Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faithfully yours,

Theodore Roosevelt.

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

Gentlemen of the Interparliamentary Union:

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

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

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

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

White House, Washington
November 4, 1904

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

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

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

Theodore Roosevelt.

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

Mr. Ambassador:

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

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

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

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

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