HORACE MARKLEY

“_We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see

that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and

should receive no less._”

A Square Deal

and

Ideals

of

Citizenship

Mankind goes ahead but slowly, and it goes ahead mainly through each of

us trying to do the best that is in him and to do it in the sanest way.

We have founded our Republic upon the theory that the average man will,

as a rule, do the right thing, that in the long run the majority will

decide for what is sane and wholesome. If our fathers were mistaken in

that theory, if ever the times become such—not occasionally but

persistently—that the mass of the people do what is unwholesome, what is

wrong, then the Republic cannot stand, I care not how good its laws, I

care not what marvelous mechanism its Constitution may embody. Back of

the laws, back of the administration, back of the system of government

lies the man, lies the average manhood of our people, and in the long

run we are going to go up or go down accordingly as the average standard

of citizenship does or does not wax in growth and grace.

¶¶The first requisite of good citizenship is that the man shall do the

homely, every-day, hum-drum duties well. A man is not a good citizen, I

do not care how lofty his thoughts are about citizenship in the

abstract, if in the concrete his actions do not bear them out; and it

does not make much difference how high his aspirations for mankind at

large may be, if he does not behave well in his own family those

aspirations do not bear visible fruit. He must be a good breadwinner, he

must take care of his wife and his children, he must be a neighbor whom

his neighbors can trust, he must act squarely in his business

relations,—he must do all these every-day, ordinary duties first, or he

is not a good citizen. But he must do more.

¶In this country of ours the average citizen must devote a good deal of

thought and time to the affairs of the State as a whole or those affairs

will go backward; and he must devote that thought and time steadily and

intelligently. If there is any one quality that is not desirable,

whether in a nation or in an individual, it is hysterics, either in

religion or anything else. The man or woman who makes up for ten days’

indifference to duty by an eleventh-day morbid repentance about that

duty is of scant use in the world. Now in the same way it is of no

possible use to decline to go through all ordinary duties of citizenship

for a long space of time and then suddenly to get up and feel very angry

about something or somebody, not clearly defined, and demand reform, as

if it was a concrete substance to be handed out forthwith.[4]

¶We cannot keep too clearly before our minds the facts that for the

success of our civilization what is needed is not so much brilliant

ability, not so much unusual genius, as the possession by the average

man of the plain, homely, work-a-day virtues that make that man a good

father, a good husband, and a good friend and neighbor—a decent man with

whom to deal in all relations of life.

¶We need good laws, we need honest administration of the laws, and we

cannot afford to be contented with less, but more than aught else we

need that the average man shall have in him the root of righteous

living; that the average man shall have in him the feeling that will

make him ashamed to do wrong or to submit to wrong, and that will make

him feel his bounden duty to help those that are weaker, to help those

especially that are in a way dependent upon him, and while not in any

way losing his power of individual initiative, to cultivate without

ceasing the further power of acting in combination with his fellows for

a common end of social uplifting and of good government.

¶One word upon success in life, upon the success that each of us should

strive for. It is a great mistake—oh, such a great mistake—to measure

success merely by that which glitters from without, or to speak of it in

terms which will mislead those about us, and especially the younger

people about us, as to what success really is.

¶There must of course be for success, a certain material basis, I should

think ill of any man who did not wish to leave his children a little

better and not a little worse off materially than he was, and I should

not feel that he was doing his duty by them; and if he cannot do his

duty by his own children he is not going to do his duty by any one else.

¶But after that certain amount of material prosperity has been gained

then the things that really count most are the things of the soul rather

than the things of money, and I am sure that each of you if he will

really think of what it is that made him most happy, of what it is that

made him most respect his neighbors will agree with me.

¶¶Look back in your own lives, see what the things are that you are

proudest of as you look back, and you will in almost every case and on

every occasion find that those memories of pride are associated, not

with days of ease, but with days of effort, the day when you had to do

all that was in you for some worthy end, and the worthiest of all worthy

ends is to make those that are closest and nearest to you—your wife and

your children, and those near you—happy and not sorry that you are

alive.

¶And after that has been done, to be able so to handle yourself that you

can feel when the end comes that on the whole your community, your

fellow men, are a little better off and not a little worse off because

you have lived.

¶This kind of success is open to every one of us. The great prizes come

more or less by accident, and no human being knows that better than any

man who has won one of them. The great prizes come more or less by

accident, but to each man there comes normally the chance so to lead his

life that at the end of his days his children, his wife, those that are

dear to him shall rise up and call him blessed, and so that his

neighbors and those who have been brought into intimate association with

him, may feel that he has done his part as a man in a world which sadly

needs that each man should play his part well.[1]

¶¶Treat each man according to his worth as a man. Don’t hold for or

against him that he is either rich or poor. But if he is rich and

crooked, hold it against him; if not rich but crooked, then hold it

against him. But if he is a square man, stand by him. Distrust all who

would have any one class placed before any other. Other republics have

fallen because of the unscrupulous rich or the unscrupulous poor who

gained ascendancy, who substituted loyalty to class for loyalty to the

people as a whole.

¶Abolish the insolence and arrogance of the rich who look down upon the

poor; if they lost their wealth they would be ready to plunder the rich.

The unscrupulous man who becomes rich would oppress the poor. The man

who is true to you is ultimately righteous, and the man who will steal

for you will steal from you. The man who will seek to persuade you that

he will benefit you by wronging any one else will wrong you when it will

benefit him.

¶What we must do as a Nation is to stand for the immutable principles of

decency and virtue, regarding vice with abhorrence. If we make any

artificial divisions we have done irreparable injury to the people.[2]

¶Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of

generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who

differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let us never

forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the

humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and frankest

generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a

spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit which

takes no more account of locality than it does of class or creed; a

spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which

Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow

nobler and greater throughout the ages.

¶I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I believe that

our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end

triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. I could not have

such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty people if I had it

merely as regards one portion of that people. Throughout our land things

on the whole have grown better and not worse, and this is as true of one

part of the country as it is of another.

¶For weal or woe we are knit together and we shall go up or go down

together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall

go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an

abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the

common-sense of all my countrymen.

¶Fundamentally our people are the same throughout this land; the same in

qualities of heart and brain and hand which have made this Republic what

it is in the great to-day; which will make it what it is to be in the

infinitely greater to-morrow. All of us alike, Northerners and

Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, can best prove our fealty to the

Nation’s past by the way in which we do the Nation’s work in the

present; for only thus can we be sure that our children’s children shall

inherit Abe Lincoln’s single-hearted devotion to the great unchanging

creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation.”[3]

A Square Deal

and

The Dignity

of

Labor

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 slipshod fashion, then no

matter what kind of work it is, he is a poor American citizen.[8]

¶Among ourselves we differ in many qualities, of body, head, and heart;

we are unequally developed, mentally as well as physically. But each of

us has the right to ask that he shall be protected from wrong-doing as

he does his work and carries his burden through life. No man needs

sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far

and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at

work worth doing; and this is a prize open to every man, for there can

be no work better worth doing than that done to keep in health and

comfort and with reasonable advantages those immediately dependent upon

the husband, the father, or the son.

