"Well," said the fellow, "don't you think he could have put in another
day here to devilish good advantage?"
But, as I have said, we have got about one-seventh of the good land of
the world. I often hear people say that we have too many folks here;
that we ought to stop immigration; that we have no more room. The people
who say this know nothing of their country. They are ignorant of their
native land. I tell you that the valley of the Mississippi and the
valleys of its tributaries can support a population of five hundred
millions of men, women, and children. Don't talk of our being
overpopulated; we have only just started.
Here, in this land of ours, five hundred million men and women and
children can be supported and educated without trouble. We can afford to
double two or three times more. But what have we got to do? We have got
to educate them when they come. That is to say, we have got to educate
their children, and in a few generations we will have them splendid
American citizens, proud of the Republic.
We have no more patriotic men under the flag than the men who came from
other lands, the hundreds and thousands of those who fought to preserve
this country. And I think just as much of them as I would if they had
been born on American soil. What matters it where a man was born? It is
what is inside of him you have to look at--what kind of a heart he has,
and what kind of a head. I do not care where he was born; I simply ask,
Is he a man? Is he willing to give to others what he claims for himself?
That is the supreme test.
Now, I have got a hobby. I do not suppose any of you have heard of it.
I think the greatest thing for a country is for all of its citizens to
have a home. I think it is around the fireside of home that the virtues
grow, including patriotism. We want homes.
Until a few years ago it was the custom to put men in prison for debt.
The authorities threw a man into jail when he owed something which he
could not pay, and by throwing him into jail they deprived him of an
opportunity to earn what would pay it. After a little time they got
sense enough to know that they could not collect a debt in this way,
and that it was better to give him his freedom and allow him to earn
something, if he could. Therefore, imprisonment for debt was done away
with.
At another time, when a man owed anything, if he was a carpenter, a
blacksmith or a shoemaker, and not able to pay it, they took his tools,
on a writ of sale and execution, and thus incapacitated him so that he
could do nothing. Finally they got sense enough to abolish that law,
to leave the mechanic his tools and the farmer his plows, horses and
wagons, and after this, debts were paid better than ever they were
before.
Then we thought of protecting the home-builder, and we said: "We will
have a homestead exemption. We will put a roof over wife and child,
which shall be exempt from execution and sale," and so we preserved
hundreds of thousands and millions of homes, while debts were paid just
as well as ever they were paid before.
Now, I want to take a step further. I want, the rich people of this
country to support it. I want the people who are well off to pay the
taxes. I want the law to exempt a homestead of a certain value, say from
two thousand dollars to two thousand five hundred, and to exempt it, not
only from sale on judgment and execution, but to exempt it from taxes of
all sorts and kinds. I want to keep the roof over the heads of children
when the man himself is gone. I want that homestead to belong not only
to the man, but to wife and children. I would like to live to see a roof
over the heads of all the families of the Republic. I tell you, it does
a man good to have a home. You are in partnership with nature when you
plant a hill of corn. When you set out a tree you have a new interest in
this world. When you own a little tract of land you feel as if you and
the earth were partners. All these things dignify human nature.
Bad as I am, I have another hobby. There are thousands and thousands of
criminals in our country. I told you a little while ago I did not blame
the South, because of the conditions which prevailed in the South. The
people of the South did as they must. I am the same about the criminal.
He does as he must.
If you want to stop crime you must treat it properly. The conditions of
society must not be such as to produce criminals.
When a man steals and is sent to the penitentiary he ought to be sent
there to be reformed and not to be brutalized; to be made a better man,
not to be robbed.
I am in favor, when you put a man in the penitentiary, of making him
work, and I am in favor of paying him what his work is worth, so that
in five years, when he leaves the prison cell, he will have from two
hundred dollars to three hundred dollars as a breastwork between him and
temptation, and something for a foundation upon which to build a nobler
life.
Now he is turned out and before long he is driven back. Nobody will
employ him, nobody will take him, and, the night following the day of
his release he is without a roof over his head and goes back to his old
ways. I would allow him to change his name, to go to another State with
a few hundred dollars in his pocket and begin the world again.
We must recollect that it is the misfortune of a man to become a
criminal.