¶The aim to set before ourselves in trying to aid one another is to give

that aid under conditions which will harm no man’s self-respect and

which will teach the less fortunate how to help themselves as their

stronger brothers do. To give such aid it is necessary not only to

possess the right kind of heart, but also the right kind of head.

Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether, in

the long run, it works more damage than softness of head. At any rate

both are undesirable. The prerequisite to doing good work in the field

of philanthropy—in the field of social effort, undertaken with one’s

fellows for the common good—is that it shall be undertaken in a spirit

of broad sanity no less than of broad and loving charity.

¶¶The sinews of virtue lie in a man’s capacity to care for what is

outside himself. The man who gives himself up to the service of his

appetites, the man who the more goods he has the more he wants, has

surrendered himself to destruction. It makes little difference whether

he achieves his purpose or not. If his point of view is all wrong, he is

a bad citizen whether he be rich or poor. It is a small matter to the

community whether in arrogance and insolence he has misused great wealth

or whether though poor, he is possessed by the mean and fierce desire to

seize a morsel, the biggest possible, of that prey which the fortunate

of earth consume. The man who lives simply, and justly, and honorably,

whether rich or poor, is a good citizen. Those who dream only of

idleness and pleasure, who hate others, and fail to recognize the duty

of each man to his brother, these, be they rich or poor, are the enemies

of the State. The misuse of property is one manifestation of the same

evil spirit which under changed circumstances denies the right of

property because this right is in the hands of others. In a purely

material civilization the bitterness of attack on another’s possession

is only additional proof of the extraordinary importance attached to

possession itself. When outward well-being instead of being regarded as

a valuable foundation on which happiness may with wisdom be built, is

mistaken for happiness itself, so that material prosperity becomes the

one standard, then, alike by those who enjoy such prosperity in slothful

or criminal ease, and by those who in no less evil manner rail at, envy,

and long for it, poverty is held to be shameful, and money, whether well

or ill gotten, to stand for merit.

¶All this does not mean condemnation of progress. It is mere folly to

try to dig up the dead past, and scant is the good that comes from

asceticism and retirement from the world. But let us make sure that our

progress is in the essentials as well as in the incidentals. Material

prosperity without the moral lift toward righteousness means a

diminishing capacity for happiness and a debased character. The worth of

a civilization is the worth of the man at its centre. When this man

lacks moral rectitude, material progress only makes bad worse, and

social problems still darker and more complex.[13]

A Square Deal

and

The Trusts

The tremendous and highly complex industrial development which went on

with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth

century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with

very serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs which

had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to

regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the

industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive

power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.

¶The growth of the cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the

growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial

centres has meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of

wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of

very large corporate fortunes. The creation of these great corporate

fortunes has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental

action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in other

countries as they operate in our own.

¶The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is

wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown

richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the

average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well

off as in this country and at the present time. There have been abuses

connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a

fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the

person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense

incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type

which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such as

to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.

¶The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across

this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our

manufactures, have on the whole done great good for our people. Without

them the material development of which we are so justly proud could

never have taken place. Moreover, we should recognize the immense

importance to this material development of leaving as unhampered as is

compatible with the public good the strong and forceful men upon whom

the success of business operations inevitably rests. The slightest study

of business conditions will satisfy any one capable of forming a

judgment that the personal equation is the most important factor in a

business operation; that the business ability of the man at the head of

any business concern, big or little, is usually the factor which fixes

the gulf between striking success and hopeless failure.

¶An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be

found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same

business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of

corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in

international commercial competition. Business concerns which have the

largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are

naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial

supremacy among the nations of the world.

¶America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the

international business world which we believe will more and more be

hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not

jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our

own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical

aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such

conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful

strength of our Nation.

¶Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with

ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably

endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national

life—the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in

the long run, we shall go up or down together. There are exceptions; and

in times of prosperity some will prosper far more, and in times of

adversity some will suffer far more, than others; but speaking

generally, a period of good times means that all share more or less in

them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or

less degree.

¶It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this

statement; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still

vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions in this very year

which is now closing. Disaster to great business enterprises can never

have its effects limited to the men at the top. It spreads throughout,

and while it is bad for everybody, it is worst for those farthest down.

The capitalist may be shorn of his luxuries; but the wage-worker may be

deprived of even bare necessities.

¶The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must

be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance.

Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great

industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical

inaccuracy, known as “trusts,” appeal especially to hatred and fear.

¶These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with

ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment.

In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world

shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective

unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. Much

of the legislation directed at the trusts would have been exceedingly

mischievous had it not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance

with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or reckless agitator

has been the really effective friend of the evils which he has been

nominally opposing.

¶In dealing with business interests, for the Government to undertake by

crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may turn out to be bad,

would be to incur the risk of such far-reaching national disaster that

it would be preferable to undertake nothing at all. The men who demand

the impossible or the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with

which they are nominally at war, for they hamper those who would

endeavor to find out in rational fashion what the wrongs really are and

to what extent and in what manner it is practicable to apply remedies.

¶All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave

evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many

baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made

to correct these evils.

¶There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people

that the great corporations known as the trusts are in certain of their

features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs

from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the

great industrial achievements that have placed this country at the head

of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not rest

upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of the necessity of meeting

changing and changed conditions of trade with new methods, nor upon

ignorance of the fact that combination of capital in the effort to

accomplish great things is necessary when the world’s progress demands

that great things be done. It is based upon sincere conviction that

combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised

and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this

conviction is right.

¶It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to

require that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing

business under corporate form, which frees them from individual

responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprise the

capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful

representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is

to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be

regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public

injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social

betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the

entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only

because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is

therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with

these institutions.

¶The first essential in determining how to deal with the great

industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity. In the

interest of the public, the Government should have the right to inspect

and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate

business. Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke.

What further remedies are needed in the way of governmental regulation,

or taxation, can only be determined after publicity has been obtained,

by process of law, and in the course of administration. The first

requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge which may be made

public to the world.

¶Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint-stock or other

associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or

privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and

full and accurate information as to their operations should be made

public regularly at reasonable intervals.

¶The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in one

State, always do business in many States, often doing very little

business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack

of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any

exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice

proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action.

Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should,

without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself,

also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations

doing an interstate business. This is especially true where the

corporation derives a portion of its wealth from the existence of some

monopolistic element or tendency in its business. There would be no

hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their case

it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable

that supervision of corporations by the National Government need not go

so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised over them by so

conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce excellent

results.

¶When the constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth

century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in

industrial and political conditions, which were to take place by the

beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a

matter of course that the several States were the proper authorities to

regulate, so far as was then necessary, the comparatively insignificant

and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are

now wholly different and wholly different action is called for. I

believe that a law can be framed which will enable the National

Government to exercise control along the lines above indicated;

profiting by the experience gained through the passage and

administration of the Interstate-Commerce Act. If, however the judgment

of the Congress is that it lacks the constitutional power to pass such

an act, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted to confer

the power.

¶There should be created a Cabinet officer, to be known as Secretary of

Commerce and Industries, as provided in the bill introduced at the last

session of the Congress. It should be his province to deal with commerce

in its broadest sense; including among many other things whatever

concerns labor and all matters affecting the great business corporations

and our merchant marine.

¶The course proposed is one phase of what should be a comprehensive and

far-reaching scheme of constructive statesmanship for the purpose of

broadening our markets, securing our business interests on a safe basis,

and making firm our new position in the international industrial world;

while scrupulously safeguarding the rights of wage-worker and

capitalist, of investor and private citizen, so as to secure equity as

between man and man in this Republic.[7]

A Square Deal

and

The Problem

of

the South

All good Americans who dwell in the North must, because they are good

Americans, feel the most earnest friendship for their fellow-countrymen

who dwell in the South, a friendship all the greater because it is in

the South that we find in its most acute phase one of the gravest

problems before our people: the problem of so dealing with the man of

one color as to secure him the right that no one would grudge him if he

were of another color. To solve this problem it is of course necessary

to educate him to perform the duties, a failure to perform which will

render him a curse to himself and to all around him.

