_Mr. President, and you of Williams_:
It is a high honor that I have received at your hands, and I deeply
appreciate it. I appreciate it particularly because it is my good
fortune to find on the platform with me so many men to whom I am knit
by the bonds of personal friendship and of work for a common end. I
have listened with real pleasure to the three discourses to-day; and of
course the first was in my line of business.
Before speaking of what I had intended to say here to-day, I want to
say a word just suggested by that address on “idealism in politics.” I
wish to see every graduate of this college, and every graduate of every
other college in the land, feel (and I thank the speaker for the way he
emphasized it) the need of ideals in business and in law, quite as much
as in politics. I wish to see every graduate do all that in him lies to
uphold a standard of practical idealism in after life. I was struck
and amused by the sentence in which the speaker said that at present if
you spoke of ideals, you met with the answer, “Oh, yes, that is very
pretty in theory, but it won’t work in Troy!” There are two sides to
that. In the first place, it is a bad thing for Troy if Troy will not
stand idealism; and in the next place it is a poor type of ideal that
is of no use in Troy. I want you to remember the last just as much as
the first. I want you to have high ideals, but practical ideals. I do
not want you ever to get into a frame of mind which we see pretty often
in the world at large, which believes that you can only have either
high or fantastic ideals, or else low and practical ones. If you have
to choose, of course I would a great deal rather see you choose high
and fantastic ideals than low and practical ones, because the last are
a detriment to the Nation at large, while the first are merely of no
earthly consequence. If you have to choose between being noxious and
being merely harmless, of course, choose to be harmless. But do not
expect very great gratitude from any person interested in the country
if you choose merely to be harmless. If you choose to have high ideals
so fantastic that they are of no use when you try to apply them in
practical life, do not for one moment delude yourself into the belief
that to have these fantastic ideals shows that you are more virtuous
than the man who has not got them. It merely shows that you are more
foolish. Have a high ideal and try to realize it, measurably, within
your powers, as, immeasurably and with tremendous power, Abraham
Lincoln and George Washington strove to realize their ideals. Have
high ideals, and then try to realize them in practical shape. I do not
want to see you go out of this institution of learning with an ideal
impossible to put into effect, because I am afraid if you leave it with
such an ideal and find that this ideal does not work, then instead of
realizing that the fault lies in you for having chosen that kind of an
ideal, you will think it lies with idealism itself, and will abandon
idealism. What I desire to see you feel is that you must have a high
ideal; that you must also apply that ideal in practice; and above all
things to avoid the state of mind in which you preach an impossible
idealism, and make amends for it by not practicing any idealism at all.
It is perfectly true that you want to avoid improper compromises,
but you will not get any other, if you are not able to compromise in
non-essential matters. I do not suppose there is one of these men
on this platform—Mr. Root, Mr. Choate, Senator Crane—who has not
disagreed with me on some pretty important points, ranging from the
navy to corporations. But we have been able to come to a working
agreement. We have been able to establish a basis for common action,
not by surrendering on matters of principle, but by agreeing each to
subordinate his views on certain points, so that we could secure the
efficiency of action that can only come from united effort. I want you
to feel that to accomplish anything in after life, you men who are
just going out into the great world, you must keep ever before your
minds both the desire to work for betterment, and the power to work in
combination with your fellows (who will not on all points agree with
you) practically to achieve that betterment.
In striving to solve the immediate governmental problems that are
before us, we have a right to expect leadership from the men who come
out of Williams, who come out of the other colleges and universities of
the land; we have a right to expect that leadership to be shown with
practical efficiency, in seeing that this Nation does its duty abroad
and at home. I wish to see this Nation not merely talk for peace and
righteousness, but act for peace and righteousness; but I wish to see
this Nation stand for righteousness first and then for peace. I wish to
see the Nation stand for the peace of justice, for the righteousness in
the attainment of which peace is normally a potent instrument, but for
which we must stand, whether peace comes or not. In 1861, there were
men who cried peace, peace, when there was no peace; and we have peace
now combined with righteousness, and have secured it, as I believe,
for ages to come on this continent, because men then dared to draw the
sword for righteousness. We have no such terrible crisis as that of
1861 facing us now. On the contrary, we have a series of rather humdrum
little crises which it is sometimes exasperating to have to face, but
which we must.
The particular small crisis of which I am thinking is that in Santo
Domingo last year. I had done everything that in me lay to prevent
that crisis coming. All I asked, on behalf of the people of the United
States, of Santo Domingo was that it should be good and happy. Without
entering into the ethical question, I shall merely say that it was not
happy. Finally affairs grew into such shape down there that it was
evident that the bonds of society were on the point of dissolution;
and the Government of Santo Domingo made an earnest appeal to the
Government of the United States and asked that this Nation, out of the
abundance of its strength, should strive to help a weaker brother. Now
do not forget that that was the appeal, and that it was because of
this appeal that we took action. There were of course two motives that
influenced us. One was the desire to help the people of Santo Domingo
for their own sakes, and the other, and a legitimate one, was to try
to fend off the possibility of trouble coming to Santo Domingo, which
might bring the United States itself into trouble. The debts of Santo
Domingo were so great and the impossibility of paying all those debts
so patent that there was a threat of imminent interference by foreign
nations to collect the debts due their own citizens. And as the only
way of guaranteeing the collection of those debts was to seize the
custom-houses, it inevitably meant the seizure nominally, temporarily,
of a certain amount of Santo Domingo territory, which would almost
inevitably produce a conflict between us and those foreign governments.
