ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS (continued 3)

AT NORTHFIELD, MASS., SEPTEMBER 1, 1902

My Fellow-Citizens:

Here near the seat of the summer school for young men founded by Dwight L. Moody, I naturally speak on a subject suggested to me by the life of Mr. Moody and by the aims sought for through the establishment of the summer school.

In such a school—a school which is to equip young men to do good in the world—to show both the desire for the rule of righteousness and the practical power to give actual effect to that desire—it seems to me there are two texts specially worthy of emphasis: One is, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only”; and the other is, “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” A republic of freemen is pre-eminently a community in which there is need for the actual exercise and practical application of both the milder and the stronger virtues. Every good quality—every virtue and every grace—has its place and is of use in the great scheme of creation; but it is of course a mere truism to say that at certain times and in certain places there is pre-eminent need for a given set of virtues. In our own country, with its many-sided, hurrying, practical life, the place for cloistered virtue is far smaller than is the place for that essential manliness which, without losing its fine and lofty side, can yet hold its own in the rough struggle with the forces of the world round about us. It would be a very bad thing for this country if it happened that the men of righteous living tended to lose the robust, virile qualities of heart, mind and body, and if, on the other hand, the men best fitted practically to achieve results lost the guidance of the moral law. No one-sided development can produce really good citizenship—as good citizenship is needed in the America of to-day. If a man has not in him the root of righteousness—if he does not believe in, and practice, honesty—if he is not truthful and upright, clean and high-minded, fair in his dealings both at home and abroad—then the stronger he is, the abler and more energetic he is, the more dangerous he is to the body politic. Wisdom untempered by devotion to an ideal usually means only that dangerous cunning which is far more fatal in its ultimate effects to the community than open violence itself. It is inexcusable in an honest people to deify mere success without regard to the qualities by which that success is achieved. Indeed there is a revolting injustice, intolerable to just minds, in punishing the weak scoundrel who fails, and bowing down to and making life easy for the far more dangerous scoundrel who succeeds. A wicked man who is wicked on a large scale, whether in business or in politics, of course does many times more evil to the community than the man who only ventures to be wicked furtively and in lesser ways. If possible, the success of such a man should be prevented by law, and in any event he ought to be made to feel that there is no condonation of his offences by the public. There is no more unpleasant manifestation of public feeling than the deification of mere “smartness,” as it is termed—of mere successful cunning unhampered by scruple or generosity or right feeling. If a man is not decent, is not square and honest, then the possession of ability only serves to render him more dangerous to the community; as a wild beast grows more dangerous the stronger and fiercer he is.

But virtue by itself is not enough, or anything like enough. Strength must be added to it, and the determination to use that strength. The good man who is ineffective is not able to make his goodness of much account to the people as a whole. No matter how much a man hears the word, small is the credit attached to him if he fails to be a doer also; and in serving the Lord he must remember that he needs to avoid sloth in his business as well as to cultivate fervency of spirit. All around us there are great evils to combat, and they are not to be combated with success by men who pride themselves on their superiority in taste and in virtue, and draw aside from the world’s life. It matters not whether they thus draw aside because they fear their fellows or because they despise them. Each feeling—the fear no less than the contempt—is shameful and unworthy. A man to be a good American must be straight, and he must also be strong. He must have in him the conscience which will teach him to see the right, and he must also have the vigor, the courage, and the practical, hard-headed common-sense which will enable him to make his seeing right result in some benefit to his fellows.

AT FITCHBURG, MASS., SEPTEMBER 2, 1902

Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens:

There are two or three things that I should like to say to this audience, but before beginning what I have to say on some of the problems of the day, I wish to thank for their greeting, not only all of you, my fellow-citizens here, but particularly the men of the great war, and second only to them my comrades of a lesser war, where, I hope, we showed that we were anxious to do our duty, as you had done yours, only the need did not come to us.

We have great problems before us as a nation. I will not try to discuss them at length with you to-day, but I can speak a word as to the manner in which they must be met if they are to be met successfully. All great works, though they differ in the method of doing them, must be solved by substantially the same qualities. You who upheld the arms of Lincoln, who followed the sword of Grant, were able to do your duty not because you found some patent device for doing it, but by going down to the bedrock principles which had made good soldiers since the world began.

There was no method possible to devise which would have spared you from heart-breaking fatigue on the marches, from hardships at night, from danger in battle. The only way to overcome those difficulties and dangers was by drawing on every ounce of hardihood, of courage, of loyalty, and of iron resolution. That is how you had to win out. You had to win as the soldiers of Washington had won before you, as we of the younger generation must win if ever the call should be made upon us to face a serious foe. Arms change, tactics change, but the spirit that makes the real soldier does not change. The spirit that makes for victory does not change.

It is just so in civic life. The problems change, but fundamentally the qualities needed to face them in the average citizen are the same. Our new and highly complex industrial civilization has produced a new and complicated series of problems. We need to face those problems and not to run away from them. We need to exercise all our ingenuity in trying to devise some effective solution, but the only way in which that solution can be applied is the old way of bringing honesty, courage, and common-sense to bear upon it. One feature of honesty and common-sense combined is never to promise what you do not think you can perform, and then never fail to perform what you have promised. And that applies in public life just as much as in private life.

If some of those who have seen cause for wonder in what I have said this summer on the subject of the great corporations, which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as trusts, would take the trouble to read my messages when I was Governor, what I said on the stump two years ago, and what I put into my first message to Congress, I think they would have been less astonished. I said nothing on the stump that I did not think I could make good, and I shall not hesitate now to take the position which I then advocated.

I am even more anxious that you who hear what I say should think of it than that you should applaud it. I am not going to try to define with technical accuracy what ought to be meant when we speak of a trust. But if by trust we mean merely a big corporation, then I ask you to ponder the utter folly of the man who either in a spirit of rancor or in a spirit of folly says “destroy the trusts,” without giving you an idea of what he means really to do. I will go with him if he says destroy the evil in the trusts, gladly. I will try to find out that evil, I will seek to apply remedies, which I have already outlined in other speeches; but if his policy, from whatever motive, whether hatred, fear, panic or just sheer ignorance, is to destroy the trusts in a way that will destroy all our property—no. Those men who advocate wild and foolish remedies which would be worse than the disease are doing all in their power to perpetuate the evils against which they nominally war, because, if we are brought face to face with the naked issue of either keeping or totally destroying a prosperity in which the majority share, but in which some share improperly, why, as sensible men, we must decide that it is a great deal better that some people should prosper too much than that no one should prosper enough. So that the man who advocates destroying the trusts by measures which would paralyze the industries of the country is at least a quack, and at worst an enemy to the Republic.

In 1893 there was no trouble about anybody making too much money. The trusts were down, but the trouble was that we were all of us down. Nothing but harm to the whole body politic can come from ignorant agitation, carried on partially against real evils, partially against imaginary evils, but in a spirit which would substitute for the real evils evils just as real and infinitely greater. Those men, if they should succeed, could do nothing to bring about a solution of the great problems with which we are concerned. If they could destroy certain of the evils at the cost of overthrowing the well-being of the entire country, it would mean merely that there would come a reaction in which they and their remedies would be hopelessly discredited.

Now, it does not do anybody any good, and it will do most of us a great deal of harm, to take steps which will check any proper growth in a corporation. We wish not to penalize but to reward a great captain of industry or the men banded together in a corporation who have the business forethought and energy necessary to build up a great industrial enterprise. Keep that in mind. A big corporation may be doing excellent work for the whole country, and you want, above all things, when striving to get a plan which will prevent wrongdoing by a corporation which desires to do wrong, not at the same time to have a scheme which will interfere with a corporation doing well, if that corporation is handling itself honestly and squarely. What I am saying ought to be treated as simple, elementary truths. The only reason it is necessary to say them at all is that apparently some people forget them.

I believe something can be done by national legislation. When I state that I ask you to note my words. I say I believe. It is not in my power to say I know. When I talk to you of my own executive duties I can tell you definitely what will and what will not be done. When I speak of the actions of any one else I can only say that I believe something more can be done by national legislation. I believe it will be done. I think we can get laws which will increase the power of the Federal Government over corporations; if we can not, then there will have to be an amendment to the Constitution of the nation conferring additional power upon the Federal Government to deal with corporations. To get that will be a matter of difficulty, and a matter of time.