¶Most certainly all clear-sighted and generous men in the North

appreciate the difficulty and perplexity of this problem, sympathize

with the South in the embarrassment of conditions for which she is not

alone responsible, feel an honest wish to help her where help is

practicable, and have the heartiest respect for those brave and earnest

men of the South who, in the face of fearful difficulties, are doing all

that men can do for the betterment both of white and of black. The

attitude of the North toward the negro is far from what it should be,

and there is need that the North also should act in good faith upon the

principle of giving to each man what is justly due him, of treating him

on his worth as a man, granting him no special favor, but denying him no

proper opportunity for labor and the reward of labor.

¶But the peculiar circumstances of the South render the problem there

far greater and far more acute. Neither I nor any other man can say that

any given way of approaching that problem will present in our time even

an approximately perfect solution, but we can safely say that there can

never be such solution at all unless we approach it with the effort to

do fair and equal justice among all men; and to demand from them in

return just and fair treatment for others.

¶Our efforts should be to secure to each man, whatever his color,

equality of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law. As a

people striving to shape our actions in accordance with the great law of

righteousness we cannot afford to take part in or be indifferent to the

oppression or maltreatment of any man who, against overwhelming

disadvantages, has by his own industry, energy, self-respect and

perseverance struggled upward to a position which would entitle him to

the respect of his fellows, if only his skin were of a different hue.

¶Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrusting down

instead of helping up such a man. To deny any man the fair treatment

granted to others no better than he is to commit a wrong upon him—a

wrong sure to react in the long run upon those guilty of such denial.

The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men

up,” not that of “some men down.” If in any community the level of

intelligence, morality, and thrift among the colored men can be raised,

it is, humanely speaking, sure that the same level among the whites will

be raised to an even higher degree; and it is no less sure that the

debasement of the blacks will in the end carry with it an attendant

debasement of the whites.

¶The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of

different ethical type that the rights of neither be abridged nor

jeopardized; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter into

the possession of true freedom while the forward race is enabled to

preserve unharmed the high civilization wrought out by its forefathers.

The working out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not

possible in offhand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boon of

freedom, industrial efficiency, political capacity, and domestic

morality. Nor is it only necessary to train the colored man; it is quite

as necessary to train the white man, for on his shoulders rest a well

nigh unparalleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem demanding

the best thought; the utmost patience, the most earnest effort, the

broadest charity, of the statesman, the student, the philanthropist; of

the leaders of thought in every department of our national life. The

Church can be a most important factor in solving it aright. But above

all else we need for its successful solution the sober, kindly,

steadfast, unselfish performance of duty by the average plain citizen in

his every-day dealings with his fellows.

¶The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the ideal we

should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day before we attain

to it and unless we show not only devotion to it, but also wisdom and

self-restraint in the exhibition of that devotion, we shall defer the

time for its realization still further. In striving to attain to so much

of it as concerns dealing with men of different colors, we must remember

two things.

¶In the first place it is true of the colored man, as it is true of the

white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far more upon his

own effort than upon the efforts of any outside friend. Every vicious,

venal, or ignorant colored man is an even greater foe to his own race

than to the community as a whole. The colored man’s self-respect

entitles him to do that share in the political work of the country which

is warranted by his individual ability and integrity and the position he

has won for himself. But the prime requisite of the race is moral and

industrial uplifting.

¶Laziness and shiftlessness, then, and above all, vice and criminality

of every kind, are evils more potent for harm to the black race than all

acts of oppression of white men put together. The colored man who fails

to condemn crime in another colored man, who fails to co-operate in all

lawful ways in bringing colored criminals to justice, is the worst enemy

of his own people, as well as an enemy to all the people. Law-abiding

black men should, for the sake of their race, be foremost in relentless

and unceasing warfare against lawbreaking black men. If the standards of

private morality and industrial efficiency can be raised high enough

among the black race, then its future on this continent is secure. The

stability and purity of the home is vital to the welfare of the black

race, as it is to the welfare of every race.

¶The white man who can be of most use to the colored man is that colored

man’s neighbor. It is the southern people themselves who must and can

solve the difficulties that exist in the South. What help the people of

the rest of the Union can give them must and will be gladly and

cheerfully given. The hope of advancement for the colored man in the

South lies in his steady common-sense effort to improve his moral and

material conditions and to work in harmony with the white man in

upbuilding the commonwealth. The future of the South now depends upon

the people of both races living up to the spirit and letter of the laws

of their several states and working out the destinies of both races not

as races, but as law-abiding citizens.[29]

¶It is a good thing that the guard around the tomb of Lincoln should be

composed of colored soldiers. It was my own good fortune at Santiago to

serve beside colored troops. A man who is good enough to shed his blood

for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall

have.[24]

A Square Deal

and

Lynch Law

All thoughtful men must feel the gravest alarm over the growth of

lynching in this country, and especially over the peculiarly hideous

form so often taken by mob violence when colored men are the victims, on

which occasions the mob seems to lay most weight, not on the crime but

on the color of the criminal. In a certain proportion of these cases the

man lynched has been guilty of a crime horrible beyond description a

crime so horrible that as far as he himself is concerned he has

forfeited the right to any kind of sympathy whatsoever.

¶The feeling of all good citizens that such a hideous crime shall not be

hideously punished by mob violence is due not in the least to sympathy

for the criminal, but to a very lively sense of the dreadful

consequences which follow the course taken by the mob in exacting

inhuman vengeance from an inhuman wrong.

In such cases, moreover, it is well to remember that the criminal not

merely sins against humanity in inexpiable and unpardonable fashion, but

sins particularly against his own race and does them a wrong far greater

than any white man can possibly do them.

¶Therefore, in such cases the colored people throughout the land should

in every possible way show their belief that they, more than all others

in the community are horrified at the commission of such a crime, and

are peculiarly concerned in taking every possible measure to prevent its

recurrence and to bring the criminal to immediate justice.

¶The slightest lack of vigor either in denunciation of the crime or in

bringing the criminal to justice is itself unpardonable. Moreover, every

effort should be made under the law to expedite the proceedings of

justice in the case of such an awful crime. But it cannot be necessary,

in order to accomplish this, to deprive any citizen, of those

fundamental rights to be heard in his own defence which are so dear to

us all and which lie at the root of our liberty.

¶It certainly ought to be possible by the proper administration of the

laws to secure swift vengeance upon the criminal; and the best and

immediate efforts of all legislators, judges and citizens should be

addressed to securing such reforms in our legal procedure as to leave no

vestige of excuse for those misguided men who undertake to wreak

vengeance through violent methods.

¶Men who have been guilty of a crime like rape or murder should be

visited with swift and certain punishment, and the just efforts made by

the courts to protect them in their rights should under no circumstances

be perverted into permitting any mere technicality to avert or delay

their punishment. The substantial rights of the prisoner to a fair trial

must, of course, be guaranteed; but subject to this guarantee, the law

must work swiftly and surely, and all the agents of the law should

realize the wrong they do when they permit justice to be delayed or

thwarted for technical or insufficient reasons.

¶We must show that the law is adequate to deal with crime by freeing it

from every vestige of technicality and delay.

¶But the fullest recognition of the horror of the crime and the most

complete lack of sympathy with the criminal can not in the least

diminish our horror at the way in which it has become customary to

avenge these crimes, and at the consequences that are already proceeding

therefrom.

¶It is, of course, inevitable that where vengeance is taken by a mob it

should frequently light on innocent people; and the wrong done in such a

case to the individual is one for which there is no remedy. But even

where the real criminal is reached, the wrong done by the mob to the

community itself is well nigh as great. Especially is this true where

the lynching is accompanied by torture. There are certain hideous sights

which when once seen, can never be wholly erased from the mental retina.

The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation. This is a

thousandfold stronger when, instead of merely seeing the dead, the man

has participated in it. Whoever in any part of our country has ever

taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the dreadful

torture of fire must forever after have the awful spectacle of his own

handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same

man.

¶This matter of lynching would be a terrible thing even if it stopped

with the lynching of men guilty of the inhuman and hideous crime of

rape; but as a matter of fact, lawlessness of this type never does stop

and never can stop in such fashion. Every violent man in the community

is encouraged by every case of lynching in which the lynchers go

unpunished to himself take the law into his own hands whenever it suits

his own convenience. In the same way the use of torture by the mob in

certain cases is sure to spread until it is applied more or less

indiscriminately in other cases.

