AT THE BANQUET AT DALLAS, TEX., APRIL 5, 1905
Mr. Toastmaster, and you, My Hosts:
Before I came to Texas I knew the generous hospitality which is one of your chief characteristics, and I anticipated a good reception, but neither I nor any one else could have anticipated such a reception, and it has touched me and pleased me more than I can well say. I think I was a middling good American before I came here, but I go away an even better one.
Mr. Simpson spoke of the fact that nearly seven years ago I came to this State to take part in raising a volunteer regiment. Many among you who served on one side or the other in the Civil War will remember the number of things that you did not know at the beginning. If you will take that lack of knowledge and multiply it by two you will get a fair estimate of what I and the regiment did not know when we started. That we learned something I hope is true.
I want to say a word of serious thanks to you, and a word as to my accountability as a steward to you. No man is fit to hold the position of President of the United States at all unless as President he feels that he represents no party but the people as a whole. So far as in me lies I have tried and shall try so to handle myself that every decent American citizen can feel that I have at least made the effort. Each man has got to carry out his own principles in his own way. If he tries to model himself on some one else he will make a poor show of it. My own view has been that if I must choose between taking risks by not doing a thing or by doing it, I will take the risks of doing it.
I have been a very close student of Texan history. The history of your State has always held a peculiar fascination for me. I had begun certain historic studies connected with the growth of our Western people many years ago, before I took much of a part in public life.
However little some of you may now agree with me, when you come to take into account what I have done in the Caribbean Sea, in future you will find that I have been carrying out the doctrine of the Texans who made Texas what it is. Especially as regards what was done in Panama, I want to say that while I was most anxious to deserve the approval of my countrymen, and while I was very glad to be elected President, I would without one moment’s hesitation have given up the second term in the Presidency rather than not to have begun the Panama Canal.
Now in the same way with our internal affairs; take what the toastmaster was kind enough to say as to my standing for a square deal. I want that understood literally. I do not want it exaggerated on one side or the other. When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean, and nobody who speaks the truth can mean, that he believes it possible to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall not be any crookedness in the dealing. In other words, it is not in the power of any human being to devise legislation or administration by which each man shall achieve success and have happiness; it not only is not in the power of any man to do that, but if any man says that he can do it, distrust him as a quack. If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon any man, if misfortune comes upon him, he may be unable to win; or even if fortune favors him and he lacks the courage, the nerve, the common-sense, the ability, to do the best with the chance given him, then he will fail. All any of us can pretend to do is to come as near as our imperfect abilities will allow to securing through governmental agencies an equal opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him; and that must be done with no more intention of discrimination against the rich man than the poor man, or against the poor man than the rich man; with the intention of safeguarding each man, rich or poor, poor or rich, in his rights, and giving him as nearly as may be a fair chance to do what his powers permit him to do; always provided he does not wrong his neighbor.
This is not in the least a partisan question. It is one of those questions that affect all our citizens, a question that goes to the root of our citizenship; and when it comes to a question like that you citizens of this country have the right to expect your representatives in public life to join hands and work for the common good and without regard to any mere party differences. As to the details of carrying out those general principles we can not expect everybody to agree. My own views are pretty definite, both about foreign and domestic policies. In foreign policies, for instance, I have this strong belief, which I am sure will appeal to every cow-man present—never draw, unless you mean to shoot; and that implies, of course, that when you draw it shall not be an empty gun. Do not speak impolitely, disrespectfully of other nations. Always treat them with courtesy. Remember that nobody likes to be insulted. One would rather be wronged than insulted; and this is just as true internationally as among individuals. Always speak courteously; be dead sure you are right before going into trouble; being in, see it through.
As a corollary to that, if you need a weapon which you can not possibly improvise, get it ready in advance. The individual who gets into trouble and then thinks he will go and buy a six-shooter is left. He does not want to get into trouble unless he has the six-shooter. It is just so with us. We have built up and are building up a pretty good navy. If we had not done that and were not doing it, I for one would not have recommended going into the Panama business, and I would not advocate the Monroe Doctrine, for I do not intend to go into anything and make a bluff and then have the bluff called and not be able to make good.
In the same way when you come to internal affairs; I have advocated giving the Interstate Commerce Commission increased power; power that will enable it to work effectively and quickly. I should not do that for one moment if I believed that there would be injustice done to the railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission. I wish it understood definitely that if I find any subordinate of mine doing an injustice against a railroad, or doing an injustice for it, I will cinch him just as quickly in one case as in the other. I shall expect him to do the square thing, both by the railroad and by the public. If the railroad wants more than it is entitled to have, then he must decide against it; if the public ignorantly demands that the railroad shall do more than it can with propriety do, then just as fearlessly he must antagonize public sentiment, even if the public sentiment is unanimous.
These are the general principles. It is much easier to lay down general principles than it is to work out those principles in detail. But I have told you substantially what are, as I regard them, the main features of the platform upon which I stand, and I think that you agree with me that it is a pretty straight American platform.
TO THE LEGISLATURE OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, TEX., APRIL 6, 1905
Governor, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President pro tem., Senators, and Members of the House of Representatives, and all of you, men and women of Texas, those whom I am so proud to call my Fellow-Americans:
No President of the United States, no good American proud of his country, could enter this Capitol and stand in this hall without feeling a certain thrill of pride in his citizenship, and in the history of the country’s past. This building in which we are now is not only one of the largest but one of the most beautiful of its kind throughout the world. It is eminently fitting that so great a State should have so fine a capitol building.
