_Governor; Mr. Mayor; and you, My Valued Friend, Senator Clay; and
you, Men and Women of Georgia; Men and Women of my Mother’s State;
My Fellow-Citizens and Fellow-Americans_:
I can not too strongly express the feeling of gratitude I have for the
reception given to me to-day. I want to give you a word of explanation
as to what the Senator last said. The Senator said quite truly that
when I was in doubt as to the capacity or honesty of any man I was
seeking to appoint, or the wisdom of any policy, I was in the habit
of going to him. I will tell you why: because the Senator does what I
hope I try to do and what I have preached. Whenever I go to the Senator
I know I get a square deal. As I said once before to-day, the Senator
comes in that group of men upon whose advice I, like every other
American President who wishes to do what is best for the people, must
rely. If you will come down to bed-rock fact, the party differences
are mighty small compared to the common interests that all of us have
as Americans. On the great majority of questions, on almost all the
important questions that come up, what you want in public life is to
find the public man who cares for the interests of the people, and
who not only cares for them, but has the sense to know how to make
that care effective. I have found that I could consult Senator Clay
with absolute freedom and absolute confidence in his good faith and
sincere desire to do what was best for our people. All I had to do
was to convince him that I was right. I was not always successful in
convincing him; but if I did convince him I knew he would stand up for
what he thought right.
Before speaking to all of you here together let me say just one word
suggested by the generous and unexpected gift presented to me by the
representatives of organized labor here in Atlanta. I am speaking
in this mighty city, an industrial centre of the Union, in a great
agricultural State. It is of course a mere truism to say that if the
men who till the soil and the wage-workers are well off the rest of
the people will be well off; and it is the part of wise statesmanship
to try primarily to do all that can be done for the farmers, the men
who live on the land, who work on the land, and for the wage-workers,
the men who actually do the work with their hands. It has been my good
fortune to be an honorary member of a union of wage-workers. There
are few honors that I have ever had of which I am prouder than that.
I believe in organized labor; and I will do all that in me lies for
the wage-worker, except to do wrong, and if I was willing to do that I
would not be his true friend or any one else’s.
Having spoken to the farmer and the wage-worker, let me say just one
word to the men of the great Civil War, to the men who fought from
’61 to ’65. I am sure that you would be pleased if you could hear the
applause that greets, in any audience in the North, any allusion to
the valor, the self-devotion, the fealty to right as God gave them to
see the right, of the men who wore the gray in the great contest forty
years ago. We are indeed thrice fortunate as a people; because to us it
has been given alone among peoples in modern times to pass through one
of the most terrible contests of history; and, now that the bitterness
has died away, to cherish as our most precious heritage the memories
bequeathed to us alike by the men in blue and the men in gray, alike by
those who followed Grant and those who followed Lee, because each man
showed his readiness to sacrifice all, to sacrifice life itself, upon
the altar of duty as he saw it.
It is eminently appropriate that the representatives of organized labor
should be called upon to play a part in any ceremonies in a great
industrial city like this; and that incident alone would justify my
choice of subjects to-day.
Here in this great industrial centre, in this city which is a typical
Southern city, and therefore a typical American city, it is natural
to consider certain phases of the many-sided industrial problem which
this generation has to solve. In this world of ours it is practically
impossible to get success of any kind on a large scale without paying
something for it. The exceptions to the rule are too few to warrant
our paying heed to them; and as a rule it may be said that something
must be paid as an offset for everything we get and for everything
we accomplish. This is notably true of our industrial life. The
problems which we of America have to face to-day are very serious,
but we will do well to remember that after all they are only part of
the price which we have to pay for the triumphs we have won, for the
high position to which we have attained. If we were a backward and
stationary country we would not have to face these problems at all; but
I think that most of us are agreed that to be backward and stationary
would be altogether too heavy a price to pay for the avoidance of the
problems in question. There are no labor troubles where there is no
work to be done by labor. There are no troubles about corporations
where the poverty of the community is such that it is not worth while
to form corporations. There is no difficulty in regulating railroads
where the resources of a region are so few that it does not pay to
build railroads. There are many excellent people who shake their heads
over the difficulties that as a nation we now have to face; but their
melancholy is not warranted save in a very partial degree, for most of
the things of which they complain are the inevitable accompaniments of
the growth and greatness of which we are proud.
Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not for one moment mean
to say that there are not many and serious evils with which we have to
grapple, or that there are not unhealthy signs in the body social and
politic; but I do mean to say that while we must not show a foolish
optimism we must no less beware of a mere blind pessimism. There is
every reason why we should be vigilant in searching out what is wrong
and unflinchingly resolute in striving to remedy it. But at the same
time we must not blind ourselves to what has been accomplished for
good, and above all we must not lose our heads and become either
hysterical or rancorous in grappling with what is bad.
