_Mr. Mayor; Mr. Kirkpatrick; and you, My Fellow-Americans of this
mighty Commonwealth_:
I thank you for the way in which I have been greeted to-day. You can
hardly imagine how much it means to me to come back to San Antonio in
this way, and to be received as you have received me. I know that the
rest of you will not grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment
to two sets among your citizens; first to the men of the great war,
to the men who wore the blue or wore the gray in the days that tried
men’s souls. My fellow-citizens, infinitely more important than any
President, infinitely more important even than the reception to any
President, is what is symbolized by seeing the men who fought in the
Union army and the men who fought in the Confederate army standing
mingled together, fellow-Americans, one in devotion and honor and
loyalty to the country, shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the
mightiest republic upon which the sun has ever shone. Indeed the man
would have a poor heart, a poor spirit, who would not be thrilled by
such a meeting as this, by such a sight as you accord me to-day, you
of the gray, you of the blue, all one under the flag of this reunited
country.
I suppose you must know it, but I want to tell you that it was of
course the memory of the valor, the self-sacrifice, the endurance you
displayed in the great war, that made us of the younger generation
feel that when the lesser war came we wished to emulate your course.
The regiment which I had the honor to command, and which was raised
and organized in this city, took part in what were only skirmishes
compared with the campaigns in which you did your share; and all that
we claim is that while it was not given to us to have the chance to
do great deeds, yet we hope we made you feel that the old spirit was
not altogether lost. This regiment served under men who had themselves
fought in the Civil War, both under Grant and under Lee. The commander
of the cavalry division was that gallant ex-Confederate soldier,
Major-General Joseph Wheeler; and our immediate commander, our brigade
commander, was an ex-Union soldier, who entered the Union army as
a private, and to whom for my great good fortune it befell me to
sign the commission as Lieutenant-General of the army of the United
States—Lieutenant-General Young. Afterward at San Juan the cavalry
served under General Sumner, from whom I took my orders.
I can not say how much it meant to me to be able to take part in
raising that regiment under the shadow of the Alamo. My admiration for
Texas and Texans is no new thing. Since I have been a boy and first
studied the history of this country my veins have thrilled and tingled
as I read of the mighty deeds of Houston, of Bowie, of Crockett, of
Travis, of the men who were victorious at the fight at San Jacinto, of
the even more glorious men who fell in the fight of the Alamo, of which
it was said, “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had
none.”
I remember so well seven years ago when we were raising this regiment,
riding in here one day to see the Alamo, and going away feeling that
come what would I was going to try to handle myself so that there
should no disgrace come to the memory of the Americans who died there.
I want you to remember that ours was a volunteer regiment and a small
war, and that we do not claim any credit for what we did more than
falls to the lot of any number of other people. All we ask of you is to
believe that we tried to show the spirit which would have made us do
the kind of a job that you of the Civil War did, if the need had arisen.
I wish to express my acknowledgments for the greeting which I have
received here in San Antonio and which I have received throughout the
length and breadth of Texas. This is the third time I have visited
this beautiful city—and it is such a beautiful city. I wonder if you
yourselves, proud though you are of it, appreciate the charm it has
to an outsider coming here. It is fifteen years ago that I first
came here, simply passing through as any number of other travelers
pass through, and saw it. Seven years ago when I came here I was
here strictly on business. When we got back that year from Santiago
I said to the officers of the regiment, “Now we have got to have a
reunion of the regiment in San Antonio.” All kinds of things happened
in between. I have led a middling busy life myself since; and now at
last the chance has come to make good the promise and to have those of
the regiment who are able to come together here in the city where the
regiment was raised to greet one another and talk over the past. In
a sense we can claim that that regiment was a typical American body.
The men composing it were raised chiefly in the Southwest, but some
from the North, some from the East, so that we had the Northerner and
the Southerner, the Easterner and the Westerner in that regiment; we
had men in it who worshiped their Creator some according to one creed,
some according to another, for almost every religious body of any size
in the United States was represented within our ranks. We had men who
had been born abroad and men who were born here, whose ancestors came
to what is now the United States at the time of the landing of the
first colonists at the mouth of the James or at Plymouth. We had men of
inherited wealth and men who all their lives long had earned each day’s
bread by that day’s toil. We had men of every grade socially; men who
worked with their heads; men who worked with their hands; men of all
the types that our country produces; but each of them glad to get in on
his worth as a man only, and content to be judged purely by what he
could show himself to be.