Let me interrupt here by way of illustration. You of the great war recollect that about six weeks after Sumter had been fired on there began to be loud clamor in the North among people who were not at the front that you should go to Richmond; and there were any number of people who told you how to go there. Then came Bull Run, and a lot of those same people who a fortnight before had been yelling “On to Richmond at once,” turned around and said the war was over. All the hysteric brotherhood said so. But you didn’t think so. The war was not over. It was not over for three years and nine months, and then it was over the other way. And you got it over by setting your faces steadily toward the goal, by not relying upon anything impossible, but by each doing everything possible that came in his line to do, by each man doing his duty. You did not win by any patent device; you won by the generalship of Grant and Sherman and Thomas and Sheridan, and, above all, by the soldiership of the men who carried the muskets and the sabres. It did not come as soon as you wanted, and the men who said it would come at once did not help you much either.

In dealing with any great problem in civil life, be it the trusts or anything else, you are going to get along in just about the same fashion. There is not any patent remedy for all the ills. All we can do is to make up our minds definitely that we intend to find some method by which we shall be able to tell, in the first place, what are the real evils and what of the alleged evils are imaginary; in the next place, what of those real evils it is possible to cure by legislation; and then to cure them by legislation and by an honest administration of the laws after they have been enacted. That statement of the problem will never be attractive to the man who thinks that somehow, by turning your hand, you are going to get a complete solution at once.

Grant’s plan of fighting it out on that line, if it took all summer, was not attractive to the men who wanted it done in a week. But it was the only plan that won. The only way we can ever work out even an approximately satisfactory solution of these great industrial problems, of which this so-called problem of the trusts is but one, is by approaching them in a spirit which shall combine equally sanity and self-restraint on the one hand and resolute purpose on the other.

It is not given to me or to any one else to promise a perfect solution. It is not given to me or to any one else to promise you even an approximately perfect solution in a short time. But I think that we can work out a very great improvement over the present conditions, and the steps taken must, I am sure, be along these lines—along the lines, in the first place, of getting power somewhere so that we shall be able to say, the nation has power, let it use that power—and not as it is at present, where it is out of the question to say exactly where the power is.

We must get power first, then use that power fearlessly, but with moderation. Let me say that again—with moderation, with sanity, with self-restraint. The mechanism of modern business is altogether too delicate and too complicated for us to sanction for one moment any intermeddling with it in a spirit of ignorance, above all in a spirit of rancor. Something can be done, something is being done now. Much more can be done if our people resolutely but temperately will that it shall be done. But the certain way of bringing great harm upon ourselves, without in any way furthering the solution of the problem, but, on the contrary, deferring indefinitely its proper solution, would be to act in a spirit of ignorance, of violence, of rancor, in a spirit which would make us tear down the temple of industry in which we live because we are not satisfied with some of the details of its management.

I want you to think of what I have said, because it represents all of the sincerity and earnestness that I have, and I say to you here, from this platform, nothing that I have not already stated in effect, and nothing I would not say at a private table with any of the biggest corporation managers in the land.

AT DALTON, MASS., SEPTEMBER 3, 1902

Governor Crane, and you, my Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

It seems to me that in a town like this we not only have but ought to have a better standard of citizenship and a more thorough appreciation of the rights and duties of the individual citizen and of the possibilities of government than in almost any other community. Here is a town where you have both farming and manufacturing, where you have on a small scale all the elements that go to make up the industrial life of the nation as a whole—the capitalist and wage-earner, the farmer and hired man, merchant, men of the professions, you have them all; you see the forces that have built up the nation and that are at work in the nation, in play round about you in the farms, in the factories, in the houses, right among your neighbors and friends. When men live in a big city they lose touch with one another; they tend to lose intimate touch with the government, and they get to speak of the state, of the government, as something entirely apart from them. Now the government is us, here, you and me, and that ought to make us understand on the one hand what we have a right to expect from the government, and on the other hand what it is foolish to expect from the government. We have a right to expect from it that it will secure us against injustice; that so far as is humanly possible it will secure for each man a fair chance; that it will do justice as between man and man, and that it will not respect persons; that in that division of the government dealing with justice each man shall stand absolutely on his merits, not being discriminated for or against because of his wealth or his poverty, because of anything but his own conduct.

The government can take hold of certain functions which are in the interest of the people as a whole. More than this the government can not do or else does at the risk of doing it badly. The government can not supply the lack in any man of the qualities which must determine in the last resort the man’s success or failure. Instead of “government” say “the town.” Now what can the town do for you? A good deal; but not nearly as much as you can do for it, not nearly as much as you must do for yourself. The government can not make a man a success in life. If we would remember that and remember that when we use the large terms of the government and nation, we only mean the town on a large scale, there would be much less danger in our thinking that perhaps by some queer patent device or some scheme, the state, the government, the town, can supply the lack of individual thrift, energy, enterprise, resolution. It can not supply such lack. Something can be done by government, that is, by all of us acting together to protect the rights of all, to accomplish certain things for all. Something can be accomplished by helping one another. He is a poor creature who does not give help generously when the chance comes. But finally in the last resort the man who wins now will be the man of the type who has won always, the man who can win for himself. Do not make the mistake of thinking that it is possible ever to call in any outside force to take the place of the man’s own individual initiative, the man’s individual capacity to do work worth doing.

AT WHEELING, W. VA., SEPTEMBER 6, 1902

My Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

It is a pleasure to come here to your city. I wish to thank the Mayor, and through the Mayor all of your citizens, for the way in which, upon your behalf, he has greeted me; and I wish to state that it is a special pleasure to be introduced by my friend, Senator Scott. I have known the Senator for some time, and I like him, because when he gives you his word you don’t have to think about it again.

I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words here in this great industrial centre in one of those regions which have felt to a notable degree the effects of the period of prosperity through which we are now passing. Probably never before in our history has the country been more prosperous than it is at this moment; and it is a prosperity which has come alike to the tillers of the soil and to those connected with our great industrial enterprises.

Every period has its own troubles and difficulties. A period of adversity, of course, troubles us all; but there are troubles in connection with a period of prosperity also. When all things flourish it means that there is a good chance for things that we don’t like to flourish also, just exactly as things that we do like. A period of great national material well-being is inevitably one in which men’s minds are turned to the way in which those flourish who are interested in the management of the gigantic capitalistic corporations, whose growth has been so noted a feature of the last half century—the corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts—accepting the word in its usual and common significance as a big corporation usually doing business in several States at least, besides the State in which it is incorporated, and often, though not always, with some element of monopoly in it.

It seems to me that in dealing with this problem of the trusts—perhaps it would be more accurate to say the group of problems which come into our minds when we think of the trusts—we have two classes of our fellow-citizens whom we have to convert or override. One is composed of those men who refuse to admit that there is any action necessary at all. The other is composed of those men who advocate some action so extreme, so foolish, that it would either be entirely non-effective, or, if effective, would be so only by destroying everything, good and bad, connected with our industrial development.

In every governmental process the aim that a people capable of self-government should steadfastly keep in mind is to proceed by evolution rather than revolution. On the other hand, every people fit for self-government must beware of that fossilization of mind which refuses to allow of any change as conditions change. Now, in dealing with the whole problem of the change in our great industrial civilization—in dealing with the tendencies which have been accentuated in so extraordinary a degree by steam and electricity, and by the tremendous upbuilding of industrial centres which steam and electricity have been the main factors in bringing about—I think we must set before ourselves the desire not to accept less than the possible, and at the same time not to bring ourselves to a complete standstill by attempting the impossible. It is a good deal as it is in taking care, through the engineers, of the lower Mississippi River. No one can dam the Mississippi. If the nation started to dam it, the nation would waste its time. It would not hurt the Mississippi, but it would not only throw away its own means, but would incidentally damage the population along the banks. You can’t dam the current. You can build levees to keep the current within bounds and to shape its direction. I think that is exactly what we can do in connection with these great corporations known as trusts. We can not reverse the industrial tendency of the age. If you succeed in doing it, then all cities like Wheeling will have to go out of business. Remember that. You can not put a stop to or reverse the industrial tendencies of the age, but you can control and regulate them and see that they do no harm.

