads of departments asking whether any changes in the scope or character of examinations are required. In other words, the departments prescribe the requirements and the qualifications desired, and the Civil Service Commission co-operates with them in securing persons with these qualifications and ensuring open and impartial competition. In a large number of examinations (as, for example, those for trades positions) there are no educational requirements whatever, and a person who can neither read nor write may pass with a[634] high average. Vacancies in the service are filled with reasonable expedition and the machinery of the Commission, which reaches every part of the country, is the best agency that has yet been devised for finding people with the most suitable qualifications for the various offices to be filled. Written competitive examinations do not make an ideal method for filling positions, but they do represent an immeasurable advance upon the “spoils” method, under which outside politicians really made the appointments nominally made by the executive officers, the appointees being chosen by the politicians in question, in the great majority of cases, for reasons totally unconnected with the needs of the service or of the public.

Statistics gathered by the Census Bureau show that the tenure of office in the Government service does not differ materially from that enjoyed by employees of large business corporations. Heads of executive departments and members of the Commission have called my attention to the fact that the rule requiring a filing of charges and three days’ notice before an employee could be separated from the service for inefficiency has served no good purpose whatever, because that is not a matter upon which a hearing of the employee found to be inefficient can be of any value, and in practice the rule providing for such notice and hearing has merely resulted in keeping in a certain number of incompetents, because of the reluctance of heads of departments and bureau chiefs to go through the[635] required procedure. Experience has shown that this rule is wholly ineffective to save any man, if a superior for improper reasons wishes to remove him, and is mischievous because it sometimes serves to keep in the service incompetent men not guilty of specific wrong-doing. Having these facts in view, the rule has been amended by providing that where the inefficiency or incapacity comes within the personal knowledge of the head of a department the removal may be made without notice, the reasons therefor being filed and made a record of the department. The absolute right of removal rests where it always has rested, with the head of a department; any limitation of this absolute right results in grave injury to the public service. The change is merely one of procedure; it was much needed; and it is producing good results.

The civil service law is being energetically and impartially enforced, and in the large majority of cases complaints of violations of either the law or rules are discovered to be unfounded. In this respect, this law compares very favorably with any other Federal statute. The question of politics in the appointment and retention of the men engaged in merely ministerial work has been practically eliminated in almost the entire field of Government employment covered by the civil service law. The action of the Congress in providing the Commission with its own force instead of requiring it to rely on detailed clerks has been justified by the increased work done at a smaller cost to the Government. I[636] urge upon the Congress a careful consideration of the recommendations contained in the annual report of the Commission.

Our copyright laws urgently need revision. They are imperfect in definition, confused and inconsistent in expression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern reproductive processes, are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential to the fair protection of the public; they are difficult for the courts to interpret and impossible for the Copyright Office to administer with satisfaction to the public. Attempts to improve them by amendment have been frequent, no less than twelve acts for the purpose having been passed since the Revised Statutes. To perfect them by further amendments seems impracticable. A complete revision of them is essential. Such a revision, to meet modern conditions, has been found necessary in Germany, Austria, Sweden, and other foreign countries, and bills embodying it are pending in England and the Australian colonies. It has been urged here, and proposals for a commission to undertake it have, from time to time, been pressed upon the Congress. The inconveniences of the present conditions being so great, an attempt to frame appropriate legislation has been made by the Copyright Office, which has called conferences of the various interests especially and practically concerned with the operation of the copyright laws. It[637] has secured from them suggestions as to the changes necessary; it has added from its own experience and investigations, and it has drafted a bill which embodies such of these changes and additions as, after full discussion and expert criticism, appeared to be sound and safe. In form this bill would replace the existing insufficient and inconsistent laws by one general copyright statute. It will be presented to the Congress at the coming session. It deserves prompt consideration.

I recommend that a law be enacted to regulate interstate commerce in misbranded and adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs. Such law would protect legitimate manufacture and commerce, and would tend to secure the health and welfare of the consuming public. Traffic in foodstuffs which have been debased or adulterated so as to injure health or to deceive purchasers should be forbidden.

The law forbidding the emission of dense black or gray smoke in the City of Washington has been sustained by the courts. Something has been accomplished under it, but much remains to be done if we would preserve the Capital City from defacement by the smoke nuisance. Repeated prosecutions under the law have not had the desired effect. I recommend that it be made more stringent by increasing both the minimum and maximum fine; by providing for imprisonment in cases of repeated violation; and by affording the remedy of injunction[638] against the continuation of the operation of plants which are persistent offenders. I recommend, also, an increase in the number of inspectors, whose duty it shall be to detect violations of the act.

I call your attention to the generous act of the State of California in conferring upon the United States Government the ownership of the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove. There should be no delay in accepting the gift, and appropriations should be made for the including thereof in the Yosemite National Park, and for the care and policing of the park. California has acted most wisely as well as with great magnanimity in the matter. There are certain mighty natural features of our land which should be preserved in perpetuity for our children and our children’s children. In my judgment the Grand Canyon of the Colorado should be made into a national park. It is greatly to be wished that the State of New York should copy as regards Niagara what the State of California has done as regards the Yosemite. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with the preservation of Niagara Falls in all their beauty and majesty. If the State can not see to this, then it is earnestly to be wished that she should be willing to turn it over to the National Government, which should in such case (if possible, in conjunction with the Canadian Government) assume the burden and responsibility of preserving unharmed Niagara Falls; just as it should gladly assume a similar[639] burden and responsibility for the Yosemite National Park, and as it has already assumed them for the Yellowstone National Park. Adequate provision should be made by the Congress for the proper care and supervision of all these national parks. The boundaries of the Yellowstone National Park should be extended to the south and east to take in such portions of the abutting forest reservation as will enable the Government to protect the elk on their winter range.

The most characteristic animal of the Western plains was the great shaggy-maned wild ox, the bison, commonly known as buffalo. Small fragments of herds exist in a domesticated state here and there, a few of them in the Yellowstone Park. Such a herd as that on the Flathead Reservation should not be allowed to go out of existence. Either on some reservation or on some forest reserve like the Wichita reserve and game refuge provision should be made for the preservation of such a herd. I believe that the scheme would be of economic advantage, for the robe of the buffalo is of high market value, and the same is true of the robe of the crossbred animals.

I call your especial attention to the desirability of giving to the members of the Life-Saving Service pensions such as are given to firemen and policemen in all our great cities. The men in the Life-Saving Service continually and in the most matter-of-fact way do deeds such as make Americans[640] proud of their country. They have no political influence; and they live in such remote places that the really heroic services they continually render receive the scantiest recognition from the public. It is unjust for a great nation like this to permit these men to become totally disabled or to meet death in the performance of their hazardous duty and yet to give them no sort of reward. If one of them serves thirty years of his life in such a position he should surely be entitled to retire on half pay, as a fireman or policeman does, and if he becomes totally incapacitated through accident or sickness or loses his health in the discharge of his duty, he or his family should receive a pension just as any soldier should. I call your attention with especial earnestness to this matter because it appeals not only to our judgment but to our sympathy; for the people on whose behalf I ask it are comparatively few in number, render incalculable service of a particularly dangerous kind, and have no one to speak for them.

During the year just past, the phase of the Indian question which has been most sharply brought to public attention is the larger legal significance of the Indian’s induction into citizenship. This has made itself manifest not only in a great access of litigation in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which[641] struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government’s benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen of the State in which his land is situated, he passes from under Federal control in such matters as this, and the acts of the Congress prohibiting the sale or gift to him of intoxicants become substantially inoperative. It is gratifying to note that the States and municipalities of the West which have most at stake in the welfare of the Indians are taking up this subject and are trying to supply, in a measure at least, the abdication of its trusteeship forced upon the Federal Government. Nevertheless, I would urgently press upon the attention of the Congress the question whether some amendment of the internal-revenue laws might not be of aid in prosecuting those malefactors, known in the Indian country as “bootleggers,” who are engaged at once in defrauding the United States Treasury of taxes and, what is far more important, in debauching the Indians by carrying liquors illicitly into territory still completely under Federal jurisdiction.

Among the crying present needs of the Indians are more day schools situated in the midst of their settlements, more effective instruction in the industries pursued on their own farms, and a more liberal extension of the field-matron service, which means the education of the Indian women in the[642] arts of home making. Until the mothers are well started in the right direction we can not reasonably expect much from the children who are soon to form an integral part of our American citizenship. Moreover, the excuse continually advanced by male adult Indians for refusing offers of remunerative employment at a distance from their homes is that they dare not leave their families too long out of their sight. One effectual remedy for this state of things is to employ the minds and strengthen the moral fibre of the Indian women—the end to which the work of the field matron is especially directed. I trust that the Congress will make its appropriations for Indian day schools and field matrons as generous as may consist with the other pressing demands upon its providence.

During the last year the Philippine Islands have been slowly recovering from the series of disasters which, since American occupation, have greatly reduced the amount of agricultural products below what was produced in Spanish times. The war, the rinderpest, the locusts, the drought, and the cholera have been united as causes to prevent a return of the prosperity much needed in the islands. The most serious is the destruction by the rinderpest of more than 75 per cent of the draught cattle, because it will take several years of breeding to restore the necessary number of these indispensable aids to agriculture. The Commission attempted to supply by purchase from adjoining countries the needed[643] cattle, but the experiments made were unsuccessful. Most of the cattle imported were unable to withstand the change of climate and the rigors of the voyage, and died from other diseases than rinderpest.

The income of the Philippine Government has necessarily been reduced by reason of the business and agricultural depression in the islands, and the government has been obliged to exercise great economy, to cut down its expenses, to reduce salaries, and in every way to avoid a deficit. It has adopted an internal-revenue law, imposing taxes on cigars, cigarettes, and distilled liquors, and abolishing the old Spanish industrial taxes. The law has not operated as smoothly as was hoped, and although its principle is undoubtedly correct, it may need amendments for the purpose of reconciling the people to its provisions. The income derived from it has partly made up for the reduction in customs revenue.

