_My Fellow-Citizens_:
I am glad to greet the farmers of Maine. During the century that has
closed, the growth of industrialism has necessarily meant that cities
and towns have increased in population more rapidly than the country
districts. And yet, it remains true now as it always has been, that in
the last resort the country districts are those in which we are surest
to find the old American spirit, the old American habits of thought
and ways of living. Conditions have changed in the country far less
than they have changed in the cities, and in consequence there has
been little breaking away from the methods of life which have produced
the great majority of the leaders of the Republic in the past. Almost
all of our great Presidents have been brought up in the country, and
most of them worked hard on the farms in their youth and got their
early mental training in the healthy democracy of farm life.
The forces which made these farm-bred boys leaders of men when they
had come to their full manhood are still at work in our country
districts. Self-help and individual initiative remain to a peculiar
degree typical of life in the country, life on a farm, in the
lumbering camp, on a ranch. Neither the farmers nor their hired
hands can work through combinations as readily as the capitalists or
wage-workers of cities can work.
It must not be understood from this that there has been no change in
farming and farm life. The contrary is the case. There has been much
change, much progress. The granges and similar organizations, the
farmers’ institutes, and all the agencies which promote intelligent
co-operation and give opportunity for social and intellectual
intercourse among the farmers, have played a large part in raising
the level of life and work in the country districts. In the domain of
government, the Department of Agriculture since its foundation has
accomplished results as striking as those obtained under any other
branch of the national administration. By scientific study of all
matters connected with the advancement of farm life; by experimental
stations; by the use of trained agents, sent to the uttermost
countries of the globe; by the practical application of anything which
in theory has been demonstrated to be efficient; in these ways, and in
many others, great good has been accomplished in raising the standard
of productiveness in farm work throughout the country. We live in
an era when the best results can only be achieved, if to individual
self-help we add the mutual self-help which comes by combination,
both of citizens in their individual capacity and of citizens working
through the State as an instrument. The farmers of the country have
grown more and more to realize this, and farming has tended more
and more to take its place as an applied science—though, as with
everything else, the theory must be tested in practical work, and can
avail only when applied in practical fashion.
But after all this has been said, it remains true that the
countryman—the man on the farm, more than any other of our citizens
to-day, is called upon continually to exercise the qualities which
we like to think of as typical of the United States throughout its
history—the qualities of rugged independence, masterful resolution,
and individual energy and resourcefulness. He works hard (for
which no man is to be pitied), and often he lives hard (which may
not be pleasant); but his life is passed in healthy surroundings,
surroundings which tend to develop a fine type of citizenship. In the
country, moreover, the conditions are fortunately such as to allow
a closer touch between man and man, than, too often, we find to be
the case in the city. Men feel more vividly the underlying sense of
brotherhood, of community of interest. I do not mean by this that
there are not plenty of problems connected with life in our rural
districts. There are many problems; and great wisdom and earnest
disinterestedness in effort are needed for their solution.
After all, we are one people, with the same fundamental
characteristics, whether we live in the city or in the country, in the
East or in the West, in the North or the South. Each of us, unless
he is contented to be a cumberer of the earth’s surface, must strive
to do his life-work with his whole heart. Each must remember that,
while he will be noxious to every one unless he first do his duty by
himself, he must also strive ever to do his duty by his fellow. The
problem of how to do these duties is acute everywhere. It is most
acute in great cities, but it exists in the country, too. A man, to
be a good citizen, must first be a good bread-winner, a good husband,
a good father—I hope the father of many healthy children; just as a
woman’s first duty is to be a good housewife and mother. The business
duties, the home duties, the duties to one’s family, come first. The
couple who bring up plenty of healthy children, who leave behind them
many sons and daughters fitted in their turn to be good citizens,
emphatically deserve well of the State.
