railroad systems of the State running through it. On the western
edge of this State in Puget Sound I have seen the homing places of
the great steamship lines, which, in connection with these great
railroads, are doing so much to develop the Oriental trade of this
country and this State. Washington will owe no small part of its
future greatness, and that greatness will be great indeed, to the
fact that it is thus doing its share in acquiring for the United
States the dominance of the Pacific. Those railroads, the men and
the corporations that have built them, have rendered a very great
service to the community. The men who are building, the corporations
which are building the great steamship lines have likewise rendered
a very great service to the community. Every man who has made wealth
or used it in developing great legitimate business enterprises has
been of benefit and not harm to the country at large. This city has
grown by leaps and bounds only when the railroads came to it, when
the railroads came to the State; and if the State were now cut off
from its connection by rail and by steamship with the rest of the
world its position would of course diminish incalculably. Great good
has come from the development of our railroad system; great good has
been done by the individuals and corporations that have made that
development possible; and in return good is done to them, and not
harm, when they are required to obey the law. Ours is a government of
liberty by, through and under the law. No man is above it and no man
is below it. The crime of cunning, the crime of greed, the crime of
violence, are all equally crimes, and against them all alike the law
must set its face. This is not and never shall be a government either
of a plutocracy or of a mob. It is, it has been, and it will be, a
government of the people; including alike the people of great wealth
and of moderate wealth, the people who employ others, the people who
are employed, the wage-worker, the lawyer, the mechanic, the banker,
the farmer; including them all, protecting each and every one if he
acts decently and squarely, and discriminating against any one of
them, no matter from what class he comes, if he does not act squarely
and fairly, if he does not obey the law. While all people are foolish
if they violate or rail against the law—wicked as well as foolish, but
all foolish—yet the most foolish man in this Republic is the man of
wealth who complains because the law is administered with impartial
justice against or for him. His folly is greater than the folly of any
other man who so complains; for he lives and moves and has his being
because the law does in fact protect him and his property.
We have the right to ask every decent American citizen to rally to the
support of the law if it is ever broken against the interest of the
rich man; and we have the same right to ask that rich man cheerfully
and gladly to acquiesce in the enforcement against his seeming
interest of the law, if it is the law. Incidentally, whether he
acquiesces or not, the law will be enforced, and this whoever he may
be, great or small, and at whichever end of the social scale he may be.
I ask that we see to it in our country that the line of division in
the deeper matters of our citizenship be drawn, never between section
and section, never between creed and creed, never, thrice never,
between class and class; but that the line be drawn on the line of
conduct, cutting through sections, cutting through creeds, cutting
through classes; the line that divides the honest from the dishonest,
the line that divides good citizenship from bad citizenship, the line
that declares a man a good citizen only if, and always if, he acts in
accordance with the immutable law of righteousness, which has been
the same from the beginning of history to the present moment, and
which will be the same from now until the end of recorded time.
FROM ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA GARDENS, BUTTE, MONT., MAY 27, 1903
_Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:
It would have been a great pleasure to come to Butte in any event;
it is a double pleasure to come here at the invitation of the
representatives of the wage-workers of Butte. I do not say merely
workingmen, because I hold that every good American who does his duty
must be a workingman. There are many different kinds of work to do;
but so long as the work is honorable, is necessary, and is well done
the man who does it well is entitled to the respect of his fellows.
I have come here to this meeting especially as the invited guest of
the wage-workers, and I am happy to be able to say that the kind of
speech I will make to you, I would make just in exactly the same
language to any group of employers or any set of our citizens in any
corner of this Republic. I do not think so far as I know that I have
ever promised beforehand anything I did not make a strong effort to
make good afterward. It is sometimes very attractive and very pleasant
to make any kind of a promise without thinking whether or not you can
fulfil it; but in the after event it is always unpleasant when the
time for fulfilling comes; for in the long run the most disagreeable
truth is a safer companion than the most pleasant falsehood.