There are one or two things that I would like particularly to say in this chamber, and to the members of the Texas Legislature. I received a copy of the resolution passed by your body, introduced, I understand, by ex-Minister Terrell, in reference to the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act. I wish to thank you most heartily for what you did. I think, Governor, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen, that the longer our experience in public office is, the more we realize that at least ninety-five per cent, if not more, in importance, of the work done by any public officer who is worth his salt has nothing whatever to do with partisan politics. The things that concern us all as good citizens are infinitely larger than the matters concerning which we are divided one from the other along party lines. Fundamentally our attitude in our foreign affairs and in reference to foreign nations must in the long run, if we are to be successful as a people, be based upon certain common-sense rules of conduct, the identical rules upon which every self-respecting citizen must base his private actions.
This is equally true as regards all questions dealing with capital and labor; and especially with those dealings with the great aggregates of capital usually to be found in corporate form through which so much of our business at the present day is conducted. It is essential, in dealing thus by legislative action with corporate wealth, or indeed with wealth in any form, that we remember and act upon certain rules simple enough and commonplace enough to state, but not always easy to act upon. Most emphatically we can not as good Americans bear hostility to any rich man as such any more than to any poor man as such. My experience has been that the man who talks over-loudly of his hostility to corporate wealth can not be trusted even to antagonize corporate wealth when it is wrong. Let us be moderate in our statements; but let us make our deeds bear out absolutely our words.
With this preliminary I would like to say in brief just what my position is as regards the particular question with which I had to deal and as regards which the Texas Legislature took the action I so much appreciate.
On the whole there have been few instruments in the economic development of the country which have done more for the country than the railroads. I do not wish in any shape or way to interfere with the legitimate gain of any of the big men whose special industrial capacity enables them to handle the railroads so as to be of profit to themselves and of advantage to all of us. I should be most reluctant—I will put it stronger than that—I should absolutely refuse to be a party to any measure, to any proposition, that interfered with the proper and legitimate prosperity of those men; and I should feel that such a measure was aimed not only at them, but at all of us, for any attack upon the legitimate prosperity of any of us is in the long run sure to turn into an attack upon all. With that proviso (as to which I ask you to remember that I mean literally every word) let me further add that the public has the right (not a privilege, but in my view a duty) to see that there is on its behalf exercised such supervisory and regulatory power over the railroads as will ensure that while they get fair treatment themselves, they give it in return. The proper exercise of that power is conditioned upon the securing of proper legislation, which will enable the representatives of the public to see to it that any unjust or oppressive or discriminating rate is altered, so as to be a just and fair rate, and is altered immediately.
I know well that when you give that power there is a chance of its being occasionally abused. There is no power that can be given to the representatives of the people which it is not possible to abuse. As every one knows, the power of taxation, which must of course be given to the representatives of the people, is the power of death, for it is possible to kill any industry by excessive taxation. There must be a certain trust placed in the common-sense and common honesty of those who are to enforce the law. If it ever falls, and I think it will, to my lot to nominate a board to carry out such a law, I shall nominate men, as far as I am able, on whose ability, courage, and integrity I can count, men who will not be swayed by any influence whatever, direct or indirect, social, political, or any other, to show improper favoritism to any railroad, and who, on the other hand, if a railroad is unjustly attacked, no matter if that attack has behind it the feeling of prejudice of ninety-nine per cent of the people, will stand up against that attack. That is my interpretation of the doctrine of the square deal.
I want to say just one word more on an entirely different subject. I have always taken a very great interest in the National Guard in this country. It is our pride that we have the smallest possible regular army. There is not another first-class power, there is not a second or third class power in the world that has not got relatively to its population and wealth a very much larger regular army than we have. We do not need anything but a small regular army. We need and must and shall have the very best regular army of its size that is to be found anywhere. We do not need a large regular army, because of the possibilities of our people in raising volunteer troops. Those possibilities are largely conditioned upon the excellence of the National Guard. Since I have been in Texas, at almost every stopping place there have been members of the National Guard, companies of the National Guard out to do duty in connection with keeping the crowds in order, in preventing any trouble of any kind, keeping the whole proceedings orderly and proper. I have been immensely struck with their soldier-like efficiency. It is only what I ought to expect. When I was last in Texas I was engaged with certain others in raising a volunteer regiment, and as I think I know a good thing when I see it, I got just as many Texans as possible in that regiment.
Your whole history, from the days of Austin and Houston and Davy Crockett, right to the present time, shows what fighting material the average Texan makes. But I do not care how good the material, it is not going to amount to much if it is not given a chance. It is a most important thing for all of us, if we desire to keep the regular army small, that we shall have the militia, the National Guard of the several States, kept up to a proper point. Last year, I am happy to be able to say, that, at the manœuvres of the regulars, your Texan troops did admirably. I have been told again and again how well they did. I want to congratulate you upon the excellent law for the administration of the National Guard that has recently been passed by the Texas Legislature. With that law backed up by a sufficient appropriation to make it available, you can count upon having the Texas National Guard a model for the National Guard of the country.
I feel very much at home here: I have been Governor, and I have served in the Legislature, so I have a good deal of fellow-feeling with all of you. I have had for a good many years to grapple with just about the problems you are grappling with from time to time here; and I know, as any man who has taken part in active work must know, how easy it is for the outsider to say that everything should be managed perfectly, and how difficult it is in practice to get even fairly good results. There is a heap of difference between the critic, the onlooker on one side, and on the other the doer, the man who does the job.