There has been a marked increase in the number of Filipinos employed in the civil service, and a corresponding decrease in the number of Americans. The government in every one of its departments has been rendered more efficient by elimination of undesirable material and the promotion of deserving public servants.

Improvements of harbors, roads, and bridges continue, although the cutting down of the revenue forbids the expenditure of any great amount from current income for these purposes. Steps are[644] being taken, by advertisement for competitive bids, to secure the construction and maintenance of 1,000 miles of railway by private corporations under the recent enabling legislation of the Congress. The transfer of the friar lands, in accordance with the contract made some two years ago, has been completely effected, and the purchase money paid. Provision has just been made by statute for the speedy settlement in a special proceeding in the Supreme Court of controversies over the possession and title of church buildings and rectories arising between the Roman Catholic Church and schismatics claiming under ancient municipalities. Negotiations and hearings for the settlement of the amount due to the Roman Catholic Church for rent and occupation of churches and rectories by the Army of the United States are in progress, and it is hoped a satisfactory conclusion may be submitted to the Congress before the end of the session.

Tranquillity has existed during the past year throughout the Archipelago, except in the province of Cavite, the province of Batangas, and the province of Samar, and in the island of Jolo among the Moros. The Jolo disturbance was put an end to by several sharp and short engagements, and now peace prevails in the Moro province. Cavite, the mother of ladrones in the Spanish times, is so permeated with the traditional sympathy of the people for ladronism as to make it difficult to stamp out the disease. Batangas was only disturbed by[645] reason of the fugitive ladrones from Cavite. Samar was thrown into disturbance by the uneducated and partly savage peoples living in the mountains, who, having been given by the municipal code more power than they were able to exercise discreetly, elected municipal officers who abused their trusts, compelled the people raising hemp to sell it at a much less price than it was worth, and by their abuses drove their people into resistance to constituted authority. Cavite and Samar are instances of reposing too much confidence in the self-governing power of a people. The disturbances have all now been suppressed, and it is hoped that with these lessons local governments can be formed which will secure quiet and peace to the deserving inhabitants. The incident is another proof of the fact that if there has been any error as regards giving self-government in the Philippines it has been in the direction of giving it too quickly, not too slowly. A year from next April the first legislative assembly for the islands will be held. On the sanity and self-restraint of this body much will depend so far as the future self-government of the islands is concerned.

The most encouraging feature of the whole situation has been the very great interest taken by the common people in education and the great increase in the number of enrolled students in the public schools. The increase was from 300,000 to half a million pupils. The average attendance is about 70 per cent. The only limit upon the number of[646] pupils seems to be the capacity of the government to furnish teachers and schoolhouses.

The agricultural conditions of the islands enforce more strongly than ever the argument in favor of reducing the tariff on the products of the Philippine Islands entering the United States. I earnestly recommend that the tariff now imposed by the Dingley bill upon the products of the Philippine Islands be entirely removed, except the tariff on sugar and tobacco, and that that tariff be reduced to 25 per cent of the present rates under the Dingley Act; that after July 1, 1909, the tariff upon tobacco and sugar produced in the Philippine Islands be entirely removed, and that free trade between the islands and the United States in the products of each country then be provided for by law.

A statute in force, enacted April 15, 1904, suspends the operation of the coastwise laws of the United States upon the trade between the Philippine Islands and the United States until July 1, 1906. I earnestly recommend that this suspension be postponed until July 1, 1909. I think it of doubtful utility to apply the coastwise laws to the trade between the United States and the Philippines under any circumstances, because I am convinced that it will do no good whatever to American bottoms, and will only interfere and be an obstacle to the trade between the Philippines and the United States; but if the coastwise law must be thus applied, certainly it ought not to have effect until free trade is enjoyed between the people of the United States[647] and the people of the Philippine Islands in their respective products.

I do not anticipate that free trade between the islands and the United States will produce a revolution in the sugar and tobacco production of the Philippine Islands. So primitive are the methods of agriculture in the Philippine Islands, so slow is capital in going to the islands, so many difficulties surround a large agricultural enterprise in the islands, that it will be many, many years before the products of those islands will have any effect whatever upon the markets of the United States. The problem of labor is also a formidable one with the sugar and tobacco producers in the islands. The best friends of the Filipino people and the people themselves are utterly opposed to the admission of Chinese coolie labor. Hence the only solution is the training of Filipino labor, and this will take a long time. The enactment of a law by the Congress of the United States making provision for free trade between the islands and the United States, however, will be of great importance from a political and sentimental standpoint; and while its actual benefit has doubtless been exaggerated by the people of the islands, they will accept this measure of justice as an indication that the people of the United States are anxious to aid the people of the Philippine Islands in every way, and especially in the agricultural development of their Archipelago. It will aid the Filipinos without injuring interests in America.

[648]

In my judgment immediate steps should be taken for the fortification of Hawaii. This is the most important point in the Pacific to fortify in order to conserve the interests of this country. It would be hard to overstate the importance of this need. Hawaii is too heavily taxed. Laws should be enacted setting aside for a period of, say, twenty years 75 per cent of the internal-revenue and customs receipts from Hawaii as a special fund to be expended in the islands for educational and public buildings, and for harbor improvements and military and naval defences. It can not be too often repeated that our aim must be to develop the Territory of Hawaii on traditional American lines. That Territory has serious commercial and industrial problems to reckon with; but no measure of relief can be considered which looks to legislation admitting Chinese and restricting them by statute to field labor and domestic service. The status of servility can never again be tolerated on American soil. We can not concede that the proper solution of its problems is special legislation admitting to Hawaii a class of laborers denied admission to the other States and Territories. There are obstacles, and great obstacles, in the way of building up a representative American community in the Hawaiian Islands; but it is not in the American character to give up in the face of difficulty. Many an American Commonwealth has been built up against odds equal to those that now confront Hawaii.

No merely half-hearted effort to meet its problems[649] as other American communities have met theirs can be accepted as final. Hawaii shall never become a Territory in which a governing class of rich planters exists by means of coolie labor. Even if the rate of growth of the Territory is thereby rendered slower, the growth must only take place by the admission of immigrants fit in the end to assume the duties and burdens of full American citizenship. Our aim must be to develop the Territory on the same basis of stable citizenship as exists on this continent.

I earnestly advocate the adoption of legislation which will explicitly confer American citizenship on all citizens of Porto Rico. There is, in my judgment, no excuse for failure to do this. The harbor of San Juan should be dredged and improved. The expenses of the Federal court of Porto Rico should be met from the Federal Treasury, and not from the Porto Rican treasury. The elections in Porto Rico should take place every four years, and the legislature should meet in session every two years. The present form of government in Porto Rico, which provides for the appointment by the President of the members of the executive council or upper house of the legislature, has proved satisfactory and has inspired confidence in property owners and investors. I do not deem it advisable at the present time to change this form in any material feature. The problems and needs of the island are industrial and commercial rather than political.

[650]

I wish also to call the attention of the Congress to one question which affects our insular possessions, generally; namely, the need of an increased liberality in the treatment of the whole franchise question in these islands. In the proper desire to prevent the islands being exploited by speculators and to have them develop in the interest of their own people an error has been made in refusing to grant sufficiently liberal terms to induce the investment of American capital in the Philippines and in Porto Rico. Elsewhere in this Message I have spoken strongly against the jealousy of mere wealth, and especially of corporate wealth as such. But it is particularly regrettable to allow any such jealousy to be developed when we are dealing either with our insular or with foreign affairs. The big corporation has achieved its present position in the business world simply because it is the most effective instrument in business competition. In foreign affairs we can not afford to put our people at a disadvantage with their competitors by in any way discriminating against the efficiency of our business organizations. In the same way we can not afford to allow our insular possessions to lag behind in industrial development from any twisted jealousy of business success. It is, of course, a mere truism to say that the business interests of the islands will only be developed if it becomes the financial interest of somebody to develop them. Yet this development is one of the things most earnestly to be wished for in the interest of the islands themselves.[651] We have been paying all possible heed to the political and educational interests of the islands, but, important though these objects are, it is not less important that we should favor their industrial development. The Government can in certain ways help this directly, as by building good roads; but the fundamental and vital help must be given through the development of the industries of the islands, and a most efficient means to this end is to encourage big American corporations to start industries in them, and this means to make it advantageous for them to do so. To limit the ownership of mining claims as has been done in the Philippines is absurd. In both the Philippines and Porto Rico the limit of holdings of land should be largely raised.

I earnestly ask that Alaska be given an elective Delegate. Some person should be chosen who can speak with authority of the needs of the Territory. The Government should aid in the construction of a railroad from the Gulf of Alaska to the Yukon River, in American territory. In my last two Messages I advocated certain additional action on behalf of Alaska. I shall not now repeat those recommendations, but I shall lay all my stress upon the one recommendation of giving to Alaska some one authorized to speak for it. I should prefer that the Delegate was made elective, but if this is not deemed wise, then make him appointive. At any rate, give Alaska some person whose business it[652] shall be to speak with authority on her behalf to the Congress. The natural resources of Alaska are great. Some of the chief needs of the peculiarly energetic, self-reliant, and typically American white population of Alaska were set forth in my last Message. I also earnestly ask your attention to the needs of the Alaskan Indians. All Indians who are competent should receive the full rights of American citizenship. It is, for instance, a gross and indefensible wrong to deny to such hardworking, decent-living Indians as the Metlakahtlas the right to obtain licenses as captains, pilots, and engineers, the right to enter mining claims, and to profit by the homestead law. These particular Indians are civilized, and are competent and entitled to be put on the same basis with the white men round about them.