It has always seemed to me that one of the greatest lessons taught by
the Civil War was the lesson of brotherhood. You, my friends, who wore
the blue; you, my friends, who wore the gray, what each of you when he
went forward to battle was concerned with about the man on his right
hand and the man on his left was not what that man’s ancestry was, not
as to how he worshiped his Maker, not as to what his profession was, or
his means; what you wanted to know was whether he would stay put. If he
did you were for him, and if he did not you were against him.
The same thing that was true in the great war is true in time of peace.
This Government is emphatically a government by the people, for the
people, of the people. Now, besides applauding that sentiment, let us
live up to it. It has two sides to it. In the first place, it applies
in a dozen different directions. It applies, for instance, in reference
to creed. We have a right to ask that our neighbor do his duty toward
God and man; but we have no business to dictate to him how he shall
worship his Maker, and no business to discriminate for or against him
because of the way in which he does it. In the same way, if a man is
a decent citizen, he is a decent citizen, whether rich or poor. To
judge from some of the talk you occasionally hear, a man can not be a
square man if he is rich. Remember always that you listen at your peril
to any man who would seek to inflame you against your fellow-citizen
because he is better off. Again, in the Civil War, come back to the
consideration about your bunkie. You did not care whether he was a
banker or bricklayer. If he was a banker he was all right if he was
a good fellow, if he did his duty in camp, if he did not straggle on
the march, if he did not drop his share of the joint provisions on
the march, and then expect you to share yours with him at the end of
the day. You wanted him to do his part, and if he did it you were
for him. Now, apply that in civil life. If the rich man does not his
duty, cinch him, and I will help you just as far as I can. But don’t
cinch him because he is a rich man. If you do you are a mighty mean
creature yourself; you are not a good American yourself. Give him a
perfectly fair show. If he is a poor man and does his duty, help him,
stand by him. If he whines about his poverty and says that he ought to
be carried, you may just as well make up your mind to drop him then
and there. Every man of us stumbles at times. Every man of us at times
needs a helping hand stretched out to him; and shame to any man who
will not stretch out that helping hand to his brother if that brother
needs it. But if the brother lies down, you can do mighty little in
carrying him. You can help him up; but once up he has got to walk
himself. The only way in which you can ever really help any man is to
help him to help himself.
That brings me to the second set of people here whom I have been most
especially glad to see and to greet—the children. In the first place,
I believe in them, as you know, and judging by the showing that San
Antonio has made to-day, San Antonio is all right as regards both
quality and quantity. As I like your stock I am glad that it does not
seem likely to die out. In passing through Texas I have been more
impressed than by anything else by the evident care you are giving to
education, the evident care given to training your children, the school
facilities, both for primary and higher education, and the way in which
those facilities are being taken advantage of. Of course it is a mere
truism to say that the care of the children is the most important task
of any generation. You have a wonderful empire here in Texas. It is
literally larger than most Old World empires. Your diversification
of soil and climate, the marvelous fertility of your soil, your
natural advantages, ensure you a phenomenal future agriculturally and
industrially, ensure this State a wonderful growth in population and
wealth. All that is essential. You must have the material basis upon
which to build as a foundation, but I need not say to you to remember
that it is only a foundation. The material counts for nothing if you do
not build upon it the spiritual, if you do not build upon it the things
of the soul, of the mind.
Let me again take an example from the war. We need arms and equipment,
but the best rifle ever made does not make a soldier if it has not got
the right man behind it. You may take the finest modern weapon, put it
in the hands of a weakling or a coward, and a good man will beat him
with a club. If the other man is a good man too, you want a mighty good
weapon, or you will get beaten. But the weapon does not in any shape or
way serve as a substitute for the spirit of the soldier. That is what
counts in the last resort. Tactics change, weapons change, but the soul
that drives a man forward to victory does not change as the ages go
by. The men of the Civil War, alike the men who wore the gray and the
men who wore the blue, made a record which remains forever a heritage
of honor and of glory for all this people. They did that because they
had in them the spirit which from time immemorial has made the soldiers
of whom the world is proud, the spirit for the lack of which no other
quality in man or in nation will atone. We of to-day, we who, if a
war should come, will have to fight under new conditions, with new
arms, will win (as assuredly I believe we shall win) only because our
men still have in them the spirit that made their forefathers do well
in battle. So you must train your children up so that in addition to
having what counts for material prosperity in a State, you must have
the things that tell most for greatness, the things that make for the
soul of the Nation.
