_Fellow-Citizens_:
I am going to ask you to take what I say at its exact face value, as
I like whatever I say to be taken. It is suggested by coming to this
great Western State and speaking to one of its thriving cities. We
believe that the American business man is of a peculiar type; and
probably the qualities of energy, daring, and resourcefulness which
have given him his prominence in the international industrial world
find their highest development here in the West. It is the merest
truism to say that in the modern world industrialism is the great
factor in the growth of nations. Material prosperity is the foundation
upon which every mighty national structure must be built. Of course
there must be more than this. There must be a high moral purpose,
a life of the spirit which finds its expression in many different
ways; but unless material prosperity exists also there is scant room
in which to develop the higher life. The productive activity of our
vast army of workers, of those who work with head or hands, is the
prime cause of the giant growth of this nation. We have great natural
resources, but such resources are never more than opportunities, and
they count for nothing if the men in possession have not the power to
take advantage of them. You have built up in the West these cities of
the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes; as all the region round
about them has been built up—that is, because you had the qualities
of heart and brain, the qualities of moral and physical fibre, which
enabled you to use to the utmost advantage whatever you found ready to
your hands. You win, not by shirking difficulties, but by facing and
overcoming them.
In such development laws play a certain part, but individual
characteristics a still greater part. A great and successful
commonwealth like ours in the long run works under good laws, because
a people endowed with honest and practical common-sense ultimately
demands good laws. But no law can create industrial well-being,
although it may foster and safeguard it, and although a bad law may
destroy it. The prime factor in securing industrial well-being is the
high average of citizenship found in the community. The best laws that
the wit of man can devise would not make a community of thriftless and
idle men prosperous. No scheme of legislation or of social reform will
ever work good to the community unless it recognizes as fundamental
the fact that each man’s own individual qualities must be the prime
factors in his success. Work in combination may help and the State
can do a good deal in its own sphere, but in the long run each man
must rise or fall on his own merits; each man must owe his success in
life to whatever of hardihood, of resolution, of common-sense and of
capacity for lofty endeavor he has within his own soul. It is a good
thing to act in combination for the common good, but it is a very
unhealthy thing to let ourselves think for one moment that anything
can ever supply the want of our own individual watchfulness and
exertion.
Yet given this high average of individual ability and invention, we
must ever keep in mind that it may be nullified by bad legislation,
and that it can be given a chance to develop under the most favorable
conditions by good legislation. Probably the most important aid
which can be contributed by the National Government to the material
well-being of the country is to ensure its financial stability. An
honest currency is the strongest symbol and expression of honest
business life. The business world must exist largely on credit, and
to credit confidence is essential. Any tampering with the currency,
no matter with what purpose, if fraught with the suspicion of
dishonesty, in result is fatal in its effects on business prosperity.
Very ignorant and primitive communities are continually obliged to
learn the elementary truth that the repudiation of debts is in the end
ruinous to the debtors as a class; and when communities have moved
somewhat higher in the scale of civilization they also learn that
anything in the nature of a debased currency works similar damage. A
financial system of assured honesty is the first essential.