¶The spirit of lawlessness grows with what it feeds on, and when mobs

with impunity lynch criminals for one crime they are certain to begin to

lynch real or alleged criminals for other causes. Mob violence is simply

one form of anarchy, and anarchy is now, as it always has been, the

handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny.

¶Surely no patriot can fail to see the fearful brutalization and

debasement which the indulgence of such a spirit and such practices

inevitably portend. Surely all public men, all writers for the daily

press, all clergymen, all teachers, all who in any way have a right to

address the public, should with every energy unite to denounce such

crimes and to support those engaged in putting them down. As a people we

claim the right to speak with peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair

treatment of all men without regard to differences of race, fortune,

creed or color. We forfeit the right so to speak when we commit or

condone such crimes as those of which I speak.

¶The nation, like the individual, can not commit a crime with impunity.

If we are guilty of lawlessness and brutal violence, whether our guilt

consists in active participation therein or in mere connivance and

encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later on because of what we

have done.

¶The cornerstone of this Republic, as of all free governments, is

respect for and obedience to the law. Where we permit the law to be

defied or evaded, whether by rich man or poor man, by black man or

white, we are by just so much weakening the bonds of our civilization

and increasing the chances of its overthrow, and of the substitution

therefor of a system in which there shall be violent alternations of

anarchy and tyranny.[26]

A Square Deal

and

The Indians

In dealing with the Indians our aim should be their ultimate absorption

into the body of our people. But in many cases this absorption must and

should be very slow. In portions of the Indian territory the mixture of

blood has gone on at the same time with progress in wealth and

education, so that there are plenty of men with varying degrees of

purity of Indian blood who are absolutely indistinguishable in point of

social, political, and economic ability from their white associates.

There are other tribes which have as yet made no perceptible advance

toward such equality. To try to force such tribes too fast is to prevent

their going forward at all. Moreover, the tribes live under widely

different conditions.

¶Where a tribe has made considerable advance and lives on fertile

farming soil it is possible to allot the members lands in severalty much

as is the case with white settlers. There are other tribes where such a

course is not desirable. On the arid prairie lands the effort should be

to induce the Indians to lead pastoral rather than agricultural lives,

and permit them to settle in villages rather than to force them into

isolation.

¶The large Indian schools situated remote from any Indian reservation do

a special and peculiar work of great importance. But, excellent though

these are, an immense amount of additional work must be done on the

reservations themselves among the old, and above all among the young

Indians.

¶The first and most important step toward the absorption of the Indian

is to teach him to earn his living; yet it is not necessarily to be

assumed that in each community all Indians must become either tillers of

the soil or stock-raisers. Their industries may properly be diversified,

and those who show special desire or adaptability for industrial or even

commercial pursuits should be encouraged so far as practicable to follow

out each his own bent.

¶Every effort should be made to develop the Indian along the lines of

natural aptitude, and to encourage the existing native industries

peculiar to certain tribes, such as the various kinds of basket-weaving,

canoe-building, smithwork, and blanket-work. Above all, the Indian boys

and girls should be given confident command of colloquial English, and

should ordinarily be prepared for a vigorous struggle with the

conditions under which their people live, rather than for immediate

absorption into some more highly developed community.

¶The officials who represent the Government in dealing with the Indians

work under hard conditions and also under conditions which render it

easy to do wrong and very difficult to detect wrong. Consequently they

should be amply paid on the one hand, and on the other hand a

particularly high standard of conduct should be demanded from them, and

where misconduct can be proved the punishment should be exemplary.[9]

¶In my judgment the time has arrived when we should definitely make up

our minds to recognize the Indian as an individual and not as a member

of a tribe. The General Allotment Act is a mighty pulverizing engine to

break up the tribal mass. It acts directly upon the family and the

individual. Under its provisions some sixty thousand Indians have

already become citizens of the United States. We should now break up the

tribal funds, doing for them what allotment does for the tribal lands;

that is, they should be divided into individual holdings. There will be

a transition period during which the funds will in many cases have to be

held in trust. This is the case also with the lands. A stop should be

put upon the indiscriminate permission to Indians to lease their

allotments. The effort should be steadily to make the Indian work like

any other man on his own ground. The marriage laws of the Indians should

be made the same as those of the whites.

¶In the schools the education should be elementary and largely

industrial. The need of higher education among the Indians is very, very

limited. On the reservation care should be taken to try to suit the

teaching to the needs of the particular Indian. There is no use in

attempting to induce agriculture in a country suited only for cattle

raising, where the Indian should be made a stock grower. The ration

system, which is merely the corral and the reservation system, is highly

detrimental to the Indians. It promotes beggary, perpetuates pauperism,

and stifles industry. It is an effectual barrier to progress. It must

continue to a greater or less degree as long as tribes are herded on

reservations and have everything in common. The Indian should be treated

as an individual—like the white man. During the change of treatment

inevitable hardships will occur; every effort should be made to minimize

these hardships; but we should not because of them hesitate to make the

change. There should be a continuous reduction in the number of

agencies.

¶In dealing with the aboriginal races few things are more important than

to preserve them from the terrible physical and moral degradation

resulting from the liquor traffic. We are doing all we can to save our

own Indian tribes from this evil. Wherever by international agreement

this same end can be attained as regards races where we do not possess

exclusive control, every effort should be made to bring it about.[7]

A Square Deal

and

Immigration

The question of immigration is of vital interest to this country. In the

year ending June 30, 1905, there came to the United States 1,026,000

alien immigrants. In other words, in the single year that has just

elapsed there came to this country a greater number of people than came

here during the one hundred and sixty-nine years of our Colonial life

which intervened between the first landing at Jamestown and the

Declaration of Independence. It is clearly shown in the report of the

Commissioner-General of Immigration that while much of this enormous

immigration is undoubtedly healthy and natural, a considerable

proportion is undesirable for one reason or another; moreover, a

considerable proportion of it, probably a very large proportion,

including most of the undesirable class, does not come here of its own

initiative but because of the activity of the agents of the great

transportation companies. These agents are distributed throughout

Europe, and by the offer of all kinds of inducements they wheedle and

cajole many immigrants, often against their best interest, to come here.

The most serious obstacle we have to encounter in the effort to secure a

proper regulation of the immigration to these shores arises from the

determined opposition of the foreign steamship lines who have no

interest whatever in the matter save to increase the returns on their

capital by carrying masses of immigrants hither in the steerage quarters

of their ships.

¶We can not have too much immigration of the right sort, and we should

have none whatever of the wrong sort. Of course it is desirable that

even the right kind of immigration should be properly distributed in

this country. We need more of such immigration for the South; and

special effort should be made to secure it. Perhaps it would be possible

to limit the number of immigrants allowed to come in any one year to New

York and other northern cities, while leaving unlimited the number

allowed to come to the South; always provided, however, that a stricter

effort is made to see that only immigrants of the right kind come to our

country anywhere.

¶In actual practice it has proved so difficult to enforce the

immigration laws where long stretches of frontier marked by an imaginary

line alone intervene between us and our neighbors that I recommend that

no immigrants be allowed to come in from Canada and Mexico, save natives

of the two countries themselves. As much as possible should be done to

distribute the immigrants upon the land and keep them away from the

congested tenement-house districts of the great cities. But the

distribution is a palliative, not a cure. The prime need is to keep out

all immigrants who will not make good American citizens. The laws now

existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be

strengthened.

¶Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to

compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe

in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit

immigration to the United States. Moreover, there should be a sharp

limitation imposed upon vessels coming to our ports as to the number of

immigrants in ratio to the tonnage which each vessel can carry. This

ratio should be high enough to insure the coming hither of as good a

class of aliens as possible. Provision should be made for the surer

punishment of those who induce aliens to come to this country under

promise or assurance of employment. It should be made possible to

inflict a sufficiently heavy penalty on any employer violating this law

to deter him from taking the risk. It seems to me wise that there should

be an international conference held to deal with this question of

immigration, which has more than a merely national significance; such a

conference could among other things enter at length into the methods for

securing a thorough inspection of would-be immigrants at the ports from

which they desire to embark before permitting them to embark.