Here in San Antonio what is the building you are proudest of?—the
Alamo. It is not exactly up to date. Other buildings are more
useful. But you are proud of it because it commemorates forever the
spirit of those who made its fame immortal. So in the State itself,
important though it is to provide for the industrial welfare of the
commonwealth, the thing that is most important is to take care of the
really vital crop—the crop of citizens. The thing which the State most
needs to care for is the welfare, not merely material, but moral and
intellectual as well, of the children who are going to make up the
State fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years hence; and that is why I am
so glad to see the care which you of Texas are taking in the training
of the generation that is now coming up.
A thing that is distressing to me to see is when sometimes the man and
woman who have done well in life show a curious inability to train
their own children in the way that has resulted successfully for
themselves. I think that all of us know people who, because they have
worked hard and triumphed, feel that somehow or other they will spare
their children the acquisition of the very qualities which have made
the parents triumph. Too often you see the man, and I am sorry to say
the woman, who says, “I have had to work hard; my sons and my daughters
shall have an easy time.” Such a man or woman is preparing ruin for
the children about whom this is said. Of course, you want to give your
children all the love possible; but it is not right to mistake folly
for affection. When you spare the child that which alone will enable
it to conquer in after life, you are not giving it a blessing; you
are doing it the greatest wrong in your power. Bring up the boy and
girl alike with the understanding that life is not generally soft, is
not generally easy, that there will be plenty of rough times, and
that what they have to show is not the spirit that avoids difficulties
and flinches from them, but the spirit which overcomes them. Let each
of the older among you look back upon your lives. You men of the
Civil War; what are the times of which you are proudest? What are the
memories you are most glad to hand down to your children and your
children’s children? The times that were easy? No. You are proud to
remember and have them remember the days of toil, of peril, of effort,
the days when you had to risk life and endure every form of hardship
and of labor, when you had in you the spirit that made you endure it,
that made you rise level to the great need. Surely you must not rob
your sons of the right to feel in their turn the same pride that you
now feel in the power to overcome difficulty, the power to work, the
power of wresting triumph out of danger.
There is only one of my fellow-citizens to whom I will touch my hat
quicker than to the soldier; and that is the mother, because I think
she has a little harder time of it. The mother who has brought up as
they should be brought up a family of young children is entitled to
such respect as no other person in the community is entitled to. When
the end of her life comes she has endured any amount of hardship, the
sitting up by beds of sick children, the endless taking care of them,
for a mother is not allowed to know the difference between night and
day as far as the ending of the day’s task is concerned; but, after
all, when her life is done she can look back upon it with a prouder
sense of satisfaction than any one else, if she has done her duty, for
her children and her husband shall rise up and call her blessed. The
worthy life for the Nation, for the individual, for the man, for the
woman, is the life of effort for the things worth striving for; and
our whole aim should be not to teach those who are to come after us to
shirk difficulties, and to strive to have an easy time in life, but to
strive to do their duty, whether that duty is hard or not, and to feel
that no success is so great as the success of duty worth doing which is
well done.
Of course, that is my conception of the life for the Nation as well as
for the individual. I am not going to develop my theory about that;
in the first place, because I want to keep clear of anything that you
might think touched in the faintest degree upon politics, and in the
next place because I believe you know pretty well how I feel anyway. I
feel that this Nation, whether it wishes to or not, can not help being
a great Nation. You of Texas by what your forefathers did and what you
have done have helped in making this Nation so that it is impossible
not to be great. We can not decide whether we will be great or not. The
only thing we can decide is whether, being great, we will do well or do
ill. We have got our duty in the world. We must do our duty to others,
and we must do our duty to ourselves. We must so handle ourselves that
no weak power which is behaving itself shall have cause to fear us;
and no strong power of any kind shall be able to oppress or wrong us.
We all believe in the Monroe Doctrine. I have a little difficulty in
getting some of my friends to accept my interpretation of it; but they
will in time, because that interpretation has come to stay. We are
building the Panama Canal. While that will be a benefit to all the
country, it will be of most benefit to the Gulf States. We have duties
in connection with the great position we have taken. We can not shirk
these duties. We can do them well or do them ill, but do them we must
That is one reason why I want to see a good navy; and we have got a
good navy. I am going to use a simile that I used a couple of nights
ago at Dallas. In the old days in Texas I understand that there used to
be a proverb that while you would not generally want a gun at all, if
you did want it you wanted it quick and you wanted it awfully bad. That
is just the way I feel about the navy. I feel that if we have it the
chances are that we will not need it; but that if we do not have it, we
might find that our need for it was vital.
