_My Friends and Fellow-Citizens_:
It is a pleasure to come here to your city. I wish to thank the Mayor,
and through the Mayor all of your citizens, for the way in which,
upon your behalf, he has greeted me; and I wish to state that it is a
special pleasure to be introduced by my friend, Senator Scott. I have
known the Senator for some time, and I like him, because when he gives
you his word you don’t have to think about it again.
I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words here in this great
industrial centre in one of those regions which have felt to a notable
degree the effects of the period of prosperity through which we are
now passing. Probably never before in our history has the country been
more prosperous than it is at this moment; and it is a prosperity
which has come alike to the tillers of the soil and to those connected
with our great industrial enterprises.
Every period has its own troubles and difficulties. A period of
adversity, of course, troubles us all; but there are troubles in
connection with a period of prosperity also. When all things flourish
it means that there is a good chance for things that we don’t like to
flourish also, just exactly as things that we do like. A period of
great national material well-being is inevitably one in which men’s
minds are turned to the way in which those flourish who are interested
in the management of the gigantic capitalistic corporations, whose
growth has been so noted a feature of the last half century—the
corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as
trusts—accepting the word in its usual and common significance as a
big corporation usually doing business in several States at least,
besides the State in which it is incorporated, and often, though not
always, with some element of monopoly in it.
It seems to me that in dealing with this problem of the trusts—perhaps
it would be more accurate to say the group of problems which come
into our minds when we think of the trusts—we have two classes of our
fellow-citizens whom we have to convert or override. One is composed
of those men who refuse to admit that there is any action necessary at
all. The other is composed of those men who advocate some action so
extreme, so foolish, that it would either be entirely non-effective,
or, if effective, would be so only by destroying everything, good and
bad, connected with our industrial development.
In every governmental process the aim that a people capable of
self-government should steadfastly keep in mind is to proceed by
evolution rather than revolution. On the other hand, every people
fit for self-government must beware of that fossilization of mind
which refuses to allow of any change as conditions change. Now, in
dealing with the whole problem of the change in our great industrial
civilization—in dealing with the tendencies which have been
accentuated in so extraordinary a degree by steam and electricity,
and by the tremendous upbuilding of industrial centres which steam
and electricity have been the main factors in bringing about—I think
we must set before ourselves the desire not to accept less than the
possible, and at the same time not to bring ourselves to a complete
standstill by attempting the impossible. It is a good deal as it is in
taking care, through the engineers, of the lower Mississippi River.
No one can dam the Mississippi. If the nation started to dam it, the
nation would waste its time. It would not hurt the Mississippi, but
it would not only throw away its own means, but would incidentally
damage the population along the banks. You can’t dam the current.
You can build levees to keep the current within bounds and to shape
its direction. I think that is exactly what we can do in connection
with these great corporations known as trusts. We can not reverse the
industrial tendency of the age. If you succeed in doing it, then all
cities like Wheeling will have to go out of business. Remember that.
You can not put a stop to or reverse the industrial tendencies of the
age, but you can control and regulate them and see that they do no
harm.
A flood comes down the Mississippi—you can’t stop it. If you tried
to build a dam across it, it would not hurt the flood, and it would
not benefit you. You can guide it between levees so as to prevent its
doing injury, and so as to ensure its doing good. Another thing: you
don’t build those levees in a day or in a month. A man who told you
that he had a patent device by which in sixty days he would solve the
whole question of the floods along the lower Mississippi would not be
a wise man; but he would be a perfect miracle of wisdom compared to
the man who tells you that by any one patent remedy he can bring the
millennium in our industrial and social affairs.