To-night I have come hither looking on either hand at the results of
the enterprises which have made Butte so great. The man who by the use
of his capital develops a great mine, the man who by the use of his
capital builds a great railroad, the man who by the use of his capital
either individually or joined with others like him does any great
legitimate business enterprise, confers a benefit, not a harm, upon
the community, and is entitled to be so regarded. He is entitled to
the protection of the law, and in return he is to be required himself
to obey the law. The law is no respecter of persons. The law is to be
administered neither for the rich man as such, nor for the poor man as
such. It is to be administered for every man, rich or poor, if he is
an honest and law-abiding citizen; and it is to be invoked against any
man, rich or poor, who violates it, without regard to which end of the
social scale he may stand at, without regard to whether his offence
takes the form of greed and cunning, or the form of physical violence;
in either case if he violates the law, the law is to be invoked
against him; and in so invoking it I have the right to challenge the
support of all good citizens and to demand the acquiescence of every
good man. I hope I will have it; but once for all I wish it understood
that even if I do not have it I shall enforce the law.
The soldiers who fought in the great Civil War fought for liberty
under, by, and through the law; and they fought to put a stop
once for all to any effort to sunder this country on the lines of
sectional hatred; therefore their memory shall be forever precious
to our people. We need to keep ever in mind that he is the worst
enemy of this country who would strive to separate its people along
the lines of section against section, of creed against creed, or of
class against class. There are two sides to that. It is a base and an
infamous thing for the man of means to act in a spirit of arrogant and
brutal disregard of right toward his fellow who has less means; and
it is no less infamous, no less base, to act in a spirit of rancor,
envy, and hatred against the man of greater means, merely because
of his greater means. If we are to preserve this Republic as it was
founded, as it was handed down to us by the men of ’61 to ’65, and as
it is and will be, we must draw the line never between section and
section, never between creed and creed, thrice never between class and
class; but along the line of conduct, the line that separates the good
citizen wherever he may be found from the bad citizen wherever he may
be found. This is not and never shall be a government of a plutocracy;
it is not and never shall be a government by a mob. It is as it has
been and as it will be, a government in which every honest man, every
decent man, be he employer or employed, wage-worker, mechanic, banker,
lawyer, farmer, be he who he may, if he acts squarely and fairly, if
he does his duty by his neighbor and the State, receives the full
protection of the law and is given the amplest chance to exercise the
ability that there is within him, alone or in combination with his
fellows as he desires. My friends, it is sometimes easier to preach
a doctrine under which the millennium will be promised off-hand if
you have a particular kind of law, or follow a particular kind of
conduct—it is easier, but it is not better. The millennium is not
here; it is some thousand years off yet. Meanwhile there must be a
good deal of work and struggle, a good deal of injustice; we shall
often see the tower of Siloam fall on the just as well as the unjust.
We are bound in honor to try to remedy injustice, but if we are wise
we will seek to remedy it in practical ways. Above all, remember this:
that the most unsafe adviser to follow is the man who would advise us
to do wrong in order that we may benefit by it. That man is never a
safe man to follow; he is always the most dangerous of guides. The man
who seeks to persuade any of us that our advantage comes in wronging
or oppressing others can be depended upon, if the opportunity comes,
to do wrong to us in his own interest, just as he has endeavored to
make us in our supposed interest do wrong to others.