OUTSIDE OF CAPITOL BUILDING, AUSTIN, TEX., APRIL 6, 1905
Mr. Governor; and you, My Fellow-Citizens:
I have been particularly pleased to be greeted wherever I have gone by the great masses of school children, the children from the public schools and the children from the higher institutions of learning, State and private. It is a mere truism to say that the prime work of any State should be to keep up and raise ever higher its standard of citizenship. Texas has a right to be proud of its industrial development and of its wonderful natural resources, but I tell you the best crop for any State to rear after all is the crop of men and women. I believe in the future of Texas so heartily because I believe that you are steadily taking measures for the uptraining of the children, for the uptraining of the generations that in a very few years will take our places and rule the destinies of the State.
No State can be great without paying the penalty of responsibility that comes with greatness. That is true of the Nation; it is true likewise of the States that go to make up the Nation. You have here in Texas a commonwealth which in area and diversification of resources already stands unequaled, which in population and wealth will soon be one of the three or four first in the entire land. That means that besides feeling exaltation about it you ought to have a very heavy sense of responsibility entailed upon you thereby. No man can do any work worth doing except at the cost of effort, of self-restraint, of forcing himself to achieve things. No State can do anything except by possessing just those qualities, because the State is of course simply the aggregate of the individuals within it. If Texas fails in any way the failure will be felt by the entire country, because its influence and its power are so great. There is no royal road to good government; and I think all those interested in managing your public affairs will agree with me that what we need in our public officials is not genius, not even brilliancy, so much as the exercise of the ordinary rather commonplace qualities of honesty, courage, and common-sense—the qualities that make a man a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor; that make it advantageous to have dealings with him in business, or make it worth while having him as a friend. These are the qualities which are fundamental, which should be shown by the man who has to do with public life; and do not forget that each one of you here has to do his share in governing this commonwealth. It is not a figure of speech, it is the literal fact that in the United States every man is a sovereign. Remember that the fate of the sovereign who does not do his duty is to get dethroned; and if the average man who is sovereign does not do his duty he will get ousted from his sovereignty. If a man can not govern himself he will find a boss or some one else who can govern him, and then do not blame the boss, blame yourself for not having the self-control, the resolution, the forethought, and the sense of civic duty which would make you do your full part in the work of governing this country. We will not lose our birthright of citizenship unless by our own fault. If the average man keeps his head and his wits, and if he takes a little pains, he will be governed just about the way he desires to be governed. If he is not governed that way do not let him sit down and blame the politicians, let him blame himself, for it is in his power to get any government that he seriously desires to have. My fellow-citizens, together with expressing the exultation that we have a right to express about our country, we need to have impressed upon us a sense of our own responsibility, and of the shortcomings of which we are guilty if we do not rise level to that responsibility. It is a very good thing that we should gather together on state occasions, on the 4th of July, and at public festivals, and hear speakers say how big a country we have. But it is a better thing if we will go home and think over certain of the shortcomings that all of us have and make up our minds to remedy them in the future. What I ask of you and what I most firmly believe you will give is a patriotic perseverance in doing each his average round of duties, in doing the duties both of private life and as a citizen in public affairs each day. Do not wait for some special time when heroism will be called for, but do unweariedly the humdrum work that comes to every man. If we will do that, we will find that the affairs of state will be settled as we desire to have them settled. There is no use sitting at home finding fault with the way in which public affairs are handled, and then every four years, in a burst of animosity against some person, voting to turn him out. What you need to do is, month in and month out, year in and year out, to do your ordinary political duties as those political duties come up, and only under such conditions can you get really good public servants.
Let me say one more word of warning. In public life you will sometimes encounter a man who will endeavor to lead you to do something which down at bottom you doubt being right, which he tells you will be to your advantage to do, usually something that looks like wronging some one else. But the man who will wrong some one else for your advantage will, when the chance comes, be sure to wrong you for his own advantage.
My fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, I address you here under the shadow of your beautiful capitol of this great and wonderful State, with its heroic memories of Austin, of Sam Houston, of Davy Crockett, of all the men who in picture or in statue are commemorated on these walls; and my strongest feeling is that, proud though you are of Texas, you can not be prouder of it than I am. One of the great and splendid features of our American life is that each American has a right to be proud of the deeds of every other American, no matter from what part of the country his fellow-American may come. Your honor, your glory, are the honor and the glory of every man of our great country. All that is necessary for our people is that they should get to know one another in order to appreciate how slight are the divergencies and how vital and fundamental is the union among them.
IN FRONT OF THE ALAMO, SAN ANTONIO, TEX., APRIL 7, 1905
Mr. Mayor; Mr. Kirkpatrick; and you, My Fellow-Americans of this mighty Commonwealth:
I thank you for the way in which I have been greeted to-day. You can hardly imagine how much it means to me to come back to San Antonio in this way, and to be received as you have received me. I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment to two sets among your citizens; first to the men of the great war, to the men who wore the blue or wore the gray in the days that tried men’s souls. My fellow-citizens, infinitely more important than any President, infinitely more important even than the reception to any President, is what is symbolized by seeing the men who fought in the Union army and the men who fought in the Confederate army standing mingled together, fellow-Americans, one in devotion and honor and loyalty to the country, shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the mightiest republic upon which the sun has ever shone. Indeed the man would have a poor heart, a poor spirit, who would not be thrilled by such a meeting as this, by such a sight as you accord me to-day, you of the gray, you of the blue, all one under the flag of this reunited country.