But duty to one’s self and one’s family does not exclude duty to
one’s neighbor. Each of us, rich or poor, can help his neighbor at
times; and to do this he must be brought into touch with him, into
sympathy with him. Any effort is to be welcomed that brings people
closer together, so as to secure a better understanding among those
whose walks of life are in ordinary circumstances far apart. Probably
the good done is almost equally great on both sides, no matter which
one may seem to be helping the other. But it must be kept in mind
that no good will be accomplished at all by any philanthropic or
charitable work, unless it is done along certain definite lines. In
the first place, if the work is done in a spirit of condescension, it
would be better never to attempt it. It is almost as irritating to be
patronized as to be wronged. The only safe way of working is to try to
find out some scheme by which it is possible to make a common effort
for the common good. Each of us needs at times to have a helping hand
stretched out to him or her. Every one of us slips on some occasion,
and shame to his fellow who then refuses to stretch out the hand that
should always be ready to help the man who stumbles. It is our duty
to lift him up; but it is also our duty to remember that there is no
earthly use in trying to carry him. If a man will submit to being
carried, that is sufficient to show that he is not worth carrying. In
the long run, the only kind of help that really avails is the help
which teaches a man to help himself. Such help every man who has been
blessed in life should try to give to those who are less fortunate,
and such help can be accepted with entire self-respect.
The aim to set before ourselves in trying to aid one another is to
give that aid under conditions which will harm no man’s self-respect,
and which will teach the less fortunate how to help themselves as
their stronger brothers do. To give such aid it is necessary not only
to possess the right kind of heart, but also the right kind of head.
Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether,
in the long run, it works more damage than softness of head. At any
rate, both are undesirable. The prerequisite to doing good work in the
field of philanthropy—in the field of social effort, undertaken with
one’s fellows for the common good—is that it shall be undertaken in a
spirit of broad sanity no less than of broad and loving charity.
The other day I picked up a little book called “The Simple Life,”
written by an Alsatian, Charles Wagner, and he preaches such
wholesome, sound doctrine that I wish it could be used as a tract
throughout our country. To him the whole problem of our complex,
somewhat feverish modern life can be solved only by getting men and
women to lead better lives. He sees that the permanence of liberty and
democracy depends upon a majority of the people being steadfast in
morality and in that good plain sense which, as a national attribute,
comes only as the result of the slow and painful labor of centuries,
and which can be squandered in a generation by the thoughtless and
vicious. He preaches the doctrine of the superiority of the moral to
the material. He does not undervalue the material, but he insists, as
we of this nation should always insist, upon the infinite superiority
of the moral, and the sordid destruction which comes upon either the
nation or the individual if it or he becomes absorbed only in the
desire to get wealth. The true line of cleavage lies between good
citizen and bad citizen; and the line of cleavage may, and often
does, run at right angles to that which divides the rich and the
poor. The sinews of virtue lie in man’s capacity to care for what
is outside himself. The man who gives himself up to the service of
his appetites, the man who the more goods he has the more wants, has
surrendered himself to destruction. It makes little difference whether
he achieves his purpose or not. If his point of view is all wrong,
he is a bad citizen whether he be rich or poor. It is a small matter
to the community whether in arrogance and insolence he has misused
great wealth, or whether, though poor, he is possessed by the mean
and fierce desire to seize a morsel, the biggest possible, of that
prey which the fortunate of earth consume. The man who lives simply,
and justly, and honorably, whether rich or poor, is a good citizen.
Those who dream only of idleness and pleasure, who hate others, and
fail to recognize the duty of each man to his brother, these, be they
rich or poor, are the enemies of the State. The misuse of property
is one manifestation of the same evil spirit which, under changed
circumstances, denies the right of property because this right is in
the hands of others. In a purely material civilization the bitterness
of attack on another’s possession is only additional proof of the
extraordinary importance attached to possession itself. When outward
well-being, instead of being regarded as a valuable foundation on
which happiness may with wisdom be built, is mistaken for happiness
itself, so that material prosperity becomes the one standard, then,
alike by those who enjoy such prosperity in slothful or criminal ease,
and by those who in no less evil manner rail at, envy, and long for
it, poverty is held to be shameful, and money, whether well or ill
gotten, to stand for merit.
All this does not mean condemnation of progress. It is mere folly to
try to dig up the dead past, and scant is the good that comes from
asceticism and retirement from the world. But let us make sure that
our progress is in the essentials as well as in the incidentals.
Material prosperity without the moral lift toward righteousness means
a diminished capacity for happiness and a debased character. The worth
of a civilization is the worth of the man at its centre. When this man
lacks moral rectitude, material progress only makes bad worse, and
social problems still darker and more complex.