_Mr. President; and Gentlemen of the Union League_:
This club was founded to uphold the hands of Abraham Lincoln when
he stood as the great leader in the struggle for union and liberty.
We have a right, therefore, to appeal to this club for aid in every
governmental or social effort made along the lines marked out by
Lincoln. The great President taught many lessons which we who come
after him should learn. Among the most important of these was the
lesson that for weal or woe we are indissolubly bound together, in
whatever part of the country we live, whatever our social standing,
whatever our wealth or our poverty, whatever form of mental or physical
activity our life work may assume. Lincoln, who was, more emphatically
than any other President we have ever had, the President of the plain
people, was yet as far removed as Washington himself from the slightest
taint of demagogy. With his usual farsighted clearness of vision he
saw that in a republic such as ours permanent prosperity of any part
of our people was conditioned upon the prosperity of all; and that on
the other hand any effort to raise the general level of happiness by
striking at the well-being of a portion of the people could not be but
in the end disastrous to all.
The principles which Lincoln applied to the solution of the problems
of his day are those which we must apply if we expect successfully
to solve the different problems of our own day—problems which are so
largely industrial. Exactly as it is impossible to develop a high
morality unless we have as a foundation those qualities which give at
least a certain minimum of material prosperity, so it is impossible
permanently to keep material prosperity unless there is back of it a
basis of right living and right thinking. In the last analysis, of
course, the dominant factor in obtaining this good conduct must be
the individual character of the average citizen. If there is not this
condition of individual character in the average citizenship of the
country, all effort to supply its place by the wisest legislation and
administration will in the end prove futile. But given this average of
individual character, then wise laws and the honest administration of
the laws can do much to supplement it. If either the business world or
the world of labor loses its head, then it has lost something which can
not be made good by any governmental effort. Our faith in the future of
the Republic is firm, because we believe that on the whole and in the
long run our people think clearly and act rightly.
Unquestionably, however, the great development of industrialism means
that there must be an increase in the supervision exercised by the
Government over business enterprises. This supervision should not
take the form of violent and ill-advised interference; and assuredly
there is danger lest it take such form if the business leaders of the
business community confine themselves to trying to thwart the effort
at regulation instead of guiding it aright. Such men as the members of
this club should lead in the effort to secure proper supervision and
regulation of corporate activity by the Government, not only because it
is for the interest of the community as a whole that there should be
this supervision and regulation, but because in the long run it will be
in the interest above all of the very people who often betray alarm and
anger when the proposition is first made.
Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate
the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially
by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the
Government the still higher power of seeing that this power, in
addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals
possessing it, is also used for and not against the interests of the
people as a whole. Our peculiar form of government, a Government in
which the Nation is supreme throughout the Union in certain respects,
while each of nearly half a hundred States is supreme in its part of
the Union in certain other respects, renders the task of dealing with
these conditions especially difficult. No finally satisfactory result
can be expected from merely State action. The action must come through
the Federal Government. The business of the country is now carried
on in a way of which the founders of our Constitution could by no
possibility have had any idea.
All great business concerns are engaged in interstate commerce, and it
was beyond question the intention of the founders of our Government
that interstate commerce in all its branches and aspects should be
under national and not State control. If the courts decide that this
intention was not carried out and made effective in the Constitution
as it now stands, then in the end the Constitution, if not construed
differently, will have to be amended so that the original undoubted
intention may be made effective. But, of course, a constitutional
amendment is only to be used as a last resort, if every effort of
legislation and administration shall have been proved inadequate.
Meanwhile the men in public life and the men who direct the great
business interests of the country should work not in antagonism but in
harmony toward this given end. In entering a field where the progress
must of necessity be so largely experimental it is essential that the
effort to make progress should be tentative and cautious. We must grow
by evolution, not by revolution. There must be no hurry, but there must
also be no halt; and those who are anxious that there should be no
sudden and violent changes must remember that precisely these sudden
and violent changes will be rendered likely if we refuse to make the
needed changes in cautious and moderate manner.
At the present moment the greatest need is for an increase in the
power of the National Government to keep the great highways of commerce
open alike to all on reasonable and equitable terms. Less than a
century ago these highways were still, as they had been since the dawn
of history, either waterways, natural or artificial, or else ordinary
roads for wheel vehicles drawn by animal power. The railroad, which
was utterly unknown when our Government was formed and when the great
principles of our jurisprudence were laid down, has now become almost
everywhere the most important, and, in many large regions, the only
form of highway for commerce. The man who controls its use can not be
permitted to control it in his own interest alone.
It is not only just, but it is in the interest of the public, that
this man should receive the amplest payment for the masterful business
capacity which enables him to benefit himself while benefiting the
public; but in return he must himself recognize his duty to the public.