I suppose you must know it, but I want to tell you that it was of course the memory of the valor, the self-sacrifice, the endurance you displayed in the great war, that made us of the younger generation feel that when the lesser war came we wished to emulate your course. The regiment which I had the honor to command, and which was raised and organized in this city, took part in what were only skirmishes compared with the campaigns in which you did your share; and all that we claim is that while it was not given to us to have the chance to do great deeds, yet we hope we made you feel that the old spirit was not altogether lost. This regiment served under men who had themselves fought in the Civil War, both under Grant and under Lee. The commander of the cavalry division was that gallant ex-Confederate soldier, Major-General Joseph Wheeler; and our immediate commander, our brigade commander, was an ex-Union soldier, who entered the Union army as a private, and to whom for my great good fortune it befell me to sign the commission as Lieutenant-General of the army of the United States—Lieutenant-General Young. Afterward at San Juan the cavalry served under General Sumner, from whom I took my orders.
I can not say how much it meant to me to be able to take part in raising that regiment under the shadow of the Alamo. My admiration for Texas and Texans is no new thing. Since I have been a boy and first studied the history of this country my veins have thrilled and tingled as I read of the mighty deeds of Houston, of Bowie, of Crockett, of Travis, of the men who were victorious at the fight at San Jacinto, of the even more glorious men who fell in the fight of the Alamo, of which it was said, “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none.”
I remember so well seven years ago when we were raising this regiment, riding in here one day to see the Alamo, and going away feeling that come what would I was going to try to handle myself so that there should no disgrace come to the memory of the Americans who died there. I want you to remember that ours was a volunteer regiment and a small war, and that we do not claim any credit for what we did more than falls to the lot of any number of other people. All we ask of you is to believe that we tried to show the spirit which would have made us do the kind of a job that you of the Civil War did, if the need had arisen.
I wish to express my acknowledgments for the greeting which I have received here in San Antonio and which I have received throughout the length and breadth of Texas. This is the third time I have visited this beautiful city—and it is such a beautiful city. I wonder if you yourselves, proud though you are of it, appreciate the charm it has to an outsider coming here. It is fifteen years ago that I first came here, simply passing through as any number of other travelers pass through, and saw it. Seven years ago when I came here I was here strictly on business. When we got back that year from Santiago I said to the officers of the regiment, “Now we have got to have a reunion of the regiment in San Antonio.” All kinds of things happened in between. I have led a middling busy life myself since; and now at last the chance has come to make good the promise and to have those of the regiment who are able to come together here in the city where the regiment was raised to greet one another and talk over the past. In a sense we can claim that that regiment was a typical American body. The men composing it were raised chiefly in the Southwest, but some from the North, some from the East, so that we had the Northerner and the Southerner, the Easterner and the Westerner in that regiment; we had men in it who worshiped their Creator some according to one creed, some according to another, for almost every religious body of any size in the United States was represented within our ranks. We had men who had been born abroad and men who were born here, whose ancestors came to what is now the United States at the time of the landing of the first colonists at the mouth of the James or at Plymouth. We had men of inherited wealth and men who all their lives long had earned each day’s bread by that day’s toil. We had men of every grade socially; men who worked with their heads; men who worked with their hands; men of all the types that our country produces; but each of them glad to get in on his worth as a man only, and content to be judged purely by what he could show himself to be.
It has always seemed to me that one of the greatest lessons taught by the Civil War was the lesson of brotherhood. You, my friends, who wore the blue; you, my friends, who wore the gray, what each of you when he went forward to battle was concerned with about the man on his right hand and the man on his left was not what that man’s ancestry was, not as to how he worshiped his Maker, not as to what his profession was, or his means; what you wanted to know was whether he would stay put. If he did you were for him, and if he did not you were against him.
The same thing that was true in the great war is true in time of peace. This Government is emphatically a government by the people, for the people, of the people. Now, besides applauding that sentiment, let us live up to it. It has two sides to it. In the first place, it applies in a dozen different directions. It applies, for instance, in reference to creed. We have a right to ask that our neighbor do his duty toward God and man; but we have no business to dictate to him how he shall worship his Maker, and no business to discriminate for or against him because of the way in which he does it. In the same way, if a man is a decent citizen, he is a decent citizen, whether rich or poor. To judge from some of the talk you occasionally hear, a man can not be a square man if he is rich. Remember always that you listen at your peril to any man who would seek to inflame you against your fellow-citizen because he is better off. Again, in the Civil War, come back to the consideration about your bunkie. You did not care whether he was a banker or bricklayer. If he was a banker he was all right if he was a good fellow, if he did his duty in camp, if he did not straggle on the march, if he did not drop his share of the joint provisions on the march, and then expect you to share yours with him at the end of the day. You wanted him to do his part, and if he did it you were for him. Now, apply that in civil life. If the rich man does not his duty, cinch him, and I will help you just as far as I can. But don’t cinch him because he is a rich man. If you do you are a mighty mean creature yourself; you are not a good American yourself. Give him a perfectly fair show. If he is a poor man and does his duty, help him, stand by him. If he whines about his poverty and says that he ought to be carried, you may just as well make up your mind to drop him then and there. Every man of us stumbles at times. Every man of us at times needs a helping hand stretched out to him; and shame to any man who will not stretch out that helping hand to his brother if that brother needs it. But if the brother lies down, you can do mighty little in carrying him. You can help him up; but once up he has got to walk himself. The only way in which you can ever really help any man is to help him to help himself.