TO THE CONGREGATION ASSEMBLED AT THE BLUE SCHOOLHOUSE ON UPPER DIVIDE
CREEK, COLO., SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 1905
_Friends_:
It is hard for me not to call you neighbors, for during a number of
years my neighbors were just such men and women as those I now see
before me, and they were as good friends as I ever had. I do not
intend to say more than a few words to-day, but I do wish to tell you
how thoroughly at home I feel with you, how much I have enjoyed my stay
here, and how I have appreciated the kind and thoughtful hospitality
with which I have been treated.
Here, as elsewhere in almost every gathering in the West, I see men
wearing the button which shows that they served in the Grand Army of
the Republic, and carrying the flag which they more than any other men
in this Nation have the right to carry because it is owing to them
that this Nation has a flag at all. The few words which I have to say
are to be on success, and I wish to illustrate what I mean by taking
these veterans of the Civil War as examples; and what I am about to
say was suggested by a conversation I had with the Dominie here, when
he was with me the other day on a bear hunt. The Grand Army in its
organization is typically and fundamentally American, because in the
Grand Army every man from lieutenant-general to drummer boy is judged
not by his position, but by the way he discharges or discharged his
duty while in that position. In other words, to the Grand Army man
success, in the highest and truest acceptation of the word, means the
full performance of duty in whatever position Providence has assigned
the man to whom the duty comes. Success from the soldier’s standpoint,
if an army is to rank as one of the great armies of all time, must mean
that whether the man carries sword or musket, whether he looks after
the mules or the commissary, he does his duty up to the handle. If the
soldier feels that he has done that, then he has a right to feel that
his career has been honorable and successful, and that his children’s
children will be proud of him. Success had this meaning from 1861 to
1865.
So it is in civil life. Real success consists in doing one’s duty well
in the path where one’s life is led. Of course, you must remember
that to do your duty you must in the first place do it to yourself
and to those that are nearest you. There is no use whatever in having
lofty ambitions or great schemes for helping mankind if you are not
able in the first place to keep yourself and your own family decently
fed, clothed, and housed. You must pull your own weight first before
you can do more than be a passenger in the boat. You must do what is
right to your family and your neighbors before you can help the State.
If, however, you have the ordinary humdrum qualities, the workaday
qualities, you can win real success; for real success in civil life
means that the man is able to make a living for himself and his family,
to educate his children, to do his duty by his neighbors, and when the
end of his life comes, to be able to feel that the world has been a
little better and not a little worse off because he has lived.
When it comes to the great prizes of life there must always be more
or less accident in winning. No man who has made what the world at
large calls a great success can fail to recognize, if he is sincere
with himself, that there has been much of chance, of fortune, in his
triumph; and surely this should prevent arrogance on his part, and
should also prevent any feeling of mean envy toward him on the part of
others. Carry yourself so that if accident puts great opportunities in
your way you will be able to take advantage of them, and so that, at
any rate, even if the exceptional opportunities do not come, you can do
the things that count most for real happiness in life, the things that
in their sum mean the life that is successful, because they make up a
happy and healthy home. No amount of skill, perseverance, energy, or
genius can win either the great or the small prizes of life unless back
of them lie character and the courage of moral convictions. With this
character, whether the great opportunity comes or not, you can count
upon so bearing yourselves that your children will bless you for having
done all that was in your power to bring them up to an honored name.
So much for success in private life. Now for the success from the
national standpoint. In this country of ours the Government can no more
rise higher than those who make it than a stream can rise higher than
its source. No one leader, no set of leaders, can make the Government.
It will be made by the average citizen, and whether it stands high or
low will and must depend upon the character of the average citizenship.