¶There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler, for

the man or the woman whose object it is throughout life to shirk the

duties which life ought to bring. Life can mean nothing worth meaning,

unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results

worth achieving. A recent writer has finely said: “After all the saddest

thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burdens. To be bent under

too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable; but even in

that there are possibilities that are glorious. But to carry no load at

all—there is nothing in that. No one seems to arrive at any goal really

worth reaching in this world who does not come to it heavy-laden.”

¶Surely from our own experience each one of us knows that this is true.

From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely

found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and

truest sense only by those who have not shirked life’s burdens. The men

whom we most delight to honor in all this land are those who, in the

iron years from ’61 to ’65, bore on their shoulders the burden of saving

the Union. They did not choose the easy task. They did not shirk the

difficult duty. Deliberately and of their own free will they strove for

an ideal, upward and onward across the stony slopes of greatness. They

did the hardest work that was then to be done; they bore the heaviest

burden that any generation of Americans ever had to bear; and because

they did this they have won such proud joy as it has fallen to the lot

of no other men to win, and have written their names forever more on the

golden honor roll of the Nation.

¶As it is with the soldier, so it is with the civilian. To win success

in the business world, to become a first class mechanic, a successful

farmer, an able lawyer or doctor, means that the man has devoted his

best energy and power through long years to the achievement of his ends.

So it is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the

whole welfare of the Nation rests. The man or woman who as breadwinner

and home-maker, or as wife and mother, has done all that he or she can

do, patiently and uncomplainingly, is to be honored; and is to be envied

by all those who have never had the good fortune to feel the need and

duty of doing such work.

¶The woman who has borne, and who has reared as they should be reared, a

family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the

Republic. Her burden has been heavy, and she has been able to bear it

worthily only by the possession of resolution, of good sense, of

conscience, and of unselfishness.

¶¶But if she has borne it well, then to her shall come the supreme

blessing, for in the words of the oldest and greatest of books, “Her

children shall rise up and call her blessed,” and among the benefactors

of the land her place must be with those who have done the best and the

hardest work whether as lawgivers or as soldiers, whether in public or

in private life.

¶This is not a soft and easy creed to preach. It is a creed willingly

learned only by men and women who, together with their softer virtues,

possess also the stronger; who can do, and dare, and die at need, but

who while life lasts will never flinch from their allotted task.... It

is not enough to be well-meaning and kindly, but weak; neither is it

enough to be strong, unless morality and decency go hand in hand with

strength. We must possess the qualities which make us do our duty in our

homes and among our neighbors, and in addition we must possess the

qualities which are indispensable to the makeup of every great and

masterful nation—the qualities of courage and hardihood, of individual

initiative and yet of power to combine for a common end, and, above all,

the resolute determination to permit no man and no set of men to sunder

us one from the other by lines of caste or creed or section.

¶We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all.

¶There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a

Republic such as ours the only safety is to stand neither for nor

against any man because he is rich or because he is poor, because he is

engaged in one occupation or another, because he works with his brains

or because he works with his hands. We must treat each man on his worth

and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal,

because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. Finally we

must ever keep in mind that a Republic such as ours can exist only by

virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination

of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such

resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it

and no man below it.[11]

¶In our present advanced civilization we have to pay certain penalties

for what we have obtained. Among the penalties is the fact that in very

many occupations there is so little demand upon nerve, hardihood, and

endurance, that there is a tendency to unhealthy softening of fibre and

relaxation of fibre; and such being the case I think it is a fortunate

thing for our people as a whole that there should be certain

occupations, prominent among them railroading, in which the man has to

show the very qualities of courage, of hardihood, of willingness to face

danger, the cultivation of the power of instantaneous decision under

difficulties, and the other qualities which go to make up the virile

side of a man’s character.... These qualities are all-important, but

they are not all-sufficient. It is necessary absolutely to have them. No

nation can rise to greatness without them, but by them alone no nation

will ever become great.

¶Reading through the pages of history you come upon nation after nation

in which there has been a high average of individual strength, bravery,

and hardihood, and yet in which there has been nothing approaching to

national greatness because those qualities were not supplemented by

others just as necessary. With the courage, with the hardihood, with the

strength, must come the power of self-restraint, the power of

self-mastery, the capacity to work for and with others as well as for

one’s self, the power of giving to others the love which each of us must

bear for his neighbor, if we are to make our civilization great.... We

need then, the two qualities—work and love, using each in its broadest

sense—work, the quality which makes a man ashamed not to be able to pull

his own weight, not to be able to do for himself as well as for others

without being beholden to any one for what he is doing.

¶¶No man is happy if he does not work. Of all miserable creatures the

idler, in whatever rank of society, is in the long run the most

miserable. If a man does not work, if he has not in him not merely the

capacity for work but the desire for work, then nothing can be done with

him. He is out of place in our community. We have in our scheme of

government no room for the man who does not wish to pay his way through

life by what he does for himself and for the community. If he has

leisure which makes it unnecessary for him to devote his time to earning

his daily bread, then all the more he is bound to work just as hard in

some way that will make the community the better off for his existence.

If he fails in that, he fails to justify his existence.

¶¶¶Work, the capacity for work, is absolutely necessary; and no man’s

life is full, no man can be said to live in the true sense of the word,

if he does not work. This is necessary; and yet it is not enough. If a

man is utterly selfish, if utterly disregardful of the rights of others,

if he has no ideals, if he works simply for the sake of ministering to

his own base passions, if he works simply to gratify himself, small is

his good in the community. I think even then he is probably better off

than if he is an idler, but he is of no real use unless together with

the quality which enables him to work he has the quality which enables

him to love his fellows, to work with them and for them for the common

good of all.[12]

A Square Deal

and

The

Workingman

With the sole exception of the farming interest, no one matter is of

such vital moment to our whole people as the welfare of the

wage-workers. If the farmer and the wage-worker are well off, it is

absolutely certain that all others will be well off too. It is therefore

a matter for hearty congratulation that on the whole wages are higher

to-day in the United States than ever before. The standard of living is

also higher than ever before in our history, and far higher than in any

other country. Every effort of legislator and administrator should be

bent to secure the permanency of this condition of things and its

improvement wherever possible. Not only must our labor be protected by

the tariff, but it should also be protected so far as it is possible

from the presence in this country of any laborers brought over by

contract, or of those who, coming freely, yet represent a standard of

living so depressed that they can undersell our men in the labor market

and drag them to a lower level. I regard it as necessary, with this end

in view, to reenact immediately the law excluding Chinese laborers and

to strengthen it wherever necessary in order to make its enforcement

entirely effective.

¶American wage-workers work with their heads as well as their hands.

Moreover, they take a keen pride in what they are doing; so that,

independent of the reward, they wish to turn out a perfect job. This is

the great secret of success in competition with the labor of foreign

countries.

