AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., JUNE 22, 1905
Mr. President, and you of Williams:
It is a high honor that I have received at your hands, and I deeply appreciate it. I appreciate it particularly because it is my good fortune to find on the platform with me so many men to whom I am knit by the bonds of personal friendship and of work for a common end. I have listened with real pleasure to the three discourses to-day; and of course the first was in my line of business.
Before speaking of what I had intended to say here to-day, I want to say a word just suggested by that address on “idealism in politics.” I wish to see every graduate of this college, and every graduate of every other college in the land, feel (and I thank the speaker for the way he emphasized it) the need of ideals in business and in law, quite as much as in politics. I wish to see every graduate do all that in him lies to uphold a standard of practical idealism in after life. I was struck and amused by the sentence in which the speaker said that at present if you spoke of ideals, you met with the answer, “Oh, yes, that is very pretty in theory, but it won’t work in Troy!” There are two sides to that. In the first place, it is a bad thing for Troy if Troy will not stand idealism; and in the next place it is a poor type of ideal that is of no use in Troy. I want you to remember the last just as much as the first. I want you to have high ideals, but practical ideals. I do not want you ever to get into a frame of mind which we see pretty often in the world at large, which believes that you can only have either high or fantastic ideals, or else low and practical ones. If you have to choose, of course I would a great deal rather see you choose high and fantastic ideals than low and practical ones, because the last are a detriment to the Nation at large, while the first are merely of no earthly consequence. If you have to choose between being noxious and being merely harmless, of course, choose to be harmless. But do not expect very great gratitude from any person interested in the country if you choose merely to be harmless. If you choose to have high ideals so fantastic that they are of no use when you try to apply them in practical life, do not for one moment delude yourself into the belief that to have these fantastic ideals shows that you are more virtuous than the man who has not got them. It merely shows that you are more foolish. Have a high ideal and try to realize it, measurably, within your powers, as, immeasurably and with tremendous power, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington strove to realize their ideals. Have high ideals, and then try to realize them in practical shape. I do not want to see you go out of this institution of learning with an ideal impossible to put into effect, because I am afraid if you leave it with such an ideal and find that this ideal does not work, then instead of realizing that the fault lies in you for having chosen that kind of an ideal, you will think it lies with idealism itself, and will abandon idealism. What I desire to see you feel is that you must have a high ideal; that you must also apply that ideal in practice; and above all things to avoid the state of mind in which you preach an impossible idealism, and make amends for it by not practicing any idealism at all.
It is perfectly true that you want to avoid improper compromises, but you will not get any other, if you are not able to compromise in non-essential matters. I do not suppose there is one of these men on this platform—Mr. Root, Mr. Choate, Senator Crane—who has not disagreed with me on some pretty important points, ranging from the navy to corporations. But we have been able to come to a working agreement. We have been able to establish a basis for common action, not by surrendering on matters of principle, but by agreeing each to subordinate his views on certain points, so that we could secure the efficiency of action that can only come from united effort. I want you to feel that to accomplish anything in after life, you men who are just going out into the great world, you must keep ever before your minds both the desire to work for betterment, and the power to work in combination with your fellows (who will not on all points agree with you) practically to achieve that betterment.
In striving to solve the immediate governmental problems that are before us, we have a right to expect leadership from the men who come out of Williams, who come out of the other colleges and universities of the land; we have a right to expect that leadership to be shown with practical efficiency, in seeing that this Nation does its duty abroad and at home. I wish to see this Nation not merely talk for peace and righteousness, but act for peace and righteousness; but I wish to see this Nation stand for righteousness first and then for peace. I wish to see the Nation stand for the peace of justice, for the righteousness in the attainment of which peace is normally a potent instrument, but for which we must stand, whether peace comes or not. In 1861, there were men who cried peace, peace, when there was no peace; and we have peace now combined with righteousness, and have secured it, as I believe, for ages to come on this continent, because men then dared to draw the sword for righteousness. We have no such terrible crisis as that of 1861 facing us now. On the contrary, we have a series of rather humdrum little crises which it is sometimes exasperating to have to face, but which we must.
The particular small crisis of which I am thinking is that in Santo Domingo last year. I had done everything that in me lay to prevent that crisis coming. All I asked, on behalf of the people of the United States, of Santo Domingo was that it should be good and happy. Without entering into the ethical question, I shall merely say that it was not happy. Finally affairs grew into such shape down there that it was evident that the bonds of society were on the point of dissolution; and the Government of Santo Domingo made an earnest appeal to the Government of the United States and asked that this Nation, out of the abundance of its strength, should strive to help a weaker brother. Now do not forget that that was the appeal, and that it was because of this appeal that we took action. There were of course two motives that influenced us. One was the desire to help the people of Santo Domingo for their own sakes, and the other, and a legitimate one, was to try to fend off the possibility of trouble coming to Santo Domingo, which might bring the United States itself into trouble. The debts of Santo Domingo were so great and the impossibility of paying all those debts so patent that there was a threat of imminent interference by foreign nations to collect the debts due their own citizens. And as the only way of guaranteeing the collection of those debts was to seize the custom-houses, it inevitably meant the seizure nominally, temporarily, of a certain amount of Santo Domingo territory, which would almost inevitably produce a conflict between us and those foreign governments. So, in the interest of the peace of the world, and in the interest of justice to Santo Domingo, we yielded to Santo Domingo’s request and have started to try to help her so to carry on her finances that she may be able to pay all that she can of what she justly owes. In taking that action the Government has proceeded upon the theory that you can not formulate a right, individual or national, without impliedly formulating a responsibility and obligation to go with that right.