He will not and can not do this if our laws are so defective that in
the sharp competition of the business world the conscientious man is
put at a disadvantage by his less scrupulous fellows. It is in the
interest of the conscientious and public-spirited railway man that
there should be such governmental supervision of the railway traffic
of the country as to require from his less scrupulous competitors,
and from unscrupulous big shippers as well, that heed to the public
welfare which he himself would willingly give, and which is of vital
consequence to the small shipper. Every important railroad is engaged
in interstate commerce. Therefore, this control over the railroads must
come through the National Government.
The control must be exercised by some governmental tribunal, and
it must be real and effective. Doubtless there will be risk that
occasionally, if an unfit President is elected, this control will
be abused; but this is only another way of saying that any adequate
governmental power, from the power of taxation down, can and will be
abused if the wrong men get control of it.
The details must rest with the lawmakers of the two Houses of Congress;
but about the principle there can be no doubt. Hasty or vindictive
action would merely work damage; but in temperate, resolute fashion,
there must be lodged in some tribunal the power over rates, and
especially over rebates—whether secured by means of private cars, of
private tracks, in the form of damages, or commissions, or in any other
manner—which will protect alike the railroad and the shipper, and put
the big shipper and the little shipper on an equal footing. Doubtless
no law would accomplish all that enthusiasts hope; there is always
disappointment over results of such a law among the oversanguine;
but very real and marked good has come from the legislation and
administration of the last few years; and now, as part of a coherent
plan, it is entirely possible, and, indeed, necessary to enact an
additional law which will mean further progress along the same lines
of definite achievement in the direction of securing fair dealing as
between man and man.
In some such body as the Interstate Commerce Commission there must
be lodged in effective shape the power to see that every shipper who
uses the railroads and every man who owns or manages a railroad shall
on the one hand be given justice and on the other hand be required to
do justice. Justice—so far as it is humanly possible to give and to
get justice—is the foundation of our Government. We are not trying to
strike down the rich man; on the contrary, we will not tolerate any
attack upon his rights. We are not trying to give an improper advantage
to the poor man because he is poor, to the man of small means because
he has not larger means; but we are striving to see that the man of
small means has exactly as good a chance, so far as we can obtain it
for him, as the man of larger means; that there shall be equality of
opportunity for the one as for the other.
We do not intend that this Republic shall ever fail as those republics
of olden times failed, in which there finally came to be a government
by classes, which resulted either in the poor plundering the rich or
in the rich exploiting and in one form or another enslaving the poor;
for either event means the destruction of free institutions and of
individual liberty. Ours is not a Government which recognizes classes.
It is based on the recognition of the individual. We are not for the
poor man as such, nor for the rich man as such. We are for every man,
rich or poor, provided he acts justly and fairly by his fellows, and if
he so acts the Government must do all it can to see that inasmuch as he
does no wrong, so he shall suffer no wrong.
ADDRESS AT THE LINCOLN DINNER OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF NEW
YORK, WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, FEB. 13, 1905
_Mr. President, and you, my Fellow-Members of the Republican Club,
and you, my Fellow-Guests of the Republican Club_:
In his second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long as the
memory of this Nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by saying:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in; ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a
just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Immediately after his re-election he had already spoken thus:
“The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied
to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever
recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future
great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have
as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.
Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to
learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged....
May not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to
(serve) our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall
strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have
been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.
While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election,
and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed
my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own
good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be
disappointed or pained by the result.
“May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in
this same spirit toward those who have?”
This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up the
Nation’s wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce hatreds,
with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful passions
provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all Americans
should show now, when there is so little excuse for malice or rancor or
hatred, when there is so little of vital consequence to divide brother
from brother.
Lincoln, himself a man of Southern birth, did not hesitate to appeal
to the sword when he became satisfied that in no other way could the
Union be saved, for high though he put peace he put righteousness
still higher. He warred for the Union; he warred to free the slave;
and when he warred he warred in earnest, for it is a sign of weakness
to be half-hearted when blows must be struck. But he felt only love, a
love as deep as the tenderness of his great and sad heart, for all his
countrymen alike in the North and in the South, and he longed above
everything for the day when they should once more be knit together in
the unbreakable bonds of eternal friendship.
We of to-day, in dealing with all our fellow-citizens, white or
colored, North or South, should strive to show just the qualities that
Lincoln showed: His steadfastness in striving after the right, and
his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw that right
less clearly than he did; his earnest endeavor to do what was best,
and yet his readiness to accept the best that was practicable when the
ideal best was unattainable; his unceasing effort to cure what was
evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad situation worse by any
ill-judged or ill-timed effort to make it better.
The great Civil War in which Lincoln towered as the loftiest figure
left us not only a reunited country, but a country which has the proud
right to claim as its own glory won alike by those who wore the blue
and by those who wore the gray, by those who followed Grant and by
those who followed Lee; for both fought with equal bravery and with
equal sincerity of conviction, each striving for the light as it was
given him to see the light; though it is now clear to all that the
triumph of the cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the
welfare of mankind. We are now one people, a people with failings which
we must not blink, but a people with great qualities in which we have
the right to feel just pride.