¶¶When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the

indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for

which we strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works

no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he

is indeed his brother’s keeper, and that while no man who refuses to

walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else, yet that

each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times needs to have the

helping hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective, aid must

always take the form of helping a man to help himself; and we can all

best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common

interest to all.[7]

¶How to secure fair treatment alike for labor and for capital, how to

hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee,

without weakening individual initiative, without hampering and cramping

the industrial development of the country, is a problem fraught with

great difficulties and one which it is of the highest importance to

solve on lines of sanity and far-sighted common-sense as well as of

devotion to the right. Exactly as business men find they must often work

through corporations, and as it is a constant tendency of these

corporations to grow larger, so it is often necessary for laboring men

to work in federations, and these have become important factors of

modern industrial life. Both kinds of federation, capitalistic and

labor, can do much good, and as a necessary corollary they can both do

evil.

¶Opposition to each kind of organization should take the form of

opposition to whatever is bad in the conduct of any given corporation or

union—not of attacks upon corporations as such nor upon unions as such;

for some of the most far-reaching beneficent work for our people has

been accomplished through both corporations and unions. Each must

refrain from arbitrary or tyrannous interference with the rights of

others. Organized capital and organized labor alike should remember that

in the long run the interest of each must be brought into harmony with

the interest of the general public; and the conduct of each must conform

to the fundamental rules of obedience to the law, of individual freedom,

and of justice and fair-dealing toward all. Each should remember that in

addition to power it must strive after the realization of healthy,

lofty, and generous ideals.

¶Every employer, every wage-worker, must be guaranteed his liberty and

his right to do as he likes with his property or his labor so long as he

does not infringe upon the rights of others. It is of the highest

importance that employer and employee alike should endeavor to

appreciate each the view-point of the other and the sure disaster that

will come upon both in the long run if either grows to take as habitual

an attitude of sour hostility and distrust toward the other.

¶Few people deserve better of the country than those representatives of

both capital and labor—and there are many such—who work continually to

bring about a good understanding of this kind, based upon wisdom and

upon broad and kindly sympathy between employers and employed. Above

all, we need to remember that any kind of class animosity in the

political world is, if possible, even more destructive to national

welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity. We can get good

government only upon condition that we keep true to the principles upon

which this Nation was founded, and judge each man not as a part of a

class, but upon his individual merits.

¶All that we have a right to ask of any man, rich or poor, whatever his

creed, his occupation, his birthplace, or his residence, is that he

shall act well and honorably by his neighbor and by his country. We are

neither for the rich man as such nor for the poor man as such; we are

for the upright man, rich and poor. So far as the constitutional powers

of the National Government touch these matters of general and vital

moment to the Nation, they should be exercised in conformity with the

principles above set forth.[9]

¶The consistent policy of the National Government, so far as it has the

power, is to hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or

employee; but to refuse to weaken individual initiative or to hamper or

cramp the industrial development of the country. We recognize that this

is an era of federation and combination, in which great capitalistic

corporations and labor unions have become factors of tremendous

importance in all industrial centers. Hearty recognition is given the

far-reaching, beneficent work which has been accomplished through both

corporations and unions, and the line as between different corporations,

as between different unions, is drawn on conduct, the effort being to

treat both organized capital and organized labor alike; asking nothing

save that the interest of each shall be brought into harmony with the

interest of the general public, and that the conduct of each shall

conform to the fundamental rules of obedience to law, of individual

freedom, and of justice and fair-dealing towards all.

¶Whenever either corporation, labor union, or individual disregards the

law or acts in a spirit of arbitrary and tyrannous interference with the

rights of others, whether corporations or individuals, then, where the

Federal Government has jurisdiction, it will see to it that the

misconduct is stopped, paying not the slightest heed to the position or

power of the corporation, the union, or the individual, but only to one

vital fact—that is, the question whether or not the conduct of the

individual or aggregate of individuals is in accordance with the law of

the land. Every man must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do

as he likes with his property or his labor, so long as he does not

infringe the rights of others. No man is above the law and no man is

below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey

it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a

favor.[10]

A Square Deal

and

Labor Unions

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.[8]

¶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. 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 view-point 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 wrong-doing, 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.[20]

¶In any great labor disturbance not only are employer and employee

interested, but also a third party—the general public. Every

considerable labor difficulty in which interstate commerce is involved

should be investigated by the Government and the facts officially

reported to the public.

¶Very much of our effort in reference to labor matters should be by

every device and expedient to try to secure a constant better

understanding between employer and employee. Everything possible should

be done to increase the sympathy and fellow-feeling between them, and

every chance taken to allow each to look at all questions, especially at

questions in dispute, somewhat through the other’s eyes. If met with a

sincere desire to act fairly by one another, and if there is,

furthermore, power by each to appreciate the other’s standpoint, the

chance for trouble is minimized. I suppose every thinking man rejoices

when by mediation or arbitration it proves possible to settle troubles

in time to avert the suffering and bitterness caused by strikes.

Moreover, a conciliation committee can do best work when the trouble is

in its beginning, or at least has not come to a head. When the break has

actually occurred, damage has been done, and each side feels sore and

angry; and it is difficult to get them together—difficult to make either

forget its own wrongs and remember the rights of the other. If possible

the effort at conciliation or mediation or arbitration should be made in

the earlier stages, and should be marked by the wish on the part of both

sides to try and come to a common agreement which each shall think in

the interests of the other as well as of itself.[15]

¶The question of securing a healthy, self-respecting, and mutually

sympathetic attitude as between employer and employee, capitalist and

wage-worker, is a difficult one. All phases of the labor problem prove

difficult when approached. But the underlying principles, the root

principles, in accordance with which the problem must be solved are

entirely simple. We can get justice and right dealing only if we put as

of paramount importance the principle of treating a man on his worth as

a man rather than with a reference to his social position, his

occupation, or the class to which he belongs. There are selfish and

brutal men in all ranks of life. If they are capitalists their

selfishness and brutality may take the form of hard indifference to

suffering, greedy disregard of every moral restraint which interferes

with the accumulation of wealth, and coldblooded exploitation of the

weak; or, if they are laborers, the form of laziness, of sullen envy of

the more fortunate, and of willingness to perform deeds of murderous

violence. Such conduct is just as reprehensible in one case as in the

other, and all honest and farseeing men should join in warring against

it wherever it becomes manifest.

¶Individual capitalist and individual wage-worker, corporation and

union, are alike entitled to the protection of the law, and must alike

obey the law. Moreover, in addition to mere obedience to the law, each

man, if he be really a good citizen, must show broad sympathy for his

neighbor and genuine desire to look at any question arising between them

from the standpoint of that neighbor no less than from his own; and to

this end it is essential that capitalist and wage-worker should consult

freely one with the other, should each strive to bring closer the day

when both shall realize that they are properly partners and not enemies.

To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely

from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of

the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish.

