TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
The original edition did not include a Table of Contents. For the
convenience of the reader one has been created:
Presidential Addresses and State Papers 401
At Dedication of Navy Memorial Monument, San Francisco, Cal.,
May 14, 1903 401
At the University of California, Berkeley, Cal., May 14, 1903 404
At Banquet of the Union League Club of San Francisco, Cal.,
May 14, 1903 413
At Carson City, Nevada, May 19, 1903 414
From Address at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Lewis and
Clark Memorial, Portland, Ore., May 21, 1903 419
Remarks in Accepting Souvenir Presented by the Workmen of the
Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., May 23, 1903 420
To the Arctic Brotherhood, Seattle, Wash., May 23, 1903 421
From Address at Everett, Wash., May 23, 1903 426
From Address at Seattle, Wash., May 23, 1903 428
At Spokane, Wash., May 26, 1903 429
From Address at Columbia Gardens, Butte, Mont., May 27, 1903 432
At the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 29, 1903 435
At Freeport, Ill., June 3, 1903 444
At the Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Ill., June 4, 1903 446
At the Consecration of Grace Memorial Reformed Church,
Washington, D. C., June 7, 1903 446
At the Saengerfest, Baltimore, Md., June 15, 1903 449
At the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.,
June 16, 1903 453
To the Holy Name Society at Oyster Bay, N. Y., August 16, 1903 458
On Board the _Kearsarge_, During the Review of the Fleet,
August 17, 1903 463
On Board the _Olympia_ During the Review of the Fleet,
August 17, 1903 465
At the State Fair, Syracuse, N. Y., September 7, 1903 466
At Richmond Hill, N. Y., September 8, 1903 481
At Antietam, Md., September 17, 1903 482
At the Unveiling of the Sherman Statue, Washington, D. C.,
October 15, 1903 489
At the Pan-american Missionary Service, Cathedral of St. Peter
and St. Paul, Mount St. Alban, Washington, D. C.,
October 25, 1903 495
At the Centennial Exercises in the N. Y. Avenue Presbyterian
Church, Washington, D. C., Nov. 16, 1903 501
Remarks to the Delegates of the German Societies Received at the
White House, Thursday, November 19, 1903 506
Correspondence, October 18, 1902 - To: Mrs. Van Vorst 508
Correspondence, November 26, 1902 - Re: Appointment of Dr. Crum 510
Correspondence, February 24, 1903 - To: Mr. Howell 514
Correspondence, July 13, 1903 - To: Secretary Cortelyou 518
Correspondence, July 14, 1903 - To: Mr. Cortelyou 520
Statement to American Federation of Labor, September 29, 1903 521
Correspondence, August 6, 1903 - To: Governor Durbin 523
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress, at the Beginning of the First Session of
the Fifty-seventh Congress 529
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of
the Fifty-seventh Congress 605
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the First Session of
the Fifty-eighth Congress 644
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of
the Fifty-eighth Congress 648
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress on January 4, 1904 709
Extracts from the Messages of Theodore Roosevelt As Governor of
the State of New York 758
Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature,
January 2, 1899 758
Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature,
May 22, 1899 760
Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature,
January 3, 1900 770
First Administration Index 789
[Illustration: _THE FOURTH OF MARCH, 1901_
_A photograph taken on the day when Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in
as Vice-President of the United States_]
Homeward Bound Edition
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS
_December 3, 1901, to January 4, 1904_
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
[Illustration: (colophon)]
[INDEX FIRST ADMINISTRATION]
PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
VOLUME II
NEW YORK
THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
MCMX
The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president Roosevelt
retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes containing these
speeches. He feels that the material contained in these addresses
has been dedicated to the public, and that it is, therefore,
not to be handled as copyrighted material from which
Mr. Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS
DECEMBER 3, 1901
TO
JANUARY 4, 1904
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
AT DEDICATION OF NAVY MEMORIAL MONUMENT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14,
1903
_Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens_:
The ground for this monument was first turned by President McKinley,
and I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words in dedication
of the completed monument. There is no branch of our government in
which all our people are so deeply interested as the Navy of the
United States. It is not merely San Francisco, not merely New York, or
Boston, or Charleston, or New Orleans, not merely the seacoast cities
of the Nation; every individual in the Nation who is proud of America
and jealous of her good name must feel a thrill of generous emotion
at the erection of a monument to the navy, a monument to the fleet
which was victorious under Admiral Dewey on the first of May five
years ago, a fleet which then added a new page to the long honor roll
of American achievement. It is eminently fitting that there should be
here in this great city on the Pacific Ocean a monument to commemorate
the deed which showed once for all that America had taken her position
on the Pacific. I want you all to draw a practical lesson from this
commemoration. We to-day dedicate this monument because those who
went before us had the wisdom to make ready for the victory. If we
wish our children to have the chance of dedicating monuments of this
kind in the event of war we must see that the navy is made ready in
advance. To dedicate the monument would be an empty and foolish thing
if we accompanied it by an abandonment of our national policy of
building up the navy. And good though it is to erect this monument, it
is better still to go on with the building up of the navy which gave
the monument to us, and which, if we ever give it a fair chance, can
be relied upon to rise level to our needs.