A flood comes down the Mississippi—you can’t stop it. If you tried to build a dam across it, it would not hurt the flood, and it would not benefit you. You can guide it between levees so as to prevent its doing injury, and so as to ensure its doing good. Another thing: you don’t build those levees in a day or in a month. A man who told you that he had a patent device by which in sixty days he would solve the whole question of the floods along the lower Mississippi would not be a wise man; but he would be a perfect miracle of wisdom compared to the man who tells you that by any one patent remedy he can bring the millennium in our industrial and social affairs.

We can do something; I believe we can do a good deal, but our accomplishing what I expect to see accomplished is conditioned upon our setting to work in a spirit as far removed as possible from hysteria—a spirit of sober, steadfast, kindly—I want to emphasize that—kindly determination not to submit to wrong ourselves and not to wrong others, not to interfere with the great business development of the country, and at the same time so to shape our legislation and administration as to minimize, if we can not eradicate, the unpleasant and vicious features connected with that industrial development. I have said that there can be no patent remedy. There is not any one thing which can be done to remove all of the existing evils. There are a good many things which, if we do them all, will, I believe, make a very appreciable betterment in the existing conditions. To do that is not to make a promise that will evoke wild enthusiasm, but a promise that can be kept; and in the long run it is much more comfortable only to make promises that can be kept than to make promises which are sure of an immense reception when made, but which entail intolerable humiliation when it is attempted to carry them out.

I am sufficiently fortunate to be advocating now, as President, precisely the remedies that I advocated two years ago—advocating them not in any partisan spirit, because, gentlemen, this problem is one which affects the life of the nation as a whole—but advocating them simply as the American citizen who, for the time being, stands as the Chief Executive and, therefore, the special representative of his fellow-American citizens of all parties.

A century and a quarter ago there had been no development of industry such as to make it a matter of the least importance whether the nation or the State had charge of the great corporations or supervised the great business and industrial organizations. A century and a quarter ago, here at Wheeling, commerce was carried on by pack train, by wagon train, by boat. That was the way it was carried on throughout the whole civilized world—oars and sails, wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden—those were the means of carrying on commerce at the end of the eighteenth century, when this country became a nation.

There had been no radical change, no essential change, in the means of carrying on commerce from the days when the Phœnician galleys plowed the waters of the Mediterranean. For four or five thousand years, perhaps longer, from the immemorial past when Babylon and Nineveh stood in Mesopotamia, when Thebes and Memphis were mighty in the valley of the Nile—from that time on through the supremacy of Greece and of Rome, through the upbuilding of the great trading cities like Venice and Genoa in Italy; like the cities of the Rhine and the Netherlands in Northern Europe—on through the period of the great expansion of European civilization which followed the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, down to the time when this country became a nation—the means of commercial intercourse remained substantially unchanged. Those means, therefore, limited narrowly what could be done by any corporation, the growth that could take place in any community.

Suddenly, during our own lifetime as a nation—a lifetime trivial in duration compared to the period of recorded history—there came a revolution in the means of intercourse which made a change in commerce, and in all that springs from commerce, in industrial development, greater than all the changes of the preceding thousands of years. A greater change in the means of commerce of mankind has taken place since Wheeling was founded, since the first settlers built their log huts in the great forests on the banks of this river, than in all the previous period during which man had led an existence that can be called civilized.

Through the railway, the electric telegraph, and other developments, steam and electricity worked a complete revolution. This has meant, of course, that entirely new problems have sprung up. You have right in this immediate neighborhood a very much larger population than any similar region in all the United States held when the Continental Congress began its sessions; and the change in industrial conditions has been literally immeasurable. Those changed conditions need a corresponding change in the governmental agencies necessary for their regulation and supervision.

Such agencies were not provided, and could not have been provided, in default of a knowledge of prophecy by the men who founded the Republic. In those days each State could take care perfectly well of any corporations within its limits, and all it had to do was to try to encourage their upbuilding. Now the big corporations, although nominally the creatures of one State, usually do business in other States, and in a very large number of cases the wide variety of State laws on the subject of corporations has brought about the fact that the corporation is made in one State, but does almost all its work in entirely different States.

It has proved utterly impossible to get anything like uniformity of legislation among the States. Some States have passed laws about corporations which, if they had not been ineffective, would have totally prevented any important corporate work being done within their limits. Other States have such lax laws that there is no effective effort made to control any of the abuses. As a result we have a system of divided control—where the nation has something to say, but it is a little difficult to know exactly how much, and where the different States have each something to say, but where there is no supreme power that can speak with authority. It is, of course, a mere truism to say that every corporation, the smallest as well as the largest, is the creature of the State. Where the corporation is small there is very little need of exercising much supervision over it, but the stupendous corporations of the present day certainly should be under governmental supervision and regulation. The first effort to make is to give somebody the power to exercise that supervision, that regulation. We have already laws on the statute books. Those laws will be enforced, and are being enforced, with all the power of the National Government, and wholly without regard to persons. But the power is very limited. Now I want you to take my words at their exact value. I think—I can not say I am sure, because it has often happened in the past that Congress has passed a law with a given purpose in view, and when that law has been judicially interpreted it has proved that the purpose was not achieved—but I think that by legislation additional power in the way of regulation of at least a number of these great corporations can be conferred. But, gentlemen, I firmly believe that in the end power must be given to the National Government to exercise in full supervision and regulation of these great enterprises, and, if necessary, a Constitutional amendment must be resorted to for this purpose.

That is not new doctrine for me. That is the doctrine that I advocated on the stump two years ago. Some of my ultra-conservative friends have professed to be greatly shocked at my advocating it now. I would explain to those gentlemen, once for all, that they err whenever they think that I advocate on the stump anything that I will not try to put into effect after election. The objection is made that working along these lines will take time. So it will. Let me go back to my illustration of the Mississippi River. It took time to build the levees, but we built them. And if we have the proper intelligence, the proper resolution, and the proper self-restraint, we can work out the solution along the lines that I have indicated. Thus, the first thing is to give the National Government the power. All the power that is given, I can assure you, will be used in a spirit as free as possible from rancor of any kind, but with the firmest determination to make big man and little man alike obey the law.

What we need first is power. Having gotten the power, remember the work won’t be ended—it will be only fairly begun. And let me say again and again and again that you will not get the millennium—the millennium is some way off yet. But you will be in a position to make long strides in advance in the direction of securing a juster, fairer, wiser management of many of these corporations, both as regards the general public and as regards their relationship among themselves and to the investing public. When we have the power I most earnestly hope, and should most earnestly advocate, that it be used with the greatest wisdom and self-restraint.

The first thing to do would be to find out the facts. For that purpose I am absolutely clear that we need publicity—that we need it not as a matter of favor from any one corporation, but as a matter of right, secured through the agents of the Government, from all the corporations concerned. The mere fact of the publicity itself will tend to stop many of the evils, and it will show that some other alleged evils are imaginary, and finally in making evident the remaining evils—those that are not imaginary and that are not cured by the simple light of day—it will give us an intelligent appreciation of the methods to take in getting at them. We should have, under such circumstances, one sovereign to whom the big corporations should be responsible—a sovereign in whose courts a corporation could be held accountable for any failure to comply with the laws of the legislature of that sovereign. I do not think you can accomplish that among the forty-six sovereigns of the States. I think that it will have to be through the National Government.