Another essential for any community is perseverance in the economic
policy which for a course of years is found best fitted to its
peculiar needs. The question of combining such fixedness of economic
policy as regards the tariff, while at the same time allowing for a
necessary and proper readjustment of duties in particular schedules,
as such readjustment becomes a matter of pressing importance, is not
an easy one. It is perhaps too much to expect that from the discussion
of such a question it would be possible wholly to eliminate political
partisanship. Yet those who believe, as we all must when we think
seriously of the subject, that the proper aim of the party system
is after all simply to subserve the public good, can not but hope
that where such partisanship on a matter of this kind conflicts with
the public good it shall at least be minimized. It is all right and
inevitable that we should divide on party lines, but woe to us if we
are not Americans first, and party men second. What we really need
in this country is to treat the tariff as a business proposition
from the standpoint of the interests of the country as a whole, and
not from the standpoint of the temporary needs of any political
party. It surely ought not to be necessary to dwell upon the extreme
unwisdom, from a business standpoint, from the standpoint of national
prosperity, of violent and radical changes amounting to the direct
upsetting of tariff policies at intervals of every few years. A nation
like ours can adjust its business after a fashion to any kind of
tariff. But neither our nation nor any other can stand the ruinous
policy of readjusting its business to radical changes in the tariff at
short intervals. This is more true now than ever it was before, for
owing to the immense extent and variety of our products, the tariff
schedules of to-day carry rates of duty on more than four thousand
articles. Continual sweeping changes in such a tariff, touching so
intimately the commercial interests of the nation which stands as one
of the two or three greatest in the whole industrial world, can not
but be disastrous. Yet on the other hand where the industrial needs
of the nation shift as rapidly as they do with us, it is a matter
of prime importance that we should be able to readjust our economic
policy as rapidly as possible and with as little friction as possible
to these needs.
We need a scheme which will enable us to provide a reapplication of
the principle to the changed conditions. The problem therefore is to
devise some method by which these shifting needs can be recognized
and the necessary readjustments of duties provided without forcing
the entire business community, and therefore the entire nation, to
submit to a violent surgical operation, the mere threat of which, and
still more the accomplished fact of which, would probably paralyze
for a considerable time all the industries of the country. Such a
radical action might very readily reproduce the conditions from
which we suffered nine years ago, in 1893. It is on every account
most earnestly to be hoped that this problem can be solved in some
manner into which partisanship shall enter as a purely secondary
consideration, if at all; that is, in some manner which shall provide
for an earnest effort by non-partisan inquiry and action to secure any
changes the need of which is indicated by the effect found to proceed
from a given rate of duty on a given article; its effect, if any,
as regards the creation of a substantial monopoly; its effect upon
domestic prices, upon the revenue of the government, upon importations
from abroad, upon home productions, and upon consumption. In other
words, we need to devise some machinery by which, while persevering
in the policy of a protective tariff, in which I think the nation
as a whole has now generally acquiesced, we would be able to correct
the irregularities and remove the incongruities produced by changing
conditions, without destroying the whole structure. Such machinery
would permit us to continue our definitely settled tariff policy,
while providing for the changes in duties upon particular schedules
which must inevitably and necessarily take place from time to time as
matters of legislative and administrative detail. This would secure
the needed stability of economic policy which is a prime factor
in our industrial success, while doing away with any tendency to
fossilization. It would recognize the fact that, as our needs shift,
it may be found advisable to alter rates and schedules, adapting them
to the changed conditions and necessities of the whole people; and
this would be in no wise incompatible with preserving the principle of
protection, for belief in the wisdom of a protective tariff is in no
way inconsistent with frankly admitting the desirability of changing a
set of schedules, when from any cause such change is in the interests
of the nation as a whole—and our tariff policy is designed to favor
the interests of the nation as a whole and not those of any particular
set of individuals save as an incident to this building up of national
well-being. There are two or three different methods by which it
will be possible to provide such readjustment without any shock
to the business world. My personal preference would be for action
which should be taken only after preliminary inquiry by and upon
the findings of a body of experts of such high character and ability
that they could be trusted to deal with the subject purely from the
standpoint of our business and industrial needs; but, of course,
Congress would have to determine for itself the exact method to be
followed. The Executive has at its command the means for gathering
most of the necessary data, and can act whenever it is the desire
of Congress that it should act. That the machinery for carrying out
the policy above outlined can be provided I am very certain, if only
our people will make up their minds that the health of the community
will be subserved by treating the whole question primarily from the
standpoint of the business interests of the entire country, rather
than from the standpoint of the fancied interests of any group of
politicians.
Of course in making any changes we should have to proceed in
accordance with certain fixed and definite principles, and the most
important of these is an avowed determination to protect the interests
of the American producer, be he business man, wage-worker, or farmer.