¶In dealing with this question it is unwise to depart from the old

American tradition and to discriminate for or against any man who

desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that

man’s fitness for citizenship. It is our right and duty to consider his

moral and social quality. His standard of living should be such that he

will not, by pressure of competition, lower the standard of living of

our own wage-workers; for it must ever be a prime object of our

legislation to keep high their standard of living. If the man who seeks

to come here is from the moral and social standpoint of such a character

as to bid fair to add value to the community he should be heartily

welcomed. We can not afford to pay heed to whether he is of one creed or

another, of one nation or another. We cannot afford to consider whether

he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman

or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav,

or Magyar. What we should endeavor to find out is the individual quality

of the individual man. In my judgment, with this end in view, we shall

have to prepare through our own agents a far more rigid inspection in

the countries from which the immigrants come.

¶It will be a great deal better to have fewer immigrants, but all of the

right kind, than a great number of immigrants, many of whom are

necessarily of the wrong kind. As far as possible we wish to limit the

immigration to this country to persons who propose to become citizens of

this country, and we can well afford to insist upon adequate scrutiny of

the character of those who are thus proposed for future citizenship.

There should be an increase in the stringency of the laws to keep out

the insane, the idiotic, the epileptic, and pauper immigrants. But this

is by no means enough. Not merely the anarchist, but every man of

anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly people, all people of

bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the vicious, the physically

unfit, defective, or degenerate should be kept out. The stocks out of

which American citizenship is to be built should be strong and healthy,

sound in body, mind and character. If it be objected that the Government

agents would not always select well, the answer is that they would

certainly select better than do the agents and brokers of foreign

steamship companies, the people who now do what ever selection is

done.[14]

¶Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest

and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, every

immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout

heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every

way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing members

of the community. But there should be a comprehensive law enacted with

the object of working a threefold improvement over our present system.

First, we should aim to exclude absolutely not only all persons who are

known to be believers in anarchistic principles or members of

anarchistic societies, but also all persons who are of a low moral

tendency or of unsavory reputation. This means that we should require a

more thorough system of inspection abroad and a more rigid system of

examination at our immigration ports, the former being especially

necessary.

¶The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by

a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent

capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American

citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them

belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is also

in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in

producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order,

out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all

persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic

fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American

labor. There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an

American living and enough money to ensure a decent start under American

conditions. This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the resulting

competition which gives rise to so much of bitterness in American

industrial life; and it would dry up the springs of the pestilential

social conditions in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations

have their greatest possibility of growth.

¶Both educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law should be

designed to protect and elevate the general body politic and social. A

very close supervision should be exercised over the steamship companies

which mainly bring over the immigrants, and they should be held to a

strict accountability for any infraction of the law.[7]

¶The United States Government endeavors to do its duty by the immigrants

who come to these shores, but unless people have had some experience

with the dangers and difficulties surrounding the newly arrived

immigrant they can hardly realize how great they are.

¶The immigrant comes here almost unprotected; he does not as a rule know

our language, he is wholly unfamiliar with our institutions, our

customs, our habits of life and ways of thought, and there are, I am

sorry to say, great numbers of evil and wicked people who hope to make

their livelihood by preying on him. He is exposed to innumerable

temptations, innumerable petty oppressions, on almost every hand, and

unless some one is there to help him he literally has no idea where to

turn.

¶No greater work can be done by a philanthropic or religious society

than to stretch out the helping hand to the man and the woman who come

here to this country to become citizens, and the parent of citizens, and

therefore, to do their part in making up for weal or woe the future of

our land. If we do not take care of them, if we do not try to uplift

them, then as sure as fate our own children will pay the penalty. If we

do not see that the immigrant and the children of the immigrant are

raised up most assuredly the result will be that our own children and

children’s children are pulled down. Either they will rise or we shall

sink.

¶The level of well-being in this country will be a level for all of us.

We cannot keep that level down for a part and not have it sink more or

less for the whole. Therefore it means much, not merely to the

immigrants but to every good American that there should be at Ellis

Island, the colporteurs and the representatives of religious and

philanthropic societies to try to care for the immigrant’s body, and

above all to try to care for the immigrant’s soul.

¶It is of course unnecessary to say that the things of the body must be

cared for; that the first duty of any man, especially of the man who has

others dependent upon him, is to take care of them and to take care of

himself. Nobody can help others if he begins by being a burden upon

others. Each man must be able to pull his own weight; and therefore each

man must show his capacity to earn for himself and his family enough to

secure a certain amount of material well-being. That must be the

foundation. But on that foundation he must build as a superstructure the

spiritual life.[17]

¶This government is based upon the fundamental idea that each man, no

matter what his occupation, his race, or his religious belief, is

entitled to be treated on his worth as a man, and neither favored nor

discriminated against because of any accident in his position. Even here

at home there is painful difficulty in the effort to realize this ideal;

and the attempt to secure from other nations acknowledgment of it

sometimes encounters obstacles that are well-nigh insuperable; for there

are many nations which in the slow procession of the ages have not yet

reached that point where the principles which Americans regard as

axiomatic obtain any recognition whatever. One of the chief difficulties

arises in connection with certain American citizens of foreign birth or

of particular creed, who desire to travel abroad. Russia for instance,

refuses to admit and protect Jews. Turkey refuses to admit and protect

certain sects of Christians.

¶This Government has consistently demanded equal protection abroad for

all American citizens, whether native or naturalized. On March 27, 1899,

Secretary Hay sent a letter of instructions to all the diplomatic and

consular officers of the United States in which he said: “This

Department does not discriminate between native-born and naturalized

citizens in according them protection while they are abroad, equality of

treatment being required by the laws of the United States.”

¶These orders to our agents abroad have been repeated again and again,

and are treated as the fundamental rule of conduct laid down for them,

proceeding upon the theory “that all naturalized citizens of the United

States while in foreign countries are entitled to and shall receive from

this Government the same protection of persons and property which is

accorded to native-born citizens.”

¶In issuing passports the State Department never discriminates, or

alludes to any man’s religion; and in granting to every American

citizen, native or naturalized, Christian or Jew, the same passport, so

far as it has power it insists that all foreign governments shall accept

the passport as prima facie proof that the person therein described is a

citizen of the United States and entitled to protection as such. It is a

standing order to every American diplomatic and consular officer to

protect every American citizen of whatever faith, from unjust

molestation, and officers abroad have been stringently required to

comply with this order.... The steady pressure which the Department has

been keeping up in the past will be continued in the future. This

Administration has on all proper occasions given clear expression to the

belief of the American people that discrimination and oppression because

of religion, wherever practiced, are acts of injustice before God and

man, and in making evident to the world the depth of American conviction

in this regard we have gone to the very limit of diplomatic usage.[18]

A Square Deal

and

The Chinese Question

The questions arising in connection with Chinese immigration stand by

themselves. The conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese

coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and

unskilled, legitimately come under the head of undesirable immigrants to

this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they

work and their low standard of living. Not only is it to the interest of

this country to keep them out, but the Chinese authorities do not desire

that they should be admitted. At present their entrance is prohibited by

laws amply adequate to accomplish this purpose. These laws have been,

are being, and will be, thoroughly enforced. The violations of them are

so few in number as to be infinitesimal and can be entirely disregarded.

There is no serious proposal to alter the immigration law as regards the

Chinese laborer, skilled or unskilled, and there is no excuse for any

man feeling or affecting to feel the slightest alarm on the subject.

¶But in the effort to carry out the policy of excluding Chinese

laborers, Chinese coolies, grave injustice and wrong have been done by

this nation to the people of China, and therefore ultimately to this

Nation itself. Chinese students, business and professional men of all

kinds—not only merchants, but bankers, doctors, manufacturers,

professors, travelers, and the like—should be encouraged to come here

and treated on precisely the same footing that we treat students,

business men, travelers, and the like of other nations.

¶Our laws and treaties should be framed, not so as to put these people

in the excepted classes, but to state that we will admit all Chinese,

except Chinese of the coolie class, Chinese skilled or unskilled

laborers. There would not be the least danger that any such provision

would result in any relaxation of the law about laborers. These will,

under all conditions, be kept out absolutely. But it will be more easy

to see that both justice and courtesy are shown, as they ought to be

shown, to other Chinese, if the law or treaty is framed as above

suggested. Examinations should be completed at the port of departure

from China. For this purpose there should be provided a more adequate

consular service in China than we now have. The appropriations, both for

the offices of the consuls and for the office forces in the consulates,

should be increased.

