ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS (continued 6)

Remember always that in the Philippines the American Government has tried and is trying to carry out exactly what the greatest genius and most revered patriot ever known in the Philippine Islands—José Rizal—steadfastly advocated. This man shortly before his death, in a message to his countrymen, under date of December 16, 1896, condemned unsparingly the insurrection of Aguinaldo, terminated just before our navy appeared upon the scene, and pointed out the path his people should follow to liberty and enlightenment. Speaking of the insurrection and of the pretence that Filipino independence of a wholesome character could thereby be obtained, he wrote:

“When, in spite of my advice, a movement was begun, I offered of my own accord, not only my services, but my life and even my good name to be used in any way they might believe effective in stifling the rebellion. I thought of the disaster which would follow the success of the revolution, and I deemed myself fortunate if by any sacrifice I could block the progress of such a useless calamity.

“My countrymen, I have given proof that I was one who sought liberty for our country and I still seek it. But as a first step I insisted upon the development of the people in order that, by means of education and of labor, they might acquire the proper individual character and force which would make them worthy of it. In my writings I have commended to you study and civic virtue, without which our redemption does not exist.... I can not do less than condemn, and I do condemn, this absurd and savage insurrection planned behind my back, which dishonors us before the Filipinos and discredits us with those who otherwise would argue in our behalf. I abominate its cruelties and disavow any kind of connection with it, regretting with all the sorrow of my soul that these reckless men have allowed themselves to be deceived. Let them return, then, to their homes, and may God pardon those who have acted in bad faith.”

This message embodied precisely and exactly the avowed policy upon which the American Government has acted in the Philippines. What the patriot Rizal said with such force in speaking of the insurrection before we came to the islands applies with tenfold greater force to those who foolishly or wickedly opposed the mild and beneficent government we were instituting in the islands. The judgment of the martyred public servant, Rizal, whose birthday the Philippine people celebrate, and whom they worship as their hero and ideal, sets forth the duty of American sovereignty; a duty from which the American people will never flinch.

While we have been doing these great and beneficent works in the islands, we have yet been steadily reducing the cost at which they are done. The last Congress repealed the law for the war taxes, and the War Department has reduced the Army from the maximum number of one hundred thousand allowed under the law to very nearly the minimum of sixty thousand.

Moreover, the last Congress enacted some admirable legislation affecting the Army, passing first of all the militia bill and then the bill to create a general staff. The militia bill represents the realization of a reform which had been championed ineffectively by Washington, and had been fruitlessly agitated ever since. At last we have taken from the statute books the obsolete militia law of the Revolutionary days and have provided for efficient aid to the National Guard of the States. I believe that no other great country has such fine natural material for volunteer soldiers as we have, and it is the obvious duty of the nation and of the States to make such provision as will enable this volunteer soldiery to be organized with all possible rapidity and efficiency in time of war; and, furthermore, to help in every way the National Guard in time of peace. The militia law enacted by the Congress marks the first long step ever taken in this direction by the National Government. The general-staff law is of immense importance and benefit to the Regular Army. Individually, I would not admit that the American regular, either officer or enlisted man, is inferior to any other regular soldier in the world. In fact, if it were worth while to boast, I should be tempted to say that he was the best. But there must be proper training, proper organization and administration, in order to get the best service out of even the best troops. This is particularly the case with such a small army as ours, scattered over so vast a country. We do not need a large Regular Army, but we do need to have our small Regular Army the very best that can possibly be produced. Under the worn-out and ineffective organization which has hitherto existed, a sudden strain is absolutely certain to produce the dislocation and confusion we saw at the outbreak of the war with Spain; and when such dislocation and confusion occurs it is easy and natural, but entirely improper, to blame the men who happen to be in office, instead of the system which is really responsible. Under the law just enacted by Congress this system will be changed immensely for the better, and every patriotic American ought to rejoice; for when we come to the Army and the Navy we deal with the honor and interests of all our people; and when such is the case party lines are as nothing, and we all stand shoulder to shoulder as Americans, moved only by pride in and love for our common country.

AT MEDORA, NORTH DAKOTA, APRIL 7, 1903

My Friends and Neighbors:

I am very glad to see you all. I made up my mind that come what would I would stop at Medora. I first came to Medora twenty years ago, so I am a middling old settler. I meet boys, great big strapping men, and mothers of families who were children about three feet high when I knew them here. It is a very pleasant thing for me to see you. I shall not try to make you more than a very short talk, because I want to have the chance to shake hands with you. Most all of you are old friends. I have stopped at your houses and shared your hospitality. With some of the men I have ridden guard around the cattle at night, worked with them in the round-up, and hunted with them, so that I know them pretty well. It is the greatest possible pleasure to me to come back and see how you are getting along, to see the progress made by the State, to see the progress made up at this end in the place that I know so well, and it does me good to come here and see you. There is not a human being who is more proud of what you have done, and more pleased with your welfare and progress, than I am.

AT JAMESTOWN, N. D., APRIL 7, 1903

Mr. Chairman and my Fellow-Citizens:

I have only time to develop one thought to you to-day, and that is suggested to me by a letter sent me by a labor organization here in your city thanking me for some of the work that has been done in Congress this year, in connection with labor matters, in connection with what is called trust legislation. All that we have been trying to do, with a certain fair amount of success, through legislation and through administration, has been to do square and equal justice between man and man; to try to give every man a fair chance, to try to secure good treatment for him, if he deserves it, be he rich or poor, and to try to see that he does not wrong his fellow. After all, that is about what must be the essence of legislation, if it is to be really good legislation. Take such a matter as these so-called anti-trust laws—I always hate to have them called anti-trust laws or anti-corporation laws because they are not designed to hurt any corporation, they are simply designed for such regulations and control as will prevent the doing of ill. Take the anti-rebate law passed by the last Congress. It was merely designed to make effective previous legislation, to prevent any discrimination by any railroad in favor of or against any particular shipper—not trying to favor the big shipper or the little shipper; only trying to secure a fair deal for each, get fair play for each, so that each man shall have the chance to which he is entitled. That is not a bill aimed at the railroads, it is only aimed at any railroad that does anything wrong, in the same way that it is aimed at a shipper that does anything wrong—no more against the big shipper than the little shipper. It is meant to do square justice to each man, big or little, and to ensure, as far as by legislation we can secure, that he will do fair justice in return.

Take the report of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission and the spirit in which that commission went to work. They were not trying to decide for the operators or for the miners. They were trying to do justice to both the operator and the miner, and to secure justice for the general public.

Legislation to be thoroughly effective for good must proceed upon the principle of aiming to get for each man a fair chance to allow him to show the stuff there is in him. No legislation can make some men prosperous; no legislation can give wisdom to the foolish, courage to the timid, strength to the shiftless. All that legislation can do, and all that honest and fearless administration of the laws can do is to give each man as good a chance as possible to develop the qualities he has in him, and to protect him so far as is humanly possible against wrong of any kind at the hands of his fellows. That is what legislation can do, and that I think I may say we have successfully tried to do both by legislation and by the administration of the law.

I have seen you grow up. I am proud of you. I can assure you that so far as in me lies the efforts of the National Government, legislative and administrative, will be to help you and all others of our people in the only way in which they can be helped—to help them to help themselves, to help them so that each man shall have the fairest field to show the stuff that there is in him, the qualities that he has at his command.

AT LAYING OF CORNERSTONE OF GATEWAY TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, GARDINER, MONTANA, APRIL 24, 1903

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

I wish to thank the people of Montana generally, those of Gardiner and Cinnabar especially, and more especially still all those employed in the Park, whether in civil or military capacity, for my very enjoyable two weeks’ holiday.