Remember that after the war has begun it is too late to improvise
a navy. A naval war is two-thirds settled in advance, at least
two-thirds, because it is mainly settled by the preparation which has
gone on for years preceding its outbreak. We won at Manila because the
shipbuilders of the country, including those here at San Francisco,
under the wise provisions of Congress, had for fifteen years before
been preparing the navy. In 1882 our navy was a shame and a disgrace
to the country in point of material. The personnel contained as fine
material as there was to be found in the world but the ships and the
guns were antiquated, and it would have been a wicked absurdity to
have sent them against the ships of any good power. Then we began to
build up the navy. Every ship that fought under Dewey had been built
between 1883 and 1896.
We come here as patriots remembering that our party lines stop at the
water’s edge. That fleet was successful in 1898 because under the
previous administrations of both political parties, under the previous
Congresses controlled by both political parties, for the previous
fifteen years there had been a resolute effort to build adequate
ships. The ships that went in under Dewey had been constructed under
different successive Secretaries of the Navy and had been provided for
by different successive Congresses of the United States. Not one of
them had been built less than two years, some of them fourteen years.
We could not have begun to fight that battle if we had not been for so
many years making ready the navy.
The last Congress has taken greater strides than any previous Congress
in making ready the navy, but it will be two or three years before the
effects are seen. In no branch of the government are foresight and the
carrying out of a steady and continuous policy so necessary as in the
navy; and you, citizens of San Francisco, of California, and all our
citizens should make it a matter of prime duty to see that there is
no halt in that work, that the next Congress, and the Congress after
that, and the Congress after that, go right on providing formidable
warcraft, providing officers, providing men, and providing the means
of training them in peace to be effective in war. The best ships and
the best guns do not count unless they are handled aright and aimed
aright, and the best men can not thus handle the one nor aim the other
if they do not have ample practice. Our people must be trained in
handling our ships in squadrons on the high seas. Our people on the
ships must be trained by actual practice to do their duty in conning
tower, in the engine-rooms, in the gun-turrets. The shots that count
in battle are the shots that hit.
We have reason to be satisfied with the rapid increase in accuracy
in marksmanship of the navy in recent years, and I congratulate
Admiral Glass and those under him and all our naval officers who are
taking their part so well in perfecting that work, and I congratulate
the enlisted men of the navy upon the extraordinary improvement in
marksmanship shown by the gun pointers.
Applaud the navy and what it has done. That is first-class. But make
your applause count by seeing that the good work goes on. Besides
applauding now see to it that the navy is so built up that the men of
the next generation will have something to applaud also.
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, CAL., MAY 14, 1903
_President Wheeler; Fellow-Members of the University_:
Last night, in speaking to one of my new friends in California, he
told me that he thought enough had been said to me about the fruits
and flowers; that enough had been said to me about California being an
Eden, and that he wished I would pay some attention to Adam as well.
Much though I have been interested in the wonderful physical beauty of
this wonderful State, I have been infinitely more interested in its
citizenship, and perhaps most in its citizenship in the making.
When I come to the University of California and am greeted by its
President I am greeted by an old and valued friend, a friend whom I
have not merely known socially but upon whom, while I was Governor of
New York, I leaned often for advice and assistance in the problems
with which I had to deal. When he accepted your offer I grudged him
to you. And it was not until I came here, not until I have seen you,
that I have been fully reconciled to the loss. But now I am, for I can
conceive of no happier life for any man to lead to whom life means
what it should mean, than the life of the President of this great
University.