¶As a people we have talked much of the open door in China, and we

expect, and quite rightly intend to insist upon, justice being shown us

by the Chinese. But we cannot expect to receive equity unless we do

equity. We can not ask the Chinese to do to us what we are unwilling to

do to them. They would have a perfect right to exclude our laboring men

if our laboring men threatened to come into their country in such

numbers as to jeopardize the well-being of the Chinese population; and

as, mutatis mutandis, these were the conditions with which Chinese

immigration actually brought this people face to face, we had and have a

perfect right, which the Chinese Government in no way contests, to act

as we have acted in the matter of restricting coolie immigration. That

this right exists for each country was explicitly acknowledged in the

last treaty between the two countries. But we must treat the Chinese

student, traveler, and business man in a spirit of the broadest justice

and courtesy if we expect similar treatment to be accorded to our own

people of similar rank who go to China. Much trouble has come during the

past year from the organized boycott against American goods which has

been started in China. The main factor in producing this boycott has

been the resentment felt by the students and business people of China,

by all the Chinese leaders, against the harshness of our law toward

educated Chinamen of the professional and business classes.[14]

A Square Deal

and

Official Corruption

We need civic righteousness. The best constitution that the wit of man

has ever devised, the best institutions that the ablest statesmen in the

world ever have reduced to practice by law or by custom, will be of no

avail if they are not vivified by the spirit which makes a State great

by making its citizens honest, just, and brave. I do not ask you as

practical believers in applied Christianity to take part one way or the

other in matters that are merely partisan. There are plenty of questions

about which honest men can and do differ very greatly and very

intensely, but as to which the triumph of either side may be compatible

with the welfare of the State—a lesser degree of welfare or a greater

degree of welfare—but compatible with the welfare of the State.

¶But there are certain great principles, such as those which Cromwell

would have called “fundamentals,” concerning which no man has a right to

have more than one opinion. Such a principle is honesty. If you have not

honesty in the average private citizen, or public servant, then all else

goes for nothing. The abler a man is, the more dexterous, the shrewder,

the bolder, why, the more dangerous he is if he has not the root of

right living and right thinking in him—and that in private life, and

even more in public life.

¶Exactly as in time of war, although you need in each fighting man far

more than courage, yet all else counts for nothing if there is not that

courage upon which to base it; so in our civil life, although we need

that the average man in private life, that the average public servant,

shall have far more than honesty, yet all other qualities go for nothing

or for worse than nothing unless honesty underlie them—not only the

honesty that keeps its skirts technically clear, but the honesty that is

such according to the spirit as well as the letter of the law; the

honesty that is aggressive, the honesty that not merely deplores

corruption,—it is easy enough to deplore corruption,—but that wars

against it and tramples it under foot.

¶¶I ask for that type of honesty, I ask for militant honesty, for the

honesty of the kind that makes those who have it discontented with

themselves as long as they have failed to do everything that in them

lies to stamp out dishonesty wherever it can be found, in high place or

in low. And let us not flatter ourselves, we who live in countries where

the people rule, that it is ultimately possible for the people to cast

upon any but themselves the responsibilities for the shape the

government and the social and political life of the community assume. I

ask, then, that our people feel quickened within them indignation

against wrong in every shape, and condemnation of that wrong, whether

found in private or in public life.

¶We have a right to demand courage of every man who wears the uniform;

it is not so much a credit to him to have it as it is shame unutterable

to him if he lacks it. So when we demand honesty we demand it not as

entitling the possessor to praise, but as warranting the heartiest

condemnation possible if he lacks it. Surely in every movement for the

betterment of our life, our life social in the truest and deepest sense,

our life political, we have a special right to ask not merely support,

but leadership from those of the Church. We ask that you to whom much

has been given will remember that from you rightly much will be expected

in return. For all of us here the lines have been cast in pleasant

places. Each of us has been given one talent, or five, or ten talents,

and each of us is in honor bound to use that talent or those talents

aright, and to show at the end that he is entitled to the praise of

having done well as a faithful servant.[31]

¶Steps have been taken by the State Department looking to the making of

bribery an extraditable offence with foreign powers. The need of more

effective treaties covering this crime is manifest. The exposures and

prosecutions of official corruption in St. Louis, Mo., and other cities

and States have resulted in a number of givers and takers of bribes

becoming fugitives in foreign lands. Bribery has not been included in

extradition treaties heretofore, as the necessity has not arisen. While

there may have been as much official corruption in former years, there

has been more developed and brought to light in the immediate past than

in the preceding century of our country’s history.

¶It should be the policy of the United States to leave no place on earth

where a corrupt man fleeing from this country can rest in peace. There

is no reason why bribery should not be included in all treaties as

extraditable. The recent amended treaty with Mexico, whereby this crime

was put in the list of extraditable offences, has established a salutary

precedent in this regard. Under this treaty the State Department has

asked, and Mexico has granted, the extradition of one of the St. Louis

bribe-givers.

¶There can be no crime more serious than bribery. Other offenses violate

one law, while corruption strikes at the foundation of all law. Under

our form of government all authority is vested in the people and by them

delegated to those who represent them in official capacity. There can be

no offence heavier than that of him in whom such a sacred trust has been

reposed, who sells it for his own gain and enrichment; and no less heavy

is the offence of the bribe-giver.

¶He is worse than the thief, for the thief robs the individual, while

the corrupt official plunders an entire city or State. He is as wicked

as the murderer, for the murderer may only take one life against the

law, while the corrupt official and the man who corrupts the official

alike aim at the assassination of the commonwealth itself. Government of

the people, by the people, for the people will perish from the face of

the earth if bribery is tolerated. The givers and takers of bribes stand

on an evil pre-eminence of infamy. The exposure and punishment of public

corruption is an honor to a nation, not a disgrace. The shame lies in

toleration, not in correction.

¶No city or State, still less the Nation, can be injured by the

enforcement of law. As long as public plunderers when detected can find

a haven of refuge in any foreign land and avoid punishment, just so long

encouragement is given them to continue their practices. If we fail to

do all that in us lies to stamp out corruption we cannot escape our

share of responsibility for the guilt. The first requisite of successful

self-government is unflinching enforcement of the law and the cutting

out of corruption.[10]

A Square Deal

and

The Monroe Doctrine

The Monroe Doctrine is not a part of international law. But it is the

fundamental feature of our entire foreign policy so far as the Western

Hemisphere is concerned, and it has more and more been meeting with

recognition abroad. The reason why it is meeting with this recognition

is because we have not allowed it to become fossilized, but have adapted

our construction of it to meet the growing, changing needs of this

hemisphere. Fossilization, of course, means death, whether to an

individual, a government, or a doctrine.

It is out of the question to claim a right and yet shirk the

responsibility for exercising that right, when we announce a policy such

as the Monroe Doctrine we thereby commit ourselves to accepting the

consequences of the policy and these consequences from time to time

alter.

¶Let us look for a moment at what the Monroe Doctrine really is. It

forbids the territorial encroachment of non-American powers on American

soil. Its purpose is partly to secure this Nation against seeing great

military powers obtain new footholds in the Western Hemisphere, and

partly to secure to our fellow republics south of us the chance to

develop along their own lines without being oppressed or conquered by

non-American powers. As we have grown more and more powerful our

advocacy of this doctrine has been received with more and more respect;

but what has tended most to give the Doctrine standing among the nations

is our growing willingness to show that we not only mean what we say and

are prepared to back it up, but that we mean to recognize our

obligations to foreign peoples no less than to insist upon our own

rights.

¶We cannot permanently adhere to the Monroe Doctrine unless we succeed

in making it evident in the first place that we do not intend to treat

it in any shape or way as an excuse for aggrandisement on our part at

the expense of the republics to the south of us; second that we do not

intend to permit it to be used by any of those republics as a shield to

protect that republic from the consequences of its own misdeeds against

foreign nations; third, that inasmuch as by this doctrine we prevent

other nations from interfering on this side of the water, we shall

ourselves in good faith try to help those of our sister republics, which

need such help, upward toward peace and order.