Only this average citizen can make or unmake it. The right type of
leader can guide and help him—in short, can lead him; but he must
himself be trusted to see to it that his leadership is right, and if
he has not the right stuff in him, then no leadership will avail him or
any of us. In the Civil War, Grant and Sherman and Farragut rendered
incalculable service; but in the last analysis it was the average man
in the ranks who made the army. If that man had not had the right stuff
in him not all the generalship of the greatest leaders would have
availed to win victory. So it is now. The man who carries the hod or
the axe or the coupling-pin; the man who holds the plow or the hammer;
the average man who does the average work of the Nation, is the man
upon whom our whole political and social fabric rests. If he continues
to have the right stuff in him, then as a Nation we shall continue to
go up. If he surrenders himself to idleness and ignorance, to mean
envy and mean hate; if he is not thrifty, industrious, energetic and
intelligent; above all, if his moral fibre weakens—then the Republic
will be in a bad way. There is no secret about good citizenship. The
qualities that make a good citizen are those that the humblest man or
woman, girl or boy, can have; but they are the qualities upon which the
foundations of the State rest. Dishonesty, especially if accompanied by
that unpleasant type of ability without conscientiousness which some
people deify under the name of “smartness,” is a curse and a disgrace
to the individual and to the community. Honesty is the first quality
for the individual and for the Nation; and it must be backed up by
courage—the courage which does not wait before showing itself until
the heroic days which may never come, but which unflinchingly does
each day that day’s duty, be it easy or hard; and finally it must be
backed up by the common-sense without which courage and honesty are
of so little avail. The man who is a good husband; the woman who is a
good wife and mother; the son who so carries himself that the family
are glad to have him at home instead of earnestly wishing he were away;
the daughter who as she grows up is a help to her mother instead of
an added burden; the family in which tenderness and consideration are
shown for one another, together with the strong, fearless qualities
absolutely necessary both for man and for woman in this rough, workaday
world of ours—such men and women, such families, have won the success
that most counts, and in their aggregate make up the Nation that is
really successful.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND BOARD OF TRADE, DENVER,
COLO., MAY 9, 1905
_Mr. President; Mr. Toastmaster; and you, Men of Denver; Men of
Colorado_:
I hope I need not say how glad I am to be your guest to-night. Let
me say just one word in reference to the work of this organization
of which I am not only the guest, but to which I owe my most sincere
thanks for having elected me to honorary membership. You have done a
great work for the material prosperity of this city, of this State.
I fully appreciate, as every sensible man must, the great, the vital
importance of that work. We must have a basis of material prosperity
before any community, whether State, municipality, or nation, can
develop itself, can rise in any degree. There must in the community as
in the individual be first as a basis the material prosperity; but woe
to the community, woe to the individual, that accepts such material
prosperity as the be-all and the end-all of its life. In the world at
large, and especially in this Nation, we have been passing through an
era of materialism. It has had its good side, and it has had its poor
side; and we of this country will never rise level to the standard
that should be set here until we not only understand but apply the
truth that material prosperity is only the foundation, and that its
worth depends entirely upon the kind of moral superstructure of good
citizenship that we build upon it. No wealth, no material well-being,
shall avail the Nation where class hatreds flourish, where man looks
upon his brother with envy and hatred or with arrogance and contempt,
according to his position, where the average man fails to understand
that the supreme good for any man is the granting him the opportunity
and training him to the power to do service to the community at large.
I believe in material well-being, of course; I should be a fool if
I did not. I believe in material well-being; I believe in those who
have built it up; but I believe also that it is a curse if it is not
accompanied by the lift toward higher things. We of this country;
we who have enjoyed the marvelous prosperity that this country has
possessed in a degree pre-eminent above all other nations of earth,
must in the future show our understanding of this doctrine, or we shall
fail to make of the Republic what it must and shall be made—an example
for all the nations of mankind.
But do not think that I fail to understand the importance of our
material well-being. I congratulate Denver with all my heart that it
is the centre of the great mining and livestock industries. It is of
enormous consequence to all our people that any section of this country
should do well. Do not forget that. So far from its being a hurt to
any one section to see another section prosper, we can on the contrary
count it as certain that if a part of this country prospers much the
rest of the country will as a whole feel some good effects from the
result of the prosperity. As Senator Patterson was just saying to me,
when three years ago we succeeded in getting through that law which I
am so very proud should have been enacted during my administration,
the law by which the Nation undertook to do its share in the great
work of reclamation of the arid lands of the West; when we got through
that law there were certain shortsighted people, representing as they
believed the interests of the non-arid Eastern lands, who objected
to its passage on the ground that it would help build up their
rivals; whereas, they ought to have seen that whatever built up the
inter-mountain States would add to the prosperity of all the United
States. There is just one safe motto for Americans to act on; that is,
the motto of all men up; not some men down.