This same friend last night suggested to me a thought that I intend
to work out in speaking to you to-day. We were talking over the
University of California, and from that we spoke of the general
educational system of our country. Facts tend to become commonplace,
and we tend to lose sight of their importance when once they are
ingrained into the life of the Nation. Although we talk a good deal
about what the widespread education of this country means, I question
if many of us deeply consider its meaning. From the lowest grade
of the public school to the highest form of university training,
education in this country is at the disposal of every man, every
woman, who chooses to work for and obtain it. The State has done much,
very much; witness this university. Private benefaction has done
very much; witness also this university. And each one of us who has
obtained an education has obtained something for which he or she has
not personally paid. No matter what the school, what the university,
every American who has a school training, a university training, has
obtained something given to him outright by the State, or given to him
by those dead or those living who were able to make provision for that
training because of the protection of the State, because of existence
within its borders. Each one of us then who has an education, school
or college, has obtained something from the community at large for
which he or she has not paid, and no self-respecting man or woman
is content to rest permanently under such an obligation. Where the
State has bestowed education the man who accepts it must be content
to accept it merely as a charity unless he returns it to the State in
full, in the shape of good citizenship. I do not ask of you, men and
women here to-day, good citizenship as a favor to the State. I demand
it of you as a right, and hold you recreant to your duty if you fail
to give it.
Here you are in this university, in this State with its wonderful
climate, which is permitting people of a northern stock for the
first time in the history of that northern stock to gain education
in physical surroundings somewhat akin to those which surrounded the
early Greeks. Here you have all those advantages and you are not to
be excused if you do not show in tangible fashion your appreciation
of them and your power to give practical effect to that appreciation.
From all our citizens we have a right to expect good citizenship;
but most of all from those who have received most; most of all from
those who have had the training of body, of mind, of soul, which
comes from association in and with a great university. From those to
whom much has been given we have Biblical authority to expect and
demand much in return; and the most that can be given to any man is
education. I expect and demand in the name of the Nation much more
from you who have had training of the mind than from those of mere
wealth. To the man of means much has been given, too, and much will
be expected from him, and ought to be, but not as much as from you,
because your possession is more valuable than his. If you envy him I
think poorly of you. Envy is merely the meanest form of admiration,
and a man who envies another admits thereby his own inferiority. We
have a right to expect from the college bred man, the college bred
woman, a proper sense of proportion, a proper sense of perspective,
which will enable him or her to see things in their right relation one
to another, and when thus seen while wealth will have a proper place,
a just place, as an instrument for achieving happiness and power, for
conferring happiness and power, it will not stand as high as much else
in our national life. I ask you to take that not as a conventional
statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of
the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the
qualities which have made you admire them, what are the services they
have rendered. For as President Wheeler said to-day, it is true now
as it ever has been true that the greatest good fortune, the greatest
honor, that can befall any man is that he shall serve, that he shall
serve the Nation, serve his people, serve mankind; and looking back in
history the names that come up before us, the names to which we turn,
the names of the men of our own people which stand as shining honor
marks in our annals, the names of those men typifying qualities which
rightly we should hold in reverence, are the names of the statesmen,
of the soldiers, of the poets—and after them, not abreast of them, the
names of the architects of our material prosperity also.
Of recent years I have been thrown in contact with a number of college
graduates doing good service to the country, and as I wish to make it
perfectly evident what I mean by the kind of service which I should
hope to have from you and which it seems to me worth while to render,
I want to say just a word about two college graduates who have during
the last five years rendered and are now rendering such services:
Governor Taft in the Philippines, and Brigadier-General Leonard
Wood, lately Governor of Cuba. When we acquired the Philippines and
took possession for the time being of Cuba to train its people in
citizenship, we assumed heavy responsibilities; so heavy that some
very excellent persons thought we ought to shirk them. I hold that
a great and masterful people forfeits its title to greatness if it
shirks any work because that work is difficult and responsible.
The difficulty and responsibility impose upon us the high duty of
doing the work well, but they in no way excuse us for refusing to
do it. We had to do the work and the question came of the choice of
instruments in doing it. The most important and most difficult task
after the establishment of order by the army in the Philippines was
the establishment of civil government therein; and second only in
importance to that came the administration of Cuba, during the three
years and over that elapsed before we were able to turn its government
over to its own people and start it as a free Republic. When tasks
are all-important the most important factor in doing them right is
the choice of the agents; and among the many debts of gratitude which
this Nation owes to President McKinley, no debt is greater than the
debt we owe him for the choice of his instruments, such a choice as
that of Taft, such a choice as that of Wood. We sent Taft to the
Philippines; we sent Wood to Cuba; both of them as tested by the
standard of our commercial life, poor men; each man with little more
than his salary to keep himself and his family; each man to handle
millions upon millions of dollars, to have the power by mere conniving
at what was improper to acquire untold wealth—and sent them knowing
that we did not ever have to consider whether such opportunities would
be temptations toward them; sent them knowing that they had the ideals
of the true American and that, therefore, we did not have to consider
the chance of such a temptation appealing to them.