¶As regards the first point we must recognize the fact that in some

South American countries there has been much suspicion lest we should

interpret the Monroe Doctrine in some way inimical to their interests.

Now let it be understood once for all that no just and orderly

government on this continent has anything to fear from us. There are

certain of the republics south of us which have already reached such a

point of stability, order and prosperity that they are themselves,

although as yet hardly consciously, among the guarantors of this

doctrine.

¶No stable and growing American republic wishes to see some great

non-American military power acquire territory in its neighborhood. It is

the interest of all of us on this continent that no such event should

occur, and in addition to our own Republic there are now already

republics in the regions south of us which have reached a point of

prosperity and power that enables them to be considerable factors in

maintaining this doctrine which is so much to the advantage of all of

us.

¶It must be understood that under no circumstances will the United

States use the Monroe Doctrine as a cloak for territorial aggression.

Should any of our neighbors, no matter how turbulent, how disregardful

of our rights, finally get into such a position that the utmost limits

of our forbearance are reached, all the people south of us may rest

assured that no action will ever be taken save what is absolutely

demanded by our self-respect; that this action will not take the form of

territorial aggrandisement on our part, and that it will only be taken

at all with the most extreme reluctance and not without having exhausted

every effort to avert it.

¶As to the second point, if a republic to the south of us commits a tort

against a foreign nation, such for instance, as wrongful action against

the persons or citizens of that nation, then the Monroe Doctrine does

not force us to interfere to prevent punishment of the tort, save to see

that the punishment does not directly or indirectly assume the form of

territorial occupation of the offending country. The case is more

difficult when the trouble comes from the failure to meet contractual

obligations. Our own government has always refused to enforce such

contractual obligations on behalf of its citizens by the appeal to arms.

It is much to be wished that all foreign Governments would take the same

view, but at present this country would certainly not be willing to go

to war to prevent a foreign Government from collecting a just debt, or

to back up some one of our sister republics in a refusal to pay just

debts, and the alternative may in any case prove to be that we shall

ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as

is possible of the just obligations shall be paid. Personally, I should

always prefer to see this country step in and put through such an

arrangement rather than let any foreign country undertake it.

¶I do not want to see any foreign power take possession permanently or

temporarily of the Custom Houses of an American republic in order to

enforce its obligations, and the alternative may at any time be that we

shall be forced to do so ourselves.

¶Finally, and what is in my view really the most important thing of all,

it is our duty, so far as we are able, to try to help upward our weaker

brothers. Just as there has been a gradual growth of the ethical element

in the relations of one individual to another, so that with all the

faults of our Christian civilization it yet remains true that we are, no

matter how slowly, more and more coming to recognize the duty of bearing

one another’s burdens, similarly I believe that the ethical element is

by degrees entering into the dealings of one nation with another. Under

strain of emotion caused by sudden disaster this feeling is very

evident. A famine or a plague in our country brings much sympathy and

some assistance from other countries. Moreover, we are now beginning to

recognize that weaker peoples have a claim upon us, even when the appeal

is made, not to our emotions by some sudden calamity, but to our

consciences by a long-continuing condition of affairs.

¶I do not mean to say that nations have more than begun to approach the

proper relationship one to another, and I fully recognize the folly of

proceeding upon the assumption that this ideal condition can now be

realized in full for, in order to proceed upon such an assumption, we

would first require some method of forcing recalcitrant nations to do

their duty, as well as of seeing that they are protected in their

rights.

¶In the interest of justice it is as necessary to exercise the police

power as to show charity and helpful generosity. But something can even

now be done toward the end in view. That something, for instance, this

nation has already done as regards Cuba, and is now trying to do as

regards Santa Domingo. There are few things in our history in which we

should take more genuine pride than the way in which we liberated Cuba,

and then, instead of instantly abandoning it to chaos, stayed in

direction of the affairs of the island until we had put it on the right

path, and finally gave it freedom and helped it as it started on the

life of an independent republic.[30]

Boasting and blustering are as objectionable among nations as among

individuals, and the public men of a great nation owe it to their sense

of national self-respect to speak courteously of foreign powers just as

a brave and self-respecting man treats all around him courteously. But

though to boast is bad and causelessly to insult another, worse; yet

worse than all is it to be guilty of boasting, even without insult, and

when called to the proof to be unable to make such boasting good. There

is a homely old adage which runs: “Speak softly and carry a big stick;

you will go far.” If the American nation will speak softly and yet

build, and keep at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly

efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far. I ask you to think over

this. If you do, you will come to the conclusion that it is mere plain

common-sense, so obviously sound that only the blind can fail to see its

truth and only the weakest and most irresolute can fail to desire to put

it into force.[32]

¶One of the most effective instruments for peace is the Monroe Doctrine

as it has been and is being gradually developed by this Nation and

accepted by other nations. No other policy could have been as efficient

in promoting peace in the Western Hemisphere and in giving to each

nation thereon the chance to develop along its own lines. If we had

refused to apply the Doctrine to changing conditions it would now be

completely outworn, would not meet any of the needs of the present day,

and indeed would probably by this time have sunk into complete oblivion.

It is useful at home, and is meeting with recognition abroad because we

have adapted our application of it to meet the growing and changing

needs of the Hemisphere. When we announce a policy, such as the Monroe

Doctrine, we thereby commit ourselves to the consequences of the policy,

and those consequences from time to time alter. It is out of the

question to claim a right and yet shirk the responsibility for its

exercise. Not only we, but all American Republics who are benefited by

the existence of the Doctrine, must recognize the obligations each

nation is under as regards foreign peoples no less than its duty to

insist upon its own rights.

That our rights and interests are deeply concerned in the maintenance of

the Doctrine is so clear as hardly to need argument. This is especially

true in view of the construction of the Panama Canal. As a mere matter

of self-defense we must exercise a close watch over the approaches to

this canal; and this means that we must be thoroughly alive to our

interests in the Caribbean Sea.[14]

¶The Monroe Doctrine should be the cardinal feature of the foreign

policy of all the nations of the two Americas, as it is of the United

States. Just seventy-eight years have passed since President Monroe in

his Annual Message announced that “The American continents are

henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by

any European power.”

¶In other words, the Monroe Doctrine is a declaration that there must be

no territorial aggrandizement by any non-American power at the expense

of any American power on American soil. It is in no wise intended as

hostile to any nation in the Old World. Still less is it intended to

give cover to any aggression by one New World power at the expense of

any other. It is simply a step, and a long step, toward assuring the

universal peace of the world by securing the possibility of permanent

peace on this hemisphere.

¶During the past century other influences have established the

permanence and independence of the smaller states of Europe. Through the

Monroe Doctrine we hope to be able to safeguard like independence and

secure like permanence for the lesser among the New World nations.

¶This doctrine has nothing to do with the commercial relations of any

American power, save that it in truth allows each of them to form such

as it desires. In other words, it is really a guaranty of the commercial

independence of the Americans. We do not ask under this doctrine for any

exclusive commercial dealings with any other American state. We do not

guarantee any state against punishment if it misconducts itself,

provided that punishment does not take the form of the acquisition of

territory by any non-American power.

¶Our attitude in Cuba is a sufficient guaranty of our own good faith. We

have not the slightest desire to secure any territory at the expense of

any of our neighbors. We wish to work with them hand in hand, so that

all of us may be uplifted together, and we rejoice over the good fortune

of any of them, we gladly hail their material prosperity and political

stability, and are concerned and alarmed if any of them fall into

industrial or political chaos. We do not wish to see any Old World

military power grow up on this continent, or to be compelled to become a

military power ourselves. The peoples of the Americas can prosper best

if left to work out their own salvation in their own way.

A Square Deal

and

The World’s Peace

More and more war is coming to be looked upon as in itself a lamentable

and evil thing. A wanton or useless war, or a war of mere aggression—in

short, any war begun or carried on in a conscienceless spirit, is to be

condemned as a peculiarly atrocious crime against all humanity. We can,

however, do nothing of permanent value for peace unless we keep ever

clearly in mind the ethical element which lies at the root of the

problem. Our aim is righteousness. Peace is normally the handmaiden of

righteousness; but when peace and righteousness conflict then a great

and upright people can never for a moment hesitate to follow the path

which leads towards righteousness, even though that path also leads to

war. There are persons who advocate peace at any price; there are others

who, following a false analogy, think that because it is no longer

necessary in civilized countries for individuals to protect their rights

with a strong hand, it is therefore unnecessary for nations to be ready

to defend their rights. These persons would do irreparable harm to any

nation that adopted their principles, and even as it is they seriously

hamper the cause which they advocate by tending to render it absurd in

the eyes of sensible and patriotic men.