We say that in our own interest and in the interest of the peoples of the Western Hemisphere we adhere to the Monroe Doctrine. With the promulgation of that doctrine must go the responsibility that ought by right to accompany it. We can not say that other peoples shall not do what ought to be done, unless we do it ourselves. People answer that trouble and bother will come if we do it. If this Nation refuses to do its duty because it thinks the duty will necessitate encountering some trouble, some bother, then let this Nation cease to claim to be great. I demand that the Nation do its duty, and accept the responsibility that must go with greatness. I ask that the Nation dare to be great, and that in daring to be great it show that it knows how to do justice to the weak no less than to exact justice from the strong. In order to take such a position of being a great Nation, the one thing that we must not do is to bluff. It is perhaps defensible, although I think improper, to say that we will not try to be a big Nation, will not try to play the part of a big Nation or act as such in the world. But the unpardonable thing is to say we will act as a big Nation and then decline to take the necessary steps to make the words good. Therefore, gentlemen, see to it that the navy is built up, and kept at the highest point of efficiency. I ask that, not in the interest of war, but as a guarantee of peace. I believe in the Monroe Doctrine; I believe in the building and maintaining as an open highway for the nations of mankind the Panama Canal. But I had a great deal rather see this country abandon the Monroe Doctrine and give up all thought of building the Panama Canal than to see it attempt to maintain the one and construct the other while refusing to provide the means which can alone render our attitude as a Nation worthy of the respect of the other nations of mankind. Keep on building and maintaining at the highest point of efficiency the United States navy, or quit trying to be a big Nation. Do one or the other.
Now for our internal affairs. I am particularly glad to speak to an audience like this, because I do not know that I shall have the unqualified assent of everybody here. If I address an audience merely of men of very small means or wage-workers, then what I want to tell them, as the most important thing for them to learn, is to avoid an attitude of rancorous envy or hostility toward men of wealth, and above all to remember that the well-being of our social structure rests upon obedience to the law, upon the immediate suppression of mob violence, mob rule, in any form. There can be and must be no paltering with any manifestation of that spirit. Any attempt to override the law by action of individuals or by the action of mobs, whether the attempt comes in connection with labor difficulties or in any other way, must in the interest of the Nation be met fearlessly at the earliest opportunity, and the lawlessness put down.
On the other side, just as we must never allow this Government to be changed into government by a mob, so we must never allow it to be changed into government by a plutocracy. The growth of our modern industrialism has resulted in an altogether disproportionate reward to the man who goes into money-making as his only career. Two evil results follow. One is the result to himself, for, unless he is a man of very strong character, there almost inevitably comes a certain arrogance, or at least a certain carelessness toward the rights of others. The other result is to breed in the minds of poor people an attitude of sullen envy toward men of wealth, which is infinitely more damaging to the people who hold it than any action of the man of wealth could be.
There must be a closer supervision by the Government of great industrial combinations, for of course wealth at present finds its expression through these great industrial combinations. I think it has been a mistake to act on the theory which has shaped most of our legislation, National and State, for the last thirty years, that it is possible to turn back the hands of the clock, to forbid combinations and to restore business to conditions which have absolutely passed away. That can not be done. What we can do is to exercise an efficient supervision over the combinations, so as to see as far as possible that they are used in the interest of and not against the interest of the general public. I do not believe that such supervision can come effectively through the State, nor that it can effectively come through the municipality. Ultimately in the great majority of cases to be effective it must be exercised by the National Government. I trust that in the end means will be found by which the exercise of such control over all the great industrial corporations which are really engaged in and doing an interstate business will be lodged in the hands of the National Government. As the first step to that I hope to see the passage of legislation which will give as an executive, not as a judicial function, to the National Government the supervision of the railroads of the United States which are engaged in interstate commerce, with the power, when a rate is complained of as improper and unjust, to examine that rate, and if the rate should be changed to change it to a given rate, and to have that given rate take practically immediate effect. Now, I am perfectly well aware that there are objections to the proposed change, but in my judgment they are far outweighed by the objections attendant upon not making the change. The fear expressed by excellent people, who no doubt feel it genuinely, that we could not get a commission who would fix all the rates of the railroads of the country, is to my mind much as if they should express fear that you could not get Supreme Court Justices who would be able to fix all the laws. I expect that the commission will be able to pass upon a given rate brought before it, just as the Supreme Court passes upon a given question of law brought before it; and one will prove to be as feasible as the other has proved feasible. That system should be, and in my judgment will be introduced. I believe it will work a measurable betterment for the public. Listen to what I say—a measurable betterment for the public. I do not believe that it will produce the millennium, or anything approaching it; and I am quite certain that some of its most ardent advocates will be disappointed with the results. But I think measurable good will come. It can only come if the officers intrusted with the administration of the law remember that it is exactly as much their duty to protect the railroad from the public as to protect the public from the railroad; to remember that when we say we want justice from the railroad we must, if we are honest, add also a pledge to do justice to the railroad.