The one consideration which must never be omitted in a tariff change
is the imperative need of preserving the American standard of living
for the American workingman. The tariff rate must never fall below
that which will protect the American workingman by allowing for the
difference between the general labor cost here and abroad, so as at
least to equalize the conditions arising from the difference in the
standard of labor here and abroad—a difference which it should be our
aim to foster in so far as it represents the needs of better educated,
better paid, better fed, and better clothed workingmen of a higher
type than any to be found in a foreign country. At all hazards, and
no matter what else is sought for or accomplished by changes of the
tariff, the American workingman must be protected in his standard of
wages, that is, in his standard of living, and must be secured the
fullest opportunity of employment. Our laws should in no event afford
advantage to foreign industries over American industries. They should
in no event do less than equalize the difference in conditions at home
and abroad. The general tariff policy to which, without regard to
changes in detail, I believe this country to be irrevocably committed,
is fundamentally based upon ample recognition of the difference in
labor cost here and abroad; in other words, the recognition of the
need for full development of the intelligence, the comfort, the high
standard of civilized living and the inventive genius of the American
workingman as compared to the workingman of any other country in the
world.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, AT
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 11, 1902
_Mr. President, Gentlemen, and you, the Guests, whom we welcome here
this evening_:
I do not wish to speak to you in the language of idle compliment,
and yet it is but a bare statement of fact to say that nowhere in
our country could there be gathered an audience which would stand as
more typically characteristic than this of all those qualities and
attributes which have given us of the United States our commanding
position in the industrial world. There is no need of my preaching to
this gathering the need of combining efficiency with upright dealing,
for as an American and as a citizen of New York I am proud to feel
that the name of your organization carries with it a guarantee of
both; and your practice counts for more than any preaching could
possibly count. New York is a city of national importance, because its
position toward the Nation is unique, and the Chamber of Commerce of
New York must of necessity be an element of weight in the commercial
and industrial welfare of the entire people. New York is the great
port of entry for our country—the port in which centres the bulk of
the foreign commerce of the country—and her welfare is therefore no
matter of mere local or municipal, but of national, concern. The
conduct of the Government in dealing with all matters affecting the
financial and commercial relations of New York must continually
take into account this fact; and it must be taken into account in
appreciating the importance of the part played by the New York Chamber
of Commerce.
This body stands for the triumphs of peace both abroad and at home.
We have passed that stage of national development when depreciation
of other peoples is felt as a tribute to our own. We watch the growth
and prosperity of other nations, not with hatred or jealousy, but
with sincere and friendly good-will. I think I can say safely that we
have shown by our attitude toward Cuba, by our attitude toward China,
that as regards weaker powers our desire is that they may be able to
stand alone, and that if they will only show themselves willing to
deal honestly and fairly with the rest of mankind we on our side will
do all we can to help, not to hinder, them. With the great powers of
the world we desire no rivalry that is not honorable to both parties.
We wish them well. We believe that the trend of the modern spirit is
ever stronger toward peace, not war; toward friendship, not hostility,
as the normal international attitude. We are glad indeed that we are
on good terms with all the other peoples of mankind, and no effort on
our part shall be spared to secure a continuance of these relations.
And remember, gentlemen, that we shall be a potent factor for peace
largely in proportion to the way in which we make it evident that
our attitude is due, not to weakness, not to inability to defend
ourselves, but to a genuine repugnance to wrongdoing, a genuine
desire for self-respecting friendship with our neighbors. The voice
of the weakling or the craven counts for nothing when he clamors for
peace; but the voice of the just man armed is potent. We need to keep
in a condition of preparedness, especially as regards our navy, not
because we want war, but because we desire to stand with those whose
plea for peace is listened to with respectful attention.