AT THE TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, MAY 29, 1903
_Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, Senator Kearns, and you, my
Fellow-Americans_:
I am particularly glad to have the chance to speak to you here in
this city, in Utah, this morning, because you have exemplified a
doctrine which it seems to me all-essential for our people ever to
keep fresh in their minds—the fact that though natural resources can
do a good deal, though the law can do a good deal, the fundamental
requisite in building up prosperity and civilization is the requisite
of individual character in the individual man or woman. Here in this
State the pioneers and those who came after them took not the land
that would ordinarily be chosen as land that would yield return with
little effort. You took territory which at the outset was called after
the desert, and you literally—not figuratively—you literally made the
wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental element in building up
Utah has been the work of the citizens of Utah. And you did it because
your people entered in to possess the land and to leave it after them
to their children and their children’s children. You here whom I am
addressing and your predecessors did not come in to exploit the land
and then go somewhere else. You came in, as the Governor has said, as
home-makers, to make homes for yourselves and those who should come
after you; and that is the only way in which a State can be built up,
in which the Nation can be built up. You have built up this great
community because you came here with the purpose of making this your
abiding home, and of leaving to your children not an impoverished, but
an enriched heritage; and I ask that all our people from one ocean to
the other, but especially the people of the arid and the semi-arid
regions, the people of the great plains, the people of the mountains,
approach the problem of taking care of the physical resources of
the country in the spirit which has made Utah what it is. You have
developed your metal wealth wonderfully; and your growth is not a boom
growth—it is a thoroughly healthy, normal growth. During the past
decade the population has doubled and the wealth quadrupled; and labor
is employed at as high a compensation as is paid elsewhere in the
world. Although you are not essentially a mining State, in the last
year you marketed thirty millions’ worth of ore; and again you showed
your good sense in the way you handled it; for you paid five millions
in dividends and you invested the balance in labor and surplus. The
effort to make a big showing in dividends is not always healthy for
the future. Here you have shown your wonderful capacity to develop the
earth so as to make both irrigated agriculture and stock-raising in
all its forms two great industries. When you deal with a mine you take
the ore out of the earth and take it away, and in the end exhaust the
mine. The time may be very long in coming before it is exhausted, or
it may be a short time; but in any event, mining means the exhaustion
of the mine. But that is exactly what agriculture does not and must
not mean.
So far from agriculture properly exhausting the land, it is always the
sign of a vicious system of agriculture if the land is rendered poorer
by it. The direct contrary should be the fact. After the farmer has
had the farm for his life he should be able to hand it to his children
as a better farm than it was when he had it.
In these regions, in the Rocky Mountain regions, it is especially
incumbent upon us to treat the question of the natural pasturage,
the question of the forests, and the question of the use of the
waters, all from the one standpoint—the standpoint of the far-seeing
statesman, of the far-seeing citizen, who wishes to preserve and not
to exhaust the resources of the country, who wishes to see those
resources come into the hands not of a few men of great wealth, least
of all into the hands of a few men who will speculate in them; but be
distributed among many men, each of whom intends to make his home in
the land.
This whole so-called arid and semi-arid region is by nature the stock
range of the Nation. One of the questions which are rising to confront
us is how this range may be made to produce the greatest number and
best quality of horses, cattle, and sheep, not only this year, not
only next year, but for this generation and the next generation. The
old system of grazing the ranges so closely as to injure the whole
crop of grass was a serious detriment to the development of the West,
a serious detriment to the development of our people. The ranges must
be treated as a great invested capital; and that old system tended to
dissipate and partially to destroy that capital. That is something
that we can not as a Nation of home-makers permit. The wise man, the
wise industry, the wise nation, maintains such capital unimpaired and
tries to increase it; and more and more the range lands will be used
in conjunction with the small irrigable areas which they include;
so that the industry can take on a more stable character than ever
before. It is impossible permanently, although it may be advisable for
the time being, to move stock in a body from summer to winter ranges
across country which can be made into homesteads, because when the
country can itself be taken by actual settlers, in the long run it
will only be possible to move the stock through hundreds of miles of
dusty lanes where they can not graze, where they can not live. Our
aim must be steadily to help develop the settler, the man who lives
in the land and in growing up with it and raising his children to own
it after him. More and more hereafter the stock owners will have the
necessity forced upon them of providing green summer pasturage within
the limits of their own ranges; and so the question of irrigation is
wellnigh as important to the stockmen as to the agriculturist proper.