TO THE BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN, CHATTANOOGA, TENN., SEPTEMBER 8, 1902

Mr. Grand Master, Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor, my Brothers, my Fellow-Citizens:

I am glad to be here to-day. I am glad to come as the guest of the Brotherhood. Let me join with you, the members of the Brotherhood of this country, in extending a most cordial welcome to our fellows from Canada and Mexico. The fact that we are good Americans only makes us all the better men, all the more desirous of seeing good fortune to all mankind. I needed no pressing to accept the invitation tendered through you, Mr. Hannahan, and through Mr. Arnold, to come to this meeting. I have always admired greatly the railroad men of the country, and I do not see how any one who believes in what I regard as the fundamental virtues of citizenship can fail to do so. I want to see the average American a good man, an honest man, and a man who can handle himself, and does handle himself, well under difficulties. The last time I ever saw General Sherman, I dined at his house, and we got to talking over the capacity of different types of soldiers, and the General happened to say that if ever there were another war, and he were to have a command, he should endeavor to get as many railway men as possible under him. I asked him why, and he said, “Because on account of their profession they have developed certain qualities which are essential in a soldier.” In the first place, they are accustomed to taking risks. There are a great many men who are naturally brave, but who, being entirely unaccustomed to risks, are at first appalled by them. Railroad men are accustomed to enduring hardship; they are accustomed to irregular hours; they are accustomed to act on their own responsibility, on their own initiative, and yet they are accustomed to obeying orders quickly. There is not anything more soul-harrowing for a man in time of war, or for a man engaged in a difficult job in time of peace, than to give an order and have the gentleman addressed say “What?” The railroad man has to learn that when an order is issued there may be but a fraction of a second in which to obey it. He has to learn that orders are to be obeyed, and, on the other hand, that there will come plenty of crises in which there will be no orders to be obeyed, and he will have to act for himself.

Those are all qualities that go to the very essence of good soldiership, and I am not surprised at what General Sherman said. In raising my own regiment, which was raised mainly in the Southwest, partly in the Territory in which Mr. Sargent himself served as a soldier at one time—in Arizona—I got a number of railroad men. Of course, the first requisite was that a man should know how to shoot and how to ride. We were raising the regiment in a hurry, and we did not have time to teach him either. He had to know how to handle a horse and how to handle a rifle, to start with. But given the possession of those two qualities, I found that there was no group of our citizens from whom better men could be drawn to do a soldier’s work in a tight place and at all times than the railroad men.

But, gentlemen, the period of war is but a fractional part of the life of our Republic, and I earnestly hope and believe that it will be an even smaller part in the future than it has been in the past. It was the work that you have done in time of peace that especially attracted me to you, that made me anxious to come down here and see you, and that made me glad to speak to you, not for what I can tell you, but for the lesson it seems to me can be gained by all of our people from what you have done.

At the opening of the twentieth century we face conditions vastly changed from what they were in this country and throughout the world a century ago. Our complex industrial civilization under which progress has been so rapid, and in which the changes for good have been so great, has also inevitably seen the growth of certain tendencies that are not for good, or at least that are not wholly for good; and we in consequence, as a people, like the rest of civilized mankind, find set before us for solution during the coming century problems which need the best thought of all of us, and the most earnest desire of all to solve them well if we expect to work out a solution satisfactory to our people, a solution for the advantage of the nation. In facing these problems, it must be a comfort to every well-wisher of the nation to see what has been done by your organization. I believe emphatically in organized labor. I believe in organizations of wage-workers. Organization is one of the laws of our social and economic development at this time. But I feel that we must always keep before our minds the fact that there is nothing sacred in the name itself. To call an organization an organization does not make it a good one. The worth of an organization depends upon its being handled with the courage, the skill, the wisdom, the spirit of fair dealing as between man and man, and the wise self-restraint which, I am glad to be able to say, your Brotherhood has shown. You now number close upon 44,000 members. During the two years ending June 30 last you paid in to the general and beneficiary funds close upon a million and a half dollars. More than six and one-half millions have been paid in since the starting of the insurance clause in the constitution—have been paid to disabled members and their beneficiaries. Over fifty per cent of the amount paid was paid on account of accidents. Gentlemen, that is a sufficient commentary upon the kind of profession which is yours. You face death and danger in time of peace, as in time of war the men wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform must face them.

Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you? No; not a bit. I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. The law of worthy work well done is the law of successful American life. I believe in play, too—play, and play hard while you play; but don’t make the mistake of thinking that that is the main thing. The work is what counts, and if a man does his work well and it is worth doing, then it matters but little in which line that work is done; the man is a good American citizen. If he does his work in slip-shod fashion, then no matter what kind of work it is, he is a poor American citizen.

I speak to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, but what I say applies to all railroad men—not only to the engineers who have served an apprenticeship as firemen, to the conductors, who, as a rule, have served an apprenticeship as brakemen, but to all the men of all the organizations connected with railroad work. I know you do not grudge my saying that, through you, I am talking to all the railroad men of the country. You, in your organization as railroad men, have taught two lessons: the lesson of how much can be accomplished by organization, by mutual self-help of the type that helps another in the only way by which, in the long run,—that is, by teaching him to help himself. You teach the benefits of organization, and you also teach the indispensable need of keeping absolutely unimpaired the faculty of individual initiative, the faculty by which each man brings himself to the highest point of perfection by exercising the special qualities with which he is himself endowed. The Brotherhood has developed to this enormous extent since the days, now many years ago, when the first little band came together; and it has developed, not by crushing out individual initiative, but by developing it, by combining many individual initiatives.

The Brotherhood of Firemen does much for all firemen, but I firmly believe that the individual fireman since the growth of the Brotherhood has been more, not less, efficient than he was twenty years ago. Membership in the Brotherhood comes, as I understand it, after a nine months’ probationary period; after a man has shown his worth, he is then admitted and stands on his footing as a brother. Now, any man who enters with the purpose of letting the Brotherhood carry him is not worth much. The man who counts in the Brotherhood is the man who pulls his own weight and a little more. Much can be done by the Brotherhood. I have just hinted in the general figures I gave you, at how much has been done, but it still remains true in the Brotherhood, and everywhere else throughout American life, that in the last resort nothing can supply the place of the man’s own individual qualities. We need those, no matter how perfect the organization is outside. There is just as much need of nerve, hardihood, power to face risks and accept responsibilities, in the engineer and the fireman, whether on a flyer or a freight train, now as there ever was. Much can be done by the Association. A great deal can be accomplished by working each for all and all for each; but we must not forget that the first requisite in accomplishing that is that each man should work for others by working for himself, by developing his own capacity.

The steady way in which a man can rise is illustrated by a little thing that happened yesterday. I came down here over the Queen and Crescent Railroad, and the General Manager, who handled my train and who handled yours, was Mr. Maguire. I used to know him in the old days when he was on his way up, and he began right at the bottom. He was a fireman at one time. He worked his way straight up, and now he is General Manager.

I believe so emphatically in your organization because, while it teaches the need of working in union, of working in association, of working with deep in our hearts, not merely on our lips, the sense of Brotherhood, yet of necessity it still keeps, as your organization always must keep, to the forefront the worth of the individual qualities of a man. I said to you that I came here in a sense not to speak to you, but to use your experience as an object-lesson for all of us, an object-lesson in good American citizenship. All professions, of course, do not call for the exercise to the same degree of the qualities of which I have spoken. Your profession is one of those which I am inclined to feel play in modern life a greater part from the standpoint of character than we entirely realize. There is in modern life, with the growth of civilization and luxury, a certain tendency to softening of the national fibre. There is a certain tendency to forget, in consequence of their disuse, the rugged virtues which lie at the back of manhood; and I feel that professions like yours, like the profession of the railroad men of the country, have a tonic effect upon the whole body politic.

It is a good thing that there should be a large body of our fellow-citizens—that there should be a profession—whose members must, year in and year out, display those old, old qualities of courage, daring, resolution, unflinching willingness to meet danger at need. I hope to see all our people develop the softer, gentler virtues to an ever increasing degree, but I hope never to see them lose the sterner virtues that make men men.

A man is not going to be a fireman or an engineer, or serve well in any other capacity on a railroad long if he has a “streak of yellow” in him. You are going to find it out, and he is going to be painfully conscious of it, very soon. It is a fine thing for our people that we should have those qualities in evidence before us in the life-work of a big group of our citizens.

In American citizenship, we can succeed permanently only upon the basis of standing shoulder to shoulder, working in association, by organization, each working for all, and yet remembering that we need each so to shape things that each man can develop to best advantage all the forces and powers at his command. In your organization you accomplish much by means of the Brotherhood, but you accomplish it because of the men who go to make up that brotherhood.