¶In the past the most direful among the influences which have brought

about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class

spirit, the growth of the spirit which tends to make a man subordinate

the welfare of the public as a whole to the welfare of the particular

class to which he belongs, the substitution of loyalty to a class for

loyalty to the Nation. This inevitably brings about a tendency to treat

each man not on his merits as an individual, but on his position as

belonging to a certain class in the community. If such a spirit grows up

in this Republic it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it

has proved fatal to every community in which it has become dominant.

Unless we continue to keep a quick and lively sense of the great

fundamental truth that our concern is with the individual worth of the

individual man, this Government can not permanently hold the place which

it has achieved among the nations. The vital lines of cleavage among our

people do not correspond, and indeed run at right angles to, the lines

of cleavage which divide occupation from occupation, which divide

wage-workers from capitalists, farmers from bankers, men of small means

from men of large means, men who live in the towns from men who live in

the country; for the vital line of cleavage is the line which divides

the honest man who tries to do well by his neighbor from the dishonest

man who does ill by his neighbor. In other words, the standard we should

establish is the standard of conduct, not the standard of occupation, of

means, or of social position.

¶¶It is the man’s moral quality, his attitude toward the great questions

which concern all humanity, his cleanliness of life, his power to do his

duty toward himself and toward others, which really count; and if we

substitute for the standard of personal judgment which treats each man

according to his merits, another standard in accordance with which all

men of one class are favored and all men of another class discriminated

against, we shall do irreparable damage to the body politic. I believe

that our people are too sane, too self-respecting, too fit for

self-government, ever to adopt such an attitude. This government is not

and never shall be government by a plutocracy. This government is not

and never shall be government by a mob. It shall continue to be in the

future what it has been in the past, a government based on the theory

that each man, rich or poor, is to be treated simply and solely on his

worth as a man, that all his personal and property rights are to be

safeguarded, and that he is neither to wrong others nor to suffer wrong

from others.

¶¶¶The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is

also the most difficult. We who possess this priceless boon, and who

desire to hand it on to our children and our children’s children, should

ever bear in mind the thought so finely expressed by Burke: “Men are

qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to

put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are

disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to

the flattery of knaves. Society can not exist unless a controlling power

upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there be

within the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal

constitution of things that men of intemperate minds can not be free.

Their passions forge their fetters.”[14]

A Square Deal

and

The Business Man

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 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.... 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.

¶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 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 insure 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, cannot 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![16]

A Square Deal

and

Success in Life

From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical

capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of

either quality would have rendered the possession of the other of small

value. Mere ability to achieve success in things concerning the body

would not have atoned for the failure to live the life of high endeavor;

and, on the other hand, without a foundation of those qualities which

bring material prosperity there would be nothing on which the higher

life could be built. The men of the Revolution would have failed if they

had not possessed alike devotion to liberty, and ability (once liberty

had been achieved) to show common-sense and self-restraint in its use.

The men of the great Civil War would have failed had they not possessed

the business capacity which developed and organized these resources in

addition to the stern resolution to expend these resources as freely as

they expended their blood in furtherance of the great cause for which

their hearts leaped.

¶It is this combination of qualities that has made our people succeed.

Other peoples have been as devoted to liberty, and yet, because of lack

of hard-headed common-sense and of ability to show restraint and

subordinate individual passions for the general good, have failed so

signally in the struggle of life as to become a byword among the

nations. Yet other peoples, again, have possessed all possible thrift

and business capacity, but have been trampled under foot, or have played

a sordid and ignoble part in the world, because their business capacity

was unaccompanied by any of the lift toward nobler things which marks a

great and generous nation. The stern but just rule of judgment for

humanity is that each nation shall be known by its fruits; and if there

are no fruits, if the nation has failed, it matters but little whether

it has failed through meanness of soul or through lack of robustness of

character. We must judge a nation by the net result of its life and

activity. And so we must judge the policies of those who at any time

control the destinies of a nation.[19]

¶There was no patent device for securing victory by force of arms forty

years ago; and there is no patent device for securing victory for the

forces of righteousness in civil life now. In each case the

all-important factor was and is the character of the individual man.

Good laws in the State, like a good organization in an army, are the

expressions of national character. Leaders will be developed in military

and in civil life alike; and weapons and tactics change from generation

to generation, as methods of achieving good government change in civic

affairs; but the fundamental qualities which make for good citizenship

do not change any more than the fundamental qualities which make good

soldiers. In the long run, in the Civil War, the thing that counted for

more than aught else was the fact that the average American had the

fighting edge; had within him the spirit which spurred him on through

toil and danger, fatigue and hardship, to the goal of the splendid

ultimate triumph. So in achieving good government the fundamental factor

must be the character of the average citizen; that average citizen’s

power of hatred for what is mean and base and unlovely; his fearless

scorn of cowardice, and his determination to war unyieldingly against

the dark and sordid forces of evil.[6]

¶¶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.[5]

A Square Deal

and

The Man

Who Counts

When it comes to rendering service, that which counts chiefly with a

college graduate, as with any other American citizen, is not intellect

so much as what stands above mere power of body, or mere power of mind,

but must in a sense include them, and that is, character. It is a good

thing to have a sound body and a better thing to have a sound mind; and

better still to have that aggregate of virile and decent qualities which

we group together under the name of character. I said both decent and

virile qualities—it is not enough to have one or the other alone. If a

man is strong in mind and body and misuses his strength then he becomes

simply a foe to the body politic, to be hunted down by all decent men;

and if on the other hand he has thoroughly decent impulses but lacks

strength he is a nice man but does not count. You can do but little with

him.

¶In the unending strife for civic betterment, small is the use of those

people who mean well, but who mean well feebly. The man who counts is

the man who is decent and who makes himself felt as a force for decency,

for cleanliness, for civic righteousness. He must have several

qualities; first and foremost, of course, he must be honest, he must

have the root of right thinking in him. That is not enough. In the next

place he must have courage; the timid good man counts but little in the

rough business of trying to do well the world’s work. And finally, in

addition to being honest and brave he must have common-sense. If he does

not have it, no matter what other qualities he may have, he will find

himself at the mercy of those who, without possessing his desire to do

right, know only too well how to make the wrong effective.

¶We can pardon the man who has had no chance in life if he does but

little for the state, and we can count it greatly to his credit if he

does much for the state. But upon you who have had so much rests a heavy

burden to show that you are worthy of what you have received. A double

responsibility is upon you to use aright, not merely the talents that

have been given to you, but the chances you have to make much of these

talents. We have a right to expect service to the state from you in many

different lines: In the line of what, for lack of a better word, we will

call philanthropy; in all lines of effort for public decency.

¶Remember always that the man who does a thing so that it is worth doing

is always a man who does his work for the work’s sake. Somewhere in

Ruskin there is a sentence to the effect that the man who does a piece

of work for the fee, normally does it in a second-rate way, and that the

only first-rate work is the work done by the man who does it for the

sake of doing it well, who counts the deed as itself his reward. In no

kind of work done for the public do you ever find the really best,

except where you find the man who takes hold of it because he is

irresistibly impelled to do it; because he wishes to do it for the sake

of doing it well, not for the sake of any reward that comes afterward or

in connection with it.