In the same way our mountain forests must be preserved from the harm
done by over-grazing. Let all the grazing be done in them that can be
done without injury to them, but do not let the mountain forests be
despoiled by the man who will over-graze them and destroy them for the
sake of three years’ use, and then go somewhere else, and leave by so
much diminished the heritage of those who remain permanently in the
land. I believe that already the movement has begun which will make in
the long run the stock-raisers,—of whom I have been one myself, whose
business I know, and with whom I feel the heartiest sympathy,—through
the enlightenment of their own self-interest, become the heartiest
defenders and the chief beneficiaries of the wise and moderate use of
forest ranges, both within and without the forest reserves. It is and
it must be the definite policy of this government to consider the good
of all its citizens—stockmen, lumbermen, irrigators, and all others—in
dealing with the forest reserves; and for that reason I most earnestly
desire in every way to bring about the heartiest co-operation between
the men who are doing the actual business of stock-raising, the
actual business of irrigated agriculture, the actual business of
lumbering,—the closest and most intimate relations, the heartiest
co-operation between them and the government at Washington through
the Department of Agriculture. Of course I do not have to say to any
audience of intelligent people that nothing is such an enemy to the
stock industry as persistent over-grazing. We shall have not far hence
to raise the problem of the best method of making use of the public
range. Our people have not as yet settled in their own minds what
is that best method. In some way there will have to be formed such
regulation as shall without undue restriction prevent the needless
over-grazing, while keeping the public lands open to settlement
through homestead entry. Such a policy would, of course, be of the
most far-reaching benefit to the whole range industry. It is the same
in dealing with our forest reserves. Almost every industry depends
in some more or less vital way upon the preservation of the forests;
and while citizens die, the government and the nation do not die, and
we are bound in dealing with the forests to exercise the foresight
necessary to use them now, but to use them in such a way as will also
keep them for those who are to come after us.
The first great object of the forest reserves is, of course, the
first great object of the whole land policy of the United States,—the
creation of homes, the favoring of the home-maker. That is why we
wish to provide for the home-makers of the present and the future
the steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and above all, of
water. That is the object of the forest reserves, and that is why I
bespeak your cordial co-operation in their preservation. Remember you
must realize, what I thoroughly realize, that however wise a policy
may be it can be enforced only if the people of the States believe in
it. We can enforce the provisions of the forest reserve law or of any
other law only so far as the best sentiment of the community or the
State will permit that enforcement. Therefore it lies primarily not
with the people at Washington, but with you, yourselves, to see that
such policies are supported as will redound to the benefit of the home
makers and therefore the sure and steady building up of the State as a
whole.
One word as to the greatest question with which our people as a whole
have to deal in the matter of internal development to-day—the question
of irrigation. Not of recent years has any more important law been
put upon the statute books of the Federal Government than the law a
year ago providing for the first time that the National Government
should interest itself in aiding and building up a system of irrigated
agriculture in the Rocky Mountains and plains States. Here the
government had to a large degree to sit at the feet of Gamaliel in the
person of Utah; for what you had done and learned was of literally
incalculable benefit to those engaged in framing and getting through
the national irrigation law. Irrigation was first practiced on a large
scale in this State. The necessity of the pioneers here led to the
development of irrigation to a degree absolutely unknown before on
this continent. In no respect is the wisdom of the early pioneers made
more evident than in the sedulous care they took to provide for small
farms, carefully tilled by those who lived on and benefited from them;
and hence it comes about that the average amount of land required to
support a family in Utah is smaller than in any other part of the
United States. We all know that when you once get irrigation applied
rain is a very poor substitute for it. The Federal Government must
co-operate with Utah and Utah people for a further extension of the
irrigated area. Many of the simpler problems of obtaining and applying
water have already been solved and so well solved that, as I have
said, some of the most important provisions of the Federal act, such
as the control of the irrigating works by the communities they serve,
such as making the water appurtenant to the land and not a source of
speculation apart from the land, were based upon the experience of
Utah. Of course the control of the larger streams which flow through
more than one State must come under the Federal Government. Many of
the great tracts which will ultimately so enlarge the cultivated
area of Utah, which will ultimately so increase its population and
wealth, are surrounded with intricate complications because of the
high development which irrigation has already reached in this State.