We can do something; I believe we can do a good deal, but our
accomplishing what I expect to see accomplished is conditioned upon
our setting to work in a spirit as far removed as possible from
hysteria—a spirit of sober, steadfast, kindly—I want to emphasize
that—kindly determination not to submit to wrong ourselves and not to
wrong others, not to interfere with the great business development
of the country, and at the same time so to shape our legislation and
administration as to minimize, if we can not eradicate, the unpleasant
and vicious features connected with that industrial development. I
have said that there can be no patent remedy. There is not any one
thing which can be done to remove all of the existing evils. There are
a good many things which, if we do them all, will, I believe, make a
very appreciable betterment in the existing conditions. To do that is
not to make a promise that will evoke wild enthusiasm, but a promise
that can be kept; and in the long run it is much more comfortable only
to make promises that can be kept than to make promises which are
sure of an immense reception when made, but which entail intolerable
humiliation when it is attempted to carry them out.
I am sufficiently fortunate to be advocating now, as President,
precisely the remedies that I advocated two years ago—advocating them
not in any partisan spirit, because, gentlemen, this problem is one
which affects the life of the nation as a whole—but advocating them
simply as the American citizen who, for the time being, stands as the
Chief Executive and, therefore, the special representative of his
fellow-American citizens of all parties.
A century and a quarter ago there had been no development of industry
such as to make it a matter of the least importance whether the nation
or the State had charge of the great corporations or supervised the
great business and industrial organizations. A century and a quarter
ago, here at Wheeling, commerce was carried on by pack train, by wagon
train, by boat. That was the way it was carried on throughout the
whole civilized world—oars and sails, wheeled vehicles and beasts of
burden—those were the means of carrying on commerce at the end of the
eighteenth century, when this country became a nation.
There had been no radical change, no essential change, in the means
of carrying on commerce from the days when the Phœnician galleys
plowed the waters of the Mediterranean. For four or five thousand
years, perhaps longer, from the immemorial past when Babylon and
Nineveh stood in Mesopotamia, when Thebes and Memphis were mighty
in the valley of the Nile—from that time on through the supremacy
of Greece and of Rome, through the upbuilding of the great trading
cities like Venice and Genoa in Italy; like the cities of the Rhine
and the Netherlands in Northern Europe—on through the period of the
great expansion of European civilization which followed the voyages of
Columbus and Vasco da Gama, down to the time when this country became
a nation—the means of commercial intercourse remained substantially
unchanged. Those means, therefore, limited narrowly what could be
done by any corporation, the growth that could take place in any
community.
Suddenly, during our own lifetime as a nation—a lifetime trivial
in duration compared to the period of recorded history—there came
a revolution in the means of intercourse which made a change in
commerce, and in all that springs from commerce, in industrial
development, greater than all the changes of the preceding thousands
of years. A greater change in the means of commerce of mankind has
taken place since Wheeling was founded, since the first settlers built
their log huts in the great forests on the banks of this river, than
in all the previous period during which man had led an existence that
can be called civilized.
Through the railway, the electric telegraph, and other developments,
steam and electricity worked a complete revolution. This has meant,
of course, that entirely new problems have sprung up. You have right
in this immediate neighborhood a very much larger population than any
similar region in all the United States held when the Continental
Congress began its sessions; and the change in industrial conditions
has been literally immeasurable. Those changed conditions need a
corresponding change in the governmental agencies necessary for their
regulation and supervision.
Such agencies were not provided, and could not have been provided,
in default of a knowledge of prophecy by the men who founded the
Republic. In those days each State could take care perfectly well
of any corporations within its limits, and all it had to do was to
try to encourage their upbuilding. Now the big corporations, although
nominally the creatures of one State, usually do business in other
States, and in a very large number of cases the wide variety of State
laws on the subject of corporations has brought about the fact that
the corporation is made in one State, but does almost all its work in
entirely different States.
It has proved utterly impossible to get anything like uniformity of
legislation among the States. Some States have passed laws about
corporations which, if they had not been ineffective, would have
totally prevented any important corporate work being done within their
limits. Other States have such lax laws that there is no effective
effort made to control any of the abuses. As a result we have a system
of divided control—where the nation has something to say, but it is
a little difficult to know exactly how much, and where the different
States have each something to say, but where there is no supreme power
that can speak with authority. It is, of course, a mere truism to say
that every corporation, the smallest as well as the largest, is the
creature of the State. Where the corporation is small there is very
little need of exercising much supervision over it, but the stupendous
corporations of the present day certainly should be under governmental
supervision and regulation. The first effort to make is to give
somebody the power to exercise that supervision, that regulation.