I recommend that Indian Territory and Oklahoma be admitted as one State and that New Mexico and Arizona be admitted as one State. There is no obligation upon us to treat territorial subdivisions, which are matters of convenience only, as binding us on the question of admission to Statehood. Nothing has taken up more time in the Congress during the past few years than the question as to the Statehood to be granted to the four Territories above mentioned, and after careful consideration of all that has been developed in the discussions of the question I recommend that they be immediately admitted as two States. There is no[653] justification for further delay; and the advisability of making the four Territories into two States has been clearly established.

In some of the Territories the legislative assemblies issue licenses for gambling. The Congress should by law forbid this practice, the harmful results of which are obvious at a glance.

The treaty between the United States and the Republic of Panama, under which the construction of the Panama Canal was made possible, went into effect with its ratification by the United States Senate on February 23, 1904. The canal properties of the French Canal Company were transferred to the United States on April 23, 1904, on payment of $40,000,000 to that company. On April 1, 1905, the Commission was reorganized, and it now consists of Theodore P. Shonts, chairman, Charles E. Magoon, Benjamin M. Harrod, Rear-Admiral Mordecai T. Endicott, Brig.-Gen. Peter C. Hains, and Col. Oswald H. Ernst. John F. Stevens was appointed chief engineer on July 1 last. Active work in canal construction, mainly preparatory, has been in progress for less than a year and a half. During that period two points about the canal have ceased to be open to debate. First, the question of route; the canal will be built on the Isthmus of Panama. Second, the question of feasibility; there are no physical obstacles on this route that American engineering skill will not be able to overcome without serious difficulty, or that will prevent the[654] completion of the canal within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. This is virtually the unanimous testimony of the engineers who have investigated the matter for the Government.

The point which remains unsettled is the question of type, whether the canal shall be one of several locks above sea level, or at sea level with a single tide lock. On this point I hope to lay before the Congress at an early day the findings of the Advisory Board of American and European Engineers, that at my invitation have been considering the subject, together with the report of the Commission thereon; and such comments thereon or recommendations in reference thereto as may seem necessary.

The American people is pledged to the speediest possible construction of a canal adequate to meet the demands which the commerce of the world will make upon it, and I appeal most earnestly to the Congress to aid in the fulfilment of the pledge. Gratifying progress has been made during the past year and especially during the past four months. The greater part of the necessary preliminary work has been done. Actual work of excavation could be begun only on a limited scale till the Canal Zone was made a healthful place to live in and to work in. The Isthmus had to be sanitated first. This task has been so thoroughly accomplished that yellow fever has been virtually extirpated from the Isthmus and general health conditions vastly improved. The same methods which converted the island of Cuba from a pest hole which menaced the health[655] of the world into a healthful place of abode have been applied on the Isthmus with satisfactory results. There is no reason to doubt that when the plans for water supply, paving, and sewerage of Panama and Colon and the large labor camps have been fully carried out, the Isthmus will be, for the Tropics, an unusually healthy place of abode. The work is so far advanced now that the health of all those employed in canal work is as well guarded as it is on similar work in this country and elsewhere.

In addition to sanitating the Isthmus, satisfactory quarters are being provided for employees and an adequate system of supplying them with wholesome food at reasonable prices has been created. Hospitals have been established and equipped that are without superiors of their kind anywhere. The country has thus been made fit to work in, and provision has been made for the welfare and comfort of those who are to do the work. During the past year a large portion of the plant with which the work is to be done has been ordered. It is confidently believed that by the middle of the approaching year a sufficient proportion of this plant will have been installed to enable us to resume the work of excavation on a large scale.

What is needed now and without delay is an appropriation by the Congress to meet the current and accruing expenses of the Commission. The first appropriation of $10,000,000, out of the $135,000,000 authorized by the Spooner Act, was made three years ago. It is nearly exhausted. There is barely[656] enough of it remaining to carry the Commission to the end of the year. Unless the Congress shall appropriate before that time all work must cease. To arrest progress for any length of time now, when matters are advancing so satisfactorily, would be deplorable. There will be no money with which to meet pay-roll obligations and none with which to meet bills coming due for materials and supplies; and there will be demoralization of the forces, here and on the Isthmus, now working so harmoniously and effectively, if there is delay in granting an emergency appropriation. Estimates of the amount necessary will be found in the accompanying reports of the Secretary of War and the Commission.

I recommend more adequate provision than has been made heretofore for the work of the Department of State. Within a few years there has been a very great increase in the amount and importance of the work to be done by that Department, both in Washington and abroad. This has been caused by the great increase of our foreign trade, the increase of wealth among our people, which enables them to travel more generally than heretofore, the increase of American capital which is seeking investment in foreign countries, and the growth of our power and weight in the councils of the civilized world. There has been no corresponding increase of facilities for doing the work afforded to the Department having charge of our foreign relations.

[657]

Neither at home nor abroad is there a sufficient working force to do the business properly. In many respects the system which was adequate to the work of twenty-five, or even ten, years ago, is inadequate now, and should be changed. Our consular force should be classified, and appointments should be made to the several classes, with authority to the Executive to assign the members of each class to duty at such posts as the interests of the service require, instead of the appointments being made as at present to specified posts. There should be an adequate inspection service, so that the Department may be able to inform itself how the business of each consulate is being done, instead of depending upon casual private information or rumor. The fee system should be entirely abolished, and a due equivalent made in salary to the officers who now eke out their subsistence by means of fees. Sufficient provision should be made for a clerical force in every consulate, composed entirely of Americans, instead of the insufficient provision now made, which compels the employment of great numbers of citizens of foreign countries whose services can be obtained for less money. At a large part of our consulates the office quarters and the clerical force are inadequate to the performance of the onerous duties imposed by the recent provisions of our immigration laws as well as by our increasing trade. In many parts of the world the lack of suitable quarters for our embassies, legations, and consulates detracts from the respect in which our officers[658] ought to be held, and seriously impairs their weight and influence.

Suitable provision should be made for the expense of keeping our diplomatic officers more fully informed of what is being done from day to day in the progress of our diplomatic affairs with other countries. The lack of such information, caused by insufficient appropriations available for cable tolls and for clerical and messenger service, frequently puts our officers at a great disadvantage and detracts from their usefulness. The salary list should be readjusted. It does not now correspond either to the importance of the service to be rendered and the degrees of ability and experience required in the different positions, or to the differences in the cost of living. In many cases the salaries are quite inadequate.

Theodore Roosevelt.

The White House,
December 5, 1905.

[659]

“THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT”

[Included in this volume because, although not an address or a state paper, it was written by Mr. Roosevelt while President. It was published in a recent number of “The Outlook”]

The “twilight of the poets” has been especially gray in America; for poetry is of course one of those arts in which the smallest amount of work of the very highest class is worth an infinity of good work that is not of the highest class. The touch of the purple makes a poem out of verse, and if it is not there, there is no substitute. It is hard to account for the failure to produce in America of recent years a poet who in the world of letters will rank as high as certain American sculptors and painters rank in the world of art.

But true poems do appear from time to time, by Madison Cawein, by Clinton Scollard, by Maurice Egan, and others; such are the poems in Bliss Carman’s “Ballads of Lost Haven”; and such are the poems in Edward Arlington Robinson’s “The Children of the Night.”

It is rather curious that Mr. Robinson’s volume should not have attracted more attention. There is an undoubted touch of genius in the poems collected in this volume, and a curious simplicity and good faith, all of which qualities differentiate them sharply from ordinary collections of the kind. There is in them just a little of the light that never was on land or sea, and in such light the objects described often have nebulous outlines; but it is not always necessary in order to enjoy a poem that one should be able to translate it into terms of mathematical[660] accuracy. Indeed, those who admire the coloring of Turner, those who like to read how—and to wonder why—Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, do not wish always to have the ideas presented to them with cold, hard, definite outlines; and to a man with the poetic temperament it is inevitable that life should often appear clothed with a certain sad mysticism. In the present volume I am not sure that I understand “Luke Havergal”; but I am entirely sure that I like it.

Whoever has lived in country America knows the gray, empty houses from which life has gone. It is of one of these that “The House on the Hill” was written.

[661]

The next poem, “Richard Cory,” illustrates a very ancient but very profound philosophy of life with a curiously local touch which points its keen insight. Those who feel poetry in their marrow and fibre are the spiritual heirs of the ages; and so it is natural that this man from Maine, many of whose poems could have been written only by one to whom the most real of lives is the life of the American small town, should write his “Ballade of Broken Flutes”—where “A lonely surge of ancient spray told of an unforgetful sea”;—should write the poem beginning

and the very original sonnet on Amaryllis, the last three lines of which are:

Some of his images stay fixed in one’s mind, as in “The Pity of the Leaves,” the lines running:

Sometimes he writes, as in “The Tavern,” of what most of us feel we have seen; and then again of what we have seen only with the soul’s eyes.

I shall close by quoting entire his poem on “The Wilderness,” which could have been written only by[662] a man into whose heart there had entered deep the very spirit of the vast and melancholy Northern forests:

Mr. Robinson has written in this little volume not verse but poetry. Whether he has the power of sustained flight remains to be seen.

Gentlemen:

About all I can say to you is to express my very hearty sympathy with and belief in your purpose. The time of my life when I was brought into closest touch with conditions similar to those which you are trying to remedy was while I was Police Commissioner in New York City. At that time my closest friend and associate in all of my work was Mr. Jacob Riis, with whose books and writings you are all more or less familiar. I was even more impressed than I have been all along, ever since I have grown up, with the fact that if you are going to do anything permanent for the average man you have got to begin before he is a man. The older man is almost impossible to reform. Of course there are exceptional individuals, men who have been completely changed, not only after they have reached years of manhood, but after very advanced periods of life. But speaking generally, the chance of success lies in working with the boy and not with the man. That applies peculiarly to those boys who tend to drift off into courses which mean that unless they are checked they will be formidable additions to the criminal population when they grow older. It is eminently worth while to try to prevent those boys becoming criminals, to try to prevent their being menaces to and expenses and[665] sores in society, while there is a chance of reforming them.