Necessarily the Federal officers charged with the execution of the law
must proceed with great caution so as not to disturb present vested
rights; but subject to that, they will go forward as fast as they
can. They realize, and all men who have actually done irrigating here
will realize, that no man is more timid than the practical irrigator
regarding any change in the water distribution. He wants to look
well before he leaps. He has learned from bitter experience what
damage can come from well meant changes hastily made. The government
can do a good deal; the government will do a good deal; but your
experience here in Utah has shown that the greatest results which
are accomplishing most spring directly from the sturdy courage, the
self-denial, the willingness with iron resolution to endure the risk
and the suffering, of the pioneers; for they were the men who sought
and found a livelihood in what was once a desert, and they must be
protected in the legitimate fruits of their toil.
One of the tasks that the government must do here in Utah is to build
reservoirs for the storage of the flood waters, to undertake works
too great to be undertaken by private capital. Great as the task is,
and great as its benefits will become, the government must do still
more. Besides the storage of the water there must be protection of the
watersheds; and that is why I ask you to help the National Government
protect the watersheds by protecting the forests upon them.
AT FREEPORT, ILL., JUNE 3, 1903
_Congressman Hitt, and you, my Fellow-Countrymen_:
Here where we meet to-day there occurred one of those memorable
scenes in accordance with which the whole future history of nations
is molded. Here were spoken winged words that flew through immediate
time and that will fly through that portion of eternity recorded in
the history of our race. Here was sounded the keynote of the struggle
which after convulsing the Nation, made it in fact what it had only
been in name,—at once united and free. It is eminently fitting that
this monument, given by the women of this city in commemoration of the
great debate that here took place, should be dedicated by the men
whose deeds made good the words of Abraham Lincoln—the soldiers of
the Civil War. The word was mighty. Had it not been for the word the
deeds could not have taken place; but without the deeds the word would
have been the idlest breath. It is forever to the honor of our nation
that we brought forth the statesman who, with far-sighted vision,
could pierce the clouds that obscured the sight of the keenest of his
fellows, could see what the future inevitably held; and moreover that
we had back of the statesman and behind him the men to whom it was
given to fight in the greatest war ever waged for the good of mankind,
for the betterment of the world.
I have literally but a moment here. I could not resist the chance that
was offered me to stop and dedicate this monument, for great though
we now regard Abraham Lincoln, my countrymen, the future will put him
on an even higher pinnacle than we have put him. In all history I do
not believe that there is to be found an orator whose speeches will
last as enduringly as certain of the speeches of Lincoln; and in all
history, with the sole exception of the man who founded this Republic,
I do not think there will be found another statesman at once so great
and so single-hearted in his devotion to the weal of his people. We
can not too highly honor him; and the highest way in which we can
honor him is to see that our homage is not only homage of words; that
to lip loyalty we join the loyalty of the heart; that we pay honor
to the memory of Abraham Lincoln by so conducting ourselves, by so
carrying ourselves as citizens of this Republic, that we shall hand on
undiminished to our children and our children’s children the heritage
we received from the men who upheld the statesmanship of Lincoln in
the council, who made good the soldiership of Grant in the field.
AT THE LINCOLN MONUMENT, SPRINGFIELD, ILL., JUNE 4, 1903
It is a good thing that the guard around the tomb of Lincoln should be
composed of colored soldiers. It was my own good fortune at Santiago
to serve beside colored troops. A man who is good enough to shed
his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal
afterward. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no
man shall have.
AT THE CONSECRATION OF GRACE MEMORIAL REFORMED CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D.
C., JUNE 7, 1903
I shall ask your attention to three lines of the Dedication Canticle:
“Serve the Lord with gladness: enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
and into His courts with praise. Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands,
and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul with vanity, nor
sworn deceitfully.”