Taft went to the Philippines to stay there; not only forfeiting
thereby the certainty of brilliant rise in his profession on the
bench or at the bar here if he had stayed, but at imminent risk to
his own health; because he felt that his duty as an American made him
go; that, as President McKinley told me of him, he had been drafted
into the service of the country and he could not honorably refuse.
We have seen in consequence the Philippine Islands administered by
the American official who is at the head of the government and by his
colleagues in the interest primarily of their people, and seeking to
obtain for the United States, for the dominant race, that spent its
blood and its treasure in making firm and stable the government of
those islands, the reward that comes from the consciousness of duty
well done. Under Taft, by and through his efforts, not only have peace
and material well-being come to those islands to a degree never before
known in their recorded history, and to a degree infinitely greater
than had ever been dreamed possible by those who knew them best, but
more than that, a greater measure of self-government has been given to
them than is now given to any other Asiatic people under alien rule,
than to any other Asiatic people under their own rulers, save Japan
alone. That is an achievement of the past five years which I hold to
be absolutely unparalleled in history; and when the debit and credit
side of our national life is finally made up a long stroke shall be
put to the credit side for what has been done in the Philippines under
Taft and his associates.
In the same way Leonard Wood worked in Cuba. Put down there to do an
absolutely new task, to take a people of a different race, a different
speech, a different creed, a people just emerging from the hideous
welter of a war, cruel and sanguinary beyond what we in this fortunate
country can readily conceive, to take a people down in the depths of
poverty and misery, just recovering from suffering which makes one
shudder to think of, a people untrained utterly and absolutely in
self-government, and fit them for it; and he did it. For three years
he worked. He established a school system as good as the best that
we have in any of our States. He cleaned cities which had never been
cleaned in their existence before. He secured absolute safety for life
and property. He did the kind of governmental work which should be the
undying honor of our people forever. And he came home to what? He came
home to be thanked by a few, to be attacked by others—not to their
credit—and to have as his real reward the sense that though his work
had been done at pecuniary sacrifice to him, that though the demands
upon him had been such as to eat into his private means, yet he had
worthily and well done his duty as an American citizen and reflected
fresh honor upon the uniform of the United States Army.
I have chosen Taft and Wood simply as instances of what other men
by the hundred have done, Americans who have graduated from no
college, Americans who have graduated from our different colleges, and
especially by practically all those Americans who have graduated from
the two great typical American institutions of learning—West Point and
Annapolis. Taft and Wood and their fellows are spending or have spent
the best years of their prime in doing a work which means to them
pecuniary loss, at the best a bare livelihood while they are doing
it, and are doing it gladly because they realize the truth that the
highest privilege that can be given to any American is the privilege
of serving his country, his fellow-Americans. As I am speaking to an
audience with proper ideals, when I say that Taft and Wood have done
all this service to their pecuniary loss I am holding them up not for
pity but for admiration. Every man, every woman here should feel it
incumbent upon him or her to welcome with joy the chance to render
service to the country, service to our people at large, and to accept
the rendering of the service as in itself ample repayment therefor. Do
not misunderstand me. The average man, the average woman must earn his
or her living in one way or another, and I most emphatically do not
advise any one to decline to do the humdrum, every-day duties because
there may come a chance for the display of heroism. I ask of you the
straightforward, earnest, performance of duty in all the little things
that come up day by day in business, in domestic life, in every way,
and then when the opportunity comes, if you have thus done your duty
in the lesser things, I know you will rise level to the heroic needs.
AT BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14,
1903
_Mr. Toastmaster, and you, my Fellow-Members of the Union League
Club_:
No one can too strongly insist upon the elementary fact that you can
not build the superstructure of public virtue save on private virtue.
The sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to make that whole,
the State, the representative and exponent and symbol of decency,
it must be so made through the decency, public and private, of the
average citizen.