We have already laws on the statute books. Those laws will be
enforced, and are being enforced, with all the power of the National
Government, and wholly without regard to persons. But the power is
very limited. Now I want you to take my words at their exact value. I
think—I can not say I am sure, because it has often happened in the
past that Congress has passed a law with a given purpose in view, and
when that law has been judicially interpreted it has proved that the
purpose was not achieved—but I think that by legislation additional
power in the way of regulation of at least a number of these great
corporations can be conferred. But, gentlemen, I firmly believe that
in the end power must be given to the National Government to exercise
in full supervision and regulation of these great enterprises, and,
if necessary, a Constitutional amendment must be resorted to for this
purpose.
That is not new doctrine for me. That is the doctrine that I advocated
on the stump two years ago. Some of my ultra-conservative friends
have professed to be greatly shocked at my advocating it now. I would
explain to those gentlemen, once for all, that they err whenever they
think that I advocate on the stump anything that I will not try to
put into effect after election. The objection is made that working
along these lines will take time. So it will. Let me go back to my
illustration of the Mississippi River. It took time to build the
levees, but we built them. And if we have the proper intelligence, the
proper resolution, and the proper self-restraint, we can work out the
solution along the lines that I have indicated. Thus, the first thing
is to give the National Government the power. All the power that is
given, I can assure you, will be used in a spirit as free as possible
from rancor of any kind, but with the firmest determination to make
big man and little man alike obey the law.
What we need first is power. Having gotten the power, remember the
work won’t be ended—it will be only fairly begun. And let me say
again and again and again that you will not get the millennium—the
millennium is some way off yet. But you will be in a position to make
long strides in advance in the direction of securing a juster, fairer,
wiser management of many of these corporations, both as regards the
general public and as regards their relationship among themselves and
to the investing public. When we have the power I most earnestly hope,
and should most earnestly advocate, that it be used with the greatest
wisdom and self-restraint.
The first thing to do would be to find out the facts. For that
purpose I am absolutely clear that we need publicity—that we need it
not as a matter of favor from any one corporation, but as a matter
of right, secured through the agents of the Government, from all
the corporations concerned. The mere fact of the publicity itself
will tend to stop many of the evils, and it will show that some
other alleged evils are imaginary, and finally in making evident the
remaining evils—those that are not imaginary and that are not cured
by the simple light of day—it will give us an intelligent appreciation
of the methods to take in getting at them. We should have, under such
circumstances, one sovereign to whom the big corporations should be
responsible—a sovereign in whose courts a corporation could be held
accountable for any failure to comply with the laws of the legislature
of that sovereign. I do not think you can accomplish that among the
forty-six sovereigns of the States. I think that it will have to be
through the National Government.
TO THE BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN, CHATTANOOGA, TENN.,
SEPTEMBER 8, 1902
_Mr. Grand Master, Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor, my Brothers, my
Fellow-Citizens_:
I am glad to be here to-day. I am glad to come as the guest of the
Brotherhood. Let me join with you, the members of the Brotherhood
of this country, in extending a most cordial welcome to our fellows
from Canada and Mexico. The fact that we are good Americans only
makes us all the better men, all the more desirous of seeing good
fortune to all mankind. I needed no pressing to accept the invitation
tendered through you, Mr. Hannahan, and through Mr. Arnold, to come to
this meeting. I have always admired greatly the railroad men of the
country, and I do not see how any one who believes in what I regard
as the fundamental virtues of citizenship can fail to do so. I want
to see the average American a good man, an honest man, and a man who
can handle himself, and does handle himself, well under difficulties.