That brings me to the second set of people here whom I have been most especially glad to see and to greet—the children. In the first place, I believe in them, as you know, and judging by the showing that San Antonio has made to-day, San Antonio is all right as regards both quality and quantity. As I like your stock I am glad that it does not seem likely to die out. In passing through Texas I have been more impressed than by anything else by the evident care you are giving to education, the evident care given to training your children, the school facilities, both for primary and higher education, and the way in which those facilities are being taken advantage of. Of course it is a mere truism to say that the care of the children is the most important task of any generation. You have a wonderful empire here in Texas. It is literally larger than most Old World empires. Your diversification of soil and climate, the marvelous fertility of your soil, your natural advantages, ensure you a phenomenal future agriculturally and industrially, ensure this State a wonderful growth in population and wealth. All that is essential. You must have the material basis upon which to build as a foundation, but I need not say to you to remember that it is only a foundation. The material counts for nothing if you do not build upon it the spiritual, if you do not build upon it the things of the soul, of the mind.
Let me again take an example from the war. We need arms and equipment, but the best rifle ever made does not make a soldier if it has not got the right man behind it. You may take the finest modern weapon, put it in the hands of a weakling or a coward, and a good man will beat him with a club. If the other man is a good man too, you want a mighty good weapon, or you will get beaten. But the weapon does not in any shape or way serve as a substitute for the spirit of the soldier. That is what counts in the last resort. Tactics change, weapons change, but the soul that drives a man forward to victory does not change as the ages go by. The men of the Civil War, alike the men who wore the gray and the men who wore the blue, made a record which remains forever a heritage of honor and of glory for all this people. They did that because they had in them the spirit which from time immemorial has made the soldiers of whom the world is proud, the spirit for the lack of which no other quality in man or in nation will atone. We of to-day, we who, if a war should come, will have to fight under new conditions, with new arms, will win (as assuredly I believe we shall win) only because our men still have in them the spirit that made their forefathers do well in battle. So you must train your children up so that in addition to having what counts for material prosperity in a State, you must have the things that tell most for greatness, the things that make for the soul of the Nation.
Here in San Antonio what is the building you are proudest of?—the Alamo. It is not exactly up to date. Other buildings are more useful. But you are proud of it because it commemorates forever the spirit of those who made its fame immortal. So in the State itself, important though it is to provide for the industrial welfare of the commonwealth, the thing that is most important is to take care of the really vital crop—the crop of citizens. The thing which the State most needs to care for is the welfare, not merely material, but moral and intellectual as well, of the children who are going to make up the State fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years hence; and that is why I am so glad to see the care which you of Texas are taking in the training of the generation that is now coming up.
A thing that is distressing to me to see is when sometimes the man and woman who have done well in life show a curious inability to train their own children in the way that has resulted successfully for themselves. I think that all of us know people who, because they have worked hard and triumphed, feel that somehow or other they will spare their children the acquisition of the very qualities which have made the parents triumph. Too often you see the man, and I am sorry to say the woman, who says, “I have had to work hard; my sons and my daughters shall have an easy time.” Such a man or woman is preparing ruin for the children about whom this is said. Of course, you want to give your children all the love possible; but it is not right to mistake folly for affection. When you spare the child that which alone will enable it to conquer in after life, you are not giving it a blessing; you are doing it the greatest wrong in your power. Bring up the boy and girl alike with the understanding that life is not generally soft, is not generally easy, that there will be plenty of rough times, and that what they have to show is not the spirit that avoids difficulties and flinches from them, but the spirit which overcomes them. Let each of the older among you look back upon your lives. You men of the Civil War; what are the times of which you are proudest? What are the memories you are most glad to hand down to your children and your children’s children? The times that were easy? No. You are proud to remember and have them remember the days of toil, of peril, of effort, the days when you had to risk life and endure every form of hardship and of labor, when you had in you the spirit that made you endure it, that made you rise level to the great need. Surely you must not rob your sons of the right to feel in their turn the same pride that you now feel in the power to overcome difficulty, the power to work, the power of wresting triumph out of danger.
There is only one of my fellow-citizens to whom I will touch my hat quicker than to the soldier; and that is the mother, because I think she has a little harder time of it. The mother who has brought up as they should be brought up a family of young children is entitled to such respect as no other person in the community is entitled to. When the end of her life comes she has endured any amount of hardship, the sitting up by beds of sick children, the endless taking care of them, for a mother is not allowed to know the difference between night and day as far as the ending of the day’s task is concerned; but, after all, when her life is done she can look back upon it with a prouder sense of satisfaction than any one else, if she has done her duty, for her children and her husband shall rise up and call her blessed. The worthy life for the Nation, for the individual, for the man, for the woman, is the life of effort for the things worth striving for; and our whole aim should be not to teach those who are to come after us to shirk difficulties, and to strive to have an easy time in life, but to strive to do their duty, whether that duty is hard or not, and to feel that no success is so great as the success of duty worth doing which is well done.
Of course, that is my conception of the life for the Nation as well as for the individual. I am not going to develop my theory about that; in the first place, because I want to keep clear of anything that you might think touched in the faintest degree upon politics, and in the next place because I believe you know pretty well how I feel anyway. I feel that this Nation, whether it wishes to or not, can not help being a great Nation. You of Texas by what your forefathers did and what you have done have helped in making this Nation so that it is impossible not to be great. We can not decide whether we will be great or not. The only thing we can decide is whether, being great, we will do well or do ill. We have got our duty in the world. We must do our duty to others, and we must do our duty to ourselves. We must so handle ourselves that no weak power which is behaving itself shall have cause to fear us; and no strong power of any kind shall be able to oppress or wrong us. We all believe in the Monroe Doctrine. I have a little difficulty in getting some of my friends to accept my interpretation of it; but they will in time, because that interpretation has come to stay. We are building the Panama Canal. While that will be a benefit to all the country, it will be of most benefit to the Gulf States. We have duties in connection with the great position we have taken. We can not shirk these duties. We can do them well or do them ill, but do them we must That is one reason why I want to see a good navy; and we have got a good navy. I am going to use a simile that I used a couple of nights ago at Dallas. In the old days in Texas I understand that there used to be a proverb that while you would not generally want a gun at all, if you did want it you wanted it quick and you wanted it awfully bad. That is just the way I feel about the navy. I feel that if we have it the chances are that we will not need it; but that if we do not have it, we might find that our need for it was vital.