It is absolutely essential if we are to have the proper standard of
public life that promise shall be square with performance. A lie is
no more to be excused in politics than out of politics. A promise is
as binding on the stump as off the stump; and there are two facets to
that crystal. In the first place, the man who makes a promise which
he does not intend to keep and does not try to keep should rightly be
adjudged to have forfeited in some degree what should be every man’s
most precious possession—his honor. On the other hand, the public that
exacts a promise which ought not to be kept, or which can not be kept,
is by just so much forfeiting its right to self-government. There is
no surer way of destroying the capacity for self-government in a
people than to accustom that people to demanding the impossible or
the improper from its public men. No man fit to be a public man will
promise either the impossible or the improper; and if the demand is
made that he shall do so it means putting a premium upon the unfit in
public life. There is the same sound reason for distrusting the man
who promises too much in public that there is for distrusting the man
who promises too much in private business.
The one indispensable thing for us to keep is a high standard of
character for the average American citizen.
AT CARSON CITY, NEVADA, MAY 19, 1903
_Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:
It has been a great pleasure to be introduced in the more than kind
words the Governor has used, because the Governor has been a genuine
pioneer.
Here in this great Western country, the country which is what it is
purely because the pioneers who came here had iron in their veins,
because they were able to conquer plain and mountain, and to make the
wilderness blossom, we are not to be excused if we do not see to it
that the generation that comes after us is trained to have the sum of
the fundamental qualities which enabled their fathers to succeed.
I want to say one special word to-day here in Carson City on a subject
in which all of our people from the Atlantic to the Pacific take an
interest, but which affects in especial the people of the States of
the great plains and mountains and affects no State more than it does
Nevada—the question of irrigation. Now, as I say, I do not regard that
as in any way merely a question of the Rocky Mountain States, of the
great plains States, because anything which tends for the well-being
of any portion of the Union is therefore for the well-being of all
of it, and it was for that reason that I felt warranted in appealing
to the people of the seaboard States on the Atlantic, to the people
of the States of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley, to say
that it was their duty to help in bringing about a scheme of national
irrigation, because the interest of any part of this country is the
interest of all of it; and no man is a really good American who fails
to grasp that fact.
The National Government is still, as you all well know, but as many
Easterners do not know, the greatest land owner in the Western States,
and among all those States Nevada holds the great proportion of vacant
public land, and the need of Nevada for Federal assistance was one
of the strongest arguments used in the discussion which preceded the
reclamation act of June, 1902, the irrigation act of a year ago. The
great extent of the vacant public lands in the State, the fact that
its water supply came chiefly from streams rising in the adjoining
State of California, and the overwhelming difficulties which for these
and other reasons prevented the people of Nevada from efficiently
acting in their own interest, made, in my judgment, and, as it proved,
in the judgment of the Congress, Federal interference absolutely
imperative. It is a matter for the strongest congratulation, not
only for the West, but for the whole Nation, that the policy went
into effect. It is a matter of special congratulation to Nevada that
the Secretary of the Interior, guided in his choice wholly by actual
conditions on the ground, has been led to undertake one of the five
sets of works which have been first undertaken, here in Nevada,
particularly near Reno on the Truckee River, as one of the national
projects for the starting and working of the methods of the law.
Extensive surveys have already been made, and the projects for water
storage and water distribution are at a point which warrants our
belief that immediate action is in sight. There are vast tracts of
excellent land still in the ownership of the general government here
in Nevada and elsewhere to which the reclamation act will bring the
flood waters that now annually go to waste. For Nevada most of these
waters originate in the high mountains lying in sight of Reno, largely
just across the State line in California. Some of these mountains
have been included in the forest reserves, and your interests and the
interests of the irrigators in California imperatively demand the
extension of the forest reserve system so that the source of supply
for the great reservoirs and irrigation works may be safe from fire,
from over-grazing, and from destructive lumbering. I ask you to pay
attention to what I say when I use the word destructive lumbering;
no one can desire to prevent, or do anything but help, practical and
conservative lumbering. In other words, my fellow-citizens, we have
reached a condition in which it must be the object of the Nation and
the State to favor the development of the home-maker, of the man
who takes up the land intending to keep it for himself and for his
children, so that it shall be even of better use to them than to him.
The opportunities for the development of Nevada are very great. Until
recently Nevada was only thought of as a mineral and stock-raising
State. Much can be done yet as regards both the mineral exploitation
and the raising of stock within the State; but now under the stimulus
of irrigation it is probable that irrigated agriculture will come
to the front, and when it does the population will increase with a
rapidity and permanence never before known. The State of Nevada has
led the way not only in the strength of its plea for national aid
in irrigation, but also in its willingness to assist in the work.