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 rights 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 alike 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 favors, 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 effort 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 can not afford to take part
in or be indifferent to the oppression or maltreatment of any man
who, against crushing 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, humanly 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 ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor
jeoparded; 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 boons
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 rests
a wellnigh 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 everyday 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, these, 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 law-breaking 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.
In the next place the white man who, if only he is willing, can help
the colored man more than all other white men put together, is the
white man who is his neighbor, North or South. Each of us must do his
whole duty without flinching, and if that duty is national it must
be done in accordance with the principles above laid down. But in
endeavoring each to be his brother’s keeper it is wise to remember
that each can normally do most for the brother who is his immediate
neighbor. If we are sincere friends of the negro let us each in his own
locality show it by his action therein, and let us each show it also
by upholding the hands of the white man, in whatever locality, who is
striving to do justice to the poor and the helpless, to be a shield to
those whose need for such a shield is great.
The heartiest acknowledgments are due to the ministers, the judges and
law officers, the grand juries, the public men, and the great daily
newspapers in the South, who have recently done such effective work in
leading the crusade against lynching in the South; and I am glad to say
that during the last three months the returns, as far as they can be
gathered, show a smaller number of lynchings than for any other three
months during the last twenty years. Let us uphold in every way the
hands of the men who have led in this work, who are striving to do all
their work in this spirit. I am about to quote from the address of the
Right Reverend Robert Strange, Bishop Coadjutor of North Carolina, as
given in the “Southern Churchman” of October 8, 1904.
The bishop first enters an emphatic plea against any social
intermingling of the races; a question which must, of course, be left
to the people of each community to settle for themselves, as in such
a matter no one community—and indeed no one individual—can dictate to
any other; always provided that in each locality men keep in mind the
fact that there must be no confusing of civil privileges with social
intercourse. Civil law can not regulate social practices. Society, as
such, is a law unto itself, and will always regulate its own practices
and habits. Full recognition of the fundamental fact that all men
should stand on an equal footing, as regards civil privileges, in no
way interferes with recognition of the further fact that all reflecting
men of both races are united in feeling that race purity must be
maintained. The bishop continues:
“What should the white men of the South do for the negro? They
must give him a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial Godspeed,
the two races working together for their mutual benefit and for
the development of our common country. He must have liberty, equal
opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, to build his home.
He must have justice, equal rights, and protection before the law. He
must have the same political privileges; the suffrage should be based
on character and intelligence for white and black alike. He must
have the same public advantages of education; the public schools are
for all the people, whatever their color or condition. The white men
of the South should give hearty and respectful consideration to the
exceptional men of the negro race, to those who have the character,
the ability and the desire to be lawyers, physicians, teachers,
preachers, leaders of thought and conduct among their own men and
women. We should give them cheer and opportunity to gratify every
laudable ambition, and to seek every innocent satisfaction among
their own people. Finally, the best white men of the South should
have frequent conferences with the best colored men, where, in frank,
earnest, and sympathetic discussion they might understand each other
better, smooth difficulties, and so guide and encourage the weaker
race.”
Surely we can all of us join in expressing our substantial agreement
with the principles thus laid down by this North Carolina bishop, this
representative of the Christian thought of the South.
I am speaking on the occasion of the celebration of the birthday of
Abraham Lincoln, and to men who count it their peculiar privilege
that they have the right to hold Lincoln’s memory dear, and the duty
to strive to work along the lines that he laid down. We can pay most
fitting homage to his memory by doing the tasks allotted to us in the
spirit in which he did infinitely greater and more terrible tasks
allotted to him.
Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of
generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who
differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let us never
forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong
the humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and
frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen;
in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit
which takes no more account of locality than it does of class or of
creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which
Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow
nobler and greater throughout the ages.
I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I believe that
our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end
triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. I could not have
such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty people if I had
it merely as regards one portion of that people. Throughout our land
things on the whole have grown better and not worse, and this is as
true of one part of the country as it is of another. I believe in the
Southerner as I believe in the Northerner. I claim the right to feel
pride in his great qualities and in his great deeds exactly as I feel
pride in the great qualities and deeds of every other American. For
weal or for woe we are knit together, and we shall go up or go down
together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall
go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an
abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the
common-sense of all my countrymen.
The Southern States face difficult problems; and so do the Northern
States. Some of the problems are the same for the entire country.
Others exist in greater intensity in one section; and yet others exist
in greater intensity in another section. But in the end they will all
be solved; for fundamentally our people are the same throughout this
land; the same in the qualities of heart and brain and hand which have
made this Republic what it is in the great to-day; which will make it
what it is to be in the infinitely greater to-morrow. I admire and
respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the
South as I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men
and women of the North. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners,
Easterners and Westerners, can best prove our fealty to the Nation’s
past by the way in which we do the Nation’s work in the present; for
only thus can we be sure that our children’s children shall inherit
Abraham Lincoln’s single-hearted devotion to the great unchanging creed
that “righteousness exalteth a nation.”