Important though it is that we should have peace abroad, it is even
more important that we should have peace at home. You, men of the
Chamber of Commerce, to whose efforts we owe so much of our industrial
well-being, can, and I believe surely will, be influential in helping
toward that industrial peace which can obtain in society only when in
their various relations employer and employed alike show not merely
insistence each upon his own rights, but also regard for the rights
of others, and a full acknowledgment of the interests of the third
party—the public. It is no easy matter to work out a system or rule of
conduct, whether with or without the help of the lawgiver, which shall
minimize that jarring and clashing of interests in the industrial
world which causes so much individual irritation and suffering at the
present day, and which at times threatens baleful consequences to
large portions of the body politic. But the importance of the problem
can not be overestimated, and it deserves to receive the careful
thought of all men such as those whom I am addressing to-night. There
should be no yielding to wrong; but there should most certainly
be not only desire to do right but a willingness each to try to
understand the viewpoint of his fellow, with whom, for weal or for
woe, his own fortunes are indissolubly bound.
No patent remedy can be devised for the solution of these grave
problems in the industrial world; but we may rest assured that they
can be solved at all only if we bring to the solution certain old-time
virtues, and if we strive to keep out of the solution some of the
most familiar and most undesirable of the traits to which mankind has
owed untold degradation and suffering throughout the ages. Arrogance,
suspicion, brutal envy of the well-to-do, brutal indifference toward
those who are not well-to-do, the hard refusal to consider the rights
of others, the foolish refusal to consider the limits of beneficent
action, the base appeal to the spirit of selfish greed, whether it
take the form of plunder of the fortunate or of oppression of the
unfortunate—from these and from all kindred vices this Nation must be
kept free if it is to remain in its present position in the forefront
of the peoples of mankind. On the other hand, good will come, even
out of the present evils, if we face them armed with the old homely
virtues; if we show that we are fearless of soul, cool of head, and
kindly of heart; if, without betraying the weakness that cringes
before wrongdoing, we yet show by deeds and words our knowledge that
in such a government as ours each of us must be in very truth his
brother’s keeper.
At a time when the growing complexity of our social and industrial
life has rendered inevitable the intrusion of the State into spheres
of work wherein it formerly took no part, and when there is also a
growing tendency to demand the illegitimate and unwise transfer to
the government of much of the work that should be done by private
persons, singly or associated together, it is a pleasure to address
a body whose members possess to an eminent degree the traditional
American self-reliance of spirit which makes them scorn to ask from
the government, whether of State or of Nation, anything but a fair
field and no favor; who confide not in being helped by others, but in
their own skill, energy, and business capacity to achieve success.
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is
that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight—that he shall
not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each
generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing
his work he shall show not only the capacity for sturdy self-help but
also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.
The Chamber of Commerce, it is no idle boast to say, stands in a
preëminent degree for those qualities which make the successful
merchant, the successful business man, whose success is won in ways
honorable to himself and beneficial to his fellows. There are very
different kinds of success. There is the success that brings with
it the seared soul—the success which is achieved by wolfish greed
and vulpine cunning—the success which makes honest men uneasy or
indignant in its presence. Then there is the other kind of success—the
success which comes as the reward of keen insight, of sagacity,
of resolution, of address, combined with unflinching rectitude of
behavior, public and private. The first kind of success may, in a
sense—and a poor sense at that—benefit the individual, but it is
always and necessarily a curse to the community; whereas the man
who wins the second kind, as an incident of its winning becomes a
beneficiary to the whole commonwealth. Throughout its history the
Chamber of Commerce has stood for this second and higher kind of
success. It is therefore fitting that I should come on here as the
Chief Executive of the Nation to wish you well in your new home; for
you belong not merely to the city, not merely to the State, but to all
the country, and you stand high among the great factors in building
up that marvelous prosperity which the entire country now enjoys. The
continuance of this prosperity depends in no small measure upon your
sanity and common-sense, upon the way in which you combine energy in
action with conservative refusal to take part in the reckless gambling
which is so often bred by, and which so inevitably puts an end to,
prosperity. You are men of might in the world of American effort;
you are men whose names stand high in the esteem of our people; you
are spoken of in terms like those used in the long-gone ages when it
was said of the Phœnician cities that their merchants were princes.
Great is your power and great, therefore, your responsibility. Well
and faithfully have you met this responsibility in the past. We look
forward with confident hope to what you will do in the future, and it
is therefore with sincerity that I bid you Godspeed this evening and
wish for you, in the name of the Nation, a career of ever increasing
honor and usefulness.
AT THE BANQUET TENDERED GENERAL LUKE E. WRIGHT, AT MEMPHIS, TENN.,
NOVEMBER 19, 1902
_Mr. Toastmaster, General Wright, and you, my friends, whose
greeting to-night I shall ever remember_:
It is a real and great pleasure to come to this typical city of the
southern Mississippi Valley in order to greet a typical American, a
citizen of Tennessee, who deserves honor not only from his State, but
from the entire country—General Luke E. Wright. We have a right to
expect a high standard of manhood from Tennessee. It was one of the
first two States created west of the Alleghany Mountains, and it was
in this State that the first self-governing community of American
freemen was established upon waters flowing into the Gulf. The
pioneers of Tennessee were among the earliest in that great westward
march which thrust the nation’s border across the continent to the
Pacific, and it is eminently fitting that a son of Tennessee should
now play so prominent a part in the further movement of expansion
beyond the Pacific. There have been Presidents of the United States
for but one hundred and thirteen years, and during sixteen of those
years Tennesseeans sat in the White House. Hardihood, and daring, and
iron resolution are of right to be expected among the sons of a State
which nurtured Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston; which sent into the
American Navy one of the most famous fighting admirals of all time,
Farragut.
There is another reason why our country should be glad that it was
General Wright who rendered this service. General Wright fought with
distinguished gallantry among the gallant men who served in the armies
of the Confederacy during the Civil War. We need no proof of the
completeness of our reunion as a people. When the war with Spain came
the sons of the men who wore the blue and the sons of the men who wore
the gray vied with one another in the effort to get into the ranks
and face a foreign foe under the old flag that had been carried in
triumph under Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor and Andrew Jackson.
It was my own good fortune to serve under that fearless fighter, old
Joe Wheeler, a memory of which I shall always be proud. But if we
needed any proof of the unity of our interests it would have been
afforded this very year by General Wright, the ex-Confederate, in his
administration as Acting Governor of the Philippine Islands. Upon him
during the months of summer rested a heavier burden of responsibility
than upon any other public servant at that particular time; and not
the least of his titles to our regard is the way in which he was able
to work on terms of cordial good-will with the head of the army,
himself a man who had honored the blue uniform as Wright had honored
the gray.
General Wright’s work has been as difficult as it was important. The
events of the last four years have definitely decided that whether we
wish to or not we must hereafter play a great part in the world. We
can not escape facing the duties. We may shirk them if we are built
of poor stuff, or we may take hold and do them if we are fit sons of
our sires—but face them we must, whether we will or not. Our duty in
the Philippine Islands has simply been one of the duties that thus
have come upon us. We are there, and we can no more haul down our flag
and abandon the islands than we could now abandon Alaska. Whether we
are glad or sorry that events forced us to go there is aside from the
question; the point is that, as the inevitable result of the war with
Spain, we found ourselves in the Philippines and that we could not
leave the islands without discredit. The islanders were wholly unfit
to govern themselves, and if we had left there would have been a brief
period of bloody chaos, and then some other nation would have stepped
in to do the work which we had shirked. It can not be too often
repeated that there was no question that the work had to be done. All
the question was, whether we would do it well or ill; and, thanks to
the choice of men like Governor Wright, it has been done well. The
first and absolutely indispensable requisite was order—peace. The
reign of lawless violence, of resistance to legitimate authority, the
reign of anarchy, could no more be tolerated abroad than it could be
tolerated here in our own land.