¶Of course, that is true of almost every other walk of life; just

exactly as true as it is in politics. A clergyman is not worth his salt

if he finds himself bound to be a clergyman for the material reward of

that profession. Every doctor who has ever succeeded has been a man

incapable of thinking of his fee when he did a noteworthy surgical

operation. A scientific man, a writer, a historian, an artist, can only

be a good man of science, a first class artist, a first class writer, if

he does his work for the sake of doing it well; and this is exactly as

true in political life, exactly as true in every form of social effort,

in every kind of work done for the public at large. The man who does

work worth doing is the man who does it because he cannot refrain from

doing it, the man who feels it borne in on him to try that particular

job and see if he cannot do it well. And so it is with a general in the

field. The man in the civil war who thought of any material reward for

what he did was not among the men whose names you read now on the honor

roll of American history.

¶So the work that our colleges can do is to fit their graduates, to do

service; to fit the bulk of them, the men who cannot go in for the

highest type of scholarship, to do the ordinary citizen’s service for

the country; and they can fit them to do this service only by training

them in character. To train them in character means to train them not

only to possess, as they must possess, the softer and gentler virtues,

but also the virile powers of a race of vigorous men, the virtues of

courage, of honesty—not merely the honesty that refrains from doing

wrong, but the honesty that wars aggressively for the right—the virtues

of courage, honesty, and finally, hard common-sense.[20]

A Square Deal

and

Education

Facts tend to become commonplace, and we tend to lose sight of their

importance when once they are ingrained into the life of the nation.

Although we talk a good deal about what the widespread education of this

country means, I question if many of us deeply consider its meaning.

From the lowest grade of the public school to the highest form of

university training, education in this country is at the disposal of

every man, every woman, who chooses to work for and obtain it. The State

has done very much. Private benefaction has done much, very much. And

each one of us who has obtained an education has obtained something for

which he or she has not personally paid. No matter what the school, what

the university, every American who has a school training, a university

training, has obtained something given to him outright by the State, or

given to him by those dead or those living who were able to make

provision for that training because of the protection of the State,

because of existence within its borders.

¶Each one of us then who has an education, school or college, has

obtained something from the community at large for which he or she has

not paid, and no self-respecting man or woman is content to rest

permanently under such an obligation. Where the State has bestowed

education the man who accepts it must be content to accept it merely as

a charity unless he returns it to the State in full, in the shape of

good citizenship. I do not ask of you, good citizenship as a favor to

the State. I demand it of you as a right, and hold you recreant to your

duty if you fail to give it.

¶From all our citizens we have a right to expect good citizenship; but

most of all from those who have received most; most of all from those

who have had the training of body, of mind, of soul, which comes from

association in and with a great university. From those to whom much has

been given we have Biblical authority to expect and demand much in

return; and the most that can be given to any man is education. I expect

and demand in the name of the nation much more from you who have had

training of the mind than from those of mere wealth. To the man of means

much has been given, too, and much will be expected from him, and ought

to be, but not as much as from you, because your possession is more

valuable than his. If you envy him I think poorly of you. Envy is merely

the meanest form of admiration, and a man who envies another admits

thereby his own inferiority.

¶We have a right to expect from the college-bred man, the college-bred

woman, a proper sense of proportion, a proper sense of perspective,

which will enable him or her to see things in their right relation one

to another, and when thus seen while wealth will have a proper place, a

just place, as an instrument for achieving happiness and power, for

conferring happiness and power, it will not stand as high as much else

in our national life. I ask you to take that not as a conventional

statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of

the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the

qualities which have made you admire them, what are the services they

have rendered. For, as President Wheeler said to-day, it is true now as

it ever has been true that the greatest good fortune, the greatest

honor, that can befall any man is that he shall serve, that he shall

serve the nation, serve his people, serve mankind; and looking back in

history the names that come up before us, the names to which we turn,

the names of the men of our own people which stand as shining honor

marks in our annals, the names of those men typifying qualities which

rightly we should hold in reverence, are the names of the statesmen, of

the soldiers, of the poets, and after them, not abreast of them, the

names of the architects of our material prosperity also.[23]

¶You, men and women, you who have had the advantages of a college

training are not to be excused if you fail to do, not as well as, but

more than the average man outside who has not had your advantages. Every

now and then I meet (at least I meet him in the East and I dare say he

is to be found here) the man who having gone through college feels that

somehow that confers upon him a special distinction which relieves him

from the necessity of showing himself as good as his fellows. I see you

recognize the type. That man is not only a curse to the community, and

incidentally to himself, but he is a curse to the cause of academic

education, the college and university training, because by his

insistence he serves as an excuse for those who like to denounce such

education.

¶Your education, your training, will not confer on you one privilege in

the way of excusing you from effort or from work. All it can do, and

what it should do, is to make you a little better fitted for such

effort, for such work; and I do not care whether that is in business,

politics, in no matter what branch of endeavor, all it can do is by the

training you have received, by the advantages you have received, to fit

you to do a little better than the average man that you meet.

¶It is incumbent upon you to show that the training has had that effect.

It ought to enable you to do a little better for yourselves, and if you

have in you souls capable of a thrill of generous emotion, souls capable

of understanding what you owe to your training, to your alma mater, to

the past and the present that have given you all that you have—if you

have such souls it ought to make you doubly bent upon disinterested work

for the State and the Nation.[22]

¶Education may not make a man a good citizen, but most certainly

ignorance tends to prevent his being a good citizen. Washington was far

too much of a patriot, had far too much love for his fellow citizen to

try to teach them that they could govern themselves unless they could

develop a sound and enlightened public opinion. No nation can

permanently retain free government unless it can retain a high average

of citizenship, and there can be no such high average of citizenship

without a high average of education, using the word in its broadest and

truest sense to include the things of the soul as well as the things of

the mind.

¶School education can never supplant or take the place of

self-education, still less can it in any way take the place of those

rugged and manly qualities which we group under the name of character;

but it can be of enormous use in supplementing both. It is a source of

just pride to every American that our people have so consistently acted

in accordance with Washington’s principles of promoting institutions for

the diffusion of knowledge. There is nothing dearer to our hearts than

our public school system, by which free primary education is provided

for every one within our borders.

¶The higher education such as is provided by the University of

Pennsylvania and kindred bodies, not only confers great benefits to

those able to take advantage of it, but entails upon them corresponding

duties.

¶The men who founded this nation had to deal with theories of government

and the fundamental principles of free institutions. We are now

concerned with a different set of questions for the Republic has been

firmly established, its principles fully tested and approved. To merely

political issues have succeeded those of grave social and economic

importance, the solution of which demands the best efforts of the best

men. We have a right to expect that a wise and leading part in the

effort to attain this solution will be taken by those who have been

exceptionally blessed in the matter of obtaining an education.