¶There can be no worse foe of mankind in general, and of his own country

in particular, than the demagogue of war, the man who in mere folly or

to serve his own selfish ends continually rails at and abuses other

nations, who seeks to excite his countrymen against foreigners on

insufficient pretexts, who excites and inflames a perverse and

aggressive national vanity, and who may on occasions wantonly bring on

conflict between his nation and some other nation. But there are

demagogues of peace just as there are demagogues of war, and in any such

movements as that for The Hague conference it is essential not to be

misled by one set of extremists any more than by the other.

¶Whenever it is possible for a nation or an individual to work for real

peace, assuredly it is failure of duty not so to strive; but if war is

necessary and righteous then either the man or the nation shrinking from

it forfeits all title to self-respect. We have scant sympathy with the

sentimentalist who dreads oppression less than physical suffering, who

would prefer a shameful peace to the pain and toil sometimes lamentably

necessary in order to secure a righteous peace. As yet there is only a

partial and imperfect analogy between international law and internal or

municipal law, because there is no sanction of force for executing the

former while there is in the case of the latter.

¶The private citizen is protected in his rights by the law, because the

law rests in the last resort upon force exercised through the forms of

law. A man does not have to defend his rights with his own hand, because

he can call upon the police, upon the sheriff’s posse, upon the militia,

or in extreme cases upon the Army, to defend him. But there is no such

sanction of force for international law. At present there could be no

greater calamity than for the free peoples, the enlightened,

independent, and peace-loving peoples, to disarm while yet leaving it

open to any barbarism or despotism to remain armed.

¶So long as the world is as unorganized as now, the armies and navies of

those peoples who on the whole stand for justice, offer not only the

best, but the only possible, security for a just peace. For instance, if

the United States alone, or in company only with the other nations that

on the whole tend to act justly, disarmed, we might sometimes avoid

bloodshed, but we would cease to be of weight in securing the peace of

justice—the real peace for which the most law-abiding and high-minded

men must at times be willing to fight. As the world is now, only that

nation is equipped for peace that knows how to fight and that will not

shrink from fighting if ever the conditions become such that war is

demanded in the name of the highest morality.

¶So much it is emphatically necessary to say in order both that the

position of the United States may not be misunderstood, and that a

genuine effort to bring nearer the day of the peace of justice among the

nations may not be hampered by a folly which, in striving to achieve the

impossible, would render it hopeless to attempt the achievement of the

practical. But while recognizing most clearly all above set forth, it

remains our clear duty to strive in every practicable way to bring

nearer the time when the sword shall not be the arbiter among nations.

¶At present the practical thing to do is to try to minimize the number

of cases in which it must be the arbiter, and to offer, at least to all

civilized powers, some substitute for war which will be available in at

least a considerable number of instances. Very much can be done through

another Hague conference in this direction, and I most earnestly urge

that this Nation do all in its power to try to further the movement and

to make the result of the decisions of The Hague conference effective. I

earnestly hope that the conference may be able to devise some way to

make arbitration between nations the customary way of settling

international disputes in all save a few classes of cases, which should

themselves be as sharply defined and rigidly limited as the present

governmental and social development of the world will permit. If

possible, there should be a general arbitration treaty negotiated among

all the nations represented at the conference. Neutral rights and

property should be protected at sea as they are protected on land. There

should be an international agreement to this purpose and a similar

agreement defining contraband of war.

¶During the last century there has been a distinct diminution in the

number of wars between the most civilized nations. International

relations have become closer, and the development of The Hague tribunal

is not only a symptom of this growing closeness of relationship, but is

a means by which the growth can be furthered. Our aim should be from

time to time to take such steps as may be possible toward creating

something like an organization of the civilized nations, because as the

world becomes more highly organized the need for navies and armies will

diminish.

¶It is not possible to secure anything like an immediate disarmament,

because it would first be necessary to settle what peoples are on the

whole a menace to the rest of mankind, and to provide against the

disarmament of the rest being turned into a movement which would really

chiefly benefit these obnoxious peoples; but it may be possible to

exercise some check upon the tendency to swell indefinitely the budgets

for military expenditure.

Of course such an effort could succeed only if it did not attempt to do

too much; and if it were undertaken in a spirit of sanity as far removed

as possible from a merely hysterical pseudo-philanthropy. It is worth

while pointing out that since the end of the insurrection in the

Philippines this Nation has shown its practical faith in the policy of

disarmament by reducing its little army one-third. But disarmament can

never be of prime importance; there is more need to get rid of the

causes of war than of the implements of war.

¶I have dwelt much on the dangers to be avoided by steering clear of any

mere foolish sentimentality because my wish for peace is so genuine and

earnest; because I have a real and great desire that this second Hague

conference may mark a long stride forward in the direction of securing

the peace of justice throughout the world. No object is better worthy

the attention of enlightened statesmanship than the establishment of a

surer method than now exists of securing justice as between nations,

both for the protection of the little nations and for the prevention of

war between the big nations. To this aim we should endeavor not only to

avert bloodshed, but, above all, effectively to strengthen the forces of

right. The Golden Rule should be, and as the world grows in morality it

will be, the guiding rule of conduct among nations as among individuals;

though the Golden Rule must not be construed, in fantastic manner, as

forbidding the exercise of the police power. This mighty and free

Republic should ever deal with all other states, great or small, on a

basis of high honor, respecting their rights as jealously as it

safeguards its own.[14]

¶Among Washington’s maxims which he bequeathed to his countrymen were

the following: “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations” and

“To be prepared for war is the most effective means to promote peace.”

These two principles taken together should form the basis of our whole

foreign policy. Neither is sufficient taken by itself. It is not merely

an idle dream but a most mischievous dream to believe that mere

refraining from wrong-doing will insure us against being wronged. Yet,

on the other hand, a nation prepared for war is a menace to mankind

unless the national purpose is to treat other nations with good faith

and justice. In any community it is neither the conscientious man who is

a craven at heart nor yet the bold and strong without the moral sense,

who is of real use to the community, it is the man who to strength and

courage adds a realizing sense of the moral obligations resting upon

him, the man who has not only the desire but the power to do his full

duty by his neighbor and by the State.

¶So in the world at large the nation which is of use in the progress of

mankind is that nation which combines strength of character, force of

character and insistence upon its own rights, with a full acknowledgment

of its own duties toward them.

¶Just at present the best way in which we can show that our loyalty to

the teachings of Washington is a loyalty of the heart and not of the

lips only is to see to it that the work of building up our Navy goes

steadily on, and that at the same time our stand for international

righteousness is clear and emphatic.

¶Never since the beginning of our country’s history has the Navy been

used in an unjust war. Never has it failed to render great and sometimes

vital service to the Republic. It has not been too strong for our good,

though often not strong enough to do all the good it should have

done.... Our possession of the Philippines, our interest in the trade of

the Orient, our building the Isthmian Canal, our insistence upon the

Monroe Doctrine all demand that our navy shall be of adequate size and,

for its size, of unsurpassed efficiency. If it is strong enough I

believe it would minimize the chance of our being drawn into foreign

war. If we let it run down it is as certain as the day that sooner or

later we shall have to choose between a probably disastrous foreign war

or a peace kept on terms that imply national humiliation.

¶¶Our navy is the surest guaranty of peace and the cheapest insurance

against war, and those who, in whatever capacity, have helped to build

it up during the past twenty years have been in good faith observing and

living up to one of the most important of the principles which

Washington laid down for the guidance of his countrymen. Nor was

Washington the only one of our presidents who showed far-sighted

patriotism by support of the Navy. When Andrew Jackson was in Congress

he voted for the first warships we ever built as part of our regular

navy, and he voted against the grant of money to pay an humiliating

tribute to the pirates of the Barbary States. Old Hickory was a patriot

through and through, and there was not an ounce of timidity in his

nature, and of course he felt only indignant contempt for a policy which

purchased an ignoble peace by cowardice instead of exacting a just peace

by showing we were as little willing to submit to as to inflict

oppression. Had a majority of Jackson’s colleagues and successors felt

as he did about the navy, had it been built up instead of being brought

to a standstill, it would probably never have been necessary to fight

the War of 1812.