The last time I ever saw General Sherman, I dined at his house, and
we got to talking over the capacity of different types of soldiers,
and the General happened to say that if ever there were another war,
and he were to have a command, he should endeavor to get as many
railway men as possible under him. I asked him why, and he said,
“Because on account of their profession they have developed certain
qualities which are essential in a soldier.” In the first place, they
are accustomed to taking risks. There are a great many men who are
naturally brave, but who, being entirely unaccustomed to risks, are
at first appalled by them. Railroad men are accustomed to enduring
hardship; they are accustomed to irregular hours; they are accustomed
to act on their own responsibility, on their own initiative, and yet
they are accustomed to obeying orders quickly. There is not anything
more soul-harrowing for a man in time of war, or for a man engaged in
a difficult job in time of peace, than to give an order and have the
gentleman addressed say “What?” The railroad man has to learn that
when an order is issued there may be but a fraction of a second in
which to obey it. He has to learn that orders are to be obeyed, and,
on the other hand, that there will come plenty of crises in which
there will be no orders to be obeyed, and he will have to act for
himself.
Those are all qualities that go to the very essence of good
soldiership, and I am not surprised at what General Sherman said. In
raising my own regiment, which was raised mainly in the Southwest,
partly in the Territory in which Mr. Sargent himself served as a
soldier at one time—in Arizona—I got a number of railroad men. Of
course, the first requisite was that a man should know how to shoot
and how to ride. We were raising the regiment in a hurry, and we
did not have time to teach him either. He had to know how to handle
a horse and how to handle a rifle, to start with. But given the
possession of those two qualities, I found that there was no group of
our citizens from whom better men could be drawn to do a soldier’s
work in a tight place and at all times than the railroad men.
But, gentlemen, the period of war is but a fractional part of the life
of our Republic, and I earnestly hope and believe that it will be an
even smaller part in the future than it has been in the past. It was
the work that you have done in time of peace that especially attracted
me to you, that made me anxious to come down here and see you, and
that made me glad to speak to you, not for what I can tell you, but
for the lesson it seems to me can be gained by all of our people from
what you have done.
At the opening of the twentieth century we face conditions vastly
changed from what they were in this country and throughout the world a
century ago. Our complex industrial civilization under which progress
has been so rapid, and in which the changes for good have been so
great, has also inevitably seen the growth of certain tendencies that
are not for good, or at least that are not wholly for good; and we in
consequence, as a people, like the rest of civilized mankind, find
set before us for solution during the coming century problems which
need the best thought of all of us, and the most earnest desire of all
to solve them well if we expect to work out a solution satisfactory
to our people, a solution for the advantage of the nation. In facing
these problems, it must be a comfort to every well-wisher of the
nation to see what has been done by your organization. I believe
emphatically in organized labor. I believe in organizations of
wage-workers. Organization is one of the laws of our social and
economic development at this time. But I feel that we must always keep
before our minds the fact that there is nothing sacred in the name
itself. To call an organization an organization does not make it a
good one. The worth of an organization depends upon its being handled
with the courage, the skill, the wisdom, the spirit of fair dealing as
between man and man, and the wise self-restraint which, I am glad to
be able to say, your Brotherhood has shown. You now number close upon
44,000 members. During the two years ending June 30 last you paid in
to the general and beneficiary funds close upon a million and a half
dollars. More than six and one-half millions have been paid in since
the starting of the insurance clause in the constitution—have been
paid to disabled members and their beneficiaries. Over fifty per cent
of the amount paid was paid on account of accidents. Gentlemen, that
is a sufficient commentary upon the kind of profession which is yours.
You face death and danger in time of peace, as in time of war the men
wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform must face them.
Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you?
No; not a bit. I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing.
I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work, at whichever end
of the social scale he may regard himself as being. The law of worthy
work well done is the law of successful American life. I believe in
play, too—play, and play hard while you play; but don’t make the
mistake of thinking that that is the main thing. The work is what
counts, and if a man does his work well and it is worth doing, then it
matters but little in which line that work is done; the man is a good
American citizen. If he does his work in slip-shod fashion, then no
matter what kind of work it is, he is a poor American citizen.