It is a pleasure now to say a few words to you at the laying of the cornerstone of the beautiful road which is to mark the entrance to this Park. The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in the world, so far as I know. Nowhere else in any civilized country is there to be found such a tract of veritable wonderland made accessible to all visitors, where at the same time not only the scenery of the wilderness, but the wild creatures of the Park are scrupulously preserved; the only change being that these same wild creatures have been so carefully protected as to show a literally astounding tameness. The creation and preservation of such a great natural playground in the interest of our people as a whole is a credit to the nation; but above all a credit to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. It has been preserved with wise foresight. The scheme of its preservation is noteworthy in its essential democracy. Private game preserves, though they may be handled in such a way as to be not only good things for themselves, but good things for the surrounding community, can yet never be more than poor substitutes, from the standpoint of the public, for great national playgrounds such as this Yellowstone Park. This Park was created, and is now administered, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The government must continue to appropriate for it especially in the direction of completing and perfecting an excellent system of driveways. But already its beauties can be seen with great comfort in a short space of time and at an astoundingly small cost, and with the sense on the part of every visitor that it is in part his property, that it is the property of Uncle Sam and therefore of all of us. The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and preserving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures. When we have a good system of carriage roads throughout the Park—for of course it would be very unwise to allow either steam or electric roads in the Park—we shall have a region as easy and accessible to travel in as it is already every whit as interesting as any similar territory of the Alps or the Italian Riviera. The geysers, the extraordinary hot springs, the lakes, the mountains, the canyons, and cataracts unite to make this region something not wholly to be paralleled elsewhere on the globe. It must be kept for the benefit and enjoyment of all of us; and I hope to see a steadily increasing number of our people take advantage of its attractions. At present it is rather singular that a greater number of people come from Europe to see it than come from our own Eastern States. The people near by seem awake to its beauties; and I hope that more and more of our people who dwell far off will appreciate its really marvelous character. Incidentally, I should like to point out that some time people will surely awake to the fact that the Park has special beauties to be seen in winter; and any hardy man who can go through it in that season on skis will enjoy himself as he scarcely could elsewhere.

I wish especially to congratulate the people of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and notably you of Gardiner and Cinnabar and the immediate outskirts of the Park, for the way in which you heartily co-operate with the superintendent to prevent acts of vandalism and destruction. Major Pitcher has explained to me how much he owes to your co-operation and your lively appreciation of the fact that the Park is simply being kept in the interest of all of us, so that every one may have the chance to see its wonders with ease and comfort at the minimum of expense. I have always thought it was a liberal education to any man of the East to come West, and he can combine profit with pleasure if he will incidentally visit this Park, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and the Yosemite, and take the sea voyage to Alaska. Major Pitcher reports to me, by the way, that he has received invaluable assistance from the game wardens of Montana and Wyoming, and that the present game warden of Idaho has also promised his hearty aid.

The preservation of the forests is of course the matter of prime importance in every public reserve of this character. In this region of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains the problem of the water supply is the most important which the home-maker has to face. Congress has not of recent years done anything wiser than in passing the irrigation bill; and nothing is more essential to the preservation of the water supply than the preservation of the forests. Montana has in its water power a source of development which has hardly yet been touched. This water power will be seriously impaired if ample protection is not given the forests. Therefore this Park, like the forest reserves generally, is of the utmost advantage to the country around from the merely utilitarian side. But of course this Park, also because of its peculiar features, is to be preserved as a beautiful natural playground. Here all the wild creatures of the old days are being preserved, and their overflow into the surrounding country means that the people of the surrounding country, so long as they see that the laws are observed by all, will be able to ensure to themselves and to their children and to their children’s children much of the old-time pleasure of the hardy life of the wilderness and of the hunter in the wilderness. This pleasure, moreover, can under such conditions be kept for all who have the love of adventure and the hardihood to take advantage of it, with small regard for what their fortune may be. I can not too often repeat that the essential feature in the present management of the Yellowstone Park, as in all similar places, is its essential democracy—it is the preservation of the scenery, of the forests, of the wilderness life and the wilderness game for the people as a whole, instead of leaving the enjoyment thereof to be confined to the very rich who can control private reserves. I have been literally astounded at the enormous quantities of elk and at the number of deer, antelope and mountain sheep which I have seen on their wintering grounds; and the deer and sheep in particular are quite as tame as range stock. A few buffalo are being preserved. I wish very much that the government could somewhere provide for an experimental breeding station of cross-breeds between buffalo and the common cattle. If these cross-breeds could be successfully perpetuated we should have animals which would produce a robe quite as good as the old buffalo robe with which twenty years ago every one was familiar, and animals moreover which would be so hardy that I think they would have a distinct commercial importance. They would, for instance, be admirably suited for Alaska, a territory which I look to see develop astoundingly within the next decade or two, not only because of its furs and fisheries, but because of its agricultural and pastoral possibilities.

AT OMAHA, NEB., APRIL 27, 1903

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

It is a great pleasure to come before you this evening. Since Saturday I have been traveling through your great and beautiful State. I know your people; I have been with them; I have worked with them; and it is indeed a joy to come here now and see from one end of your State to the other the signs of your abounding prosperity. I feel that the future of Nebraska is secure. There will be temporary ups and downs, and of course if any of you are guilty of folly, from your own folly nothing can save you but yourselves. But if you act as I believe and trust that you will act, this State has a future before it second to that of no other State in this great Nation.

I address you to-night on the anniversary of the birth of the great silent soldier—Ulysses Grant, and I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words to an audience such as this in this great typical city of the West on the occasion of the birthday of the great Western general, the great American general. It is a good thing to pay homage with our lips to the illustrious dead. It is a good thing to keep in mind what we owe to the memories of Washington and his fellows, who founded this mighty Republic; to Abraham Lincoln and Grant and their fellows, who saved it. It is a far better thing to pay the homage that counts—the homage of our lives and our deeds. Illustrious memories of the Nation’s past are but curses if they serve the men of the Nation at present as excuses for shirking the problems of the day. They are blessings if they serve to spur on the men of now to see that they act as well in their time as the men of yesterday did in theirs.

Each generation has its peculiar problems; each generation has certain tasks allotted to it to do. Shame to it if it treats the glorious deeds of a generation that went before as an excuse for its own failure to do the peculiar task it finds ready to hand. Upon the way in which we solve our problems will depend whether our children and our children’s children shall look back or shall not look back to us with the veneration which we feel for the men of the mighty years of the Civil War. Our task is a lighter one than theirs, but it is an important one, and do it we must, if we wish to rise level to the standard set us by our forefathers. You in Nebraska have passed through periods of terrible privation, of misery and hardship. They were evil times. And yet, there is no experience, no evil, that out of it good can not come, if only we look at it right. Things are better now. Things can be kept better, but only on condition that we face facts with coolness and sanity, with clear-eyed vision that tells us what is true and what is false. When things go wrong there is a tendency in humanity to wish to blame some of its fellows. It is a natural tendency, and by no means always a wholesome tendency. There is always a tendency to feel that somehow by legislation, by the enactment of some law, by the trying of some patent scheme things can be made permanently better. Now, something can be done by law. A good deal can be done by law. Even more can be done by the honest administration of the law; an administration which knows neither fear nor favor, which treats each man exactly as that man’s record entitles him to be treated; the kind of enforcement of the law which I think I may promise that you will have while Mr. Knox remains Attorney-General. But more than the law, far more than the administration of the law, depends upon the individual quality of the average citizen. The chief factor in winning success for your State, for the people in the State, must be what the chief factor in winning the success of a people has been from the beginning of time—the character of the individual man, of the individual woman.

I have spoken of the homage we should pay to the memory of Grant. It is the homage we should pay to the memory of Lincoln, the homage we should pay to all of our fellow-countrymen who have at any time rendered great service to the Republic, and it can be rendered in most efficient form not by merely praising them for having dealt with problems which now we do not have to face, but by facing our problems in the same spirit in which they faced theirs. Nothing was more noteworthy in all of Lincoln’s character than the way in which he combined fealty to the loftiest ideal with a thoroughly practical capacity to achieve that ideal by practical methods. He did not war with phantoms; he did not struggle among the clouds; he faced facts; he endeavored to get the best results he could out of the warring forces with which he had to deal. When he could not get the best he was forced to content himself, and did content himself, with the best possible. What he did in his day we must do in ours. It is not possible to lay down any rule of conduct so specific that it will enable us to meet each particular issue as it arises. All that can be done is to lay down certain general rules, and then to try, each man for himself, to apply those general rules to the specific cases that come up.

