_Mr. Governor; and you, My Fellow-Citizens_:
I have been particularly pleased to be greeted wherever I have gone
by the great masses of school children, the children from the public
schools and the children from the higher institutions of learning,
State and private. It is a mere truism to say that the prime work of
any State should be to keep up and raise ever higher its standard
of citizenship. Texas has a right to be proud of its industrial
development and of its wonderful natural resources, but I tell you the
best crop for any State to rear after all is the crop of men and women.
I believe in the future of Texas so heartily because I believe that you
are steadily taking measures for the uptraining of the children, for
the uptraining of the generations that in a very few years will take
our places and rule the destinies of the State.
No State can be great without paying the penalty of responsibility
that comes with greatness. That is true of the Nation; it is true
likewise of the States that go to make up the Nation. You have here in
Texas a commonwealth which in area and diversification of resources
already stands unequaled, which in population and wealth will soon be
one of the three or four first in the entire land. That means that
besides feeling exaltation about it you ought to have a very heavy
sense of responsibility entailed upon you thereby. No man can do any
work worth doing except at the cost of effort, of self-restraint, of
forcing himself to achieve things. No State can do anything except by
possessing just those qualities, because the State is of course simply
the aggregate of the individuals within it. If Texas fails in any way
the failure will be felt by the entire country, because its influence
and its power are so great. There is no royal road to good government;
and I think all those interested in managing your public affairs
will agree with me that what we need in our public officials is not
genius, not even brilliancy, so much as the exercise of the ordinary
rather commonplace qualities of honesty, courage, and common-sense—the
qualities that make a man a good husband, a good father, a good
neighbor; that make it advantageous to have dealings with him in
business, or make it worth while having him as a friend. These are the
qualities which are fundamental, which should be shown by the man who
has to do with public life; and do not forget that each one of you
here has to do his share in governing this commonwealth. It is not a
figure of speech, it is the literal fact that in the United States
every man is a sovereign. Remember that the fate of the sovereign who
does not do his duty is to get dethroned; and if the average man who is
sovereign does not do his duty he will get ousted from his sovereignty.
If a man can not govern himself he will find a boss or some one else
who can govern him, and then do not blame the boss, blame yourself for
not having the self-control, the resolution, the forethought, and
the sense of civic duty which would make you do your full part in the
work of governing this country. We will not lose our birthright of
citizenship unless by our own fault. If the average man keeps his head
and his wits, and if he takes a little pains, he will be governed just
about the way he desires to be governed. If he is not governed that
way do not let him sit down and blame the politicians, let him blame
himself, for it is in his power to get any government that he seriously
desires to have. My fellow-citizens, together with expressing the
exultation that we have a right to express about our country, we need
to have impressed upon us a sense of our own responsibility, and of the
shortcomings of which we are guilty if we do not rise level to that
responsibility. It is a very good thing that we should gather together
on state occasions, on the 4th of July, and at public festivals, and
hear speakers say how big a country we have. But it is a better thing
if we will go home and think over certain of the shortcomings that all
of us have and make up our minds to remedy them in the future. What I
ask of you and what I most firmly believe you will give is a patriotic
perseverance in doing each his average round of duties, in doing the
duties both of private life and as a citizen in public affairs each
day. Do not wait for some special time when heroism will be called for,
but do unweariedly the humdrum work that comes to every man. If we will
do that, we will find that the affairs of state will be settled as we
desire to have them settled. There is no use sitting at home finding
fault with the way in which public affairs are handled, and then every
four years, in a burst of animosity against some person, voting to
turn him out. What you need to do is, month in and month out, year in
and year out, to do your ordinary political duties as those political
duties come up, and only under such conditions can you get really good
public servants.
Let me say one more word of warning. In public life you will sometimes
encounter a man who will endeavor to lead you to do something which
down at bottom you doubt being right, which he tells you will be to
your advantage to do, usually something that looks like wronging some
one else. But the man who will wrong some one else for your advantage
will, when the chance comes, be sure to wrong you for his own advantage.
My fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, I address you here under the
shadow of your beautiful capitol of this great and wonderful State,
with its heroic memories of Austin, of Sam Houston, of Davy Crockett,
of all the men who in picture or in statue are commemorated on these
walls; and my strongest feeling is that, proud though you are of Texas,
you can not be prouder of it than I am. One of the great and splendid
features of our American life is that each American has a right to be
proud of the deeds of every other American, no matter from what part of
the country his fellow-American may come. Your honor, your glory, are
the honor and the glory of every man of our great country. All that is
necessary for our people is that they should get to know one another in
order to appreciate how slight are the divergencies and how vital and
fundamental is the union among them.