So, in the interest of the peace of the world, and in the interest of
justice to Santo Domingo, we yielded to Santo Domingo’s request and
have started to try to help her so to carry on her finances that she
may be able to pay all that she can of what she justly owes. In taking
that action the Government has proceeded upon the theory that you
can not formulate a right, individual or national, without impliedly
formulating a responsibility and obligation to go with that right.
We say that in our own interest and in the interest of the peoples
of the Western Hemisphere we adhere to the Monroe Doctrine. With the
promulgation of that doctrine must go the responsibility that ought by
right to accompany it. We can not say that other peoples shall not do
what ought to be done, unless we do it ourselves. People answer that
trouble and bother will come if we do it. If this Nation refuses to do
its duty because it thinks the duty will necessitate encountering some
trouble, some bother, then let this Nation cease to claim to be great.
I demand that the Nation do its duty, and accept the responsibility
that must go with greatness. I ask that the Nation dare to be great,
and that in daring to be great it show that it knows how to do justice
to the weak no less than to exact justice from the strong. In order to
take such a position of being a great Nation, the one thing that we
must not do is to bluff. It is perhaps defensible, although I think
improper, to say that we will not try to be a big Nation, will not try
to play the part of a big Nation or act as such in the world. But the
unpardonable thing is to say we will act as a big Nation and then
decline to take the necessary steps to make the words good. Therefore,
gentlemen, see to it that the navy is built up, and kept at the highest
point of efficiency. I ask that, not in the interest of war, but as a
guarantee of peace. I believe in the Monroe Doctrine; I believe in the
building and maintaining as an open highway for the nations of mankind
the Panama Canal. But I had a great deal rather see this country
abandon the Monroe Doctrine and give up all thought of building the
Panama Canal than to see it attempt to maintain the one and construct
the other while refusing to provide the means which can alone render
our attitude as a Nation worthy of the respect of the other nations
of mankind. Keep on building and maintaining at the highest point of
efficiency the United States navy, or quit trying to be a big Nation.
Do one or the other.
Now for our internal affairs. I am particularly glad to speak to
an audience like this, because I do not know that I shall have the
unqualified assent of everybody here. If I address an audience merely
of men of very small means or wage-workers, then what I want to tell
them, as the most important thing for them to learn, is to avoid an
attitude of rancorous envy or hostility toward men of wealth, and above
all to remember that the well-being of our social structure rests upon
obedience to the law, upon the immediate suppression of mob violence,
mob rule, in any form. There can be and must be no paltering with any
manifestation of that spirit. Any attempt to override the law by action
of individuals or by the action of mobs, whether the attempt comes in
connection with labor difficulties or in any other way, must in the
interest of the Nation be met fearlessly at the earliest opportunity,
and the lawlessness put down.
On the other side, just as we must never allow this Government to be
changed into government by a mob, so we must never allow it to be
changed into government by a plutocracy. The growth of our modern
industrialism has resulted in an altogether disproportionate reward to
the man who goes into money-making as his only career. Two evil results
follow. One is the result to himself, for, unless he is a man of very
strong character, there almost inevitably comes a certain arrogance, or
at least a certain carelessness toward the rights of others. The other
result is to breed in the minds of poor people an attitude of sullen
envy toward men of wealth, which is infinitely more damaging to the
people who hold it than any action of the man of wealth could be.
There must be a closer supervision by the Government of great
industrial combinations, for of course wealth at present finds its
expression through these great industrial combinations. I think it
has been a mistake to act on the theory which has shaped most of our
legislation, National and State, for the last thirty years, that it is
possible to turn back the hands of the clock, to forbid combinations
and to restore business to conditions which have absolutely passed
away. That can not be done. What we can do is to exercise an efficient
supervision over the combinations, so as to see as far as possible
that they are used in the interest of and not against the interest
of the general public. I do not believe that such supervision can
come effectively through the State, nor that it can effectively come
through the municipality. Ultimately in the great majority of cases to
be effective it must be exercised by the National Government. I trust
that in the end means will be found by which the exercise of such
control over all the great industrial corporations which are really
engaged in and doing an interstate business will be lodged in the
hands of the National Government. As the first step to that I hope to
see the passage of legislation which will give as an executive, not
as a judicial function, to the National Government the supervision of
the railroads of the United States which are engaged in interstate
commerce, with the power, when a rate is complained of as improper and
unjust, to examine that rate, and if the rate should be changed to
change it to a given rate, and to have that given rate take practically
immediate effect. Now, I am perfectly well aware that there are
objections to the proposed change, but in my judgment they are far
outweighed by the objections attendant upon not making the change. The
fear expressed by excellent people, who no doubt feel it genuinely,
that we could not get a commission who would fix all the rates of the
railroads of the country, is to my mind much as if they should express
fear that you could not get Supreme Court Justices who would be able
to fix all the laws. I expect that the commission will be able to pass
upon a given rate brought before it, just as the Supreme Court passes
upon a given question of law brought before it; and one will prove to
be as feasible as the other has proved feasible. That system should
be, and in my judgment will be introduced. I believe it will work a
measurable betterment for the public. Listen to what I say—a measurable
betterment for the public. I do not believe that it will produce
the millennium, or anything approaching it; and I am quite certain
that some of its most ardent advocates will be disappointed with the
results. But I think measurable good will come. It can only come if the
officers intrusted with the administration of the law remember that it
is exactly as much their duty to protect the railroad from the public
as to protect the public from the railroad; to remember that when we
say we want justice from the railroad we must, if we are honest, add
also a pledge to do justice to the railroad.