In a very small way I am trying to build up an other industry for
the benefit of the whole country, which we are starting here in
Colorado. Through Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture,
in connection with your Agricultural College, we are starting the
development of a breed of American horse which may be called the
general utility horse. If I have any influence with this Administration
I am going to have this work continued! Also, incidentally (if any of
you have come from Vermont you will appreciate this), I think that for
this end we should develop the old breed of Morgan horse, because we
have in the Morgan horse a type which is not surpassed in any country
for the purpose to be served by the breed of horse most important for
us to develop. I do not think that the perpetuation of that fine old
stock should be left to private breeders. I think the Government should
take part in it. The reason we have started this horse breeding by the
Government here in Colorado is that we find, for reasons that I am
not wholly able to explain, that the stoutest forelegs in horses are
developed here in Colorado; and so I hope the Senators from Colorado
will help me to develop the Morgan horse in Colorado.
Gentlemen, I want to say a word as to a governmental policy in which
I feel that this whole country ought to take a great interest and
which is itself but part of a general policy into which I think our
Government must go. I speak of the policy of extending the powers of
the Interstate Commerce Commission, of giving them the power to fix
rates and to have the rates that they fix go into effect practically
at once. As I say, that represents in my mind part of what should be
the general policy of this country, the policy of giving not to the
State but to the National Government an increased supervisory and
regulatory power over corporations. The first step and to my mind the
most important step in this general policy is to give the Nation in
effective form this power over the great transportation corporations
of this country. In the days of the fathers of the older among you the
highways of commerce for civilized nations were what they had always
been—waterways and roads. Therefore they were open to all who chose to
travel upon them. Within the last two generations we have seen a system
grow up under which the old methods were completely revolutionized,
and now the typical highway of commerce is the railroad. Compared to
the railroad the ordinary road for wheeled vehicles, and the waterway,
whether natural or artificial, have lost their importance. Here in
Colorado, for instance, it is the railroads which, of course, are the
only highways that you need take into account in dealing with the
question of commerce in the State or outside of the State. Therefore,
under this changed system, we see highways of commerce grow up each of
which is controlled by a single corporation or individual; sometimes
several of them being controlled in combination by corporations or a
few individuals. When such is the case, in my judgment it is absolutely
necessary that the Nation (for the separate States can not possibly do
it) should assume a supervisory and regulatory function over the great
corporations which practically control the highways of commerce.
Now fix clearly in your minds two facts at the outset. As with
everything else mundane, when you get that supervisory and regulatory
power on behalf of the Nation you will not have cured all the evils
that existed and you will not equal the expectations of the amiable but
ill-regulated enthusiast who thinks that you ought to have cured all
those evils. A measure of good will come, some good will be done, some
injustice will have been prevented; but we shall be a long way from the
millennium. Get that fact clear in your mind or you will be laying up
for your selves a store of incalculable disappointment in the future.
That is the first thing.
Now the second and even more important matter: When you give the Nation
that power, remember that harm and not good will come unless you give
it with the firm determination not only to get justice for yourselves,
but to do justice to others. You must be as jealous to do justice to
the railroads as to exact justice from them. We can not afford in any
shape or way in this country to encourage a feeling which would do
injustice to a man of property, any more than to submit to injustice
from a man of property. Whether the man owns the biggest railroad or
the greatest outside corporation in the land, or whether he makes each
day’s bread by the sweat of that day’s toil, he is entitled to justice
and fair dealing, to no more and to no less. A spirit of envy on the
part of those less well off against the better off is as bad as and no
worse than a spirit of arrogant disregard for the rights of the man of
small means on the part of the man of large means. The arrogance and
the envy are not two different qualities; they are the same quality
shown by men under different circumstances.
We must make up our minds that nothing but harm will come from
any scheme to exercise such supervision as that I advocate over
corporations, and especially over the common carriers, unless we
have it clearly fixed in our minds that the scheme is to be one of
substantial justice alike to the common carrier and to the public. If
I have the appointment or retention of any commission and power to
administer a law of such increased powers I shall neither appoint nor
retain the man who would fail to do justice to the railroads any more
than I would appoint or retain the man who would fail to exact justice
from the railroads. I want that understood as a preliminary. If I have
the appointment of any of those men, or their retention, they will give
a square deal all around or else their shrift will be short.