Take such a question, for instance, as the question, or rather the
group of questions, connected with the growth of corporations in this
country. This growth has meant, of course, the growth of individual
fortunes. Undoubtedly the growth of wealth in this country has had some
very unfortunate accompaniments, but it seems to me that much the worst
damage that people of wealth can do the rest of us is not any actual
physical harm, but the awakening in our breasts of either the mean vice
of worshiping mere wealth, and the man of mere wealth, for the wealth’s
sake, or the equally mean vice of viewing with rancorous envy and
hatred the men of wealth merely because they are men of wealth. Envy
is, of course, merely a kind of crooked admiration; and we often see
the very man who in public is most intemperate in his denunciation of
wealth, in his private life most eager to obtain wealth, in no matter
what fashion, and at no matter what moral cost.
Undoubtedly there is need of regulation by the Government, in the
interest of the public, of these great corporations which in
modern life have shown themselves to be the most efficient business
implements, and which are, therefore, the implements commonly employed
by the owners of large fortunes. The corporation is the creature of the
State. It should always be held accountable to some sovereign, and this
accountability should be real and not sham. Therefore, in my judgment,
all corporations doing an interstate business, and this means the great
majority of the largest corporations, should be held accountable to the
Federal Government, because their accountability should be coextensive
with their field of action. But most certainly we should not strive to
prevent or limit corporate activity. We should strive to secure such
effective supervision over it, such power of regulation over it, as
to enable us to guarantee that its activity will be exercised only in
ways beneficial to the public. The unwisdom of any well-meaning but
misguided effort to check corporate activity has been shown in striking
fashion in recent years by our experience in the Philippines and in
Porto Rico. Our national legislators very properly determined that the
islands should not be exploited by adventurers without regard to the
interests of the people of the islands themselves. But unfortunately in
their zeal to prevent the islands from being improperly exploited they
took measures of such severity as to seriously, and in some respects
vitally, to hamper and retard the development of the islands. There is
nothing that the islands need more than to have their great natural
resources developed, and these resources can be developed only by
the abundant use of capital, which, of course, will not be put into
them unless on terms sufficiently advantageous to offer prospects of
good remuneration. We have made the terms not merely hard, but often
prohibitory, with the result that American capital goes into foreign
countries, like Mexico, and is there used with immense advantage to
the country in its development, while it can not go into our own
possessions or be used to develop the lands under our own flag. The
chief sufferers by this state of things are the people of the islands
themselves.
It is impossible too strongly to insist upon what ought to be the
patent fact, that it is not only in the interest of the people of
wealth themselves, but in our interest, in the interest of the public
as a whole, that they should be treated fairly and justly; that if they
show exceptional business ability they should be given exceptional
reward for that ability. The tissues of our industrial fabric are
interwoven in such complex fashion that what strengthens or weakens
part also strengthens or weakens the whole. If we penalize industry
we will ourselves in the end have to pay a considerable part of the
penalty. If we make conditions such that the men of exceptional ability
are able to secure marked benefits by the exercise of that ability,
then we shall ourselves benefit somewhat. It is our interest no less
than our duty to treat them fairly. On the other hand, it is no less
their interest to treat us fairly—by “us” I mean the great body of
the people, the men of moderate or small fortunes, the farmers, the
wage-workers, the smaller business men and professional men. The man
of great means who achieves fortune by crooked methods does wrong to
the whole body politic. But he not merely does wrong to, he becomes a
source of imminent danger to, other men of great means; for his ill-won
success tends to arouse a feeling of resentment, which if it becomes
inflamed fails to differentiate between the men of wealth who have done
decently and the men of wealth who have not done decently.
The conscience of our people has been deeply shocked by the revelations
made of recent years as to the way in which some of the great fortunes
have been obtained and used, and there is, I think, in the minds of the
people at large a strong feeling that a serious effort must be made
to put a stop to the cynical dishonesty and contempt for right which
have thus been revealed. I believe that something, and I hope that a
good deal, can be done by law to remedy the state of things complained
of. But when all that can be has thus been done, there will yet remain
much which the law can not touch, and which must be reached by the
force of public opinion. There are men who do not divide actions merely
into those that are honest and those that are not, but create a third
subdivision—that of law honesty; of that kind of honesty which consists
in keeping clear of the penitentiary. It is hard to reach astute men
of this type save by making them feel the weight of an honest public
indignation. But this indignation, if it is to be effective, must be
intelligent. It is, of course, to the great advantage of dishonest
men of wealth if they are denounced, not for being dishonest, but for
being wealthy, and if they are denounced in terms so overstrained and
hysterical as to invite a reaction in their favor. We can not afford in
this country to draw the distinction as between rich man and poor man.
