HOME-BUILDING FOR THE NATION
The most valuable citizen of this or any other country is the man who
owns the land from which he makes his living. No other man has such a
stake in the country. No other man lends such steadiness and stability
to our national life. Therefore no other question concerns us more
intimately than the question of homes. Permanent homes for ourselves,
our children, and our Nation--this is a central problem. The policy of
national irrigation is of value to the United States in very many ways,
but the greatest of all is this, that national irrigation multiplies the
men who own the land from which they make their living. The old saying,
"Who ever heard of a man shouldering his gun to fight for his boarding
house?" reflects this great truth, that no man is so ready to defend his
country, not only with arms, but with his vote and his contribution to
public opinion, as the man with a permanent stake in it, as the man who
owns the land from which he makes his living.
Our country began as a nation of farmers. During the periods that gave
it its character, when our independence was won and when our Union was
preserved, we were preeminently a nation of farmers. We can not, and we
ought not, to continue exclusively, or even chiefly, an agricultural
country, because one man can raise food enough for many. But the farmer
who owns his land is still the backbone of this Nation; and one of the
things we want most is more of him. The man on the farm is valuable to
the Nation, like any other citizen, just in proportion to his
intelligence, character, ability, and patriotism; but, unlike other
citizens, also in proportion to his attachment to the soil. That is the
principal spring of his steadiness, his sanity, his simplicity and
directness, and many of his other desirable qualities. He is the first
of home-makers.
The nation that will lead the world will be a Nation of Homes. The
object of the great Conservation movement is just this, to make our
country a permanent and prosperous home for ourselves and for our
children, and for our children's children, and it is a task that is
worth the best thought and effort of any and all of us.
To achieve this or any other great result, straight thinking and strong
action are necessary, and the straight thinking comes first. To make
this country what we need to have it, we must think clearly and directly
about our problems, and above all we must understand what the real
problems are. The great things are few and simple, but they are too
often hidden by false issues, and conventional, unreal thinking. The
easiest way to hide a real issue always has been, and always will be, to
replace it with a false one.
The first thing we need in this country, as President Roosevelt so well
set forth in a great message which told what he had been trying to do
for the American people, is equality of opportunity for every citizen.
No man should have less, and no man ought to ask for any more. Equality
of opportunity is the real object of our laws and institutions. Our
institutions and our laws are not valuable in themselves. They are
valuable only because they secure equality of opportunity for happiness
and welfare to our citizens. An institution or a law is a means, not an
end, a means to be used for the public good, to be modified for the
public good, and to be interpreted for the public good. One of the great
reasons why President Roosevelt's administration was of such enormous
value to the plain American was that he understood what St. Paul meant
when he said: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." To
follow blindly the letter of the law, or the form of an institution,
without intelligent regard both for its spirit and for the public
welfare, is very nearly as dangerous as to disregard the law altogether.
What we need is the use of the law for the public good, and the
construction of it for the public welfare.
It goes without saying that the law is supreme and must be obeyed.
Civilization rests on obedience to law. But the law is not absolute. It
requires to be construed. Rigid construction of the law works, and must
work, in the vast majority of cases, for the benefit of the men who can
hire the best lawyers and who have the sources of influence in lawmaking
at their command. Strict construction necessarily favors the great
interests as against the people, and in the long run can not do
otherwise. Wise execution of the law must consider what the law ought
to accomplish for the general good. The great oppressive trusts exist
because of subservient lawmakers and adroit legal constructions. Here is
the central stronghold of the money power in the everlasting conflict of
the few to grab, and the many to keep or win the rights they were born
with. Legal technicalities seldom help the people. The people, not the
law, should have the benefit of every doubt.
Equality of opportunity, a square deal for every man, the protection of
the citizen against the great concentrations of capital, the intelligent
use of laws and institutions for the public good, and the conservation
of our natural resources, not for the trusts, but for the people; these
are real issues and real problems. Upon such things as these the
perpetuity of this country as a nation of homes really depends. We are
coming to see that the simple things are the things to work for. More
than that, we are coming to see that the plain American citizen is the
man to work for. The imagination is staggered by the magnitude of the
prize for which we work. If we succeed, there will exist upon this
continent a sane, strong people, living through the centuries in a land
subdued and controlled for the service of the people, its rightful
masters, owned by the many and not by the few. If we fail, the great
interests, increasing their control of our natural resources, will
thereby control the country more and more, and the rights of the people
will fade into the privileges of concentrated wealth.
There could be no better illustration of the eager, rapid, unwearied
absorption by capital of the rights which belong to all the people than
the water-power trust, perhaps not yet formed but in process of
formation. This statement is true, but not unchallenged. We are met at
every turn by the indignant denial of the water-power interests. They
tell us that there is no community of interest among them, and yet they
appear by their paid attorneys, year after year, at irrigation and other
congresses, asking for help to remove the few remaining obstacles to
their perpetual and complete absorption of the remaining water-powers.
They tell us it has no significance that there is hardly a bank in some
sections of the country that is not an agency for water-power capital,
or that the General Electric Company interests are acquiring great
groups of water-powers in various parts of the United States, and
dominating the power market in the region of each group. And whoever
dominates power, dominates all industry.
Have you ever seen a few drops of oil scattered on the water spreading
until they formed a continuous film, which put an end at once to all
agitation of the surface? The time for us to agitate this question is
now, before the separate circles of centralized control spread into the
uniform, unbroken, Nation-wide covering of a single gigantic trust.
There will be little chance for mere agitation after that. No man at all
familiar with the situation can doubt that the time for effective
protest is very short. If we do not use it to protect ourselves now, we
may be very sure that the trust will give hereafter small consideration
to the welfare of the average citizen when in conflict with its own.
The man who really counts is the plain American citizen. This is the man
for whom the Roosevelt policies were created, and his welfare is the end
to which the Roosevelt policies lead.
I stand for the Roosevelt policies because they set the common good of
all of us above the private gain of some of us; because they recognize
the livelihood of the small man as more important to the Nation than the
profit of the big man; because they oppose all useless waste at present
at the cost of robbing the future; because they demand the complete,
sane, and orderly development of all our natural resources; because they
insist upon equality of opportunity and denounce monopoly and special
privilege; because, discarding false issues, they deal directly with the
vital questions that really make a difference with the welfare of us
all; and, most of all, because in them the plain American always and
everywhere holds the first place. And I propose to stand for them while
I have the strength to stand for anything.