I wish to lay emphasis on the fact that in Nevada the authorities
have been anxious in every way to help in working out the problem of
irrigation; and to pay all acknowledgment to them now. The recent
Legislature passed laws which in many respects should serve as models
for the legislation of other States. The union of land and water under
the national law has been recognized, and so has the fundamental
proposition which necessarily underlies the prosperity of all
communities in which irrigated agriculture is the chief industry,
namely, that the water belongs to the people and can not be made a
monopoly. The public appreciation of this fundamental truth that the
water belongs to the people to be taken and put to beneficial use will
wipe out many controversies which are at present so harmful to the
development of the West. And the example of Nevada will be of material
aid in bringing about this fortunate result.
As I said of the forests so it is even more true of the water supply.
It should be our constant policy by national and by State legislation
to see that the water is used for the benefit of the occupants of the
soil, of those who till and use the soil, that it is not exploited by
any one man or set of men in his or their interests as against the
interests of those on the land who are to use it. It is a fundamental
truth that the prosperity of any people is simply another term for the
prosperity of the home-makers among that people. Our entire policy in
irrigation, in forestry, in handling the public lands, should be in
recognition of that truth, to favor in every way the man who wishes to
take up a given area of soil and thereon to build a home in which he
will rear his children as useful citizens of the State.
FROM ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK
MEMORIAL, PORTLAND, ORE., MAY 21, 1903
_Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:
We come here to-day to lay a cornerstone of a monument that is to
call to mind the greatest single pioneering feat on this continent,
the voyage across the continent by Lewis and Clark, which rounded
out the ripe statesmanship of Jefferson and his fellows by giving
to the United States all of the domain between the Mississippi and
the Pacific. Following their advent came the reign of the fur trade;
and then some sixty years ago those entered in whose children and
children’s children were to possess the land. Across the continent
in the early 40’s came the ox-drawn white-topped wagons bearing the
pioneers, the stalwart, sturdy, sunburned men, with their wives and
their little ones, who entered into this country to possess it. You
have built up here this wonderful commonwealth, a commonwealth great
in its past, and infinitely greater in its future.
It was a pleasure to me to-day to have as part of my escort the men of
the Second Oregon, who carried on the expansion of our people beyond
the Pacific as your fathers had carried it on to the Pacific. Speaking
to you here I do not have to ask you to face the future high of heart
and confident of soul. You could not assume any other attitude and be
true to your blood, true to the position in which you find yourselves
on this continent. I speak to the men of the Pacific Slope, to the
men whose predecessors gave us this region because they were not
afraid, because they did not seek the life of ease and safety, because
their life training was not to shrink from obstacles but to meet and
overcome them; and now I ask that this Nation go forward as it has
gone forward in the past; I ask that it shape its life in accordance
with the highest ideals; I ask that our name be a synonym for truthful
and fair dealing with all the nations of the world; and I ask two
things in connection with our foreign policy—that we never wrong the
weak and that we never flinch from the strong. Base is the man who
inflicts a wrong, and base is the man who suffers a wrong to be done
him.
We have met to commemorate a mighty pioneer feat, a feat of the
old days, when men needed to call upon every ounce of courage and
hardihood and manliness they possessed in order to make good our
claim to this continent. Let us in our turn with equal courage, equal
hardihood and manliness, carry on the task that our forefathers have
intrusted to our hands; and let us resolve that we shall leave to our
children and our children’s children an even mightier heritage than we
received in our turn.
REMARKS IN ACCEPTING SOUVENIR PRESENTED BY THE WORKMEN OF THE NAVY
YARD, BREMERTON, WASH., MAY 23, 1903
I want to thank you and through you your fellow workmen for this
token. I also wish to repeat what I have said before, that the
victories of Manila and Santiago reflect credit not merely upon those
who fought, but upon every man who did his work in preparing the
ships for battle. There is not a workman in any of our yards who did
his duty in connection with the guns, the armor plate, the turrets,
the hulls, or anything, who has not his full right to a share in the
credit of those victories. You all did your part in winning them just
as much as the men who actually fought. Nothing could have pleased me
more than to have received this gift from the men of the yard, and I
appreciate it.
TO THE ARCTIC BROTHERHOOD, SEATTLE, WASH., MAY 23, 1903
_Mr. Chairman, and you, Men and Women of Alaska_:
Let me thank you and the members of the Arctic Brotherhood for their
greeting. I am happy to say that during the last year or two the
National Legislature has begun to realize its responsibilities in
reference to Alaska; and that even those of our people who do not
live on the Pacific Slope are beginning to understand that in the
not distant future Alaska will be not merely a regularly organized
Territory, but a great and populous State.