¶That college graduate is but a poor creature who does not feel when he

has left college that he has received something for which he owes a

return. What he thus owes he can as a rule only pay by the way he bears

himself throughout life. It is but occasionally that a college graduate

can do much outright for his alma mater; he can best repay her by living

a life that will reflect credit upon her, by so carrying himself as a

citizen that men shall see that the years spent in training him have not

been wasted.

¶The educated man is entitled to no special privilege, save the

inestimable privilege of trying to show that his education enables him

to take the lead in striving to guide his fellows aright in the

difficult task which is set to us of the twentieth century. The problems

before us to-day are very complex, and are widely different from those

which the men of Washington’s generation had to face; but we can

overcome them surely if we approach them in the spirit which Washington

and Washington’s great supporters brought to bear upon the problems of

their day—the spirit of sanity and of courage, the spirit which combines

hard common-sense with the loftiest idealism.[25]

A Square Deal

and

The School Teacher

The development of the high school, especially during the last half

century, has been literally phenomenal. Nothing like our present system

of education was known in earlier times. No such system of popular

education for the people by the representatives of the people existed.

¶It is, of course, a mere truism to say that the stability and future

welfare of our institutions of government depend upon the grade of

citizenship turned out from our public schools. And no body of public

servants, no body of individuals associated in private life, are better

worth the admiration and respect of all who value citizenship at its

true worth, than the body composed of the teachers in the public schools

throughout the length and breadth of this Union. They have to deal with

citizenship in the raw and turn it out something like a finished

product. I think that all of us who also endeavor to deal with that

citizenship in the raw in our own homes appreciate the burden of the

responsibility.

¶The training given in the public schools must, of course, be not merely

a training in intellect, but a training in what counts for infinitely

more than intellect—a training in character. And the chief factors in

that training must be the personal equation of the teachers; the

influence exerted, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, by

the man or woman who stands in so peculiar a relation to the boys and

girls under his or her care—a relation closer, more intimate, and more

vital in its after-effects than any other relation save that of parent

and child. Wherever a burden of that kind is laid, those who carry it

necessarily carry a great responsibility. There can be no greater. Scant

should be our patience with any man or woman doing a bit of work vitally

worth doing, who does not approach it in the spirit of sincere love for

the work, and of desire to do it well for the sake of the work’s sake.

¶Doubtless most of you remember the old distinction drawn between the

two kinds of work, the work done for the sake of the fee and the work

done for the sake of the work itself. The man or woman in public or

private life who ever works only for the sake of the reward that comes

outside of the work, will in the long run do poor work. The man or woman

who does work worth doing is the man or woman who lives, who breathes

that work; with whom it is ever present in his or her soul; whose

ambition it is to do it well and to feel rewarded by the thought of

having done it well. That man, that woman, puts the whole country under

an obligation. As a body all those connected with the education of our

people are entitled to the heartiest praise from all lovers of their

country, because as a body they are devoting heart and soul to the

welfare of those under them.

¶It is a poor type of school nowadays that has not a good playground

attached. It is not so long since, in my own city at least, this was

held as revolutionary doctrine, especially in the crowded quarters where

playgrounds were most needed. People said they didn’t need playgrounds.

It was a newfangled idea. They expected to make good citizens of the

boys and girls who, when they were not in school, were put upon the

streets in the crowded quarters of New York to play at the kind of games

alone that they could play at in the streets. We have passed that stage.

I think we realize what a good healthy playground means to children. I

think we understand not only the effects for good upon their bodies, but

for good upon their minds. We need healthy bodies. We need to have

schools physically developed.

¶Sometimes you can develop character by the direct inculcation of moral

precept; a good deal more often you cannot. You develop it less by

precept than by your practice. Let it come as an incident of the

association with you; as an incident to the general tone of the whole

body, the tone which in the aggregate we all create. Is not that the

experience of all of you, in dealing with these children in the schools,

in dealing with them in the family, in dealing with them in bodies

anywhere? They are quick to take the tone of those to whom they look up,

and if they do not look up to you, then you can preach virtue all you

wish, but the effect will be small.

¶I should hold myself a poor citizen if I did not welcome the chance to

wish you Godspeed in your work for yourselves and to wish you Godspeed

in your work as representatives of that great public body of public

school teachers, upon the success of whose efforts to train aright the

children of to-day depends the safety of our institutions of

to-morrow.[21]

¶It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the

Republic is that done by the educators, by the teachers, for whatever

our shortcomings as a Nation may be—and we have certain shortcomings—we

have at least firmly grasped the fact that we cannot do our part in the

difficult and all-important work of self-government, that we cannot rule

and govern ourselves unless we approach the task with developed minds,

and with what counts for more even—with trained characters. You teachers

make the whole world your debtors.

¶Of your profession this can be said with more truth than of any other

profession barring only that of the minister of the Gospel himself. If

you—you teachers—did not do your work well this Republic would not

endure beyond the span of the generation.

¶Moreover as an incident to your avowed work, you render some well-nigh

unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to the

Republic the prime, the vital service of amalgamating into one

homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of

those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish a

common training and common ideals for the children of the mixed peoples

who are here being fused into one nationality.

¶It is in no small degree due to you and to your efforts that we of this

great American Republic form one people instead of a group of jarring

peoples. The pupils, no matter where they or their parents were born,

who are being educated in our public schools will be sure to become

imbued with that mutual sympathy, that mutual respect and understanding,

which is absolutely indispensable for the working out of the problems we

as a people have before us.

¶And one service you render which I regard as wholly indispensable. In

our country, where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere

possession of wealth, we are under heavy obligations to such a body as

this[A] which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating money the

infinitely loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth

doing simply for that work’s sake.

¶I do not in the least underestimate the need of having material

prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly insist

that if our civilization does not build a lofty super structure on this

basis, we can never rank among the really great peoples.[28]

A Square Deal

and

The Nobility

of

Parenthood

In our modern industrial civilization there are many and grave dangers

to counterbalance the splendors and the triumphs. It is not a good thing

to see cities grow at disproportionate speed relatively to the country;

for the small land owners, the men who own their little home, and,

therefore, to a very large extent, the men who till farms, the men of

the soil, have hitherto made the foundation of lasting National life in

every State; and, if the foundation becomes either too weak or too

narrow, the superstructure, no matter how attractive, is in imminent

danger of falling.

¶¶But far more important than the question of the occupation of our

citizens is the question of how their family life is conducted. No

matter what that occupation may be, so long as there is a real home and

so long as those who make up that home do their duty to one another, to

their neighbors, and to the State, it is of minor consequence whether

the man’s trade is plied in the country or the city, whether it calls

for the work of the hands or for the work of the head.