TO THE CONGREGATION ASSEMBLED AT THE BLUE SCHOOLHOUSE ON UPPER DIVIDE CREEK, COLO., SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 1905
Friends:
It is hard for me not to call you neighbors, for during a number of years my neighbors were just such men and women as those I now see before me, and they were as good friends as I ever had. I do not intend to say more than a few words to-day, but I do wish to tell you how thoroughly at home I feel with you, how much I have enjoyed my stay here, and how I have appreciated the kind and thoughtful hospitality with which I have been treated.
Here, as elsewhere in almost every gathering in the West, I see men wearing the button which shows that they served in the Grand Army of the Republic, and carrying the flag which they more than any other men in this Nation have the right to carry because it is owing to them that this Nation has a flag at all. The few words which I have to say are to be on success, and I wish to illustrate what I mean by taking these veterans of the Civil War as examples; and what I am about to say was suggested by a conversation I had with the Dominie here, when he was with me the other day on a bear hunt. The Grand Army in its organization is typically and fundamentally American, because in the Grand Army every man from lieutenant-general to drummer boy is judged not by his position, but by the way he discharges or discharged his duty while in that position. In other words, to the Grand Army man success, in the highest and truest acceptation of the word, means the full performance of duty in whatever position Providence has assigned the man to whom the duty comes. Success from the soldier’s standpoint, if an army is to rank as one of the great armies of all time, must mean that whether the man carries sword or musket, whether he looks after the mules or the commissary, he does his duty up to the handle. If the soldier feels that he has done that, then he has a right to feel that his career has been honorable and successful, and that his children’s children will be proud of him. Success had this meaning from 1861 to 1865.
So it is in civil life. Real success consists in doing one’s duty well in the path where one’s life is led. Of course, you must remember that to do your duty you must in the first place do it to yourself and to those that are nearest you. There is no use whatever in having lofty ambitions or great schemes for helping mankind if you are not able in the first place to keep yourself and your own family decently fed, clothed, and housed. You must pull your own weight first before you can do more than be a passenger in the boat. You must do what is right to your family and your neighbors before you can help the State. If, however, you have the ordinary humdrum qualities, the workaday qualities, you can win real success; for real success in civil life means that the man is able to make a living for himself and his family, to educate his children, to do his duty by his neighbors, and when the end of his life comes, to be able to feel that the world has been a little better and not a little worse off because he has lived.
When it comes to the great prizes of life there must always be more or less accident in winning. No man who has made what the world at large calls a great success can fail to recognize, if he is sincere with himself, that there has been much of chance, of fortune, in his triumph; and surely this should prevent arrogance on his part, and should also prevent any feeling of mean envy toward him on the part of others. Carry yourself so that if accident puts great opportunities in your way you will be able to take advantage of them, and so that, at any rate, even if the exceptional opportunities do not come, you can do the things that count most for real happiness in life, the things that in their sum mean the life that is successful, because they make up a happy and healthy home. No amount of skill, perseverance, energy, or genius can win either the great or the small prizes of life unless back of them lie character and the courage of moral convictions. With this character, whether the great opportunity comes or not, you can count upon so bearing yourselves that your children will bless you for having done all that was in your power to bring them up to an honored name.
So much for success in private life. Now for the success from the national standpoint. In this country of ours the Government can no more rise higher than those who make it than a stream can rise higher than its source. No one leader, no set of leaders, can make the Government. It will be made by the average citizen, and whether it stands high or low will and must depend upon the character of the average citizenship. Only this average citizen can make or unmake it. The right type of leader can guide and help him—in short, can lead him; but he must himself be trusted to see to it that his leadership is right, and if he has not the right stuff in him, then no leadership will avail him or any of us. In the Civil War, Grant and Sherman and Farragut rendered incalculable service; but in the last analysis it was the average man in the ranks who made the army. If that man had not had the right stuff in him not all the generalship of the greatest leaders would have availed to win victory. So it is now. The man who carries the hod or the axe or the coupling-pin; the man who holds the plow or the hammer; the average man who does the average work of the Nation, is the man upon whom our whole political and social fabric rests. If he continues to have the right stuff in him, then as a Nation we shall continue to go up. If he surrenders himself to idleness and ignorance, to mean envy and mean hate; if he is not thrifty, industrious, energetic and intelligent; above all, if his moral fibre weakens—then the Republic will be in a bad way. There is no secret about good citizenship. The qualities that make a good citizen are those that the humblest man or woman, girl or boy, can have; but they are the qualities upon which the foundations of the State rest. Dishonesty, especially if accompanied by that unpleasant type of ability without conscientiousness which some people deify under the name of “smartness,” is a curse and a disgrace to the individual and to the community. Honesty is the first quality for the individual and for the Nation; and it must be backed up by courage—the courage which does not wait before showing itself until the heroic days which may never come, but which unflinchingly does each day that day’s duty, be it easy or hard; and finally it must be backed up by the common-sense without which courage and honesty are of so little avail. The man who is a good husband; the woman who is a good wife and mother; the son who so carries himself that the family are glad to have him at home instead of earnestly wishing he were away; the daughter who as she grows up is a help to her mother instead of an added burden; the family in which tenderness and consideration are shown for one another, together with the strong, fearless qualities absolutely necessary both for man and for woman in this rough, workaday world of ours—such men and women, such families, have won the success that most counts, and in their aggregate make up the Nation that is really successful.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND BOARD OF TRADE, DENVER, COLO., MAY 9, 1905
Mr. President; Mr. Toastmaster; and you, Men of Denver; Men of Colorado:
I hope I need not say how glad I am to be your guest to-night. Let me say just one word in reference to the work of this organization of which I am not only the guest, but to which I owe my most sincere thanks for having elected me to honorary membership. You have done a great work for the material prosperity of this city, of this State. I fully appreciate, as every sensible man must, the great, the vital importance of that work. We must have a basis of material prosperity before any community, whether State, municipality, or nation, can develop itself, can rise in any degree. There must in the community as in the individual be first as a basis the material prosperity; but woe to the community, woe to the individual, that accepts such material prosperity as the be-all and the end-all of its life. In the world at large, and especially in this Nation, we have been passing through an era of materialism. It has had its good side, and it has had its poor side; and we of this country will never rise level to the standard that should be set here until we not only understand but apply the truth that material prosperity is only the foundation, and that its worth depends entirely upon the kind of moral superstructure of good citizenship that we build upon it. No wealth, no material well-being, shall avail the Nation where class hatreds flourish, where man looks upon his brother with envy and hatred or with arrogance and contempt, according to his position, where the average man fails to understand that the supreme good for any man is the granting him the opportunity and training him to the power to do service to the community at large. I believe in material well-being, of course; I should be a fool if I did not. I believe in material well-being; I believe in those who have built it up; but I believe also that it is a curse if it is not accompanied by the lift toward higher things. We of this country; we who have enjoyed the marvelous prosperity that this country has possessed in a degree pre-eminent above all other nations of earth, must in the future show our understanding of this doctrine, or we shall fail to make of the Republic what it must and shall be made—an example for all the nations of mankind.
But do not think that I fail to understand the importance of our material well-being. I congratulate Denver with all my heart that it is the centre of the great mining and livestock industries. It is of enormous consequence to all our people that any section of this country should do well. Do not forget that. So far from its being a hurt to any one section to see another section prosper, we can on the contrary count it as certain that if a part of this country prospers much the rest of the country will as a whole feel some good effects from the result of the prosperity. As Senator Patterson was just saying to me, when three years ago we succeeded in getting through that law which I am so very proud should have been enacted during my administration, the law by which the Nation undertook to do its share in the great work of reclamation of the arid lands of the West; when we got through that law there were certain shortsighted people, representing as they believed the interests of the non-arid Eastern lands, who objected to its passage on the ground that it would help build up their rivals; whereas, they ought to have seen that whatever built up the inter-mountain States would add to the prosperity of all the United States. There is just one safe motto for Americans to act on; that is, the motto of all men up; not some men down.
In a very small way I am trying to build up an other industry for the benefit of the whole country, which we are starting here in Colorado. Through Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture, in connection with your Agricultural College, we are starting the development of a breed of American horse which may be called the general utility horse. If I have any influence with this Administration I am going to have this work continued! Also, incidentally (if any of you have come from Vermont you will appreciate this), I think that for this end we should develop the old breed of Morgan horse, because we have in the Morgan horse a type which is not surpassed in any country for the purpose to be served by the breed of horse most important for us to develop. I do not think that the perpetuation of that fine old stock should be left to private breeders. I think the Government should take part in it. The reason we have started this horse breeding by the Government here in Colorado is that we find, for reasons that I am not wholly able to explain, that the stoutest forelegs in horses are developed here in Colorado; and so I hope the Senators from Colorado will help me to develop the Morgan horse in Colorado.
Gentlemen, I want to say a word as to a governmental policy in which I feel that this whole country ought to take a great interest and which is itself but part of a general policy into which I think our Government must go. I speak of the policy of extending the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, of giving them the power to fix rates and to have the rates that they fix go into effect practically at once. As I say, that represents in my mind part of what should be the general policy of this country, the policy of giving not to the State but to the National Government an increased supervisory and regulatory power over corporations. The first step and to my mind the most important step in this general policy is to give the Nation in effective form this power over the great transportation corporations of this country. In the days of the fathers of the older among you the highways of commerce for civilized nations were what they had always been—waterways and roads. Therefore they were open to all who chose to travel upon them. Within the last two generations we have seen a system grow up under which the old methods were completely revolutionized, and now the typical highway of commerce is the railroad. Compared to the railroad the ordinary road for wheeled vehicles, and the waterway, whether natural or artificial, have lost their importance. Here in Colorado, for instance, it is the railroads which, of course, are the only highways that you need take into account in dealing with the question of commerce in the State or outside of the State. Therefore, under this changed system, we see highways of commerce grow up each of which is controlled by a single corporation or individual; sometimes several of them being controlled in combination by corporations or a few individuals. When such is the case, in my judgment it is absolutely necessary that the Nation (for the separate States can not possibly do it) should assume a supervisory and regulatory function over the great corporations which practically control the highways of commerce.
Now fix clearly in your minds two facts at the outset. As with everything else mundane, when you get that supervisory and regulatory power on behalf of the Nation you will not have cured all the evils that existed and you will not equal the expectations of the amiable but ill-regulated enthusiast who thinks that you ought to have cured all those evils. A measure of good will come, some good will be done, some injustice will have been prevented; but we shall be a long way from the millennium. Get that fact clear in your mind or you will be laying up for your selves a store of incalculable disappointment in the future. That is the first thing.