I speak to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, but what I say
applies to all railroad men—not only to the engineers who have served
an apprenticeship as firemen, to the conductors, who, as a rule,
have served an apprenticeship as brakemen, but to all the men of all
the organizations connected with railroad work. I know you do not
grudge my saying that, through you, I am talking to all the railroad
men of the country. You, in your organization as railroad men, have
taught two lessons: the lesson of how much can be accomplished by
organization, by mutual self-help of the type that helps another in
the only way by which, in the long run,—that is, by teaching him to
help himself. You teach the benefits of organization, and you also
teach the indispensable need of keeping absolutely unimpaired the
faculty of individual initiative, the faculty by which each man brings
himself to the highest point of perfection by exercising the special
qualities with which he is himself endowed. The Brotherhood has
developed to this enormous extent since the days, now many years ago,
when the first little band came together; and it has developed, not by
crushing out individual initiative, but by developing it, by combining
many individual initiatives.
The Brotherhood of Firemen does much for all firemen, but I firmly
believe that the individual fireman since the growth of the
Brotherhood has been more, not less, efficient than he was twenty
years ago. Membership in the Brotherhood comes, as I understand it,
after a nine months’ probationary period; after a man has shown his
worth, he is then admitted and stands on his footing as a brother.
Now, any man who enters with the purpose of letting the Brotherhood
carry him is not worth much. The man who counts in the Brotherhood
is the man who pulls his own weight and a little more. Much can be
done by the Brotherhood. I have just hinted in the general figures I
gave you, at how much has been done, but it still remains true in the
Brotherhood, and everywhere else throughout American life, that in the
last resort nothing can supply the place of the man’s own individual
qualities. We need those, no matter how perfect the organization is
outside. There is just as much need of nerve, hardihood, power to face
risks and accept responsibilities, in the engineer and the fireman,
whether on a flyer or a freight train, now as there ever was. Much
can be done by the Association. A great deal can be accomplished by
working each for all and all for each; but we must not forget that the
first requisite in accomplishing that is that each man should work for
others by working for himself, by developing his own capacity.
The steady way in which a man can rise is illustrated by a little
thing that happened yesterday. I came down here over the Queen and
Crescent Railroad, and the General Manager, who handled my train and
who handled yours, was Mr. Maguire. I used to know him in the old days
when he was on his way up, and he began right at the bottom. He was
a fireman at one time. He worked his way straight up, and now he is
General Manager.
I believe so emphatically in your organization because, while it
teaches the need of working in union, of working in association, of
working with deep in our hearts, not merely on our lips, the sense of
Brotherhood, yet of necessity it still keeps, as your organization
always must keep, to the forefront the worth of the individual
qualities of a man. I said to you that I came here in a sense not to
speak to you, but to use your experience as an object-lesson for all
of us, an object-lesson in good American citizenship. All professions,
of course, do not call for the exercise to the same degree of the
qualities of which I have spoken. Your profession is one of those
which I am inclined to feel play in modern life a greater part from
the standpoint of character than we entirely realize. There is in
modern life, with the growth of civilization and luxury, a certain
tendency to softening of the national fibre. There is a certain
tendency to forget, in consequence of their disuse, the rugged virtues
which lie at the back of manhood; and I feel that professions like
yours, like the profession of the railroad men of the country, have a
tonic effect upon the whole body politic.
It is a good thing that there should be a large body of our
fellow-citizens—that there should be a profession—whose members must,
year in and year out, display those old, old qualities of courage,
daring, resolution, unflinching willingness to meet danger at need. I
hope to see all our people develop the softer, gentler virtues to an
ever increasing degree, but I hope never to see them lose the sterner
virtues that make men men.
A man is not going to be a fireman or an engineer, or serve well in
any other capacity on a railroad long if he has a “streak of yellow”
in him. You are going to find it out, and he is going to be painfully
conscious of it, very soon. It is a fine thing for our people that we
should have those qualities in evidence before us in the life-work of
a big group of our citizens.