¶But the Nation is in a bad way if there is no real home, if the family

is not of the right kind, if the man is not a good husband and father,

if he is brutal or cowardly or selfish; if the woman has lost her sense

of duty, if she is sunk in vapid self-indulgence or has let her nature

be twisted so that she prefers a sterile pseudo-intellectuality to that

great and beautiful development of character which comes only to those

whose lives know the fulness of duty done, of effort made, and

self-sacrifice undergone.

¶In the last analysis the welfare of the State depends absolutely on

whether or not the average family, the average man and woman, and their

children, represent the kind of citizenship for the foundation of a

great Nation, and if we fail to appreciate this we fail to appreciate

the root morality upon which all healthy civilization is based.

¶No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of

artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home

life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage,

common-sense, and decency; unless he works hard and is willing at need

to fight hard, and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good

mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of

womanhood, able and willing to bear and to bring up as they should be

brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind and character, and

numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.

¶¶There are certain old truths which will be true as long as this world

endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the

truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the

breadwinner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the

woman is to be the helpmeet, the housewife, the mother.

¶The woman should have ample educational advantages; but save in

exceptional cases the man must be, and the woman need not be, and

generally ought not to be, trained for a life long career as the family

breadwinner; and, therefore, after a certain point the training of the

two must normally be different because the duties of the two are

normally different.

¶This does not mean inequality of function, but it does mean that

normally there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I think

the duty of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the

more honorable of the two; on the whole I respect the woman who does her

duty even more than I respect the man who does his.

¶¶No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as

the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for

upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the

day but often every hour of the night. She may have to get up night

after night to take care of a sick child, and yet must by day continue

to do all her household duties as well; and if the family means are

scant she must usually enjoy even her rare holidays taking her whole

brood of children with her. The birth-pangs make all men the debtors of

all women.

¶Above all our sympathy and regard are due to the struggling wives among

those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people, and whom he so loved

and trusted; for the lives of these women are often led on the lonely

heights of quiet, self-sacrificing heroism.

¶Just as the happiest and most honorable and most useful task that can

be set any man is to earn enough for the support of his wife and family,

for the bringing up and starting in life of his children, so the most

important, the most honorable and desirable task which can be set any

woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect

and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal

to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and

self-sacrifice.

¶Of course there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do

and ought to do more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great

careers of outside usefulness in addition to—not as a substitute

for—their home work; but I am not speaking of exceptions; I am speaking

of the primary duties. I am speaking of the average citizens, the

average men and women who make up the Nation.

¶No mother has an easy time, and most mothers have very hard times; and

yet what true mother would barter her experience of joy and sorrow in

exchange for a life of cold selfishness, which insists upon perpetual

amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often finds its fit

dwelling place in some flat designed to furnish with the least possible

expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury, but in which

there is literally no place for children?

¶¶The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our

respect as is no one else, but she is entitled to it only because, and

so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law

of worthy life for the man as for the woman, though neither the effort

nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other.

¶I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in

the woman who submits to gross and long-continued ill-treatment, any

more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression.

No wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife

and the children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature.

¶Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of

consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them,

should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.

¶I believe in the woman’s keeping her self-respect just as I believe in

the man’s doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in

the man’s and, indeed, a little more, and I regard marriage as a

partnership in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the

rights of the other as well as of his or her own.

¶But I think the duties are even more important than the rights, and in

the long run, I think, that the reward is ampler and greater for duty

well done than for the insistence upon individual rights necessary

though this, too, must often be.

¶¶¶Into the woman’s keeping is committed the destiny of the generation

to come after us. In bringing up children mothers must remember that

while it is essential to be loving and tender, it is no less essential

to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as

interchangeable terms, and besides training sons and daughters in the

softer and milder virtues mothers must seek to give them those stern and

hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need.

¶Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training, and some

will go right even where their surroundings are most unfortunate;

nevertheless, an immense amount depends upon the family training.

¶If mothers, through weakness, bring up sons to be selfish and to think

only of themselves, they will be responsible for much sadness among the

women who are to be their wives in the future. If they let their

daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as

they have had to work hard, their daughters shall know only enjoyment,

they are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to

themselves.

¶¶¶Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives

spent in avoiding difficulties, but to lives spent in overcoming

difficulties. Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others,

is not a curse, but a blessing. Seek to make them happy, to make them

enjoy life, but seek also to make them face life with the steadfast

resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their

whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons

and her daughters is thrice fortunate among women.

¶There are a good many people who are denied the supreme blessing of

children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to

those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great

blessings of life.

¶But the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these blessings, whether

from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or

mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the

all-important and the unimportant—why, such a creature merits contempt

as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle, or

upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those dependent upon

him, and who, though able-bodied, is yet content to eat in idleness the

bread which others provide.

¶The existence of women of this type forms one of the most unpleasant

and unwholesome features of modern life. If any one is so dim of vision

as to fail to see what a thoroughly unlovely creature such a woman is I

wish they would read Judge Robert Grant’s novel “Unleavened Bread,”

ponder seriously the character of Selma, and think of the fate that

would surely overcome any nation which developed its average and typical

women along such lines.

¶Unfortunately it would be untrue to say that this type exists only in

American novels. That it also exists in American life is made

unpleasantly evident by statistics as to the dwindling families in some

localities. It is made evident in equally sinister fashion by the census

statistics as to divorce, which are fairly appalling; for easy divorce

is now as it ever has been, a bane to any nation, a curse to society, a

menace to the home, an incitement to married unhappiness and to

immorality, an evil thing for men, and a still more hideous evil for

women.

¶These unpleasant tendencies in our American life are made evident by

articles such as those which I actually read not long ago in a certain

paper, where a clergyman was quoted seemingly with approval, as

expressing the general American attitude when he said that the ambition

of any save a very rich man should be to rear two children only, so as

to give his children an opportunity “to taste a few of the good things

of life.”

¶This man whose profession and calling should have made him a moral

teacher, actually set before others the ideal, not of training children

to do their duty, not of sending them forth with stout hearts and ready

minds to win triumphs for themselves and their country, not of allowing

them the opportunity and giving them the privilege of making their own

place in the world, but forsooth, of keeping the number of children so

limited that they might “taste a few good things!”

¶¶The way to give a child a fair chance in life is not to bring it up in

luxury, but to see that it has the kind of training that will give

strength of character. Even apart from the question of National life,

and regarding only the individual interest of the children themselves,

happiness in the true sense is a hundredfold more apt to come to any

given member of a healthy family of healthy-minded children, well

brought up, well educated, but taught that they must shift for

themselves, must win their own way, and by their own exertions make

their own positions of usefulness, than it is apt to come to those whose

parents themselves have acted on and have trained their children to act

on, the selfish and sordid theory that the whole end of life is “to

taste a few of the good things!”

¶The intelligence of the remark is on a par with its morality, for the

most rudimentary mental process would have shown the speaker that if the

average family in which there are children contained but two children

the nation as a whole would decrease in population so rapidly that in

two or three generations it would very deservedly be on the point of

extinction, so that the people who had acted on this base and selfish

doctrine would be giving place to others with braver and more robust

ideals.