The distinction upon which we must insist is the vital, deep-lying,
unchangeable distinction between the honest man and the dishonest
man, between the man who acts decently and fairly by his neighbor and
with a quick sense of his obligations, and the man who acknowledges
no internal law save that of his own will and appetite. Above all we
should treat with a peculiarly contemptuous abhorrence the man who in
a spirit of sheer cynicism debauches either our business life or our
political life. There are men who use the phrase “practical politics”
as merely a euphemism for dirty politics, and it is such men who have
brought the word “politician” into discredit. There are other men
who use the noxious phrase “business is business” as an excuse and
justification for every kind of mean and crooked work; and these men
make honest Americans hang their heads because of some of the things
they do. It is the duty of every honest patriot to rebuke in emphatic
fashion alike the politician who does not understand that the only kind
of “practical politics” which a nation can with safety tolerate is
that kind which we know as clean politics, and that we are as severe
in our condemnation of the business trickery which succeeds as of the
business trickery which fails. The scoundrel who fails can never by
any possibility be as dangerous to the community as the scoundrel who
succeeds; and of all the men in the country, the worst citizens, those
who should excite in our minds the most contemptuous abhorrence, are
the men who have achieved great wealth, or any other form of success,
in any save a clean and straightforward manner.
So much for the general subject of industrialism. Now, just a word
in reference to one of the great staples of this country, which is
peculiarly a staple of the Southern States. Of course I mean cotton. I
am glad to see diversifications of industry in the South, the growth
of manufactures as well as the growth of agriculture, and the growing
growth of diversification of crops in agriculture. Nevertheless, it
will always be true that in certain of the Southern States cotton will
be the basis of the wealth, the mainstay of prosperity in the future
as in the past. The cotton crop is of enormous consequence to the
entire country. It was the cotton crop of the South that brought four
hundred million dollars of foreign gold into the United States last
year, turning the balance of trade in our favor. The soil and climate
of the South are such that she enjoys a practical monopoly in the
production of raw cotton. No other clothing material can be accepted
as a substitute for cotton. I welcome the action of the planters in
forming a cotton association, and every assistance shall be given them
that can be given them by the National Government. Moreover, we must
not forget that the work of the manufacturer in the South supplements
the work of the planter. It is an advantage to manufacture the raw
material here and sell to the world the finished goods. Under proper
methods of distribution it may well be doubted whether there can be
such a thing as overproduction of cotton. Last year’s crop was nearly
fourteen million bales, and yet the price was sufficiently high to give
a handsome profit to the planter. The consumption of cotton increases
each year, and new uses are found for it.
This leads me to a matter of our foreign relations which directly
concerns the cotton planter. At present our market for cotton is
largely in China. The boycott of our goods in China during the past
year was especially injurious to the cotton manufacturers. This
Government is doing, and will continue to do, all it can to put a stop
to the boycott. But there is one measure to be taken toward this end
in which I shall need the assistance of the Congress. We must insist
firmly on our rights; and China must beware of persisting in a course
of conduct to which we can not honorably submit. But we in our turn
must recognize our duties exactly as we insist upon our rights. We can
not go into the international court of equity unless we go in with
clean hands. We can not expect China to do us justice unless we do
China justice. The chief cause in bringing about the boycott of our
goods in China was undoubtedly our attitude toward the Chinese who come
to this country. This attitude of ours does not justify the action of
the Chinese in the boycott, and especially some of the forms which that
action has taken. But the fact remains that in the past we have come
short of our duty toward the people of China. It is our clear duty,
in the interest of our own wage-workers, to forbid all Chinese of the
coolie class—that is, laborers, skilled or unskilled—from coming here.
The greatest of all duties is national self-preservation, and the
most important step in national self-preservation is to preserve in
every way the well-being of the wage-worker. I am convinced that the
well-being of our wage-workers demands the exclusion of the Chinese
coolies, and it is therefore our duty to exclude them, just as it would
be the duty of China to exclude American laboring men if they became
in any way a menace to China by entering into her country. The right
is reciprocal, and in our last treaty with China it was explicitly
recognized as inhering in both nations. But we should not only operate
the law with as little harshness as possible, but we should show every
courtesy and consideration and every encouragement to all Chinese who
are not of the laboring class to come to this country. Every Chinese
traveler or student, business man or professional man, should be given
the same right of entry to, and the same courteous treatment in, this
country as are accorded to the student or traveler, the business man
or professional man, of any other nation. Our laws and treaties should
be so framed as to guarantee to all Chinamen, save of the excepted
coolie class, the same right of entry to this country and the same
treatment while here as is guaranteed to citizens of any other nation.
By executive action I am as rapidly as possible putting a stop to the
abuses which have grown up during many years in the administration
of this law. I can do a good deal, and will do a good deal, even
without the action of the Congress; but I can not do all that should
be done unless such action is taken, and that action I most earnestly
hope will be taken. It is needed in our own interest, and especially
in the interest of the Pacific Slope and of the South Atlantic and
Gulf States; for it is short-sighted indeed for us to permit foreign
competitors to drive us from the great markets of China. Moreover, the
action I ask is demanded by considerations that are higher than mere
interest, for I ask it in the name of what is just and right. America
should take the lead in establishing international relations on the
same basis of honest and upright dealing which we regard as essential
as between man and man.