Our complex industrial civilization has not only been productive of much benefit, but has also brought us face to face with many puzzling problems; problems that are puzzling, partly because there are men that are wicked, partly because there are good men who are foolish or short-sighted. There are many such to-day—the problems of labor and capital, the problems which we group together rather vaguely when we speak of the problems of the trusts, the problems affecting the farmers on the one hand, the railroads on the other. It would not be possible in any one place to deal with the particular shapes which these problems take at that time and in that place. And yet, there are certain general rules which can be laid down for dealing with them, and those rules are the immutable rules of justice, of sanity, of courage, of common-sense. Six months ago it fell to my lot to appoint a commission to investigate into and conclude about matters connected with the great and menacing strike in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. On that commission I appointed representatives of the church, of the bench, of the army, a representative of the capitalists of the region, and a representative of organized labor. They published a report which was not only of the utmost moment because of dealing with the great and vital problem with which they were appointed to deal, but also because in its conclusions it initiated certain general rules in so clear and masterful a fashion that I wish most earnestly it could receive the broadest circulation as a tract wherever there exists or threatens to exist trouble in any way akin to that with which those commissioners dealt.

If I might give a word of advice to Omaha, I should like to see your daily press publish in full the concluding portion of that report of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, signed by all the members thereof, by those in a special sense the champion of the wage-worker, and by those in a special sense identified with capital, organized or unorganized; because, men and women of Omaha, those people did not speak first as capitalist or as laborer, did not speak first as judge, as army man, as church man, but all of them signed that report as American citizens anxious to see right and justice prevail. No one quality will get us out of any difficulty. We need more than one; we need a good many. We need, as I said, the power first of each man’s honestly trying to look at the problem from his fellow’s standpoint. Capitalist and wage-worker alike should honestly endeavor each to look at any matter from the other’s standpoint, with a freedom on the one hand from the contemptible arrogance which looks down upon the man of less means, and on the other, from the no less contemptible envy, jealousy and rancor, which hates another because he is better off. Each quality is the supplement of the other, and in point of baseness there is not the weight of a finger to choose between them. Look at the report signed by those men; look at it in the spirit in which they wrote it, and if you can only make yourselves, make this community, approach the problems of to-day in the spirit that those men, your fellows, showed in approaching the problem of yesterday, your problems will be solved.

Any man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do it in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainty that class’s own worst enemy. In the long run, and as a whole, we are going to go up or go down together. Of course there will be individual exceptions, small, local exceptions, exceptions in kind, exceptions in place; but as a whole, if the commonwealth prospers some measure of prosperity comes to all of us. If it is not prosperous, then the adversity, though it may fall unequally upon us, will weigh more or less upon all. It lies with us ourselves to determine our own fate. I can not too often say that the wisest law, the best administration of the law, can do naught more than give us a fair field in which to work out that fate aright. If as individuals, or as a community, we mar our future by our own folly, let us remember that it is upon ourselves that the responsibility must rest.

FROM ADDRESS AT QUINCY, ILL., APRIL 29, 1903

Mr. Chairman and my Fellow-Citizens:

There is one matter which I think presses for national legislative attention—the matter of the currency. From your sister State of Iowa I have a Secretary of the Treasury, who, as he showed last fall, can be counted on to act with courage and with wisdom whenever the need arises, and to use fearlessly and coolly whatever the law now allows him to use. Our currency laws have been recently improved by specific declarations intended to secure permanency of values; but this does not imply that these laws may not be further improved and strengthened. It is wellnigh universally admitted, certainly in any business community such as this, that our currency system is wanting in elasticity; that is, the volume does not respond to the varying needs of the country as a whole, nor to the varying needs of the different localities as well as of different times. Our people scarcely need to be reminded that grain-raising communities require a larger volume of currency at harvest time than during the summer months; and the same principle in greater or less extent applies to every community. Our currency laws need such modification as will ensure definitely the parity of every dollar coined or issued by the government, and such expansion or contraction of the currency as will promptly and automatically respond to the varying needs of commerce. Permanent increase would be dangerous, permanent contraction ruinous, but the needed elasticity must be brought about by provisions which will permit both contraction and expansion as the varying needs of the several communities and business interests at different times and in different localities require.

AT ODEON HALL, ST. LOUIS, MO., BEFORE THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL GOOD ROADS CONVENTION, APRIL 29, 1903

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

When we wish to use descriptive terms fit to characterize great empires and the men who made those empires great, invariably one of the terms used is to signify that that empire built good roads. When we speak of the Romans, we speak of them as rulers, as conquerors, as administrators, as road builders. There were empires that rose over night and fell over night, empires whose influence was absolutely evanescent, which have passed away without leaving a trace of their former existence; but wherever the Roman established his rule the traces of that rule remain deep to-day, stamped on the language and customs of the people, or stamped in tangible form upon the soil itself. And so passing through Britain fifteen centuries and over after the dominion of Rome passed away, the Roman roads as features still remain; going through Italy, where power after power has risen, and flourished, and vanished since the days when the temporal dominion of the Roman emperors transferred its seat from Rome to Byzantium—going through Italy after the Lombard, the Goth, the Byzantine, and all the people of the Middle Ages that have ruled that country—it is the imperishable Roman road that reappears.

The faculty, the art, the habit of road building marks in a nation those solid, stable qualities which tell for permanent greatness. Merely from the standpoint of historic analogy we should have a right to ask that this people which has tamed a continent, which has built up a country with a continent for its base, which boasts itself, with truth, as the mightiest republic that the world has ever seen, which I firmly believe will in the century now opening rise to a position of headship and leadership such as no other nation has ever yet attained—merely from historic analogy, I say, we should have a right to demand that such a nation build good roads. Much more have we the right to demand it from the practical standpoint. The great difference between the semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages and the civilization which succeeded it was the difference between poor and good means of communication. And we to whom space is less of an obstacle than ever it was in the history of any other nation, we who have spanned a continent, who have thrust our border westward in the course of a century and a quarter until it has gone from the Atlantic to the Alleghanies, from the Alleghanies down into the valley of the Mississippi, across the great plains, over the Rockies to where the Golden Gate lets through the long heaving waters of the Pacific, and finally to Alaska, to the Arctic regions, to the tropic islands of the sea—we who take so little account of mere space must see to it that the best means of nullifying the existence of space are at our command.

Of course, during the last century there has been an altogether phenomenal growth of one kind of road wholly unknown to the people of an earlier period—the iron road. The railroad is, of course, something purely modern. A great many excellent people have proceeded upon the assumption that somehow or other having good railways should be a substitute for having good highways, good ordinary roads. A more untenable position can not be imagined. What the railway does is to develop the country; and of course its development implies that the developed country will need more and better roads.

A few years ago it was a matter of humiliation that there should be so little attention paid to our roads; that there should be a willingness not merely to refrain from making good roads, but to let the roads that were in existence become worse. I can not too heartily congratulate our people upon the existence of a body such as this, ramifying into every section of the country, having its connections in every State of the country, and bent upon that eminently proper work of making the conditions of life easier and better for the people whom of all others we can least afford to see grow discontented with their lot in life—the people who live in the country districts. The extraordinary, the wholly unheard-of, rate of our industrial development during the past seventy-five years, together with the good sides has had some evil sides. It is a fine thing to see our cities built up, but not at the expense of the country districts. The healthy thing to see is the building up of both the country and city go hand in hand. But we can not expect the ablest, the most eager, the most ambitious young men to stay in the country, to stay on the farm, unless they have certain advantages. If the farm life is a life of isolation, a life in which it is a matter of great and real difficulty for one man to communicate with his neighbor, you can rest assured that there will be a tendency to leave it on the part of those very people whom we should most wish to see stay in it. It is a good thing to encourage in every way any tendency which will tend to check an unhealthy flow from the country to the city. There are several such tendencies in evidence at present. The growth of electricity as a means of transportation tends to a certain degree to exercise a centrifugal force to offset the centripetal force of steam. Exactly as steam and electricity have tended to gather men in masses, so now electricity, as applied to the purposes which steam has so long claimed as exclusively its own, tends again to scatter out the masses. The trolley lines that go out into the country are doing a great deal to render it more possible to live in the country and yet not to lose wholly the advantages of the town. The telephone is not to be minimized as an instrument with a tendency in the same direction; and rural free delivery is playing its part along the same lines. But no one thing can do more to offset the tendency toward an unhealthy growth from the country into the city than the making and keeping of good roads. They are needed for the sake of their effect upon the industrial conditions of the country districts; and I am almost tempted to say they are needed for the sake of social conditions in the country districts. If winter means to the average farmer the existence of a long line of liquid morasses through which he is to move his goods if bent on business, or to wade and swim if bent on pleasure; if winter means that after an ordinary rain the farmer boy or girl can not use his or her bicycle; if a little heavy weather means a stoppage of all communication not only with industrial centres but with the neighbors, you must expect that there will be a great many young people of both sexes who will not find farm life attractive. It is for this reason that I feel the work you are doing is so pre-eminently one in the interest of the Nation as a whole. I congratulate you upon the fact that you are doing it. In our American life it would be hard to overestimate the amount of good that has been accomplished by associations of individuals who have gathered together to work for a common object which was to be of benefit to the community as a whole; and among all the excellent objects for which men and women combine to work to-day, there are few indeed which have a better right to command the energies of those engaged in the movement, and the hearty sympathy and support of those outside, than this movement in which you are engaged.

AT ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, APRIL 29, 1903

Cardinal Gibbons, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is indeed a pleasure to be received here as a guest of the first and oldest university founded in our country west of the Mississippi River in the Louisiana Purchase. I know your work. I have myself been much in the West, and I have come across the traces of your work, both among the communities of our own people and among the Indian tribes.

I thank you personally for your kind allusions to me, and would hold myself recreant to the principles upon which this government was founded did I not strive as Chief Executive to do fair and equal justice to all men without regard to the way in which any man chooses to worship his Maker.

AT THE DEDICATION CEREMONIES OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION, ST. LOUIS, APRIL 30, 1903

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen:

At the outset of my address let me recall to the minds of my hearers that the soil upon which we stand, before it was ours, was successively the possession of two mighty empires, Spain and France, whose sons made a deathless record of heroism in the early annals of the New World. No history of the Western country can be written without paying heed to the wonderful part played therein in the early days by the soldiers, missionaries, explorers, and traders, who did their work for the honor of the proud banners of France and Castile. While the settlers of English-speaking stock, and those of Dutch, German, and Scandinavian origin who were associated with them, were still clinging close to the Eastern seaboard, the pioneers of Spain and of France had penetrated deep into the hitherto unknown wilderness of the West, had wandered far and wide within the boundaries of what is now our mighty country. The very cities themselves—St. Louis, New Orleans, Santa Fe—bear witness by their titles to the nationalities of their founders. It was not until the Revolution had begun that the English-speaking settlers pushed west across the Alleghanies, and not until a century ago that they entered in to possess the land upon which we now stand.

We have met here to-day to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the event which more than any other, after the foundation of the Government and always excepting its preservation, determined the character of our national life—determined that we should be a great expanding Nation instead of relatively a small and stationary one.

Of course it was not with the Louisiana Purchase that our career of expansion began. In the middle of the Revolutionary War the Illinois region, including the present States of Illinois and Indiana, was added to our domain by force of arms, as a sequel to the adventurous expedition of George Rogers Clark and his frontier riflemen. Later the treaties of Jay and Pinckney materially extended our real boundaries to the West. But none of these events was of so striking a character as to fix the popular imagination. The old thirteen colonies had always claimed that their rights stretched westward to the Mississippi, and vague and unreal though these claims were until made good by conquest, settlement, and diplomacy, they still served to give the impression that the earliest westward movements of our people were little more than the filling in of already existing national boundaries.

But there could be no illusion about the acquisition of the vast territory beyond the Mississippi, stretching westward to the Pacific, which in that day was known as Louisiana. This immense region was admittedly the territory of a foreign power, of a European kingdom. None of our people had ever laid claim to a foot of it. Its acquisition could in no sense be treated as rounding out any existing claims. When we acquired it we made evident once for all that consciously and of set purpose we had embarked on a career of expansion, that we had taken our place among those daring and hardy nations who risk much with the hope and desire of winning high position among the great powers of the earth. As is so often the case in nature, the law of development of a living organism showed itself in its actual workings to be wiser than the wisdom of the wisest.

This work of expansion was by far the greatest work of our people during the years that intervened between the adoption of the Constitution and the outbreak of the Civil War. There were other questions of real moment and importance, and there were many which at the time seemed such to those engaged in answering them; but the greatest feat of our forefathers of those generations was the deed of the men who, with pack train or wagon train, on horseback, on foot, or by boat, pushed the frontier ever westward across the continent.

Never before had the world seen the kind of national expansion which gave our people all that part of the American continent lying west of the thirteen original States; the greatest landmark in which was the Louisiana Purchase. Our triumph in this process of expansion was indissolubly bound up with the success of our peculiar kind of federal government; and this success has been so complete that because of its very completeness we now sometimes fail to appreciate not only the all-importance but the tremendous difficulty of the problem with which our Nation was originally faced.

When our forefathers joined to call into being this Nation, they undertook a task for which there was but little encouraging precedent. The development of civilization from the earliest period seemed to show the truth of two propositions: In the first place, it had always proved exceedingly difficult to secure both freedom and strength in any government; and in the second place, it had always proved wellnigh impossible for a nation to expand without either breaking up or becoming a centralized tyranny. With the success of our effort to combine a strong and efficient national union, able to put down disorder at home and to maintain our honor and interest abroad, I have not now to deal. This success was signal and all-important, but it was by no means unprecedented in the same sense that our type of expansion was unprecedented. The history of Rome and of Greece illustrates very well the two types of expansion which had taken place in ancient time and which had been universally accepted as the only possible types up to the period when as a Nation we ourselves began to take possession of this continent. The Grecian States performed remarkable feats of colonization, but each colony as soon as created became entirely independent of the mother State, and in after years was almost as apt to prove its enemy as its friend. Local self-government, local independence, was secured, but only by the absolute sacrifice of anything resembling national unity. In consequence, the Greek world, for all its wonderful brilliancy and the extraordinary artistic, literary, and philosophical development which has made all mankind its debtors for the ages, was yet wholly unable to withstand a formidable foreign foe, save spasmodically. As soon as powerful, permanent empires arose on its outskirts, the Greek states in the neighborhood of such empires fell under their sway. National power and greatness were completely sacrificed to local liberty.

With Rome the exact opposite occurred. The imperial city rose to absolute dominion over all the peoples of Italy and then expanded her rule over the entire civilized world by a process which kept the nation strong and united, but gave no room whatever for local liberty and self-government. All other cities and countries were subject to Rome. In consequence this great and masterful race of warriors, rulers, road-builders, and administrators stamped their indelible impress upon all the after life of our race, and yet let an over-centralization eat out the vitals of their empire until it became an empty shell; so that when the barbarians came they destroyed only what had already become worthless to the world.

The underlying viciousness of each type of expansion was plain enough and the remedy now seems simple enough. But when the fathers of the Republic first formulated the Constitution under which we live this remedy was untried and no one could foretell how it would work. They themselves began the experiment almost immediately by adding new States to the original thirteen. Excellent people in the East viewed this initial expansion of the country with great alarm. Exactly as during the colonial period many good people in the mother-country thought it highly important that settlers should be kept out of the Ohio Valley in the interest of the fur companies, so after we had become a Nation many good people on the Atlantic Coast felt grave apprehension lest they might somehow be hurt by the westward growth of the Nation. These good people shook their heads over the formation of States in the fertile Ohio Valley which now forms part of the heart of our Nation; and they declared that the destruction of the Republic had been accomplished when through the Louisiana Purchase we acquired nearly half of what is now that same Republic’s present territory. Nor was their feeling unnatural. Only the adventurous and the far-seeing can be expected heartily to welcome the process of expansion, for the nation that expands is a nation which is entering upon a great career, and with greatness there must of necessity come perils which daunt all save the most stout-hearted.

We expanded by carving the wilderness into Territories and out of these Territories building new States when once they had received as permanent settlers a sufficient number of our own people. Being a practical Nation we have never tried to force on any section of our new territory an unsuitable form of government merely because it was suitable for another section under different conditions. Of the territory covered by the Louisiana Purchase a portion was given Statehood within a few years. Another portion has not been admitted to Statehood, although a century has elapsed—although doubtless it soon will be. In each case we showed the practical governmental genius of our race by devising methods suitable to meet the actual existing needs; not by insisting upon the application of some abstract shibboleth to all our new possessions alike, no matter how incongruous this application might sometimes be.

Over by far the major part of the territory, however, our people spread in such numbers during the course of the nineteenth century that we were able to build up State after State, each with exactly the same complete local independence in all matters affecting purely its own domestic interests as in any of the original thirteen States—each owing the same absolute fealty to the Union of all the States which each of the original thirteen States also owes—and finally each having the same proportional right to its share in shaping and directing the common policy of the Union which is possessed by any other State, whether of the original thirteen or not.

This process now seems to us part of the natural order of things, but it was wholly unknown until our own people devised it. It seems to us a mere matter of course, a matter of elementary right and justice, that in the deliberations of the national representative bodies the representatives of a State which came into the Union but yesterday stand on a footing of exact and entire equality with those of the Commonwealths whose sons once signed the Declaration of Independence. But this way of looking at the matter is purely modern, and in its origin purely American. When Washington during his Presidency saw new States come into the Union on a footing of complete equality with the old, every European nation which had colonies still administered them as dependencies, and every other mother-country treated the colonist not as a self-governing equal but as a subject.

The process which we began has since been followed by all the great peoples who were capable both of expansion and self-government, and now the world accepts it as the natural process, as the rule; but a century and a quarter ago it was not merely exceptional; it was unknown.

This, then, is the great historical significance of the movement of continental expansion in which the Louisiana Purchase was the most striking single achievement. It stands out in marked relief even among the feats of a nation of pioneers, a nation whose people have from the beginning been picked out by process of natural selection from among the most enterprising individuals of the nations of western Europe. The acquisition of the territory is a credit to the broad and far-sighted statesmanship of the great statesmen to whom it was immediately due, and above all to the aggressive and the masterful character of the hardy pioneer folk to whose restless energy these statesmen gave expression and direction, whom they followed rather than led. The history of the land comprised within the limits of the Purchase is the epitome of the entire history of our people. Within these limits we have gradually built up State after State until now they many times surpass in wealth, in population, and in many-sided development, the original thirteen States as they were when their delegates met in the Continental Congress. The people of these States have shown themselves mighty in war with their fellow-man, and mighty in strength to tame the rugged wilderness. They could not thus have conquered the forest and the prairie, the mountain and the desert, had they not possessed the great fighting virtues, the qualities which enable a people to overcome the forces of hostile men and hostile nature. On the other hand, they could not have used aright their conquest had they not in addition possessed the qualities of self-mastery and self-restraint, the power of acting in combination with their fellows, the power of yielding obedience to the law and of building up an orderly civilization. Courage and hardihood are indispensable virtues in a people; but the people which possesses no others can never rise high in the scale either of power or of culture. Great peoples must have in addition the governmental capacity which comes only when individuals fully recognize their duties to one another and to the whole body politic, and are able to join together in feats of constructive statesmanship and of honest and effective administration.

The old pioneer days are gone, with their roughness and their hardship, their incredible toil and their wild half-savage romance. But the need for the pioneer virtues remains the same as ever. The peculiar frontier conditions have vanished; but the manliness and stalwart hardihood of the frontiersmen can be given even freer scope under the conditions surrounding the complex industrialism of the present day. In this great region acquired for our people under the Presidency of Jefferson, this region stretching from the Gulf to the Canadian border, from the Mississippi to the Rockies, the material and social progress has been so vast that alike for weal and for woe its people now share the opportunities and bear the burdens common to the entire civilized world. The problems before us are fundamentally the same east and west of the Mississippi, in the new States and in the old, and exactly the same qualities are required for their successful solution.

We meet here to-day to commemorate a great event, an event which marks an era in statesmanship no less than in pioneering. It is fitting that we should pay our homage in words; but we must in honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to the effort to show ourselves by our acts worthy of them. In the administration of city, State, and Nation, in the management of our home life and the conduct of our business and social relations, we are bound to show certain high and fine qualities of character under penalty of seeing the whole heart of our civilization eaten out while the body still lives.

We justly pride ourselves on our marvelous material prosperity, and such prosperity must exist in order to establish a foundation upon which a higher life can be built; but unless we do in very fact build this higher life thereon, the material prosperity itself will go for but very little. Now, in 1903, in the altered conditions, we must meet the changed and changing problems with the spirit shown by the men who in 1803 and in the subsequent years gained, explored, conquered, and settled this vast territory, then a desert, now filled with thriving and populous States.

The old days were great because the men who lived in them had mighty qualities; and we must make the new days great by showing these same qualities. We must insist upon courage and resolution, upon hardihood, tenacity, and fertility in resource; we must insist upon the strong, virile virtues; and we must insist no less upon the virtues of self-restraint, self-mastery, regard for the rights of others; we must show our abhorrence of cruelty, brutality, and corruption, in public and in private life alike. If we come short in any of these qualities we shall measurably fail; and if, as I believe we surely shall, we develop these qualities in the future to an even greater degree than in the past, then in the century now beginning we shall make of this Republic the freest and most orderly, the most just and most mighty, nation which has ever come forth from the womb of time.

AT TOPEKA, KANSAS, MAY 1, 1903

Colonel McCook, Gentlemen, and Ladies:

It needed no urging to get me to accept your invitation. I hailed the chance of speaking a few words to you on this occasion, because it seems to me that the railroad branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association exemplifies in practice just exactly what I like to preach; that is, the combination of efficiency with decent living and high ideals.

In our present advanced civilization we have to pay certain penalties for what we have obtained. Among the penalties is the fact that in very many occupations there is so little demand upon nerve, hardihood, and endurance, that there is a tendency to unhealthy softening of fibre and relaxation of fibre; and such being the case I think it is a fortunate thing for our people as a whole that there should be certain occupations, prominent among them railroading, in which the man has to show the very qualities of courage, of hardihood, or willingness to face danger, the cultivation of the power of an instantaneous decision under difficulties, and the other qualities which go to make up the virile side of a man’s character—the qualities, Colonel McCook, which you and those like you showed when as boys, as young men, they fought to a finish the great Civil War.

So much for the manliness, so much for the strength, so much for the courage developed by your profession, all of which you show, and have to show, or you could not succeed in doing the work you are doing as your life work. These qualities are all-important, but they are not all-sufficient. It is necessary absolutely to have them. No nation can rise to greatness without them; but by them alone no nation will ever become great. Reading through the pages of history you come upon nation after nation in which there has been a high average of individual strength, bravery, and hardihood, and yet in which there has been nothing approaching to national greatness, because those qualities were not supplemented by others just as necessary. With the courage, with the hardihood, with the strength, must come the power of self-restraint, the power of self-mastery, the capacity to work for and with others as well as for one’s self, the power of giving to others the love which each of us must bear for his neighbor, if we are to make our civilization really great. And these are the qualities which are fostered and developed, which are given full play, by institutions such as the Young Men’s Christian Association.

The other day in a little Lutheran church at Sioux Falls I listened to a most interesting and most stimulating sermon, which struck me particularly because of the translation of a word which, I am ashamed to say, I had myself always before mistranslated. It was on the old text of faith, hope, and charity. The sermon was delivered in German, and the word that the preacher used for charity was not charity, but love; preaching that the greatest of all the forces with which we deal for betterment is love. Looking it up I found, of course, what I ought to have known but did not, that the Greek word which we have translated into the word charity, should be more properly translated love. That is, we use the word charity at present in a sense which does not make it correspond entirely to the word used in the original Greek. This Lutheran preacher developed in a very striking but very happy fashion the absolute need of love in the broadest sense of the word, in order to make mankind even approximately perfect.

We need then the two qualities—the quality of which I first spoke to you which has many shapes, the quality which rests upon courage, upon bodily and mental strength, upon will, upon daring, upon resolution, the quality which makes a man work; and then we need the quality of which the preacher spoke when he spoke of love as being the great factor, the ultimate factor, in bringing about the kind of human fellowship which will even approximately enable us to come up toward the standard after which I think all of us with many shortcomings strive. Work, the quality which makes a man ashamed not to be able to pull his own weight, not to be able to do for himself as well as for others without being beholden to any one for what he is doing. No man is happy if he does not work. Of all miserable creatures the idler, in whatever rank of society, is in the long run the most miserable. If a man does not work, if he has not in him not merely the capacity for work but the desire for work, then nothing can be done with him. He is out of place in our community. We have in our scheme of government no room for the man who does not wish to pay his way through life by what he does for himself and for the community. If he has leisure which makes it unnecessary for him to devote his time to earning his daily bread, then all the more he is bound to work just as hard in some way that will make the community the better off for his existence. If he fails in that, he fails to justify his existence. Work, the capacity for work, is absolutely necessary; and no man’s life is full, no man can be said to live in the true sense of the word, if he does not work. This is necessary, and yet it is not enough. If a man is utterly selfish, if utterly disregardful of the rights of others, if he has no ideals, if he works simply for the sake of ministering to his own base passions, if he works simply to gratify himself, small is his good in the community. I think even then he is probably better off than if he is an idler, but he is of no real use unless together with the quality which enables him to work he has the quality which enables him to love his fellows, to work with them and for them for the common good of all.

It seems to me that these Young Men’s Christian Associations play a part of the greatest consequence, not merely because of the great good they do in themselves, but because of the lesson of brotherhood that they teach all of us. All of us here are knit together by bonds which we can not sever. For weal or for woe our fates are inextricably intermingled. All of us in our present civilization are dependent upon one another to a degree never before known in the history of mankind, and in the long run we are going to go up or go down together. For a moment some man may rise by trampling on his fellows; for a moment, and much more commonly, some men may think they will rise or gratify their envy and hatred by pulling down others. But any such movement upward is probably illusory, and is certainly short-lived. Any permanent movement upward must come in such a shape that all of us feel the lift a little, and if there is a tendency down ward all of us will feel that tendency, too. We must, if we are to raise ourselves, realize that each of us in the long run can with certainty be raised only if the conditions are such that all of us are somewhat raised. In order to bring about these conditions the first essential is that each shall have a genuine spirit of regard and friendship for the others, and that each of us shall try to look at the problems of life somewhat from his neighbor’s standpoint—that we shall have the capacity to understand one another’s position, one another’s needs, and also the desire each to help his brother as well as to help himself. To do that wisely, wisely to strive with that as the aim, is not very easy. Many qualities are needed in order that we can contribute our mite toward the upward movement of the world—among them the quality of self-abnegation, and yet combined with it the quality which will refuse to submit to injustice. I want to preach the two qualities going hand in hand. I do not want a man to fail to try to strive for his own betterment, I do not want him to be quick to yield to injustice; I want him to stand for his rights; but I want him to be very certain that he knows what his rights are, and that he does not make them the wrongs of some one else.

I have a great deal of faith in the average American citizen. I think he is a pretty good fellow, and I think he can generally get on with the other average American citizen if he will only know him. If he does not know him, but makes him a monster in his mind, then he will not get on with him. But if he will take the trouble to know him and realize that he is a being just like himself, with the same instincts, not all of them good, the same desire to overcome those that are not good, the same purposes, the same tendencies, the same shortcomings, the same desires for good, the same need of striving against evil; if he will realize all this, then if you can get the two together with an honest desire each to try not only to help himself but to help the other, most of our problems will be solved. And I can imagine no way more likely to hurry forward such a favorable solution than to encourage the building up of just such institutions as this.

Therefore, I congratulate you with all my heart upon this meeting to-day. Therefore I esteem myself most fortunate in having the chance of addressing you. It is a very good thing to attend to the material side of life. We must in the first instance attend to our material prosperity. Unless we have that as a foundation we can not build up any higher kind of life. But we shall lead a miserable and sordid life if we spend our whole time in doing nothing but attending to our material needs. If the building up of the railroads, of the farms, of the factories, of the industrial centres, means nothing whatever but an increase in the instruments of production and an increase in the fevered haste with which those instruments are used, progress amounts to but a little thing. If, however, the developing of our material prosperity is to serve as a foundation upon which we raise a higher, a purer, a fuller, a better life, then indeed things are well with the Republic. If as our wealth increases the wisdom of our use of the wealth increases in even greater proportion, then the wealth has justified its existence many times over. If with the industry, the skill, the hardihood, of those whom I am addressing and their fellows, nothing comes beyond a selfish desire each to grasp for himself whatever he can of material enjoyment, then the outlook for the future is indeed grave, then the advantages of living in the twentieth century surrounded by all our modern improvements, our modern symbols of progress, is indeed small. But if we mean to make of each fresh development in the way of material betterment a step toward a fresh development in moral and spiritual betterment, then we are to be congratulated.

To me the future seems full of hope because, although there are many conflicting tendencies, and although some of these tendencies of our present life are for evil, yet, on the whole the tendencies for good are in the ascendency. And I greet this audience, this great body of delegates, with peculiar pleasure because they are men who embody, and embody by the very fact of their presence here, the two essential sets of qualities of which I have been speaking. They embody the capacity for self-help with the desire mutually to help one the other. You have several qualities I like. You have sound bodies. Your profession is not one that can be carried on, at least in some of its branches, without the sound body. You have sound minds, and that is better than sound bodies; and finally, the fact that you are here, the fact that you have done what you have done, shows that you have that which counts for more than body, for more than mind—character.

I congratulate you upon what you are doing for yourselves, and I congratulate you even more upon what you are doing for all men who hope to see the day brought nearer when the people of all nations, shall realize—not merely talk of, but realize—what the essence of brotherhood is. I congratulate you, as I say, not only because you are bettering yourselves, but because to you, for your good fortune, it is given to better others, to teach, in the way in which teaching is most effective, not merely by precept but by action. The railroad men of this country are a body entitled to the well wishes of their fellow-men in any event, but peculiarly is this true of the railroad men of the country who join in such work as that of the Young Men’s Christian Associations, because they are showing by their actions—and oh, how much louder actions speak than words!—that it is not only possible, but very, very possible and easy to combine the manliness which makes a man able to do his own share of the world’s work, with that fine and lofty love of one’s fellow-men which makes you able to come together with your fellows and work hand in hand with them for the common good of mankind in general.

FROM ADDRESS AT DENVER, COL., MAY 4, 1903

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

Colorado has certain special interests which it shares with the group of States immediately around it. To my mind one of the best pieces of legislation put upon the statute books of the National Government of recent years was the irrigation act; an act under which we declare it to be the national policy that exactly as care is to be taken of the harbors and along the lower courses of the rivers, so in their upper courses care is to be taken by the Nation of the irrigation work to be done in connection with them.

Under that act a beginning has been made in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and the Territory of Arizona. There is bound to be disappointment here and there where people have built hopes without a quite sufficient warranty of fact behind. But good will surely come at once and wellnigh immeasurable good in the future from the policy which has thus been begun. In Colorado two-thirds of your products come from irrigated farms, and four years ago those products already surpassed fifteen million dollars. With the aid of the government far more can be done in the future even than has been done in the past. The object of the law is to provide small irrigated farms to actual settlers, to actual home-makers; the land is given away ultimately in small tracts under the terms of the homestead act, the settlers repaying the cost of bringing water to their lands in ten annual payments; and lands now in private ownership can be watered in small tracts by similar payments, but the law forbids the furnishing of water to large tracts, and the aim of the government is rigidly to prevent the acquisition of large rights for speculative purposes. The purpose of the law was, and that purpose is being absolutely carried out, to promote settlement and cultivation of small farms carefully tilled. Water made available under the terms of this law becomes appurtenant under the law to the land, and can not be disposed of without it, and thus monopoly and speculation in this vitally important commodity are prevented, or at least their evil effects minimized so far as the law or the administration of the law can bring that end about. This is the great factor in future success. The policy is a policy of encouragement to the home-maker, to the man who comes to establish his home, to bring up his children here as a citizen of the commonwealth, and his welfare is guarded by the union of the water and the land.

The government can not deal with large numbers individually. We have encouraged the formation of associations of water users, of cultivators of the soil in small tracts. The ultimate ownership and control of the irrigation works will pass away from the government into the hands of those users, those home-makers, who through their officers do the necessary business of their associations. The aim of the government is to give locally the ultimate control of water distributed and to leave neighborhood disputes to be settled locally; and that should be so as far as it is possible. The law protects vested rights; it prevents conflict with established laws or institutions; but of course it is important that the legislatures of the States should co-operate with the National Government. When the works are constructed to utilize the waters now wasted happy and prosperous homes will flourish where twenty years ago it would have seemed impossible that a man could live. It is a great national measure of benefit, and while, as I say, it is primarily to benefit the people of the mountain States and of the great plains, yet it will ultimately benefit the whole community. For, my fellow-countrymen, you can never afford to forget for one moment that in the long run anything that is of benefit to one part of our Republic is of necessity of benefit to all the Republic. The creation of new homes upon desert lands means greater prosperity for Colorado and the Rocky Mountain States, and inevitably their greater prosperity means greater prosperity for Eastern manufacturers, for Southern cotton growers, for all our people throughout the Union.

AT SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, MAY 5, 1903

Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is of course with a peculiar feeling of pleasure that I come here to New Mexico, from which Territory half (and if my memory serves me correctly a little over half) of the men of my regiment came. The man is but a poor man wherever he may be born to whom one part of this country is not exactly as dear as any other part. And I should count myself wholly unworthy of the position I hold if I did not strive to represent the people of the mountains and the plains exactly as much as those of the Mississippi Valley or of either coast, the Atlantic or the Pacific. I know your people, Mr. Governor, and I need not say how fond I am of them, for that you know yourself. How could I help being fond of people with whom I have worked, with whom I marched to battle? The only men here to whom I would doff my hat quicker than to the men of my own regiment are the men of the great war. You know well the claim that comradeship in war makes between man and man; and it has always seemed to me, Mr. Governor, that in a sense my regiment in its composition was a typical American regiment. Its people came from the West chiefly, but some from the East, from the South chiefly, but some from the North, so that every section was represented in it. They varied in birthplace as in creed; some were born on this side of the water, some on the other side; some of their ancestors had come to New Mexico, as did your ancestors, Mr. Governor, when this was already a city and at a time when not one English-speaking community existed on the Atlantic seaboard; some were men whose forefathers were among the early Puritans and Pilgrims; some were of those whose forefathers had settled by the banks of the James even before the Puritan and Pilgrim came to this country, but after your people came. There were men in that regiment who themselves were born, or whose parents were born, in England, Ireland, Germany, or Scandinavia, but there was not a man, no matter what his creed, what his birthplace, what his ancestry, who was not an American and nothing else. We had representatives of the real, original, native Americans, because we had no inconsiderable number who were in whole or in part of Indian blood. There was in the regiment but one kind of rivalry among those men, and but one would have been tolerated. That was the rivalry of each man to see if he could not do his duty a little better than any one else. Short would have been the shrift of any man who tried to introduce division along lines of section, or creed, or class. We had serving in the ranks men of inherited wealth and men who all their lives had earned each day’s bread by that day’s labor, and they stood on a footing of exact equality. It would not have been any more possible for a feeling of arrogance to exist on one side than for a feeling of rancor and envy to exist on the other.

I appreciate to the full all the difficulties under which you labor, and I think that your progress has been astonishing. I congratulate you upon all that has been done, and I am certain that the future will far more than make good the past. I believe that we have come upon an era of fuller development for New Mexico. That development must of course take place principally through the average of foresight, thrift, industry, energy and will of the citizens of New Mexico; but the government can and will help somewhat. This is a great grazing State. Because of the importance of the grazing industry I wish to bespeak your support for the preservation in proper shape of the forest reserves of the State. These forest reserves are created and are kept up in the interest of the home-maker. In many of them there is much natural pasturage. Where that is the case the object is to have that pasturage used by the settlers, by the people of the Territory, not eaten out so that nobody will have the benefit after three years. I want the land preserved so that the pasturage will do, not merely for a man who wants to make a good thing out of it for two or three years, but for the man who wishes to see it preserved for the use of his children and his children’s children. That is the way to use the resources of the land. I build no small hope upon the aid that under the wise law of Congress will ultimately be extended to this as to other States and Territories in the way of governmental aid to irrigation. Irrigation is of course to be in the future wellnigh the most potent factor in the agricultural development of this Territory and one of the factors which will do most toward bringing it up to Statehood. Nothing will count more than development of that kind in bringing the Territory in as a State. That is the kind of development which I am most anxious to see here—the development that means permanent growth in the capacity of the land, not temporary, not the exploiting of the land for a year or two at the cost of its future impoverishment, but the building up of farm and ranch in such shape as to benefit the home-maker whose intention it is that this Territory of the present, this State of the future, shall be a great State in the American Union.

AT THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL, ALBUQUERQUE, N. M., MAY 5, 1903

Bishop:

Permit me to thank you and to say how much I appreciate the courtesy you showed in putting yourself to such inconvenience to come here to greet me. I had hoped to meet you at Santa Fe in the cathedral, where I participated in the baptism of the son of one of the men of my regiment.

I greet the school children and the sisters. There can be no greater privilege than to meet a missionary who has done good work. Of all the work that is done or that can be done for our country, the greatest is that of educating the body, the mind, and above all the character, giving spiritual and moral training to those who in a few years are themselves to decide the destinies of the nation.

AT THE INDIAN SCHOOL, ALBUQUERQUE, N. M., MAY 5, 1903

Mr. Superintendent:

I wish to express the peculiar pleasure it is to have seen the Indian schools to-day, and through you, Mr. Superintendent, I want to say to the Indians that are right behind you, what a fine thing it is to see the industry and thrift of their people. I was struck by their orchards, the irrigated fields, and by seeing them working in the fields and along the road. The Indian who will work and do his duty will stand on a par with any other American citizen. Of course I will do as every President must do, I will stand for his rights with the same jealous eagerness that I would for the rights of any white man. I am glad to see the Indian children being educated as these are educated so as to come more and more into the body of American citizenship, to fit themselves for work in the home, work in the fields, for leading decent, clean lives, for making themselves self-supporting, for being good providers and good housekeepers; in other words, for becoming American citizens just like other American citizens.

AT GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA, MAY 6, 1903

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

I am glad to be in Arizona to-day. From Arizona many gallant men came into the regiment which I had the honor to command. Arizona sent men who won glory on fought fields, and men to whom came a glorious and an honorable death fighting for the flag of their country. As long as I live it will be to me an inspiration to have served with Bucky O’Neill. I have met so many comrades whom I prize, for whom I feel respect and admiration and affection, that I shall not particularize among them except to say that there is none for whom I feel all of respect and admiration and affection more than for your Governor.

I have never been in Arizona before. It is one of the regions from which I expect most development through the wise action of the National Congress in passing the irrigation act. The first and biggest experiment now in view under that act is the one that we are trying in Arizona. I look forward to the effects of irrigation partly as applied by and through the government, still more as applied by individuals, and especially by associations of individuals, profiting by the example of the government, and possibly by help from it—I look forward to the effects of irrigation as being of greater consequence to all this region of country in the next fifty years than any other material movement whatsoever.

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I was delighted to learn of the wisdom of the Santa Fe railroad people in deciding not to build their hotel on the brink of the canyon. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see. We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children’s children will get the benefit of it. If you deal with irrigation, apply it under circumstances that will make it of benefit, not to the speculator who hopes to get profit out of it for two or three years, but handle it so that it will be of use to the home-maker, to the man who comes to live here, and to have his children stay after him. Keep the forests in the same way. Preserve the forests by use; preserve them for the ranchman and the stockman, for the people of the Territory, for the people of the region round about. Preserve them for that use, but use them so that they will not be squandered, that they will not be wasted, so that they will be of benefit to the Arizona of 1953 as well as the Arizona of 1903.

To the Indians here I want to say a word of welcome. In my regiment I had a good many Indians. They were good enough to fight and to die, and they are good enough to have me treat them exactly as squarely as any white man. There are many problems in connection with them. We must save them from corruption and from brutality; and I regret to say that at times we must save them from unregulated Eastern philanthropy. All I ask is a square deal for every man. Give him a fair chance. Do not let him wrong any one, and do not let him be wronged.

I believe in you. I am glad to see you. I wish you well with all my heart, and I know that your future will justify all the hopes we have.

AT BARSTOW, CALIFORNIA, MAY 7, 1903

My Fellow-Citizens:

This is the first time I have ever been to California, and I can not say to you how much I have looked forward to making the trip. I can tell you now with absolute certainty that I will have enjoyed it to the full when I get through.

I have felt that the events of the last five or six years have been steadily hastening the day when the Pacific will loom in the world’s commerce as the Atlantic now looms, and I have wished greatly to see these marvelous communities growing up on the Pacific Slope. There are plenty of things that to you seem matters of course, that I have read about and know about from reading, and yet when I see them they strike me as very wonderful.

One thing that impresses me more than anything else as I go through the country—as I said I have never been on the Pacific Slope; the Rocky Mountain States and the States of the great plains I know quite as well as I know the Eastern seaboard; I have worked with the men, played with them, fought with them; I know them all through—the thing that impresses me most as I go through this country and meet the men and women of the country, is the essential unity of all Americans. Down at bottom we are the same people all through. That is not merely a unity of section, it is a unity of class. For my good fortune I have been thrown into intimate relationship, into intimate personal friendship, with many men of many different occupations, and my faith is firm that we shall come unscathed out of all our difficulties here in America, because I think that the average American is a decent fellow, and that the prime thing in getting him to get on well with the other average American is to have each remember that the other is a decent fellow, and try to look at the problems a little from the other’s standpoint.

I thank you for coming out here to greet me. I wish you well with all my heart for the future.

AT SAN BERNARDINO, CAL., MAY 7, 1903

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Governor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens:

It is half a century since the early pioneers founded this place, and while time goes fast in America anywhere, it has gone fastest here on the Pacific Slope and in the regions of the Rocky Mountains directly to the eastward. If you live in the presence of miracles you gradually get accustomed to them. So it is difficult for any of us, and it is especially difficult for those who have themselves been doing the things, to realize the absolute wonder of the things that have been done. California and the region round about have in the past fifty or sixty years traversed the distance that separates the founders of the civilization of Mesopotamia and Egypt from those who enjoy the civilization of to-day. They have gone further than that. They have seen this country change from a wilderness into one of the most highly civilized regions of the world’s surface. They have seen cities, farms, ranches, railroads grow up and transform the very face of nature. The changes have been so stupendous that in our eyes they have become commonplace. We fail to realize their immense, their tremendous importance. We fail entirely to realize what they mean. Only the older among you can remember the early pioneer days, and yet to-day I have spoken to man after man yet in his prime who, when he first came to this country warred against wild man and wild nature in the way in which that warfare was waged in the prehistoric days of the old world. We have spanned in a single lifetime—in less than the lifetime of any man who reaches the age limit prescribed by the psalmist—the whole space from savagery through barbarism, through semi-civilization, to the civilization that stands two thousand years ahead of that of Rome and Greece in the days of their prime.

The old pioneer days have gone, but if we are to prove ourselves worthy sons of our sires we can not afford to let the old pioneer virtues lapse. There is just the same need now that there was in ’49 for the qualities that mark a mighty and masterful people. East and west we now face substantially the same problems. No people can advance as far and as fast as we have advanced, no people can make such progress as we have made, and expect to escape the penalties that go with such speed and progress. The growth and complexity of our civilization, the intensity of the movement of modern life, have meant that with the benefits have come certain disadvantages and certain perils. A great industrial civilization can not be built up without a certain dislocation, a certain disarrangement of the old conditions, and therefore the springing up of new problems. The problems are new, but the qualities needed to solve them are as old as history itself, and we shall solve them aright only on condition that we bring to the solution the same qualities of head and heart that have been brought to the solution of similar problems by every race that has ever conquered for itself a space in the annals of time.

AT THE BIG TREE GROVE, SANTA CRUZ, CAL., MAY 11, 1903

Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I want to thank you very much for your courtesy in receiving me, and to say how much I have enjoyed being here. This is the first glimpse I have ever had of the big trees, and I wish to pay the highest tribute I can to the State of California, to those private citizens and associations of citizens who have co-operated with the State in preserving these wonderful trees for the whole nation, in preserving them in whatever part of the State they may be found. All of us ought to want to see nature preserved. Take a big tree whose architect has been the ages—anything that man does toward it may hurt it and can not help it. Above all, the rash creature who wishes to leave his name to mar the beauties of nature should be sternly discouraged. Those cards pinned up on that tree give an air of the ridiculous to this solemn and majestic grove. To pin those cards up there is as much out of place as if you tacked so many tin cans up there. I mean that literally. You should save the people whose names are there from the reprobation of every one by taking down the cards at the earliest possible moment; and do keep these trees, keep all the wonderful scenery of this wonderful State unmarred by the vandalism or the folly of man. Remember that we have to contend not merely with knavery, but with folly; and see to it that you by your actions create the kind of public opinion which will put a stop to any destruction of or any marring of the wonderful and beautiful gifts that you have received from nature, that you ought to hand on as a precious heritage to your children and your children’s children.

AT LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY, PALO ALTO, CAL., MAY 12, 1903

President Jordan, and you, my Fellow-Citizens, and especially you, my Fellow-college Men and Women:

I thank you for your greeting, and I know you will not grudge my saying, first of all, a special word of thanks to the men of the Grand Army. It is a fine thing to have before a body of students men who by their practice have rendered it unnecessary that they should preach; for what we have to teach by precept, you, the men of ’61 to ’65, have taught by deed, by action. I am proud as an American college man myself to have seen the tablet outside within the court which shows that this young university sent eighty-five of her sons to war when the country called for them. I come from a college which boasts as its proudest building that which stands to the memory of Harvard’s sons who responded to the call of Lincoln when the hour of the Nation’s danger was at hand. It will be a bad day for this country and a worse day for all educative institutions in this country if ever such a call is made, and the men of college training do not feel it peculiarly incumbent upon them to respond.