¶Nor would such a result be in any way regrettable; for a race

that practiced such doctrine,—that is a race that practiced

race-suicide—would thereby conclusively show that it was unfit to

exist, and that it had better give place to people who had not

forgotten the primary laws of their being.

¶To sum up, then, the whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or

an individual prefers the pleasures of mere effortless ease, of

self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher

pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but

also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual

must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid

and ignoble.

¶No man and no woman really worthy of the name can care for the life

spent solely or chiefly in the avoidance of risk and trouble and labor.

Save in exceptional cases the prizes worth having in life must be paid

for, and the life worth living must be a life of work for a worthy end,

and ordinarily of work more for others than for one’s self.

¶The man is but a poor creature whose effort is not rather for the

betterment of his wife and children than for himself; and as for the

mother, her very name stands for loving unselfishness and

self-abnegation, and, in any society fit to exist, is fraught with

associations which render it holy.

¶The woman’s task is not easy—no task worth doing is easy—but in doing

it, and when she has done it, there shall come to her the highest and

holiest joy known to mankind; and, having done it, she shall have the

reward prophesied in Scripture; for her husband and her children, yes,

and all people who realize that her work lies at the foundation of all

National happiness and greatness, shall rise up and call her

blessed.[33]

A Square Deal

and

Great Riches

In this world of ours it is practically impossible to get success of any

kind on a large scale without paying something for it. The exceptions to

the rule are too few to warrant our paying heed to them, and as a rule

it may be said that something must be paid as an offset for everything

we get and for everything we accomplish. This is notably true of our

industrial life.

¶The problems which we of America have to face to-day are very serious,

but we will do well to remember that after all they are only part of the

price which we have to pay for the triumphs we have won, for the high

position to which we have attained. If we were a backward and stationary

country we would not have to face these problems at all, but I think

that most of us are agreed that to be backward and stationary would be

altogether too heavy a price to pay for the avoidance of the problems in

question.

¶There are no labor troubles where there is no work to be done by labor.

There are no troubles about corporations where the poverty of the

community is such that it is not worth while to form corporations. There

is no difficulty in regulating railroads where the resources of a region

are so few that it does not pay to build railroads. There are many

excellent people who shake their heads over the difficulties that as a

Nation we now have to face; but their melancholy is not warranted save

in a very partial degree, for most of the things of which they complain

are the inevitable accompaniments of the growth and greatness of which

we are proud.

¶There is every reason why we should be vigilant in searching out what

is wrong and unflinchingly resolute in striving to remedy it. But at the

same time we must not blind ourselves to what has been accomplished for

good, and above all we must not lose our heads and become either

hysterical or rancorous in grappling with what is bad.

¶Take such a question, for instance, as the question, or rather the

group of questions, connected with the growth of corporations in this

country. This growth has meant, of course, the growth of individual

fortunes. Undoubtedly the growth of wealth in this country has had some

very unfortunate accompaniments, but it seems to me that much the worse

damage that people of wealth can do the rest of us is not any actual

physical harm, but the awakening in our breasts of either the mean vice

of worshipping mere wealth, and the man of mere wealth, for the wealth’s

sake, or the equally mean vice of viewing with rancorous envy and hatred

the men of wealth merely because they are men of wealth.

¶Envy is, of course, merely a kind of crooked admiration, and we often

see the very man who in public is most intemperate in his denunciation

of wealth in his private life most eager to obtain wealth, in no matter

what fashion, and at no matter what moral cost.

¶It is impossible too strongly to insist upon what ought to be the

patent fact that it is not only in the interest of the people of wealth

themselves, but in our interest, in the interest of the public as a

whole, that they should be treated fairly and justly; that if they show

exceptional business ability they should be given exceptional reward for

that ability.

¶The tissues of our industrial fabric are interwoven in such complex

fashion that what strengthens or weakens part also strengthens or

weakens the whole.

¶If we penalize industry we will ourselves in the end have to pay a

considerable part of the penalty. If we make conditions such that the

men of exceptional ability are able to secure marked benefits by the

exercise of that ability, then we shall ourselves benefit somewhat. It

is our interest no less than our duty to treat them fairly.

¶On the other hand, it is no less their interest to treat us fairly—by

“us” I mean the great body of the people, the men of moderate or small

fortunes, the farmers, the wage-workers, the smaller business men and

professional men.

¶The man of great means who achieves fortune by crooked methods does

wrong to the whole body politic. But he not merely does wrong to, he

becomes a source of imminent danger to other men of great means; for his

ill-won success tends to arouse a feeling of resentment, which if it

becomes inflamed, fails to differentiate between the men of wealth who

have done decently and the men of wealth who have not done decently.

¶The conscience of our people has been deeply shocked by the revelations

made of recent years as to the way in which some of the great fortunes

have been obtained and used, and there is, I think, in the minds of the

people at large a strong feeling that a serious effort must be made to

put a stop to the cynical dishonesty and contempt for right which have

thus been revealed.

¶I believe that something, and I hope that a good deal, can be done by

law to remedy the state of things complained of. But when all that can

be has thus been done, there will yet remain much which the law cannot

touch, and which must be reached by the force of public opinion.

¶There are men who do not divide actions merely into those that are

honest and those that are not, but create a third subdivision—that of

law honesty; of that kind of honesty which consists in keeping clear of

the penitentiary. It is hard to reach astute men of this type save by

making them feel the weight of an honest public indignation.

¶We can not afford in this country to draw the distinction as between

rich man and poor man. The distinction upon which we must insist is the

vital, deep-lying, unchangeable distinction between the honest man and

the dishonest man, between the man who acts decently and fairly by his

neighbor and with a quick sense of his obligations, and the man who

acknowledges no internal law save that of his own will and appetite.

Above all we should treat with a peculiarly contemptuous abhorrence the

man who in a spirit of sheer cynicism debauches either our business life

or our political life.

¶There are men who use the word “practical politics” as merely a

euphemism for dirty politics, and it is such men who have brought the

word “politician” into discredit. There are other men who use the

noxious phrase “business is business” as an excuse and justification for

every kind of mean and crooked work, and these men make honest Americans

hang their heads because of some of the things they do.

¶It is the duty of every honest patriot to rebuke in emphatic fashion

alike the politician who does not understand that the only kind of

“practical politics” which a nation can with safety tolerate is that

kind which we know as clean politics, and that we are as severe in our

condemnation of the business trickery which succeeds as of the business

trickery which fails. The scoundrel who fails can never by any

possibility be as dangerous to the community as the scoundrel who

succeeds, and of all the men in the country the worst citizens, those

who should excite in our minds the most contemptuous abhorrence, are the

men who have achieved great wealth, or any other form of success, in any

save a clean and straightforward manner.[27]

A Square Deal

and

The Farmer

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 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 a 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 age 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 in 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 breadwinner, a good husband, a good father—I hope

the father of many 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 up in 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, 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.