A year ago I was approached by the people interested in Colorado in their juvenile court, and they set an example which I wish could be followed all over the country, and particularly here in the District of Columbia. To the people of Colorado I expressed, as I express to you, my very earnest belief in their work, and told them that “of course so far as my very limited powers here go those powers will be at your disposal.”

I think people rather often completely misapprehend what are really the important questions. The question of the tariff, the currency, or even the regulation of railroad rates, are all subordinate to the great basic moral movements which mean the preservation of the individual in his or her relations to the home; because if the homes are all straight the State will take care of itself.

Mr. Macfarland; Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a peculiar pleasure to greet this body here to-day. As Mr. Macfarland has well said, the public-school system of our country is the most characteristically democratic and American feature of our national life. It has been my good fortune that all of my children have received, or are receiving, a portion of their education in the public schools of[666] this District, in this city; and I feel that the advantage to them is incalculable. I certainly do not underrate the importance of the higher education. It would be the greatest misfortune if we ever permitted such a warped and twisted view of democracy to obtain as would be implied in a denial of the advantage that comes to the whole Nation from the high education of the few who are able to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire it. But while fully admitting this, it remains true that most important of all is the education of the common school. The public schools are not merely the educational centres for the mass of our people, but they are the factories of American citizenship. Incidentally to its other work the public school does more than any other institution of any kind, sort, or description to Americanize the child of foreign-born parents who comes here when young, or is born here. Nothing else counts for as much in welding together into one compact mass of citizenship the different race stocks which here are being fused into a new nationality.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I enclose herewith the annual report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, the annual report of the Panama Railroad Company, and the Secretary of War’s letter transmitting the same, together with certain papers.

[667]

The work on the Isthmus is being admirably done, and great progress has been made, especially during the last nine months. The plant is being made ready and the organization perfected. The first work to be done was the work of sanitation, the necessary preliminary to the work of actual construction; and this has been pushed forward with the utmost energy and means. In a short while I shall lay before you the recommendations of the Commission and of the Board of Consulting Engineers as to the proper plan to be adopted for the canal itself, together with my own recommendations thereon. All the work so far has been done, not only with the utmost expedition, but in the most careful and thorough manner; and what has been accomplished gives us good reason to believe that the canal will be dug in a shorter time than had been anticipated, and at an expenditure within the estimated amount. All our citizens have a right to congratulate themselves upon the high standard of efficiency and integrity which has been hitherto maintained by the representatives of the Government in doing this great work. If this high standard of efficiency and integrity can be maintained in the future at the same level which it has now reached, the construction of the Panama Canal will be one of the feats to which the people of this Republic will look back with the highest pride.

From time to time various publications have been made, and from time to time in the future various similar publications doubtless will be made, purporting[668] to give an account of jobbery, or immorality, or inefficiency, or misery, as obtaining on the Isthmus. I have carefully examined into each of these accusations which seemed worthy of attention. In every instance the accusations have proved to be without foundation in any shape or form. They spring from several sources. Sometimes they take the shape of statements by irresponsible investigators of a sensational habit of mind, incapable of observing or repeating with accuracy what they see, and desirous of obtaining notoriety by widespread slander. More often they originate with, or are given currency by, individuals with a personal grievance. The sensation-mongers, both those who stay at home and those who visit the Isthmus, may ground their accusations on false statements by some engineer, who, having applied for service on the Commission and been refused such service, now endeavors to discredit his successful competitors; or by some lessee or owner of real estate who has sought action or inaction by the Commission to increase the value of his lots, and is bitter because the Commission can not be used for such purposes; or on the tales of disappointed bidders for contracts; or of office-holders who have proved incompetent, or who have been suspected of corruption and dismissed, or who have been overcome by panic and have fled from the Isthmus. Every specific charge relating to jobbery, to immorality, or to inefficiency, from whatever source it has come, has been immediately investigated, and in no single[669] instance have the statements of these sensation-mongers and the interested complainants behind them proved true. The only discredit inhering in these false accusations is to those who originate and give them currency, and who, to the extent of their abilities, thereby hamper and obstruct the completion of the great work in which both the honor and the interest of America are so deeply involved. It matters not whether those guilty of these false accusations utter them in mere wanton recklessness and folly or in a spirit of sinister malice to gratify some personal or political grudge.

Any attempt to cut down the salaries of the officials of the Isthmian Commission, or of their subordinates who are doing important work, would be ruinous from the standpoint of accomplishing the work effectively. To quote the words of one of the best observers on the Isthmus: “Demoralization of the service is certain if the reward for successful endeavor is a reduction of pay.” We are undertaking in Panama a gigantic task—the largest piece of engineering ever done. The employment of the men engaged thereon is only temporary, and yet it will require the highest order of ability if it is to be done economically, honestly, and efficiently. To attempt to secure men to do this work on insufficient salaries would amount to putting a premium upon inefficiency and corruption. Men fit for the work will not undertake it unless they are well paid. In the end the men who do undertake it will be left to seek other employment with as their chief reward[670] the reputations they achieve. Their work is infinitely more difficult than any private work, both because of the peculiar conditions of the tropical land in which it is laid, and because it is impossible to free them from the peculiar limitations inseparably connected with Government employment; while it is unfortunately true that men engaged on public work, no matter how devoted and disinterested their services, must expect to be made the objects of misrepresentation and attack. At best, therefore, the positions are not attractive in proportion to their importance; and among the men fit to do the task, only those with a genuine sense of public spirit and eager to do the great work for the work’s sake, can be obtained; and such men can not be kept if they are to be treated with niggardliness and parsimony, in addition to the certainty that false accusations will continually be brought against them.

I repeat that the work on the Isthmus has been done and is being done admirably. The organization is good. The mistakes are extraordinarily few, and these few have been of practically no consequence. The zeal, intelligence, and efficient public service of the Isthmian Commission and its subordinates have been noteworthy. I court the fullest, most exhaustive, and most searching investigation of any act of theirs, and if any one of them is ever shown to have done wrong his punishment shall be exemplary. But I ask that they be decently paid, and that their hands be upheld as long as they act[671] decently. On any other conditions we shall not be able to get men of the right type to do the work; and this means that on any other conditions we shall ensure, if not failure, at least delay, scandal, and inefficiency in the task of digging the giant canal.

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, JANUARY 10, 1906

Gentlemen:

I want to say just a word of greeting to you and to ask your influence on behalf of the medical corps, not only of the Army, but of the Navy. There is not a more exacting profession; there is not a profession which makes greater demands upon those following it, and which more entitles them to the gratitude of mankind, than is the profession which is yours. The Army surgeon has to combine the work of your profession with the work of the military man of the line. In saying that, I want to call your attention to two specific things; one thing that is now being done by men of your profession and one need of men of your profession.

First, the thing that is being done: All the United States is the debtor to the medical men who have accomplished such remarkable work on the Isthmus of Panama. You hear very loose talk about making the dirt fly in Panama. Before making the dirt fly it was necessary to get the microbes under; it was necessary to grapple with the mosquitoes;[672] necessary to eradicate disease. That has been done to perfection. We have had the foundation laid for that wonderful piece of constructive engineering work, to dig the giant canal. Too much praise can not be given to those who have done this work in Panama. So much for tribute to your compeers. Now as to the need of your compeers. You recollect the complaint made about hygienic conditions during the war with Spain. Complaint was made that the troops were not properly treated, etc. The blame rested, not on any one man then in office, but upon our people as a whole who had declined, through their representatives, to make provision long in advance for meeting such a need. If we had a war break out to-morrow and had to raise any large army, there would be an immediate breakdown in the medical department simply because at present our medical corps is numerically only fit to take care of about forty per cent of the Regular Army as it is now. The medical corps is not numerically fit to grapple with a campaign in which our whole Army as it is, the little Army as it is, should be employed. And of course if we had to mobilize an army of volunteers we would under present conditions have to count upon widespread disaster through the shortcomings in the medical and sanitary and hygienic arrangements rendered inevitable by our present lack of preparation.

The Japanese have given us a good lesson in this as in many other particulars, by the way they[673] handled their army in the recent war. One of the reasons why their medical department did well—the main reason—was the fact that they had an ample supply of doctors who had been practiced in time of peace in doing the duties they would have to do in war. And until we have provision for an ample corps of doctors in the Army so that they can be practiced in time of peace we will not have prepared as we ought to prepare for the possibilities of war. Until we thus prepare we can make up our minds that we are ourselves responsible for any disaster that occurs to any army that the United States may raise in the future; not the man who may be at the head of the Army at the time. The tendency is to attack the men in office at the time. That is utterly unjust, and the people themselves, and the representatives of the people in public life, who have failed to provide the necessary means in advance—they are responsible when disaster comes. That applies to the medical department, and it applies to every other branch of the military establishment just as much.

Senator Dick; Members of the Association:

I trust it is hardly necessary for me to say what a genuine pleasure it is to me to-day to greet this organization. I have been a member of the National[674] Guard myself, and both at the time when I was Governor (as the present Assistant Secretary of War can say) and since I have been President, and even when I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, I have always done all that in me lay to further the interests of the National Guard.

I have a good many things on hand, but one of the things that are interesting me most at present, Senator Dick, is the encouragement of rifle practice to the National Guard. I want to have it understood, gentlemen, that I do not care anything like as much for how your regiments march and perform parade-ground and armory maneuvres as I care for how they are instructed in the work that would make them valuable as soldiers in time of war. I earnestly hope that the National Guard, and, Mr. Taft, the Regular Army also, especially the Regular Army, will more and more have the kind of instruction that will make it second nature for the man who marches to march fully equipped as he would be in time of war. If he is trained to march that way he will not throw away his equipment the first time he goes to war; otherwise he will do it. I want to see the average National Guardsman know how to shoot well. I want to see the fund that we have for rifle practice distributed among the several State organizations, partly at least with reference to the way in which those State organizations promote marksmanship. I want to see the young fellow who has been through the National Guard receive a training which will[675] make him able to do his work in time of war if the need comes.

In a great industrial civilization such as ours we may just as well face the fact that there is a constant tendency to do away with, to eliminate, those qualities which make a man a good soldier. It should be the steady object of every legislator, of every executive officer, and above all of you gentlemen who have to do with the National Guard, to try to encourage those qualities, to try to counteract the tendency toward their elimination. Every officer of the National Guard should train his men the whole time as if he were training them with a view to possible action, so that the men under him will be trained by him to have those habits of body and mind which will render them formidable as soldiers in the field. You should try to train your men so they can live in the open; train them so they will know what cover is, so they will be able to take advantage of it, so they will know how to march and march well; and you should realize the relative importance of what it is that the men under you learn, that as war is carried on nowadays, ninety per cent of the ordinary work done either on the parade-ground or in the armory, either by a militia regiment or a regular regiment, amounts to nothing whatever in the way of training except so far as the incidental effect it has in accustoming the men to act together and to obey; but they are not going to fight shoulder to shoulder when they get out into the field. It is absolutely not of the slightest[676] consequence what their alignment is, but is of vital consequence that they shall know how to take cover, how to shoot, and how to make themselves at home under any circumstances.

We have such a small regular army that you men of the National Guard have upon you a heavy responsibility. I want to say that while it is incumbent upon you to take your duties seriously and do them with all your heart, if you do even that you do more good to the Nation than any equal body of citizens to be found in our country.

Mr. Hale; Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a peculiar pleasure to me to greet you to-day; and no body of our fellow-citizens can have a greater claim to being received at the White House than a body like this, which stands for the fundamental duty of American citizenship—the duty of self-education. I am, of course, as we all must be, peculiarly interested in the kind of development of which, I am glad to say, I think we can accept this school as typical—not as exceptional, but as typical. There are a great many very, very excellent charitable people in the country, but some of them tend to forget at times that the only charity that does permanent good is that kind of charity that is not a charity at all, that teaches some one how to help himself or herself. The only way in[677] which any section of our citizens, of no matter what color, can be permanently benefited is by teaching them to pull their own weight, to do their own duty, their duty to themselves, their duty to their neighbors, their duty to the State at large. I have felt about the schools of which this is a type as I feel, for instance, about Mr. Washington’s school at Tuskegee, that one of the reasons they are so good is that they can serve as an example of schools of which we should try to develop as many as we can for the white people as well as for the colored people. The white man needs just as much as the colored man to learn that for the average man the education that fits him to do work in life is industrial. Other things shall be added to it, or ought to be added to it, but that must remain as the basis.

Of course, Miss Dean, the good that comes with any such school as this is increased tenfold when the school is founded, as you founded this, and as Mr. Washington founded Tuskegee, by a colored man or colored woman to help the colored boys and colored girls of to-day to make the best type of self-respecting, self-supporting American citizens of the future. I esteem it an honor to welcome you here this afternoon, and it is a very fitting thing that you should be introduced by the American citizen whom every good American delights to honor—Rev. Edward Everett Hale.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I submit herewith the letter of the Secretary of War transmitting the report of the Board of Consulting Engineers on the Panama Canal, and the report of the Isthmian Canal Commission thereon, together with a letter written to the Chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission by Chief Engineer Stevens. Both the Board of Consulting Engineers and the Canal Commission divide in their report. The majority of the Board of Consulting Engineers, eight in number, including the five foreign engineers, favor a sea-level canal; and one member of the Canal Commission, Admiral Endicott, takes the same view. Five of the eight American members of the Board of Consulting Engineers and five members of the Isthmian Canal Commission favor the lock canal, and so does Chief Engineer Stevens. The Secretary of War recommends a lock canal pursuant to the recommendation of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers and of the majority of the Canal Commission. After careful study of the papers submitted and full and exhaustive consideration of the whole subject, I concur in this recommendation.

It will be noticed that the American engineers on the consulting board and on the commission by a more than two to one majority favor the lock canal, whereas the foreign engineers are a unit against it.[679] I think this is partly to be explained by the fact that the great traffic canal of the Old World is the Suez Canal, a sea-level canal, whereas the great traffic canal of the New World is the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, a lock canal. Although the latter, the Soo, is closed to navigation during the winter months, it carries annually three times the traffic of the Suez Canal. In my judgment the very able argument of the majority of the Board of Consulting Engineers is vitiated by their failure to pay proper heed to the lessons taught by the construction and operation of the Soo Canal. It must be borne in mind, as the Commission points out, that there is no question of building what has been picturesquely termed “the Straits of Panama”; that is, a waterway through which the largest vessels could go with safety at uninterrupted high speed. Both the sea-level canal and the proposed lock canal would be too narrow and shallow to be called with any truthfulness a strait, or to have any of the properties of a wide, deep water strip. Both of them would be canals, pure and simple. Each type has certain disadvantages and certain advantages. But in my judgment the disadvantages are fewer and the advantages very much greater in the case of a lock canal substantially as proposed in the papers forwarded herewith; and I call especial attention to the fact that the Chief Engineer, who will be mainly responsible for the success of this mighty engineering feat, and who has therefore a peculiar personal interest in judging aright, is emphatically[680] and earnestly in favor of the lock-canal project and against the sea-level project.

A careful study of the reports seems to establish a strong probability that the following are the facts: The sea-level canal would be slightly less exposed to damage in the event of war; the running expenses, apart from the heavy cost of interest on the amount employed to build it, would be less; and for small ships the time of transit would probably be less. On the other hand, the lock canal at a level of eighty feet or thereabout would not cost much more than half as much to build and could be built in about half the time, while there would be very much less risk connected with building it, and for large ships the transit would be quicker; while, taking into account the interest on the amount saved in building, the actual cost of maintenance would be less. After being built it would be easier to enlarge the lock canal than the sea-level canal. Moreover, what has been actually demonstrated in making and operating the great lock canal, the Soo, a more important artery of traffic than the great sea-level canal, the Suez, goes to support the opinion of the minority of the Consulting Board of Engineers and of the majority of the Isthmian Canal Commission as to the superior safety, feasibility, and desirability of building a lock canal at Panama.

The law now on our statute books seems to contemplate a lock canal. In my judgment a lock canal as herein recommended is advisable. If the Congress[681] directs that a sea-level canal be constructed its direction will of course be carried out. Otherwise the canal will be built on substantially the plan for a lock canal outlined in the accompanying papers, such changes being made of course as may be found actually necessary; including possibly the change recommended by the Secretary of War as to the site of the dam on the Pacific side.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

Our coast defences as they existed in 1860 were not surpassed in efficiency by those of any country, but within a few years the introduction of rifled cannon and armor in the navies of the world, against which the smoothbore guns were practically useless, rendered them obsolete. For many years no attempt was made to remedy the deficiencies of these seacoast fortifications. There was no establishment in the country equipped for the manufacture of high-power rifled guns; there was no definite adopted policy of coast defence, and Congress was reluctant to undertake a work the cost of which could not be stated even approximately and the details of which had not advanced, so far as could be ascertained, beyond the experimental stages.

The Act of March 3, 1883, was the first decisive step taken to secure suitable and adequate ordnance for military purposes. Under the provisions[682] of this act a joint board of officers of the Army and Navy was appointed “for the purpose of examining and reporting to Congress which of the navy-yards or arsenals owned by the Government has the best location and is best adapted for the establishment of a Government foundry, or what other method, if any, should be adopted for the manufacture of heavy ordnance adapted to modern warfare for the use of the Army and Navy of the United States.” This board, known as the “Gun Foundry Board,” made its report in 1884 and directed public attention not only to the defenceless condition of our coasts, but to the importance and necessity of formulating a comprehensive scheme for the protection of our harbors and coast cities.

As a result, the Act of Congress approved March 3, 1885, provided that “the President of the United States shall appoint a board ... which board shall examine and report at what ports fortifications or other defences are most urgently required, the character and kind of defences best adapted to each with reference to armament, the utilization of torpedoes, mines, and other defensive appliances.”

The board, organized under the foregoing provision of law, popularly known as the “Endicott Board,” in its report of January 23, 1886, cited the principles on which any system of coast defence should be based, and clearly stated the necessity of having our important strategic and commercial centres made secure against naval attack. In determining the ports that were in urgent need of defence,[683] since a fleet did not exist for the protection of the merchant marine, fortifications were provided at every harbor of importance along the coast and at several of the lake ports. For any particular harbor or locality the report specifies the armament considered necessary for proper protection, the character of emplacements to be used, the number of submarine mines and torpedo boats, with detailed estimates of cost for these various items. The proposed guns, mounts, and emplacements were of types that seemed at that time best suited to accomplish the desired results, based on the only data available, namely, experiments and information of similar work from abroad.

After the report was made part of the public records, the development and adoption of a suitable disappearing gun carriage caused the substitution of open emplacements for the expensive turrets and armored casements, materially reducing the cost of installing the armament. The great advances in ordnance, increasing the power and range of the later guns, caused a diminution in the number and calibre of the pieces to be mounted, and this fact, combined with advances in the science of engineering, rendered unnecessary the construction of the expensive “floating batteries” designed by the Endicott Board for mounting guns to give sufficient fire for the defence of wide channels or for harbors where suitable foundations could not be secured on land. Furthermore, keeping pace with the gradual development and improvement in the engines and implements[684] of war, fortified harbors are equipped with rapid-fire guns, and, to a certain extent, with power plants, searchlights, and a system of fire control and direction, now essential adjuncts of a complete system of defence, though not so considered by that board.

While the details of the scheme of defence recommended by the Endicott Board have been departed from, in making provision for later developments of war material, the great value of its report lies in the fact that it sets forth a definite and intelligible plan or policy upon which the very important work of coast defence should proceed, and which is as applicable to-day as when formulated.

The greater effective ranges possible with the later rifled cannon, the necessity of thoroughly covering with gun fire all available waters of approach, and the growth of seacoast towns beyond the limits of some of the military reservations, have combined to move defensive works more to the front, and many of the gun positions now occupied have been obtained from private ownership. The cost of such sites has been a large item in the present cost of fortifications, and this purchase of land was not included in its estimates by the Endicott Board.

An examination of the report also discloses the fact that no estimates were submitted covering a supply of ammunition to be kept in reserve for the services of the guns that were recommended, due, perhaps, to the fact that a satisfactory powder to[685] give the energy desired and a suitable projectile to accomplish the desired destruction of armor were still in experimental stages. These questions, however, are no longer in doubt, and Congress already has made provision for some of the ammunition needed.

The omissions in the estimates of the Endicott Board and the changes in the details of its plans have caused doubts in the minds of many as to the money that will be needed to defend completely our coasts by guns, mines, and their adjuncts. New localities are pressing their claims for defence. The insular possessions can not be held unless the principal ports, naval bases, and coaling stations are fortified before the outbreak of war. These considerations have led me to appoint a joint board of officers of the Army and Navy “to recommend the armament, fixed and floating, mobile torpedoes, submarine mines, and all other defensive appliances that may be necessary to complete the harbor defence with the most economical and advantageous expenditures of money.” The board was further instructed “to extend its examinations so as to include estimates and recommendations relative to defences of the insular possessions,” and to “recommend the order in which the proposed defence shall be completed, so that all the elements of harbor defence may be properly and effectively co-ordinated.”

The board has completed its labors, and its report, together with a letter of transmittal by the[686] Secretary of War, is herewith transmitted for the information of the Congress. It is to be noted that the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, not heretofore recommended or authorized by Congress, is added to the list of ports in the United States to be defended, with the important reasons therefor clearly stated; that the gun defence proper is well advanced toward completion, and that the greater part of the estimate is for new work of gun defence, for the accessories now so necessary for efficiency, and for an allowance of ammunition which, added to that already on hand, will give the minimum supply that should be kept in reserve to successfully meet any sudden attack. The letter of the Secretary of War contains a comparison of the estimates of the Endicott Board, with the amounts already appropriated for the present defence and the estimates of the new board, from which it appears that a completed defence of our coast, omitting cost of ammunition and sites, can be accomplished for less than the amount estimated by the Endicott Board, even including the additional localities not recommended by it.

In the insular possessions, the great naval bases at Guantanamo, Subig Bay, and Pearl Harbor, the coaling stations at Guam and San Juan, require protection, and, in addition, defences are recommended for Manila Bay and Honolulu, because of the strategic importance of these localities. In the letter of the Secretary of War will be found the sums already appropriated for defences at some of[687] these ports or harbors, and the estimates are for the completion of an adequate defence at each locality.

Defences are recommended for the entrances to the Panama Canal as contemplated by the Act of June 28, 1902 (Spooner Act), and under the terms of this act the cost of such fortifications would probably be paid from appropriations for the construction and defence of the canal.

The necessity for a complete and adequate system of coast defence is greater to-day than twenty years ago, for the increased wealth of the country offers more tempting inducements to attack and a hostile fleet can reach our coast in a much shorter period of time. The fact that we now have a navy does not in any wise diminish the importance of coast defences; on the contrary, that fact emphasizes their value and the necessity for their construction. It is an accepted naval maxim that a navy can be used to strategic advantage only when acting on the offensive, and it can be free to so operate only after our coast defence is reasonably secure and so recognized by the country. It was due to the securely defended condition of the Japanese ports that the Japanese fleet was free to seek out and watch its proper objective—the Russian fleet—without fear of interruption or recall to guard its home ports against raids by the Vladivostok squadron. This one of the most valuable lessons of the late war in the East is worthy of serious consideration by our country, with its extensive coast line, its many important[688] harbors, and its many wealthy manufacturing coast cities.

The security and protection of our interests require the completion of the defences of our coast, and the accompanying plan merits and should receive the generous support of the Congress.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I have signed the joint resolution “instructing the Interstate Commerce Commission to make examinations into the subject of railroad discriminations and monopolies in coal and oil, and report on the same from time to time.” I have signed it with hesitation because in the form in which it was passed it achieves very little and may achieve nothing; and it is highly undesirable that a resolution of this kind shall become law in such form as to give the impression of insincerity; that is, of pretending to do something which really is not done. But after much hesitation I concluded to sign the resolution because its defects can be remedied by legislation which I hereby ask for; and it must be understood that unless this subsequent legislation is granted the present resolution must be mainly, and may be entirely, inoperative.

Before specifying what this legislation is, I wish to call attention to one or two preliminary facts. In the first place, a part of the investigation requested by the House of Representatives in the[689] resolution adopted February 15, 1905, relating to the oil industry, and a further part having to do with the anthracite coal industry, has been for some time under investigation by the Department of Commerce and Labor. These investigations, I am informed, are approaching completion, and before Congress adjourns I shall submit to you the preliminary reports of these investigations. Until these reports are completed the Interstate Commerce Commission could not endeavor to carry out so much of the resolution of Congress as refers to the ground thus already covered without running the risk of seeing the two investigations conflict, and therefore render each other more or less nugatory. In the second place, I call your attention to the fact that if an investigation of the nature proposed in this joint resolution is thoroughly and effectively conducted, it will result in giving immunity from criminal prosecution to all persons who are called, sworn and constrained by compulsory process of law to testify as witnesses; though of course such immunity from prosecution is not given to those from whom statements or information, merely, in contradistinction to sworn testimony, is obtained. This is not at all to say that such investigations should not be undertaken. Publicity can by itself often accomplish extraordinary results for good; and the court of public judgment may secure such results where the courts of law are powerless. There are many cases where an investigation securing complete publicity about abuses and giving[690] Congress the material on which to proceed in the enactment of laws, is more useful than a criminal prosecution can possibly be. But it should not be provided for by law without a clear understanding that it may be an alternative instead of an additional remedy; that is, that to carry on the investigation may serve as a bar to the successful prosecution of the offences disclosed. The official body directed by Congress to make the investigation must, of course, carry out its direction, and therefore the direction should not be given without full appreciation of what it means.

But the direction contained in the joint resolution which I have signed will remain almost inoperative unless money is provided to carry out the investigations in question, and unless the Commission in carrying them out is authorized to administer oaths and compel the attendance of witnesses. As the resolution now is, the Commission, which is very busy with its legitimate work and which has no extra money at its disposal, would be able to make the investigation only in the most partial and unsatisfactory manner; and moreover it is questionable whether it could, under this resolution, administer oaths at all or compel the attendance of witnesses. If this power were disputed by the parties investigated, the investigation would be held up for a year or two until the courts passed upon it, in which case, during the period of waiting, the Commission could only investigate to the extent and in the manner already provided under[691] its organic law; so that the passage of the resolution would have achieved no good result whatever.

I accordingly recommend to Congress the serious consideration of just what they wish the Commission to do, and how far they wish it to go, having in view the possible incompatibility of conducting an investigation like this and of also proceeding criminally in a court of law; and furthermore, that a sufficient sum, say fifty thousand dollars, be at once added to the current appropriation for the Commission so as to enable them to do the work indicated in a thorough and complete manner; while at the same time the power is explicitly conferred upon them to administer oaths and compel the attendance of witnesses in making the investigation in question, which covers work quite apart from their usual duties. It seems unwise to require an investigation by a commission and then not to furnish either the full legal power or the money, both of which are necessary to render the investigation effective.

Gentlemen:

I need hardly say that our one chance for getting the consular service put upon a really effective basis lies with just such organizations as this.

We in Washington must rely upon you to make our people, who are pre-eminently a business people—I[692] do not think that is by any means all they either are or ought to be, but I think they must have and ought to have a very strong business side to them—appreciate that the consular service should be in its essence a part of the general scheme of business development of the country. Of course my own view is that that applies to all the affairs of the State Department, and under both Mr. Hay and Mr. Root that Department has been managed and is being managed with an eye single to the good of the country as a whole. I have not, I am sorry to say, been able to persuade people thus to look upon even such a question as the Santo Domingo Treaty, which is a purely non-partisan measure; for if it was treated as it should be, purely on its merits, there would not be one shadow of opposition to or criticism of it. But while we have not yet been successful in getting the work of the Department looked upon quite in the non-partisan spirit that should be our national attitude in foreign affairs, and have not been successful in getting the consular service made by law what we strive to have it made—an absolutely non-partisan service—still we have made a certain amount of progress, and with the help of you and those like you, we shall be able to make a great deal more progress. One point let me dwell upon. You can not expect to get permanently good service when that service is unattractive and ill-paid. We have had a great deal of difficulty with our consular service in China. It came partly because men were appointed for political[693] reasons, with scant regard to their qualifications, partly because men found themselves in remote Eastern ports where there was not much that made life attractive, where there was very little supervision over them, and yet great temptation. Gentlemen, we all know that under such conditions it is necessarily difficult to secure honest and efficient service. We made a pretty thorough clean-up there. But we can not keep the service as high as it should be kept unless we have adequate salaries. There must be a better monetary provision for our consuls. I think that some such scheme as that so admirably advocated by Mr. Loomis, whose experience peculiarly fits him to speak on the subject, of charging a graded fee for invoices would furnish a solution. But in any event, in some way or other, we should provide for better salaries for the consuls, for better facilities for doing their work. Remember that the dearest kind of public servant is a servant who is paid so cheaply that he must render cheap service. Also, I feel most strongly that in the consular service, which stands entirely apart from the diplomatic service proper, entrance should be made by law into the lower grades and that the higher grades should be filled by a gradual process of weeding out and promotion; remembering, gentlemen, that the weeding-out process must not be interfered with. It is not any too easy, at best, to get rid of a kindly-natured elderly incompetent, and if you add to the difficulty by law, he then stays permanently. Make the entrance to the[694] service as far as possible non-partisan and make it at the lower grades, so that desirable positions shall come to those who have rendered good and faithful service in the lower grades, so that those entering the lower grades shall feel that if they do well they have a long and worthy career ahead of them.

Gentlemen:

I wish to express my very great appreciation of the work that you are doing. It would be a good thing for certain critics of our Government to realize the amount of hard, disinterested work for the Government represented by this gathering to which I am now speaking—a work which must in the immense majority of cases be its own reward, and therefore an ample reward; for there is nothing pleasanter than the consciousness of having done well a bit of work well worth doing.

A year ago I appointed the Keep Commission, because I had become convinced that the business methods of our Government were by no means abreast of the times. While I think there is comparatively little corruption in the National Governmental service, and while that little I intend to cut out or have cut out through other agencies than yours, it yet remains true that there is a good deal of duplication of work, a good deal of clumsiness[695] of work, and above all, the inevitable tendency toward mere bureaucratic methods against which every Government official should be perpetually on his guard—the tendency to regard not the case, but the papers in the case, as the all-important matter with which to deal, and to feel a proud sense of duty performed if all those papers are appropriately docketed and referred and minutes made about them, and then referred back, without regard to what has become of the real fact at issue.

As you are aware, the Keep Commission sent out questions to those responsible for the actual work in all branches of the Government service. Answers were received, or are now being received, to those questions, and they furnish a useful aid to the study by the commission of Governmental conditions. But inevitably in the great majority of cases these answers are inadequate to form a basis for definite recommendations, and of course that is what I want from this commission. I do not want a diagnosis of the case; I want a recommendation how to reach the case. I do not want merely to know that things are bad; I want to know what is bad and what is to be done to make it better, so that if legislation is necessary I can recommend it, or if, as I hope will be true in the enormous majority of cases, the matter can be reached by executive regulation, I can see that that regulation is issued. I want to say right here, gentlemen, that I shall value the reports that I receive largely in proportion as they do not call for legislation. There[696] is nothing easier, as all of you know, than to draw up an elaborate minute to show how well things would go on if some one else did something different. I want you, so far as is possible, to recommend something that I can do, something that the heads of the departments can do, so that we can ourselves put a stop to much at least of the evil that exists, remedy much at least of the shortcomings that exist.

With this in view, a number of assistant committees were appointed, consisting of you gentlemen here, carefully chosen men from the Government service, who are already largely responsible for the efficiency of the work done in your several departments and bureaus. It was a compliment to choose you, gentlemen; though it is one of those compliments that take the form of imposition of additional labor. If you were not of the type that I know you to be it would not be a compliment that would be appreciated. These committees, you gentlemen, have been at work for about a month, and you are taking up your work within your specific fields through study of the data already collected by the Committee on Department Methods, through bringing before you men whose knowledge is of expert value, and above all by a thorough study on the ground by experts (for that is what you are) of the conditions and needs within the departments themselves. I shall not enumerate the different committees. They are now at work. You compose them, gentlemen, and all told they have a membership of about seventy individuals.

[697]

As I have said, your particular effectiveness lies in the fact that you are dealing at first hand with work with which you are thoroughly familiar. You are not outsiders. You are not engaged in constructing a parlor theory of how the work should be done; you are engaged in recommendations to better the business which you are yourselves to carry through and see made better when those recommendations have been adopted. You have literally an unparalleled opportunity for useful work. As far as I am aware, there has never before been made in this country, or indeed, in any country, such a comprehensive systematic effort to put the country’s housekeeping in order. I need not say to you that it is urgent. A great deal of our Government work has become proverbial for the red tape involved. Of course much of the outside criticism upon red tape is due to forgetfulness of the fact that you and I are responsible to Congress for every dollar we spend, and for every dollar’s worth of work that we do, while the outsider is responsible only to himself or those interested with him, so that we not only have to do what is right and efficient, but have to be able to show that what we have done is right and efficient; and this inevitably means that there must be certain forms observed which the unthinking outsider is apt to stigmatize as red tape. Nevertheless it is true that there is always a tendency in Government work to run to needless red tape. I asked the Keep Commission, for instance, to take up with particular care, through[698] the Assistant Secretaries of War and the Navy, the burden of paper work resting on the officers of the Army and Navy. I remember very well the pride with which a certain high officer in one of the bureaus in the Navy Department, a good many years ago, told me, pointing to a big case of papers, that in that he could find out through the reports of the officers of each battleship how many bottles of violet ink each captain of a battleship was responsible for. I remarked that I did not care a snap of my finger about the number of bottles of violet ink on the ship, that what I wanted to know was whether the men at the guns could shoot; I did not accept the knowledge of the whereabouts of the violet ink as a substitute for shooting. The paper work must be subordinated in the departments and bureaus to the efficiency of the work itself, keeping only enough of it to make a record of what is done.

Of course it is impossible to set any actual time limit to the work you are doing, but it would be a mighty good thing to inaugurate the next fiscal year by adopting the new policies and methods in the departmental business. I want to assure you of one thing, and that is that your mere appointment has already produced a very marked moral effect. The good results of seventy men studying local methods and local needs on the ground, in the departments, does not lie only in the knowledge gained; you render a great service by making the men with whom you come in contact feel that they actually share in this movement.

[699]

The most magnificent architecture that our race has ever been able to produce—the great Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages—were made, not by any known architect, not even by any number of architects whose names have ever been recorded. We do not know the name of an architect or builder connected with those great masterpieces. Each was made by a number of men, architects and builders, each of whom felt amply rewarded by the mere fact that he was able to put all the best that there was in him into his work. He did not care to have his name known, he did not desire to be immortalized in connection with the work; he cared only to make the work itself the best that it could possibly be made. There never was an army that amounted to anything in campaign or in battle unless the average soldier had in him the spirit which made him regard the winning of the campaign, the winning of the battle, as in itself the end, and his service, if good enough, as in itself the reward. He might wish other rewards if they happened to come; but if they did not, well and good. The doing the duty is of itself a sufficient reward for any man.

So it has to be if the work of the Government is to be really well done. As Ruskin has said, there are two ways of doing work; to work for the fee, for the payment, and to work for the work’s own sake. The work done simply to get money for having done it will never, under any circumstances, rank with the work done by the man whose sense of self-respect, whose capacity for loyalty to an[700] ideal, makes him discontented unless the work that is at his hand is done with all the skill that heart and hand and brain can bring to it.

Of course, gentlemen, when you come to make your recommendations, you will have to deal with broad principles for the conduct of the Government business; but those broad principles must be supported by definite plans ready to be given immediate effect. I believe in broad principles, but I do not want them so broad that they will not apply to any given case. I want a general scheme, but also a way to make that general scheme effective in each department, each bureau, each section and subdivision touched by your committee. I do not want you in any case to recommend a change simply for the sake of making a change; nothing could be more foolish. But never hesitate for a moment in basing your recommendations upon the conditions actually found and the best way to meet them, no matter how radical may be the departure from established methods required. As I have said before, remember that in the vastly larger number of cases the essential need will not be for new legislation, but for better organization and improved methods under existing law. Now and then you will find where there must be a change in law, but the essential thing will be to change methods so that we can better administer the existing law.

There is, however, one fundamental weakness in the Government service which can not be remedied without additional legislation. That weakness lies[701] in the faulty distribution of work among the different departments. It is one of the most serious of all the obstacles to good executive work, to effective work, and to economy in the public service. No matter how well a bureau or division may be organized and directed, you can not get the best work out of it unless it is associated with, and co-operating with, the other bureaus and divisions which are engaged in cognate lines of work and with which it naturally belongs. Good teamwork is as much needed in the executive civil service as it can possibly be anywhere else. And it is the only way to prevent duplication of work. Your own work is most important, but it covers only half of the field. To put the departments on the best and most economical working basis the President, as I have already recommended, should be given power to transfer any part of the work of a department to another department, as was done in the case of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

In closing I wish to say a word of acknowledgment of the public-spirited and most valuable co-operation of the American Association of Public Accountants, which has been promised to the Committee on Department Methods. I wish to thank them, and I wish to thank you, gentlemen, for the invaluable work that you are doing.

Gentlemen:

If your body objects to the passage of the proposed anti-injunction bill, I have no question that you can stop it, for there is not a capitalist concerned who simply as capitalist is not against it; though I believe that a goodly number both of capitalists and wage-workers who are concerned primarily as citizens favor it. The law was worked over and substantially whipped into its present shape at a number of conferences between representatives of the railroad organizations, of the Department of Justice, and of the Bureau of Corporations with me. It goes as far as I personally think it should go in limiting the right of injunction; at any rate, no arguments have hitherto been advanced which make me think it should go farther. I do not believe it has any chance of passing, because there has been great criticism in both Houses of Congress against the attitude of the Administration in going so far as we have gone; and if you think it is not far enough, why, you will have no earthly difficulty in killing the bill. Personally, I think the proposed law a most admirable one, and I very sincerely wish it would be put through. As for the right of injunction, it is absolutely necessary to have this power[703] lodged in the courts; though of course any abuse of the power is strongly to be reprobated. During the four and a half years that I have been President I do not remember an instance where the Government has invoked the right of injunction against a combination of laborers. We have invoked it certainly a score of times against combinations of capital; I think possibly oftener. Thus, though we have secured the issuance of injunctions in a number of cases against capitalistic combinations, it has happened that we have never tried to secure an injunction against a combination of labor. But understand me, gentlemen; if I ever thought it necessary, if I thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply for an injunction against them just as quick as against so many capitalists.

Now I come to the general subject of your petition. I wish in the first place to state my regret that you did not divorce so much of the petition as refers to the action of the Executive from so much as refers to the action of the legislative branch, because I can not consider any petition that you make that reflects upon the co-ordinate branch of the Government, or that makes any charges whatever against it. I would not even receive it save for the fact that in part it affects the Executive. Therefore in what I have to say I shall limit myself solely to what you assert in reference to the acts of the Executive.

You speak of the eight-hour law. Your criticism, so far as it relates to the Executive, bears upon the signature of the appropriation bill containing the[704] money for expenditure on the Panama Canal, with the proviso that the eight-hour law shall not there apply. If your statement is intended to mean that no opportunity was given for a hearing before me, then the statement is not in accordance with the facts. There was ample opportunity, but not a single request for such a hearing came to me. I received, however, some hundreds of telegrams and letters requesting the veto of the entire appropriation bill because it contained that proviso. Frankly, I found it difficult to believe that you were writing and telegraphing with any kind of knowledge of the conditions in the case. I believe emphatically in the eight-hour law for our own people in our own country. But the conditions of labor, such as we have to work with in the tropics, are so absolutely different that there is no possible analogy between them; and an eight-hour law for the Panama Canal is an absurdity. Every one of you knows that we can not get white labor, can not get labor of the United States, to go down to Panama and work. We are driven to extremities in the effort to get any kind of labor at all. Just at the moment we are working chiefly with negro labor from the West Indies. The usual result in the employment of those men is that Monday and Tuesday they work fairly well, Wednesday and Thursday there is a marked falling off, and by Friday and Saturday not more than a half, sometimes less than a fourth, of the laborers will be at work. The conditions that make the eight-hour law proper here have no possible reference to[705] the conditions that make the eight-hour law entirely improper there. The conditions are so utterly different on the Isthmus, as compared to here, that it is impossible to try to draw conclusions affecting the one from what is true about the other. You hamper me in the effort to get for you what I think you ought to have in connection with the eight-hour law, when you make a request that is indefensible, and to grant which would mean indefinite delay and injury to the work on the Isthmus.

As to the violations of the eight-hour law, Mr. Morrison, you give me no specifications. At your earliest convenience please lay before me in detail any complaints you have of violations of the eight-hour law. Where I have power I will see that the law is obeyed. All I ask is that you give me the cases. I will take them up, and if they prove to be sustained by the facts I shall see that the law is enforced.

Now, about the Chinese exclusion. The number of Chinese now in this country is, if I remember aright, some sixty or seventy thousand. So far from there being a great influx of the Chinese, the fact is that the number has steadily decreased. There are fewer Chinese than there were ten years ago, fewer than there were twenty years ago, fewer than there were thirty years ago. Unquestionably some scores of cases occur each year where Chinese laborers get in either by being smuggled over the Mexican and Canadian borders, or by coming in under false certificates; but the steps that we have[706] taken, the changes in the consuls that have been made within the last few years in the Orient, and the effort to conduct examinations in China before the immigrants are allowed to come here, are materially reducing even the small number of cases that do occur. But even as it is the number of these cases is insignificant. There is no appreciable influx of Chinese laborers, and there is not the slightest or most remote danger of any; the whole scare that has been worked up on the subject is a pure chimera. It is my deep conviction that we must keep out of this country every Chinese laborer, skilled or unskilled—every Chinaman of the coolie class. This is what the proposed law will do; it will be done as effectively as under the present law; and the present law is being handled with the utmost efficiency. But I will do everything in my power to make it easy and desirable for the Chinese of the business and professional classes, the Chinese travelers and students, to come here, and I will do all I can to secure their good treatment when they come; and no laboring man has anything whatever to fear from that policy. I have a right to challenge you as good American citizens to support that policy; and in any event I shall stand unflinchingly for it; and no man can say with sincerity that on this, or indeed on any other point, he has any excuse for misunderstanding my policy.

You have spoken of the immigration laws. I believe not merely that all possible steps should be taken to prevent the importation of laborers under[707] any form, but I believe further that this country ought to make a resolute effort from now on to prevent the coming to the country of men with a standard of living so low that they tend, by entering into unfair competition with, to reduce the standard of living of our own people. Not one of you can go farther than I will go in the effort steadily to raise the status of the American wage-worker, so long as, while doing it, I can retain a clear conscience and the certainty that I am doing what is right. I will do all in my power for the laboring man except to do what is wrong; and I will not do that for him or for any one else.

We must not let our national sentiment for succoring the oppressed and unfortunate of other lands lead us into that warped moral and mental attitude of trying to succor them at the expense of pulling down our own people. Laws should be enacted to keep out all immigrants who do not show that they have the right stuff in them to enter into our life on terms of decent equality with our own citizens. This is needed, first, in the interest of the laboring man, but furthermore in the interests of all of us as American citizens; for, gentlemen, the bonds that unite all good American citizens are stronger by far than the differences, which I think you accentuate altogether too much, between the men who do one kind of labor and the men who do another. As for immigrants, we can not have too many of the right kind; and we should have none at all of the wrong kind; and they are of the right kind if we[708] can be fairly sure that their children and grandchildren can meet on terms of equality our children and grandchildren, so as to try to be decent citizens together and to work together for the uplifting of the Republic.

Now a word as to the petitioning of employees to Congress. That stands in no shape or way on a par with the petitioning of men not employed by the Government. I can not have and will not have when I can prevent it men who are concerned in the administration of Government affairs going to Congress and asking for increased pay, without the permission of the heads of the departments. Their business is to come through the heads of departments. This applies to postmasters, to Army and Navy officers, to clerks in the Government departments, to laborers; it applies to each and all, and must apply, as a matter of simple discipline.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I trust that it is not necessary for me to say what a pleasure it is to meet you and how very earnest and hearty my sympathy is with your purpose. I owed my first interest in the playground question, among a great many other things, to Jacob Riis when he spoke of the poor children who were not allowed to play in the streets, but had to play in the streets as they had no other place to play. I have felt very[709] keenly the need of playgrounds, and of course as the children grow older, the need of athletic grounds. In expressing my adherence to what you have said, Dr. Gulick, as to the need of helping adapt the plays, and of course the playgrounds and athletic grounds, to the needs of the citizenship of city life, let me add just one thing, which, I am sure, it is hardly necessary for me to say; and that is to remember that in trying to shape the plays for the children you must previously consult the children’s wishes. You must try to take advantage of their initiative and simply help in shaping it in the proper direction. One of the chief difficulties that all of us have encountered who have tried to help, whether in establishing playgrounds for children, or in establishing hotels for young women, or houses where working girls could live, or clubs, which instead of being saloons should be coffee clubs, for men, has arisen from the fact that philanthropists often establish such excellent but minute and overprecautionary regulations that nobody will inhabit them. As far as possible let the children work out their own salvation in their own way; simply exercise such supervision as to see that they do not do harm. Remember that in the last analysis the play has to suit them and not us.

I welcome you here, my fellow-Americans; for among the many strains that go to make up our[710] composite race stock in this country, no strain has given us better Americans than those who are of German birth or blood. It is our peculiar pride as a nation that in this Republic we have measurably realized the ideal under which good citizens know no discrimination as between creed and creed, birthplace and birthplace, provided only that whatever the man’s parentage may have been, whatever the way in which he worships his Creator, he strives in good faith to do his duty by himself and by his fellow-men and to show his unflinching loyalty to our common country. In addition to thus greeting you, my fellow-Americans of German birth, I wish also to greet the German citizens present, the members of the German army, belonging to the reserve of that army, and to welcome them here; especially Mr. Ambassador, as they are brought here by you, yourself an old soldier, who have endeared yourself to the American people by your hearty friendship for this country.

The reverence a man preserves for his native land, so far from standing in the way of his loving and doing his full duty by the land of his adoption, should help him toward this love and the performance of this duty. If a man is a good son he is apt to make a good husband; and the quality that makes a man reverence the country of his birth is apt to be the quality that makes him a good citizen in the country of his adoption.

The ties that unite Germany and the United States are many and close, and it must be a prime[711] object of our statesmanship to knit the two nations ever closer together. In no country is there a warmer admiration for Germany and for Germany’s exalted ruler, Emperor William, than here in America.

It is not out of place in closing for me to say a word of congratulation both to the German people and the German Emperor upon the work that has been accomplished in the Algeciras convention which has just closed, a conference held chiefly because of the initiative of Germany. It was not a conference in which we Americans as a nation had much concern, save that it is always our concern to see justice obtained everywhere, and, so far as we properly can, to work for the cause of international peace and good-will. In its outcome this conference has added to the likelihood of the betterment of conditions in Morocco itself, has secured equitable dealing as among the foreign Powers who have commercial relations with Morocco, and has diminished the chance of friction between these Powers. In particular it may not be out of place for me to say that I hope and believe that the conference has resulted and will result in rendering continually more friendly the relations between the mighty Empire of Germany and the mighty Republic of France; for it is my hope and wish, as it must be the hope and wish of every sincere well wisher of humankind, that these friendly relations may not only continue unbroken but may ever grow in strength.