¶With the great powers of the world we desire no rivalry that is not

honorable to both parties. We wish them well. We believe that the trend

of the modern spirit is ever stronger toward peace, not war; toward

friendship, not hostility, as the normal international attitude. We are

glad indeed that we are on good terms with all the other peoples of

mankind, and no effort on our part shall be spared to secure a

continuance of these relations. And remember that we shall be a potent

factor for peace largely in proportion to the way in which we make it

evident that our attitude is due, not to weakness, not to inability to

defend ourselves, but to a genuine repugnance to wrong-doing, a genuine

desire for self-respecting friendship with our neighbors.

¶The voice of the weakling or the craven counts for nothing when he

clamors for peace; but the voice of the just man armed is potent. We

need to keep in a condition of preparedness, especially as regards our

navy, not because we want war, but because we desire to stand with those

whose plea for peace is listened to with respectful attention.[5]

¶The true end of every great and free people should be self-respecting

peace; and this Nation most earnestly desires sincere and cordial

friendship with all others. Over the entire world, of recent years, wars

between the great civilized powers have become less and less frequent.

Wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples come in an entirely

different category, being merely a most regrettable but necessary

international police duty which must be performed for the sake of the

welfare of mankind.

¶Peace can only be kept with certainty where both sides wish to keep it;

but more and more the civilized peoples are realizing the wicked folly

of war and are attaining that condition of just and intelligent regard

for the rights of others which will in the end, as we hope and believe,

make world-wide peace possible. The peace conference at The Hague gave

definite expression to this hope and belief and marked a stride toward

their attainment.

¶Probably no other great nation in the world is so anxious for peace as

we are. There is not a single civilized power which has anything

whatever to fear from aggressiveness on our part. All we want is peace;

and toward this end we wish to be able to secure the same respect for

our rights from others which we are eager and anxious to extend to their

rights in return, to insure fair treatment to us commercially, and to

guarantee the safety of the American people.

¶Our people intend to abide by the Monroe Doctrine and to insist upon it

as the one sure means of securing the peace of the Western Hemisphere.

The Navy offers us the only means of making our insistence upon the

Monroe Doctrine anything but a subject of derision to whatever nation

chooses to disregard it. We desire the peace which comes as of right to

the just man armed; not the peace granted on terms of ignominy to the

craven and the weakling.[7]

A Square Deal

and

The Essence

of

Christian Character

I think that each one of us who has a large experience grows to realize

more and more that the essentials of experience are alike for all of us.

The things that move us most are the things of the home, of the Church;

the intimate relations that knit a man to his family, to his close

friends; that make him try to do his duty by his neighbor, by his God,

are in their essentials just the same for one man as for another,

provided the man is in good faith trying to do his duty.

¶I feel that the progress of our country really depends upon the sum of

the efforts of the individuals acting by themselves, but especially upon

the sum of the efforts of the individuals acting in associations for the

betterment of themselves, for the betterment of the communities in which

they dwell. There is never any difficulty about the forces of evil being

organized. Every time that we get an organization of the forces that are

plainly striving for good, we are doing our part to offset, and a little

more than offset the forces of evil.

¶I want to read several different texts which it seems to me have

especial bearing upon the work of brotherhoods like this, upon the

spirit in which not only all of us who are members of this brotherhood,

but all of us who strive to be decent Christians are to apply our

Christianity on week days as well as on Sundays. The first verse I want

to read can be found in the seventh chapter of Matthew, the first and

sixteenth verses.

¶First: “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” sixteenth, “Ye shall know

them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs of

thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a

corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth

evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”

¶“Judge not that ye be not judged.” That means, treat each of us his

brethren with charity. Be not quick to find fault. Above all be not

quick to judge another man who according to his light is striving to do

his duty as each of us hopes he is striving to do his. Let us ever

remember that we have not only divine authority for the statement that

by our fruits we shall be known, but also that it is true that mankind

will tend to judge us by our fruits.

¶It is an especially lamentable thing to see ill done by any man who

from his associations with the Church, who from the fact that he has had

the priceless benefits of the teachings of Christian religion, should be

expected to take a position of leadership in the work for good.

¶The next quotation I wish to read is found in the twenty-fifth chapter

of Matthew, thirty-seventh to fortieth verses inclusive: “Then shall the

righteous answer them, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, and

fed thee, or thirsty, and gave thee drink?’

¶“‘When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in, or naked, and clothed

thee?’

¶“‘Or, when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?’

¶“And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily, I say unto you,

inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren

ye have done it unto me.’”

¶That is what this brotherhood means; by trying to worship our Creator

by acting toward his creatures as He would have us act; to try to make

our religion a living force in our lives; to do unto others as we would

have them do unto us.

¶The next text I wish to read is found in I Corinthians, thirteenth

chapter, beginning, with the first verse. “Though I speak with the

tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity I am become as

sounding brass, as a tinkling cymbal.”

¶“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,

and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I would remove

mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

¶“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give

my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long and is kind, charity envieth not, charity

vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

¶“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of

these is charity.”

¶Let each of us exercise the largest tolerance for his brother who is

trying, though in a different way to lead a decent life; who is trying

to do good in his own fashion; let each try to show practical sympathy

with that brother; not be too quick to criticise.

¶In closing I want to read a few verses from the Epistle of James, from

the first chapter twenty-seventh verse:

¶“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To

visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep

himself unspotted before the world.”

¶If a man will try to serve God the Father by being kindly to the many

around him who need such kindness and by being upright and honest

himself, then we have the authority of the Good Book for saying that we

are in honor bound to treat him as a good Christian and extend the hand

of brotherhood to him.

¶Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes what a very large

number of people tend to forget that the teachings of the Bible are

so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that

it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, I mean

literally—impossible for us to figure to ourselves what this life

would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all

the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals;

all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution,

strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man who has, by his life

work, added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is

proud, of which our people are proud, almost every such man has

based his life work largely upon the teachings of the Bible.

Sometimes it has been done unconsciously, more often consciously,

and among the very greatest men a disproportionately large number

have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand.

¶Lincoln,—sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing upon his weary

shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other

man of the Nineteenth Century, laid down his life for the people whom,

living, he had served so well,—built up his entire reading upon his

early study of the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely; mastered it as,

later he mastered only one or two other books, notably Shakespeare;

mastered it so that he became almost a man of one book, who knew that

book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught

therein; and he left his life as a part of the crowning work of the

Nineteenth Century.

¶You may look through the Bible from cover to cover, and nowhere will

you find a line that can be construed into an apology for the man of

brains who sins against the light. On the contrary, in the Bible, taking

that as a guide, you will find that because much has been given to you

much will be expected of you, and a heavier condemnation is to be

visited upon the able man who goes wrong than upon his weaker brother

who cannot do the harm that the other does, because it is not in him to

do it. I plead, not merely for training of the mind, but for the moral

and spiritual training of the home and the church; the moral and

spiritual training that have always been found in, and that have ever

accompanied the study of this book; this book, which, in almost every

civilized tongue, can be described as ‘The Book,’ with the certainty of

all understanding you when you so describe it.

¶The immense moral influence of the Bible, though of course, infinitely

the most important, is not the only power it has for good. In addition

there is the increasing influence it exerts on the side of good taste,

of good literature, of proper sense of proportion, of simple and

straightforward writing and thinking.

¶The Bible does not teach us to shirk difficulties, but to overcome

them. That is a lesson that each one of us who has children is bound in

honor to teach these children if he or she expects to see them become

fitted to play the part of men and women in our world.

¶If we read the Bible aright we read a book which teaches us to go forth

and do the work of the Lord; to do the work of the Lord in the world as

we find it; to try to make things better in this world, even if only a

little better, because we have lived in it. That kind of work can be

done only by the man who is neither a weakling nor a coward, by the man

who, in the fullest sense of the word is a true Christian—like Great

Heart, Bunyan’s hero. We plead for a closer and wider and deeper study

of the Bible, so that our people may be in fact as well as in theory,

‘doers of the word, and not hearers only.’