In American citizenship, we can succeed permanently only upon the
basis of standing shoulder to shoulder, working in association, by
organization, each working for all, and yet remembering that we need
each so to shape things that each man can develop to best advantage
all the forces and powers at his command. In your organization you
accomplish much by means of the Brotherhood, but you accomplish it
because of the men who go to make up that brotherhood.
If you had exactly the organization, exactly the laws, exactly the
system, and yet were yourselves a poor set of men, the system would
not save you. I will guarantee that, from time to time, you have men
go in to try to serve for the nine months who prove that they do not
have the stuff in them out of which you can make good men. You have to
have the stuff in you, and, if you have the stuff, you can make out of
it a much finer man by means of the association—but you must have the
material out of which to make it. So it is in citizenship.
And now let me say a word, speaking not merely especially to the
Brotherhood, but to all our citizens. Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor: I
fail to see how any American can come to Chattanooga and go over the
great battle-fields in the neighborhood—the battle-fields here in this
State and just across the border in my mother’s State of Georgia—how
any American can come here and see evidences of the mighty deeds done
by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, and not
go away a better American, prouder of the country, prouder because
of the valor displayed on both sides in the contest—the valor, the
self-devotion, the loyalty to the right as each side saw the right.
Yesterday I was presented with a cane cut from the Chickamauga
battle-field by some young men of Northern Georgia. On the cane were
engraved the names of three Union generals and three Confederate
generals. One of those Union generals was at that time showing me
over the battle-field—General Boynton. Under one of the Confederate
generals—General Wheeler—I myself served. In my regiment there served
under me in the ranks a son of General Hood, who commanded at one time
the Confederate army against General Sherman. The only captain whom
I had the opportunity of promoting to field rank, and to whom the
promotion was given for gallantry on the field, was Micah Jenkins, of
South Carolina, the son of a Confederate general, whose name you will
find recorded among those who fought at Chickamauga.
Two of my best captains were killed at Santiago—one was Allyn Capron,
the fifth in line who, from father to son, had served in the regular
army of the United States, who had served in every war in which our
country had been engaged; the other, Bucky O’Neill. His father had
fought under Meagher when, on the day at Fredericksburg, his brigade
left more men under the stone wall than did any other brigade. I had
in my regiment men from the North and the South; men from the East
and the West; men whose fathers had fought under Grant, and whose
fathers had fought under Lee; college graduates, capitalists’ sons,
wage-workers, the man of means and the man who all his life had owed
each day’s bread to the day’s toil. I had Catholic, Protestant, Jew,
and Gentile under me. Among my captains were men whose forefathers
had been among the first white men to settle on Massachusetts Bay
and on the banks of the James, and others whose parents had come
from Germany, from Ireland, from England, from France. They were all
Americans, and nothing else, and each man stood on his worth as a man,
to be judged by it, and to succeed or fail accordingly as he did well
or ill. Compared to the giant death-wrestles that reeled over the
mountains round about this city the fight at Santiago was the merest
skirmish; but the spirit in which we handled ourselves there, I hope
was the spirit in which we have to face our duties as citizens if we
are to make this Republic what it must be made.
Yesterday, in passing over the Chickamauga battle-field, I was
immensely struck by the monument raised by Kentucky to the Union and
Confederate soldiers from Kentucky who fell on that battle-field.
The inscription reads as follows: “As we are united in life, and
they united in death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and
one people, forgetful of all asperities, forever hold in grateful
remembrance all the glories of that terrible conflict which made all
men free and retained every star on the nation’s flag.” That is a good
sentiment. That is a sentiment by which we can all stand. And oh, my
friends! what does that sentiment have as its underlying spirit? The
spirit of brotherhood!
I firmly believe in my countrymen, and therefore I believe that the
chief thing necessary in order that they shall work together is
that they shall know one another—that the Northerner shall know the
Southerner, and the man of one occupation know the man of another
occupation; the man who works in one walk of life know the man who
works in another walk of life, so that we may realize that the things
which divide us are superficial, are unimportant, and that we are, and
must ever be, knit together into one indissoluble mass by our common
American brotherhood.