But with that statement as a preliminary I wish to urge with all
the earnestness I possess, not only upon the public, but upon those
interested in the great railway corporations, the absolute need of
acquiescence in the enactment of such law. As has been well set forth
by the Attorney-General, Mr. Moody, in his recent masterly argument
presented to the committee of the Senate which is investigating the
matter, the Legislators have the right and as I believe the duty to
confer these powers upon some executive body. It can not confer them
upon any court, nor can it take away the court’s power to interfere
if the law is administered in a way that amounts to confiscation of
property. Of course, it would be possible to come much short of such
confiscation and yet do great damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to
the great corporations engaged in interstate commerce. We must remember
always that most of the men who are responsible for the management of
these great corporations, and who have profited thereby, have made
their fortunes not as incidental to damaging, but to benefiting the
community as a whole. We must be careful that nothing is done that
would jeopardize their industries and that would therefore work harm of
the most far-reaching kind not only to all, from the humblest to the
highest, engaged in these industries, but to the business community
as a whole. We must be careful to see that the law is administered
with sanity and conservatism. But the power must exist, if justice
is to be done as between the public and the common carrier, in some
governmental executive tribunal, not only to fix rates and alter them,
when convinced that existing rates do injustice, but to see that the
rate thus fixed goes into effect practically at once.
I do not ascribe it to any moral culpability of the men engaged in
handling these great corporations that they can not see some of the bad
effects of certain things they do. It is most natural for a man who is
trying to carry on his business in competition with some other business
to think that whatever he does that would beat his competitor is a
pretty good thing for the community at large; and often I do not blame
him for what he does; but I intend to prevent his doing it when it is
against the public weal.
I can not attempt to speak in detail of all that should be put into the
law as I hope it will be enacted at the next session of the National
Congress. Not only should this power over rates go in, but in my belief
we should at the same time deal with the private car question, which,
as regards certain industries, offers an even greater menace than is
offered by the present system of fixing rates. I do not think that
the law will have to deal with many subjects, but I do feel that with
the two I have mentioned and with perhaps one or two others it should
deal effectively. There will be the argument made on the other side
(doubtless the argument being made in their own minds by certain of my
hearers) that such power is liable to abuse. Of course it is. The power
of taxation is liable to grave abuse, and yet it must exist in the
appropriate legislative body. You can not give any needed power to the
representatives of the people without exposing yourselves to the danger
of that power being abused. There must be the possibility of abuse or
there can not be the possibility of effective use.
In closing I wish to mention one governmental project which I have been
instrumental, I think, in having started which will have a certain
bearing upon this question, and that is the Panama Canal. It is perhaps
unnecessary for me to say that I am perfectly aware that many most
admirable gentlemen disagreed with me in my action toward the Panama
Canal. But I am in a wholly unrepentant frame of mind in reference
thereto. The ethical conception upon which I acted was that I did not
intend that Uncle Sam should be held up while he was doing a great work
for himself and all mankind. But without regard to that, when the canal
comes into operation I think it will have a very important regulatory
effect in connection with the transcontinental commerce of the great
railroads. I think when such is the case those great railroads will
have to revise their way of looking at the interests of certain inland
cities.
Let me repeat. I have told you my views as to what I regard to be the
most important matter of internal national legislation that in the
immediate future will be before this people. I wish to say again that,
important though that legislation is, it is nothing like as important
as the spirit in which we approach it. If we approach it in the spirit
of demagogy, if we permit ourselves as a people to be deluded into
the belief that permanent good will come to us as a mass, if we attack
unjustly the proper rights of others because they are wealthy, we shall
do ourselves just as much damage as if we permitted an attack upon
those who are poor because they are poor. In time past republic after
republic has existed in this world and has gone down to destruction,
sometimes because the republic was turned into a government of the
poor who plundered the rich, sometimes because it was turned into a
government of the rich who exploited the poor. It made no difference
whatever to the fate of the republic which form its fall took. That
fall was just as certain in one case as in the other. It was just as
certain to follow the triumph of a class which plundered another class,
whether the class thus given mastery was the class of the poor who
plundered the rich, or the class of the rich who exploited the poor.
The destruction was as inevitable in one instance as in the other.
We have the right to look forward with confident hope to the future of
this Republic because it will not and shall not become the Republic of
any class, either poor or rich, because it will and shall remain as its
founders intended it to be, and as its rescuers under Abraham Lincoln
intended it to be, a government where every man, rich or poor, so long
as he does his duty to his neighbor, is given his full rights, is
guaranteed justice and has justice exacted from him in return.