Very few European races have exercised a more profound influence
upon Europe, and none has had a more heroic history, than the race
occupying the Scandinavian peninsula of the Old World. And Alaska lies
in the same latitude as, and can and will in the lifetime of those
I am addressing support as great a population as, the Scandinavian
peninsula. It is curious how our fate as a Nation has often driven us
forward toward greatness in spite of the protests of many of those
esteeming themselves in point of training and culture best fitted to
shape the Nation’s destiny. In 1803, when we acquired the territory
stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, there were plenty
of wise men who announced that we were acquiring a mere desert,
that it was a violation of the Constitution to acquire it, and that
the acquisition was fraught with the seeds of the dissolution of
the Republic. And think how absolutely the event has falsified the
predictions of those men. So when in the late 60’s we by treaty
acquired Alaska, this great territory with its infinite possibilities
was taken by this Republic in spite of the bitter opposition of many
men who were patriots according to their lights and who esteemed
themselves far-sighted. And but five years ago there were excellent
men who bemoaned the fact that we were obliged during the war with
Spain to take possession of the Philippines and to show that we
were hereafter to be one of the dominant powers of the Pacific. In
every instance how the after events of history have falsified the
predictions of the men of little faith! There are critics so feeble
and so timid that they shrink back when this Nation asserts that it
comes in the category of the nations who dare to be great, and they
want to know, forsooth, the cost of greatness and what it means. We do
not know the cost, but we know it will be more than repaid ten times
over by the result; and what it may ultimately mean we do not know,
but we know what the present holds, what the present need demands, and
we take the present and hold ourselves ready to abide the result of
whatever the future may bring.
When I speak to you of the Pacific Slope, to you of the new Northwest,
whose cities are seated here by the Sound, I speak to people abounding
in their youth and their virile manhood, who do not fear to grasp
opportunity as the opportunity comes, and who weigh slight risk but
lightly in the balance when on the other side of the scale comes the
greatness of triumph, the greatness of acquisition. We took Alaska
thirty-five years ago, and at last we have begun to wake up to the
heritage that thereby we have handed over to our children. I speak to
you, citizens of Alaska, people who have dwelt therein, to say how
much all our people owe to you. During the last year many wise laws
have been put upon the statute book in reference to Alaska; not as
many as should have been put, but a good many. I earnestly hope that
Congress will speedily provide for a delegate from Alaska, so that
the people of the Territory may have some recognized exponent whose
duty it shall be to place its needs before the National Legislature.
Meanwhile, with the assistance of the Senators and Representatives in
Congress from this section of the country, I shall do all that in me
lies to see that the proper kinds of legislation are enacted for the
Territory.
The immediate cause of the great development of Alaska of course is
to be found in its mines; but most of the people of this country are
wholly in error when they think of the mines as being the sole or
even the chief permanent cause of Alaska’s future greatness. Alaska
has great possibilities of agricultural and pastoral development.
Not only her mines, her fisheries, her forests, but her agriculture
and her stock-raising will combine to make Alaska one of the great
wealth-producing portions of our Republic. I am anxious that our laws
should be framed in the interest of those who intend to go there and
stay there and bring up their children there and make it in very fact
as well as in name an integral part of this Republic. I ask your help
and pledge you my help in the effort to secure such legislation. In
the case of the mine you get the metal out of the earth, you can not
leave any metal in there to produce other metal; but in the case of
the salmon fishery, if you are wise you will insist upon its being
carried on under conditions which will make the salmon fishery as
valuable in that river thirty years hence as now. Do not take all the
salmon out and go away and leave the empty river for your children and
children’s children; take it out under conditions—the conditions are
ready to be created for you by the National Fish Commission, which
has been so singularly successful in its work—which will secure the
preservation of that river as a salmon river, which will secure the
perpetuation of salmon canneries along its banks, so that it will be
not an industry carried on only by Orientals in the employ of three
or four alien capitalists, but carried on in such a way as to be a
perpetual source of income to the actual settlers resident in the
locality. Just in the same way I want to have you see that the lumber
industry is exploited in a way which, while giving a great return to
those engaged in it at the moment, shall also secure the preservation
of the forests for the settlers and the settlers’ children that are
to come in and inherit the land. I wish to see such land laws enacted
and to see them so administered as to be in the interest of the actual
settler who goes to Alaska to live, who desires there to produce
crops, to raise stock, to make a home for himself; subject to that
condition I desire to see legislation shaped in the spirit of the
broadest liberality that will secure the quickest possible development
of the resources of Alaska; and with that aim in view to have all
the encouragement possible given to those seeking to establish by
steamship line and by railway quick and efficient transportation
facilities in the Territory.