If you had exactly the organization, exactly the laws, exactly the system, and yet were yourselves a poor set of men, the system would not save you. I will guarantee that, from time to time, you have men go in to try to serve for the nine months who prove that they do not have the stuff in them out of which you can make good men. You have to have the stuff in you, and, if you have the stuff, you can make out of it a much finer man by means of the association—but you must have the material out of which to make it. So it is in citizenship.

And now let me say a word, speaking not merely especially to the Brotherhood, but to all our citizens. Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor: I fail to see how any American can come to Chattanooga and go over the great battle-fields in the neighborhood—the battle-fields here in this State and just across the border in my mother’s State of Georgia—how any American can come here and see evidences of the mighty deeds done by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, and not go away a better American, prouder of the country, prouder because of the valor displayed on both sides in the contest—the valor, the self-devotion, the loyalty to the right as each side saw the right. Yesterday I was presented with a cane cut from the Chickamauga battle-field by some young men of Northern Georgia. On the cane were engraved the names of three Union generals and three Confederate generals. One of those Union generals was at that time showing me over the battle-field—General Boynton. Under one of the Confederate generals—General Wheeler—I myself served. In my regiment there served under me in the ranks a son of General Hood, who commanded at one time the Confederate army against General Sherman. The only captain whom I had the opportunity of promoting to field rank, and to whom the promotion was given for gallantry on the field, was Micah Jenkins, of South Carolina, the son of a Confederate general, whose name you will find recorded among those who fought at Chickamauga.

Two of my best captains were killed at Santiago—one was Allyn Capron, the fifth in line who, from father to son, had served in the regular army of the United States, who had served in every war in which our country had been engaged; the other, Bucky O’Neill. His father had fought under Meagher when, on the day at Fredericksburg, his brigade left more men under the stone wall than did any other brigade. I had in my regiment men from the North and the South; men from the East and the West; men whose fathers had fought under Grant, and whose fathers had fought under Lee; college graduates, capitalists’ sons, wage-workers, the man of means and the man who all his life had owed each day’s bread to the day’s toil. I had Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and Gentile under me. Among my captains were men whose forefathers had been among the first white men to settle on Massachusetts Bay and on the banks of the James, and others whose parents had come from Germany, from Ireland, from England, from France. They were all Americans, and nothing else, and each man stood on his worth as a man, to be judged by it, and to succeed or fail accordingly as he did well or ill. Compared to the giant death-wrestles that reeled over the mountains round about this city the fight at Santiago was the merest skirmish; but the spirit in which we handled ourselves there, I hope was the spirit in which we have to face our duties as citizens if we are to make this Republic what it must be made.

Yesterday, in passing over the Chickamauga battle-field, I was immensely struck by the monument raised by Kentucky to the Union and Confederate soldiers from Kentucky who fell on that battle-field. The inscription reads as follows: “As we are united in life, and they united in death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and one people, forgetful of all asperities, forever hold in grateful remembrance all the glories of that terrible conflict which made all men free and retained every star on the nation’s flag.” That is a good sentiment. That is a sentiment by which we can all stand. And oh, my friends! what does that sentiment have as its underlying spirit? The spirit of brotherhood!

I firmly believe in my countrymen, and therefore I believe that the chief thing necessary in order that they shall work together is that they shall know one another—that the Northerner shall know the Southerner, and the man of one occupation know the man of another occupation; the man who works in one walk of life know the man who works in another walk of life, so that we may realize that the things which divide us are superficial, are unimportant, and that we are, and must ever be, knit together into one indissoluble mass by our common American brotherhood.

AT DANVILLE, VA., SEPTEMBER 9, 1902

My Fellow-Citizens:

I did not expect to have the chance of speaking to any of you of Virginia on this trip. I only wish it had been my good fortune to be able to go through your grand and beautiful historic State by daylight. But you have not escaped me, gentlemen; I am going to come again.

Yesterday and to-day I spent in Tennessee and North Carolina. I have enjoyed much those two days. It is a good thing for any American, and it is an especially good thing for the American who happens to be President at any time, to go around in the country and meet his fellow-Americans of different sections and different States. The more he sees of his fellow-Americans the more he will realize that the differences which divide them are trivial and that the likenesses which unite them are fundamental. A good American is a good American wherever he is, and a bad American is a poor one wherever he is. If a man is a decent citizen, if he does his duty to his family, to his neighbors, to the State and the nation, as a decent man ought to, then he is a man who has a right to claim kinship and comradeship with every other decent American from one end of this country to the other. If he is a straight man he is a credit to all of us, and if he is a crooked man he is a disgrace to all of us. Fundamentally, for weal or for woe, we are knit together; we shall go up or go down together. If hard times come they come without much regard to State lines. If good times come they come without regard to State lines. Wherever a deed is done by an American which reflects credit upon our country, each of us can walk with his head a little higher in consequence; and wherever anything happens through the fault of any of us that is discreditable it discredits all of us more or less.

Gentlemen and ladies, I thank you greatly for having come down here to greet me. It is a genuine pleasure to see you. No man of the United States, proud of the history of the United States, can fail to feel certain associations of reverence and regard awakened when he treads the soil of Virginia, which has taken so leading a part in peace and in war throughout our history.

AT MUSIC HALL, CINCINNATI, OHIO, ON THE EVENING OF SEPTEMBER 20, 1902

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

I shall ask your attention to what I say to-night, because I intend to make a perfectly serious argument to you, and I shall be obliged if you will remain as still as possible; and I ask that those at the very back will remember that if they talk or make a noise it interferes with the hearing of the rest. I intend to speak to you on a serious subject and to make an argument as the Chief Executive of a nation, who is the President of all the people, without regard to party, without regard to section. I intend to make to you an argument from the standpoint simply of one American talking to his fellow-Americans upon one of the great subjects of interest to all alike; and that subject is what are commonly known as trusts. The word is used very loosely and almost always with technical inaccuracy. The average man, however, when he speaks of the trusts means rather vaguely all of the very big corporations, the growth of which has been so signal a feature of our modern civilization, and especially those big corporations which, though organized in one State, do business in several States, and often have a tendency to monopoly.

The whole subject of the trusts is of vital concern to us, because it presents one, and perhaps the most conspicuous, of the many problems forced upon our attention by the tremendous industrial development which has taken place during the last century, a development which is occurring in all civilized countries, notably in our own. There have been many factors responsible for bringing about these changed conditions. Of these, steam and electricity are the chief. The extraordinary changes in the methods of transportation of merchandise and of transmission of news have rendered not only possible, but inevitable, the immense increase in the rate of growth of our great industrial centres—that is, of our great cities. I want you to bring home to yourselves that fact. When Cincinnati was founded news could be transmitted and merchandise carried exactly as has been the case in the days of the Roman Empire. You had here on your river the flat-boat, you had on the ocean the sailing-ship, you had the pack-train, you had the wagon, and every one of the four was known when Babylon fell. The change in the last hundred years has been greater by far than the changes in all the preceding three thousand. Those are the facts. Because of them have resulted the specialization of industries, and the unexampled opportunities offered for the employment of huge amounts of capital, and therefore for the rise in the business world of those master-minds through whom alone it is possible for such vast amounts of capital to be employed with profit. It matters very little whether we like these new conditions or whether we dislike them; whether we like the creation of these new opportunities or not. Many admirable qualities which were developed in the older, simpler, less progressive life have tended to atrophy under our rather feverish, high-pressure, complex life of to-day. But our likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the matter. The new conditions are here. You can’t bring back the old days of the canalboat and stagecoach if you wish. The steamboat and the railroad are here. The new forces have produced both good and evil. We can not get rid of them—even if it were not undesirable to get rid of them; and our instant duty is to try to accommodate our social, economic and legislative life to them, and to frame a system of law and conduct under which we shall get out of them the utmost possible benefit and the least possible amount of harm. It is foolish to pride ourselves upon our progress and prosperity, upon our commanding position in the international industrial world, and at the same time have nothing but denunciation for the men to whose commanding position we in part owe this very progress and prosperity, this commanding position.

Whenever great social or industrial changes take place, no matter how much good there may be to them, there is sure to be some evil; and it usually takes mankind a number of years and a good deal of experimenting before they find the right ways in which so far as possible to control the new evil, without at the same time nullifying the new good. I am stating facts so obvious that if each one of you will think them over you will think them trite, but if you read or listen to some of the arguments advanced, you will come to the conclusion that there is need of learning these trite truths. In these circumstances the effort to bring the new tendencies to a standstill is always futile and generally mischievous; but it is possible somewhat to develop them aright. Law can to a degree guide, protect and control industrial development, but it can never cause it, or play more than a subordinate part in its healthy development—unfortunately it is easy enough by bad laws to bring it to an almost complete stop.

In dealing with the big corporations which we call trusts, we must resolutely purpose to proceed by evolution and not revolution. We wish to face the facts, declining to have our vision blinded either by the folly of those who say there are no evils, or by the more dangerous folly of those who either see, or make believe that they see, nothing but evil in all the existing system, and who if given their way would destroy the evil by the simple process of bringing ruin and disaster to the entire country. The evils attendant upon over-capitalization alone are, in my judgment, sufficient to warrant a far closer supervision and control than now exists over the great corporations. Wherever a substantial monopoly can be shown to exist we should certainly try our utmost to devise an expedient by which it can be controlled. Doubtless some of the evils existing in or because of the great corporations can not be cured by any legislation which has yet been proposed, and doubtless others, which have really been incident to the sudden development in the formation of corporations of all kinds, will in the end cure themselves. But there will remain a certain number which can be cured if we decide that by the power of the Government they are to be cured. The surest way to prevent the possibility of curing any of them is to approach the subject in a spirit of violent rancor, complicated with total ignorance of business interests and fundamental incapacity or unwillingness to understand the limitations upon all law-making bodies. No problem, and least of all so difficult a problem as this, can be solved if the qualities brought to its solution are panic, fear, envy, hatred, and ignorance. There can exist in a free republic no man more wicked, no man more dangerous to the people, than he who would arouse these feelings in the hope that they would redound to his own political advantage. Corporations that are handled honestly and fairly, so far from being an evil, are a natural business evolution and make for the general prosperity of our land. We do not wish to destroy corporations, but we do wish to make them subserve the public good. All individuals, rich or poor, private or corporate, must be subject to the law of the land; and the government will hold them to a rigid obedience thereof. The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law. The rich man who does not see that this is in his interest is indeed short-sighted. When we make him obey the law we ensure for him the absolute protection of the law.

The savings banks show what can be done in the way of genuinely beneficent work by large corporations when intelligently administered and supervised. They now hold over twenty-six hundred millions of the people’s money and pay annually about one hundred millions of interest or profit to their depositors. There is no talk of danger from these corporations; yet they possess great power, holding over three times the amount of our present national debt, more than all the currency, gold, silver, greenbacks, etc., in circulation in the United States. The chief reason for there being no talk of danger from them is that they are on the whole faithfully administered for the benefit of all, under wise laws which require frequent and full publication of their condition, and which prescribe certain needful regulations with which they have to comply, while at the same time giving full scope for the business enterprise of their managers within these limits.

Now of course savings banks are as highly specialized a class of corporations as railroads, and we can not force too far the analogy with other corporations; but there are certain conditions which I think we can lay down as indispensable to the proper treatment of all corporations which from their size have become important factors in the social development of the community.

Before speaking, however, of what can be done by way of remedy let me say a word or two as to certain proposed remedies which, in my judgment, would be ineffective or mischievous. The first thing to remember is that if we are to accomplish any good at all it must be by resolutely keeping in mind the intention to do away with any evils in the conduct of big corporations, while steadfastly refusing to assent to indiscriminate assault upon all forms of corporate capital as such. The line of demarcation we draw must always be on conduct, not upon wealth; our objection to any given corporation must be, not that it is big, but that it behaves badly. Perfectly simple again, my friends, but not always heeded by some of those who would strive to teach us how to act toward big corporations. Treat the head of the corporation as you would treat all other men. If he does well stand by him. You will occasionally find the head of a big corporation who objects to that treatment; very good, apply it all the more carefully. Remember, after all, that he who objects because he is the head of a big corporation to being treated like any one else is only guilty of the same sin as the man who wishes him treated worse than any one else because he is the head of a big corporation. Demagogic denunciation of wealth is never wholesome and is generally dangerous; and not a few of the proposed methods of curbing the trusts are dangerous chiefly because all insincere advocacy of the impossible is dangerous. It is an unhealthy thing for a community when the appeal is made to follow a course which those who make the appeal either do know, or ought to know, can not be followed; and which, if followed, would result in disaster to everybody. Loose talk about destroying monopoly out of hand without a hint as to how the monopoly should even be defined offers a case in point.

Nor can we afford to tolerate any proposal which will strike at the so-called trusts only by striking at the general well-being. We are now enjoying a period of great prosperity. The prosperity is generally diffused through all sections and through all classes. Doubtless there are some individuals who do not get enough of it, and there are others who get too much. That is simply another way of saying that the wisdom of mankind is finite; and that even the best human system does not work perfectly. You don’t have to take my word for that. Look back just nine years. In 1893 nobody was concerned in downing the trusts. Everybody was concerned in trying to get up himself. The men who propose to get rid of the evils of the trusts by measures which would do away with the general well-being, advocate a policy which would not only be a damage to the community as a whole, but which would defeat its own professed object. If we are forced to the alternative of choosing either a system under which most of us prosper somewhat, though a few of us prosper too much, or else a system under which no one prospers enough, of course we will choose the former. If the policy advocated is so revolutionary and destructive as to involve the whole community in the crash of common disaster, it is as certain as anything can be that when the disaster has occurred all efforts to regulate the trusts will cease, and that the one aim will be to restore prosperity.

A remedy much advocated at the moment is to take off the tariff from all articles which are made by trusts. To do this it will be necessary first to define trusts. The language commonly used by the advocates of the method implies that they mean all articles made by large corporations, and that the changes in tariff are to be made with punitive intent toward these large corporations. Of course if the tariff is to be changed in order to punish them, it should be changed so as to punish those that do ill, not merely those that are prosperous. It would be neither just nor expedient to punish the big corporations as big corporations; what we wish to do is to protect the people from any evil that may grow out of their existence or maladministration. Some of those corporations do well and others do ill. If in any case the tariff is found to foster a monopoly which does ill, of course no protectionist would object to a modification of the tariff sufficient to remedy the evil. But in very few cases does the so-called trust really monopolize the market. Take any very big corporation—I could mention them by the score—which controls, say, something in the neighborhood of half of the products of a given industry. It is the kind of corporation that is always spoken of as a trust. Surely in rearranging the schedules affecting such a corporation it would be necessary to consider the interests of its smaller competitors which control the remaining part, and which, being weaker, would suffer most from any tariff designed to punish all the producers; for, of course, the tariff must be made light or heavy for big and little producers alike. Moreover, such a corporation necessarily employs very many thousands, often very many tens of thousands of workmen, and the minute we proceeded from denunciation to action it would be necessary to consider the interests of these workmen. Furthermore, the products of many trusts are unprotected, and would be entirely unaffected by any change in the tariff, or at most very slightly so. The Standard Oil Company offers a case in point; and the corporations which control the anthracite coal output offer another—for there is no duty whatever on anthracite coal.

I am not now discussing the question of the tariff as such; whether from the standpoint of the fundamental difference between those who believe in a protective tariff and those who believe in free trade; or from the standpoint of those who, while they believe in a protective tariff, feel that there could be a rearrangement of our schedules, either by direct legislation or by reciprocity treaties, which would result in enlarging our markets; nor yet from the standpoint of those who feel that stability of economic policy is at the moment our prime economic need, and that the benefits to be derived from any change in schedules would not compensate for the damage to business caused by the widespread agitation which would follow any attempted general revision of the tariff at this moment. Without regard to the wisdom of any one of those three positions it remains true that the real evils connected with the trusts can not be remedied by any change in the tariff laws. The trusts can be damaged by depriving them of the benefits of a protective tariff, only on condition of damaging all their smaller competitors, and all the wage-workers employed in the industry. This point is very important, and it is desirable to avoid any misunderstanding concerning it. I am not now considering whether or not, on grounds totally unconnected with the trusts, it would be well to lower the duties on various schedules, either by direct legislation or by legislation or treaties designed to secure as an offset reciprocal advantages from the nations with which we trade. My point is that changes in the tariff would have little appreciable effect on the trusts save as they shared in the general harm or good proceeding from such changes. No tariff change would help one of our smaller corporations, or one of our private individuals in business, still less one of our wage-workers, as against a large corporation in the same business; on the contrary, if it bore heavily on the large corporation it would inevitably be felt still more by that corporation’s weaker rivals, while any injurious result would of necessity be shared by both the employer and the employed in the business concerned. The immediate introduction of substantial free trade in all articles manufactured by trusts, that is, by the largest and most successful corporations, would not affect some of the most powerful of our business combinations in the least, save by the damage done to the general business welfare of the country; others would undoubtedly be seriously affected, but much less so than their weaker rivals, while the loss would be divided between the capitalists and the laborers; and after the years of panic and distress had been lived through, and some return to prosperity had occurred, even though all were on a lower plane of prosperity than before, the relative difference between the trusts and their rivals would remain as marked as ever. In other words, the trust, or big corporation, would have suffered relatively to, and in the interest of, its foreign competitor; but its relative position toward its American competitors would probably be improved; little would have been done toward cutting out or minimizing the evils in the trusts; nothing toward securing adequate control and regulation of the large modern corporations. In other words, the question of regulating the trusts with a view to minimizing or abolishing the evils existent in them is separate and apart from the question of tariff revision.

You must face the fact that only harm will come from a proposition to attack the so-called trusts in a vindictive spirit by measures conceived solely with a desire of hurting them, without regard as to whether or not discrimination should be made between the good and evil in them, and without even any regard as to whether a necessary sequence of the action would be the hurting of other interests. The adoption of such a policy would mean temporary damage to the trusts, because it would mean temporary damage to all of our business interests; but the effect would be only temporary, for exactly as the damage affected all alike, good and bad, so the reaction would affect all alike, good and bad. The necessary supervision and control, in which I firmly believe as the only method of eliminating the real evils of the trusts, must come through wisely and cautiously framed legislation, which shall aim in the first place to give definite control to some sovereign over the great corporations, and which shall be followed, when once this power has been conferred, by a system giving to the Government the full knowledge which is the essential for satisfactory action. Then when this knowledge—one of the essential features of which is proper publicity—has been gained, what further steps of any kind are necessary can be taken with the confidence born of the possession of power to deal with the subject, and of a thorough knowledge of what should and can be done in the matter.

We need additional power; and we need knowledge. Our Constitution was framed when the economic conditions were so different that each State could wisely be left to handle the corporations within its limits as it saw fit. Nowadays all the corporations which I am considering do what is really an interstate business, and as the States have proceeded on very different lines in regulating them, at present a corporation will be organized in one State, not because it intends to do business in that State, but because it does not, and therefore that State can give it better privileges, and then it will do business in some other States, and will claim not to be under the control of the States in which it does business; and of course it is not the object of the State creating it to exercise any control over it, as it does not do any business in that State. Such a system can not obtain. There must be some sovereign. It might be better if all the States could agree along the same lines in dealing with these corporations, but I see not the slightest prospect of such an agreement. Therefore, I personally feel that ultimately the nation will have to assume the responsibility of regulating these very large corporations which do an interstate business. The States must combine to meet the way in which capital has combined; and the way in which the States can combine is through the National Government. But I firmly believe that all these obstacles can be met if only we face them, both with the determination to overcome them, and with the further determination to overcome them in ways which shall not do damage to the country as a whole; which on the contrary shall further our industrial development, and shall help instead of hindering all corporations which work out their success by means that are just and fair toward all men.

Without the adoption of a constitutional amendment, my belief is that a good deal can be done by law. It is difficult to say exactly how much, because experience has taught us that in dealing with these subjects, where the lines dividing the rights and duties of the States and of the Nation are in doubt, it has sometimes been difficult for Congress to forecast the action of the courts upon its legislation. Such legislation (whether obtainable now, or obtainable only after a constitutional amendment) should provide for a reasonable supervision, the most prominent feature of which at first should be publicity; that is, the making public, both to the governmental authorities and to the people at large, the essential facts in which the public is concerned. This would give us exact knowledge of many points which are now not only in doubt, but the subject of fierce controversy. Moreover, the mere fact of the publication would cure some very grave evils, for the light of day is a deterrent to wrongdoing. It would doubtless disclose other evils with which, for the time being, we could devise no way to grapple. Finally, it would disclose others which could be grappled with and cured by further legislative action.

Remember, I advocate the action which the President can only advise, and which he has no power himself to take. Under our present legislative and constitutional limitations the national executive can work only between narrow lines in the field of action concerning great corporations. Between those lines, I assure you that exact and even-handed justice will be dealt, and is being dealt, to all men, without regard to persons.

I wish to repeat with all emphasis that desirable though it is that the nation should have the power I suggest, it is equally desirable that it should be used with wisdom and self-restraint. The mechanism of modern business is tremendous in its size and complexity, and ignorant intermeddling with it would be disastrous. We should not be made timid or daunted by the size of the problem; we should not fear to undertake it; but we should undertake it with ever-present in our minds dread of the sinister spirits of rancor, ignorance, and vanity. We need to keep steadily in mind the fact that besides the tangible property in each corporation there lies behind the spirit which brings it success, and in the case of each very successful corporation this is usually the spirit of some one man or set of men. Under exactly similar conditions one corporation will make a stupendous success where another makes a stupendous failure, simply because one is well managed and the other is not. While making it clear that we do not intend to allow wrongdoing by one of the captains of industry any more than by the humblest private in the industrial ranks, we must also in the interests of all of us avoid cramping a strength which, if beneficently used, will be for the good of all of us. The marvelous prosperity we have been enjoying for the past few years has been due primarily to the high average of honesty, thrift, and business capacity among our people as a whole; but some of it has also been due to the ability of the men who are the industrial leaders of the nation. In securing just and fair dealing by these men let us remember to do them justice in return, and this not only because it is our duty, but because it is our interest; not only for their sakes, but for ours. We are neither the friend of the rich man as such, nor the friend of the poor man as such; we are the friend of the honest man, rich or poor; and we intend that all men, rich and poor alike, shall obey the law alike and receive its protection alike.

AT THE BANQUET OF THE SPANISH WAR VETERANS, DETROIT, MICH., SEPTEMBER 22, 1902

Mr. Mayor, and you, my Comrades, and all of you, my Fellow-Americans, Men and Women of Detroit:

While the war with Spain was easy enough, the tasks left behind, though glorious, have been hard. You, the men of the Spanish War, and your comrades in arms who fought in Cuba and Porto Rico and in the Philippines, won renown for the country, added to its moral grandeur and to its material prosperity; but you also left duties to be done by those who came after you. In Porto Rico the duty has been merely administrative, and it has been so well done that very little need be said about it.

I speak in the presence not only of the men who fought in the Spanish War and in the Philippine War, which was its aftermath, but in the presence of those who fought in the great Civil War; and more than that, I speak here in a typical city of the old Northwest, what is now the Middle West, in a typical State of our Union. You men of Michigan have been mighty in war and mighty in peace. You belong to a country mighty in war and mighty in peace—a country of a great past, whose great present is but an earnest of an even greater future. The world has never seen more marvelous prosperity than that which we now enjoy, and this prosperity is not ephemeral. We shall have our ups and downs. The waves at times will recede, but the tide will go steadily higher. This country has never yet been called upon to meet a crisis in war or a crisis in peace to which it did not eventually prove equal. I preach the gospel of hope to you men of the West who in thought and life embody this gospel of hope, this gospel of resolute and confident belief in your own powers and in the destiny of this mighty Republic. I believe in the future—not in a spirit which will sit down and look for the future to work itself out—but with a determination to do its part in making the future what it can and shall be made. We are optimists. We spurn the teachings of despair and distrust. We have an abiding faith in the growing strength, the growing future of the mighty young nation, still in the flush of its youth, and yet with the might of a giant, which stands on a continent and grasps an ocean with either hand.

Succeed? Of course we shall succeed! How can success fail to come to a race of masterful energy and resoluteness, which has a continent for the base of its domain, and which feels within its veins the thrill that comes to generous souls when their strength stirs in them, and they know that the future is theirs? No great destiny ever yet came to a people walking with their eyes on the ground and their faces shrouded in gloom. No great destiny ever yet came to a people who feared the future, who feared failure more than they hoped for success. With such as these we have no part. We know there are dangers ahead, as we know there are evils to fight and overcome, but we feel to the full the pulse of the prosperity which we enjoy. Stout of heart, we see across the dangers the great future that lies beyond, and we rejoice as a giant refreshed, as a strong man girt for the race; and we go down into the arena where the nations strive for mastery, our hearts lifted with the faith that to us and to our children and our children’s children it shall be given to make this Republic the mightiest among the peoples of mankind.

AT LOGANSPORT, IND., SEPTEMBER 23, 1902

Fellow-Citizens:

I am going to ask you to take what I say at its exact face value, as I like whatever I say to be taken. It is suggested by coming to this great Western State and speaking to one of its thriving cities. We believe that the American business man is of a peculiar type; and probably the qualities of energy, daring, and resourcefulness which have given him his prominence in the international industrial world find their highest development here in the West. It is the merest truism to say that in the modern world industrialism is the great factor in the growth of nations. Material prosperity is the foundation upon which every mighty national structure must be built. Of course there must be more than this. There must be a high moral purpose, a life of the spirit which finds its expression in many different ways; but unless material prosperity exists also there is scant room in which to develop the higher life. The productive activity of our vast army of workers, of those who work with head or hands, is the prime cause of the giant growth of this nation. We have great natural resources, but such resources are never more than opportunities, and they count for nothing if the men in possession have not the power to take advantage of them. You have built up in the West these cities of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes; as all the region round about them has been built up—that is, because you had the qualities of heart and brain, the qualities of moral and physical fibre, which enabled you to use to the utmost advantage whatever you found ready to your hands. You win, not by shirking difficulties, but by facing and overcoming them.

In such development laws play a certain part, but individual characteristics a still greater part. A great and successful commonwealth like ours in the long run works under good laws, because a people endowed with honest and practical common-sense ultimately demands good laws. But no law can create industrial well-being, although it may foster and safeguard it, and although a bad law may destroy it. The prime factor in securing industrial well-being is the high average of citizenship found in the community. The best laws that the wit of man can devise would not make a community of thriftless and idle men prosperous. No scheme of legislation or of social reform will ever work good to the community unless it recognizes as fundamental the fact that each man’s own individual qualities must be the prime factors in his success. Work in combination may help and the State can do a good deal in its own sphere, but in the long run each man must rise or fall on his own merits; each man must owe his success in life to whatever of hardihood, of resolution, of common-sense and of capacity for lofty endeavor he has within his own soul. It is a good thing to act in combination for the common good, but it is a very unhealthy thing to let ourselves think for one moment that anything can ever supply the want of our own individual watchfulness and exertion.

Yet given this high average of individual ability and invention, we must ever keep in mind that it may be nullified by bad legislation, and that it can be given a chance to develop under the most favorable conditions by good legislation. Probably the most important aid which can be contributed by the National Government to the material well-being of the country is to ensure its financial stability. An honest currency is the strongest symbol and expression of honest business life. The business world must exist largely on credit, and to credit confidence is essential. Any tampering with the currency, no matter with what purpose, if fraught with the suspicion of dishonesty, in result is fatal in its effects on business prosperity. Very ignorant and primitive communities are continually obliged to learn the elementary truth that the repudiation of debts is in the end ruinous to the debtors as a class; and when communities have moved somewhat higher in the scale of civilization they also learn that anything in the nature of a debased currency works similar damage. A financial system of assured honesty is the first essential.

Another essential for any community is perseverance in the economic policy which for a course of years is found best fitted to its peculiar needs. The question of combining such fixedness of economic policy as regards the tariff, while at the same time allowing for a necessary and proper readjustment of duties in particular schedules, as such readjustment becomes a matter of pressing importance, is not an easy one. It is perhaps too much to expect that from the discussion of such a question it would be possible wholly to eliminate political partisanship. Yet those who believe, as we all must when we think seriously of the subject, that the proper aim of the party system is after all simply to subserve the public good, can not but hope that where such partisanship on a matter of this kind conflicts with the public good it shall at least be minimized. It is all right and inevitable that we should divide on party lines, but woe to us if we are not Americans first, and party men second. What we really need in this country is to treat the tariff as a business proposition from the standpoint of the interests of the country as a whole, and not from the standpoint of the temporary needs of any political party. It surely ought not to be necessary to dwell upon the extreme unwisdom, from a business standpoint, from the standpoint of national prosperity, of violent and radical changes amounting to the direct upsetting of tariff policies at intervals of every few years. A nation like ours can adjust its business after a fashion to any kind of tariff. But neither our nation nor any other can stand the ruinous policy of readjusting its business to radical changes in the tariff at short intervals. This is more true now than ever it was before, for owing to the immense extent and variety of our products, the tariff schedules of to-day carry rates of duty on more than four thousand articles. Continual sweeping changes in such a tariff, touching so intimately the commercial interests of the nation which stands as one of the two or three greatest in the whole industrial world, can not but be disastrous. Yet on the other hand where the industrial needs of the nation shift as rapidly as they do with us, it is a matter of prime importance that we should be able to readjust our economic policy as rapidly as possible and with as little friction as possible to these needs.

We need a scheme which will enable us to provide a reapplication of the principle to the changed conditions. The problem therefore is to devise some method by which these shifting needs can be recognized and the necessary readjustments of duties provided without forcing the entire business community, and therefore the entire nation, to submit to a violent surgical operation, the mere threat of which, and still more the accomplished fact of which, would probably paralyze for a considerable time all the industries of the country. Such a radical action might very readily reproduce the conditions from which we suffered nine years ago, in 1893. It is on every account most earnestly to be hoped that this problem can be solved in some manner into which partisanship shall enter as a purely secondary consideration, if at all; that is, in some manner which shall provide for an earnest effort by non-partisan inquiry and action to secure any changes the need of which is indicated by the effect found to proceed from a given rate of duty on a given article; its effect, if any, as regards the creation of a substantial monopoly; its effect upon domestic prices, upon the revenue of the government, upon importations from abroad, upon home productions, and upon consumption. In other words, we need to devise some machinery by which, while persevering in the policy of a protective tariff, in which I think the nation as a whole has now generally acquiesced, we would be able to correct the irregularities and remove the incongruities produced by changing conditions, without destroying the whole structure. Such machinery would permit us to continue our definitely settled tariff policy, while providing for the changes in duties upon particular schedules which must inevitably and necessarily take place from time to time as matters of legislative and administrative detail. This would secure the needed stability of economic policy which is a prime factor in our industrial success, while doing away with any tendency to fossilization. It would recognize the fact that, as our needs shift, it may be found advisable to alter rates and schedules, adapting them to the changed conditions and necessities of the whole people; and this would be in no wise incompatible with preserving the principle of protection, for belief in the wisdom of a protective tariff is in no way inconsistent with frankly admitting the desirability of changing a set of schedules, when from any cause such change is in the interests of the nation as a whole—and our tariff policy is designed to favor the interests of the nation as a whole and not those of any particular set of individuals save as an incident to this building up of national well-being. There are two or three different methods by which it will be possible to provide such readjustment without any shock to the business world. My personal preference would be for action which should be taken only after preliminary inquiry by and upon the findings of a body of experts of such high character and ability that they could be trusted to deal with the subject purely from the standpoint of our business and industrial needs; but, of course, Congress would have to determine for itself the exact method to be followed. The Executive has at its command the means for gathering most of the necessary data, and can act whenever it is the desire of Congress that it should act. That the machinery for carrying out the policy above outlined can be provided I am very certain, if only our people will make up their minds that the health of the community will be subserved by treating the whole question primarily from the standpoint of the business interests of the entire country, rather than from the standpoint of the fancied interests of any group of politicians.