Now the second and even more important matter: When you give the Nation that power, remember that harm and not good will come unless you give it with the firm determination not only to get justice for yourselves, but to do justice to others. You must be as jealous to do justice to the railroads as to exact justice from them. We can not afford in any shape or way in this country to encourage a feeling which would do injustice to a man of property, any more than to submit to injustice from a man of property. Whether the man owns the biggest railroad or the greatest outside corporation in the land, or whether he makes each day’s bread by the sweat of that day’s toil, he is entitled to justice and fair dealing, to no more and to no less. A spirit of envy on the part of those less well off against the better off is as bad as and no worse than a spirit of arrogant disregard for the rights of the man of small means on the part of the man of large means. The arrogance and the envy are not two different qualities; they are the same quality shown by men under different circumstances.
We must make up our minds that nothing but harm will come from any scheme to exercise such supervision as that I advocate over corporations, and especially over the common carriers, unless we have it clearly fixed in our minds that the scheme is to be one of substantial justice alike to the common carrier and to the public. If I have the appointment or retention of any commission and power to administer a law of such increased powers I shall neither appoint nor retain the man who would fail to do justice to the railroads any more than I would appoint or retain the man who would fail to exact justice from the railroads. I want that understood as a preliminary. If I have the appointment of any of those men, or their retention, they will give a square deal all around or else their shrift will be short.
But with that statement as a preliminary I wish to urge with all the earnestness I possess, not only upon the public, but upon those interested in the great railway corporations, the absolute need of acquiescence in the enactment of such law. As has been well set forth by the Attorney-General, Mr. Moody, in his recent masterly argument presented to the committee of the Senate which is investigating the matter, the Legislators have the right and as I believe the duty to confer these powers upon some executive body. It can not confer them upon any court, nor can it take away the court’s power to interfere if the law is administered in a way that amounts to confiscation of property. Of course, it would be possible to come much short of such confiscation and yet do great damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to the great corporations engaged in interstate commerce. We must remember always that most of the men who are responsible for the management of these great corporations, and who have profited thereby, have made their fortunes not as incidental to damaging, but to benefiting the community as a whole. We must be careful that nothing is done that would jeopardize their industries and that would therefore work harm of the most far-reaching kind not only to all, from the humblest to the highest, engaged in these industries, but to the business community as a whole. We must be careful to see that the law is administered with sanity and conservatism. But the power must exist, if justice is to be done as between the public and the common carrier, in some governmental executive tribunal, not only to fix rates and alter them, when convinced that existing rates do injustice, but to see that the rate thus fixed goes into effect practically at once.
I do not ascribe it to any moral culpability of the men engaged in handling these great corporations that they can not see some of the bad effects of certain things they do. It is most natural for a man who is trying to carry on his business in competition with some other business to think that whatever he does that would beat his competitor is a pretty good thing for the community at large; and often I do not blame him for what he does; but I intend to prevent his doing it when it is against the public weal.
I can not attempt to speak in detail of all that should be put into the law as I hope it will be enacted at the next session of the National Congress. Not only should this power over rates go in, but in my belief we should at the same time deal with the private car question, which, as regards certain industries, offers an even greater menace than is offered by the present system of fixing rates. I do not think that the law will have to deal with many subjects, but I do feel that with the two I have mentioned and with perhaps one or two others it should deal effectively. There will be the argument made on the other side (doubtless the argument being made in their own minds by certain of my hearers) that such power is liable to abuse. Of course it is. The power of taxation is liable to grave abuse, and yet it must exist in the appropriate legislative body. You can not give any needed power to the representatives of the people without exposing yourselves to the danger of that power being abused. There must be the possibility of abuse or there can not be the possibility of effective use.
In closing I wish to mention one governmental project which I have been instrumental, I think, in having started which will have a certain bearing upon this question, and that is the Panama Canal. It is perhaps unnecessary for me to say that I am perfectly aware that many most admirable gentlemen disagreed with me in my action toward the Panama Canal. But I am in a wholly unrepentant frame of mind in reference thereto. The ethical conception upon which I acted was that I did not intend that Uncle Sam should be held up while he was doing a great work for himself and all mankind. But without regard to that, when the canal comes into operation I think it will have a very important regulatory effect in connection with the transcontinental commerce of the great railroads. I think when such is the case those great railroads will have to revise their way of looking at the interests of certain inland cities.
Let me repeat. I have told you my views as to what I regard to be the most important matter of internal national legislation that in the immediate future will be before this people. I wish to say again that, important though that legislation is, it is nothing like as important as the spirit in which we approach it. If we approach it in the spirit of demagogy, if we permit ourselves as a people to be deluded into the belief that permanent good will come to us as a mass, if we attack unjustly the proper rights of others because they are wealthy, we shall do ourselves just as much damage as if we permitted an attack upon those who are poor because they are poor. In time past republic after republic has existed in this world and has gone down to destruction, sometimes because the republic was turned into a government of the poor who plundered the rich, sometimes because it was turned into a government of the rich who exploited the poor. It made no difference whatever to the fate of the republic which form its fall took. That fall was just as certain in one case as in the other. It was just as certain to follow the triumph of a class which plundered another class, whether the class thus given mastery was the class of the poor who plundered the rich, or the class of the rich who exploited the poor. The destruction was as inevitable in one instance as in the other.
We have the right to look forward with confident hope to the future of this Republic because it will not and shall not become the Republic of any class, either poor or rich, because it will and shall remain as its founders intended it to be, and as its rescuers under Abraham Lincoln intended it to be, a government where every man, rich or poor, so long as he does his duty to his neighbor, is given his full rights, is guaranteed justice and has justice exacted from him in return.