The American flag stands for orderly liberty, and it stands for it
abroad as it stands for it at home. The task of our soldiers was to
restore and maintain order in the islands. The army had the task to
do, and it did it well and thoroughly. The fullest and heartiest
praise belongs to our soldiers who in the Philippines brought to a
triumphant conclusion a war, small indeed compared to the gigantic
struggle in which the older men whom I am addressing took part in the
early sixties, but inconceivably harassing and difficult, because
it was waged amid the pathless jungles of great tropic islands and
against a foe very elusive, very treacherous, and often inconceivably
cruel both toward our men and toward the great numbers of peace-loving
Filipinos who gladly welcomed our advent. The soldiers included both
regulars and volunteers, men from the North, the South, the East,
and the West, men from Pennsylvania and from Tennessee, no less than
men from the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Slope—and to all alike
we give honor, for they acted as American soldiers should. Cruelties
were committed here and there. The fact that they were committed under
wellnigh intolerable provocation affords no excuse for such cruelties,
nor can we admit as justification that they were retaliatory in kind.
Every effort has been made to detect and punish the wrongdoers and
the wrongdoing itself has been completely stopped. But these misdeeds
were exceptional, and their occurrence in no wise alters the fact
that the American army in the Philippines showed as a whole not
only splendid soldierly qualities but a high order of humanity in
dealing with their foes. A hundred thousand of our troops went to the
Philippines. Among them were some who offended against the right.
Well, are we altogether immaculate at home? I think not. I ask for no
special consideration to be shown our friends and kinsmen, our sons
and brothers, who during three years so well upheld the national honor
in the Philippines. I ask merely that we do the same equal justice to
the soldier who went abroad and faced death and lived hard as we show
to his fellow who stayed at home and lived easily and in comfort; and
if we show that equal justice we will doff our hats to the man who has
put the whole country under obligations by the victory he helped to
win in the Philippines.
But the soldier’s work as a soldier was not the larger part of what
he did. When once the outbreak was over in any place, then began the
work of establishing civil administration. Here, too, the soldier
did his part, for the work of preparing for the civil authority was
often done by the officers and men of the regular army, and well done,
too. Then the real work of building up a system of self-government
for the people who had become our wards was begun, under the auspices
of the Philippine Commission, Judge Taft being made Governor,
and I having had the honor myself to appoint General Wright as
Vice-Governor. During the critical period when the insurrection was
ending and the time was one of transition between a state of war and
a state of peace, at the time that I issued a proclamation declaring
that the state of war was over and that the civil government was
now in complete command, General Wright served as Governor of the
archipelago. The progress of the islands both in material well-being
and as regards order and justice under the administration of Governor
Wright and his colleagues has been astounding.
There is no question as to our not having gone far enough and fast
enough in granting self-government to the Filipinos; the only possible
danger has been lest we should go faster and further than was in the
interest of the Filipinos themselves. Each Filipino at the present
day is guaranteed his life, his liberty, and the chance to pursue
happiness as he wishes, so long as he does not harm his fellows, in
a way which the islands have never known before during all their
recorded history. There are bands of ladrones, of brigands, still in
existence. Now and then they may show sporadic increase. This will
be due occasionally to disaffection with some of the things that our
government does which are best—for example, the effort to quarantine
against the plague and to enforce necessary sanitary precautions,
gently and tactfully though it was made, produced violent hostility
among some of the more ignorant natives. Again, a disease like the
cattle plague may cause in some given province such want that a part
of the inhabitants revert to their ancient habit of brigandage. But
the islands have never been as orderly, as peaceful, or as prosperous
as now; and in no other Oriental country, whether ruled by Asiatics or
Europeans, is there anything approaching to the amount of individual
liberty and of self-government which our rule has brought to the
Filipinos. The Nation owes a great debt to the people through whom
this splendid work for civilization has been achieved, and therefore
on behalf of the Nation I have come here to-night to thank in your
presence your fellow-townsman, because he has helped us materially to
add a new page to the honor roll of American history. General Wright,
I greet you, I thank you, and I wish you well.