Few things have been more typical of our people and have been more
full of promise for the future than the way in which the resources
have been developed; and when one sees what has been done here
during the last few years I think we have cause to feel abundantly
justified in our belief that the qualities of the old-time pioneers
who first penetrated the woody wilderness between the Alleghanies
and the Mississippi, who then steered their way across vast seas of
grass from the Mississippi to the Rockies, who penetrated the passes
of the great barren mountains until they came to this, the greatest
of all the oceans, still survive in their grandsons and successors.
Nor must we forget in speaking of Alaska the immense importance that
the Territory has from the standpoint of the needs of the Nation as
a whole, as a dominant power in the Pacific. Exactly as with the
building of the Isthmian Canal we shall make our Atlantic and our
Pacific coasts in effect continuous, so the possession and peopling of
the Alaskan seacoast puts us in a position of dominance as regards the
Pacific which no other nations share or can share.
FROM ADDRESS AT EVERETT, WASH., MAY 23, 1903
There are few problems which so especially concern Washington, Oregon,
and California as the problem of forestry. Nothing has been of better
augury for the welfare and prosperity of these great States as well
as for the other forest States than the way in which those actively
engaged in the lumbering business have come of recent years to work
hand in hand with those who have made forestry a study in the effort
to preserve the forests. The whole question is a business, an economic
question; an economic question for the Nation, a business question
for the individual. East of your great mountain chains the question
of water supply becomes vital and becomes inseparable from that
of forestry. Here that question does not enter in. The lumbering
interest is the fourth great business interest in point of importance
in the United States. There is engaged in it a capital of over six
hundred millions of dollars, and every year the wage-workers in that
industry receive one hundred millions of dollars. Such an industry
so vitally connected with many others in the country can not with
wisdom be neglected, the interests depending upon it are too vast. I
do not have to say here in Washington that fire is a great enemy of
the forests. Here in Washington it is probable that fire has destroyed
more than the axe during the decade in which the axe has been at work.
Our aim should be to get the fullest use from the forest to-day,
and yet to get that benefit in ways which will keep the forests for
our children in the generations to come; so that, for instance, the
country adjoining Puget Sound shall have the lumbering industry as
a permanent industry. Recently the trade journals of that industry
have been dwelling upon the fact that its very existence is actually
at stake, and nowhere in the whole country can the question of
forestry be handled better than in this region, because nowhere else
is it so easy to produce a second crop. You are fortunate in having
such climatic conditions, such conditions of soil, that here more
than anywhere else the forest renews itself quickly, so as in a
comparatively short number of years to be again a great mercantile and
industrial asset. The preservation of our forests depends chiefly
upon the wisdom with which the practical lumberman, the practical
expert in dealing with the lumber industry, works with the men who
have studied forestry under all conditions. I am glad indeed that such
co-operation is more and more being accepted as a matter of course by
both sides.
FROM ADDRESS AT SEATTLE, WASH., MAY 23, 1903
There is no other body of water in the world which confers upon the
commonwealth possessing it quite the natural advantages that Puget
Sound confers upon your State. There is no other State in the Union,
and I include all of them, which has greater natural advantages and
a more assured future of greatness than this State of Washington.
Phenomenal though your growth has been, it has barely begun; and your
growth in the half century now opening will dwarf absolutely even your
growth in the immediate past.
I am speaking in the gateway to Alaska. All our people, even those
from the locality whence I come, are beginning to appreciate a little
of Alaska’s future. The men of my own age whom I am addressing will
not be old men before we see Alaska one of the rich and strong States
of the Union. I thank fortune that the National Legislature has begun
to wake up to the fact that Alaska has interests of vital importance
not merely to her but to the entire Union. Alaska contains a territory
which will within this century support as large a population as the
combined Scandinavian countries of Europe; those countries from which
has sprung as wonderful a race as ever imprinted its characteristics
upon the history of civilization. Exactly as the Scandinavian peoples
have left their mark upon the entire history of Europe, so we shall
see Alaska with its mines, its lumber, its fisheries, with its
possibilities in agriculture and stock-raising, with its possibilities
of commercial command, with the tremendous development that is going
on within it even now, produce as hardy and vigorous a people as any
portion of North America.
AT SPOKANE, WASH., MAY 26, 1903
_Senator Turner, and you, my Fellow-Americans_: