PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

AT THE LUNCHEON OF THE MERCHANTS’ CLUB, CHICAGO, ILL., MAY 10, 1905

Mr. President and Gentlemen:

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

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

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

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

AT THE BANQUET OF THE IROQUOIS CLUB, CHICAGO, ILL., MAY 10, 1905

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REMARKS TO STRIKERS’ COMMITTEE, CHICAGO, ILL., MAY 10, 1905

Mr. Shea:

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

Mr. Quinn:

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

The President, after reading the memorial:

Mr. Shea, Mr. Quinn, and Gentlemen:

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

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

Mr. Quinn:

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

The President:

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

Mr. Shea:

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

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

The President:

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

AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF GENERAL HENRY W. SLOCUM, BROOKLYN, N. Y., MAY 30, 1905

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AT THE NAVAL BRANCH, Y. M. C. A., BROOKLYN, N. Y., MAY 30, 1905

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AT THE GRADUATING EXERCISES OF THE COLLEGIATE DEPARTMENT OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., JUNE 21, 1905

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

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

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

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

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

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

AT HOLY CROSS COLLEGE, WORCESTER, MASS., JUNE 21, 1905

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

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

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

AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., JUNE 22, 1905

Mr. President, and you of Williams:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JUNE 28, 1905

The Harvard Spirit

Bishop Lawrence, Brothers, Men of Harvard:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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