_Governor; Colonel Wiley; My Fellow-Citizens_:
My friends and fellow-citizens, think what a privilege ours is; think
what it means for this nation; that there is no place in this Union
where the President of the Union can feel more at home, can feel more
that he is indeed the President of all the Union, of a reunited and
indissoluble Union, than here under the shadow of the first capitol of
the Confederacy. Poor indeed would be the soul of the man who did not
leave Montgomery a better American than he came into it, after being
received as I have been received to-day.
In speaking to all of you I know that the younger—those of my own age
and younger still—will not grudge my saying a special word of greeting
to the veterans of the great war. Here again think how fortunate we
are. There is no other people of which history tells, which, having
passed through such a war as we passed through, after forty years finds
not only that the flag which had been rent in sunder is once again
whole without a seam; finds all the people challenging as theirs the
right to claim their part in the heritage of glory bequeathed to every
American, alike by the Americans who wore the blue and the Americans
who wore the gray in the great Civil War. In coming to your mighty
and beautiful State, with its wealth of agriculture, its wealth of
manufactures, I am more than ever impressed by the solidarity of our
interests as a people. As the Governor pointed out, the greatest and
most important single export of our people is the export of cotton; and
the whole nation is concerned in the welfare of the cotton growers.
It is not only important for Alabama and the rest of the Gulf States;
it is important for the entire Union, because it is the cotton crop
which determines the balance of trade as being in favor of this Nation.
The business of any part of this Nation is the business of the entire
Nation; and the National Government is bound to do everything it can
in the interest of the cotton growers; to preserve your markets; to do
everything that can possibly be done to see that the natural demand for
cotton abroad is kept up and is met here under fair conditions by our
own people. Perhaps no State in the Union is more interested than this
in the performance of what is to be the greatest engineering feat the
world has yet seen—the building of the Isthmian canal. The cotton crop
largely goes to Asia. The canal will of course immensely shorten the
water route to Asia. Our influence in the Orient must be kept at such
a pitch as will ensure our being able to guarantee fair treatment to
our merchants and manufacturers by China. We must insist upon having
fair treatment; and as a step toward getting it we must give fair
treatment in return. I would demand that on ethical grounds alone; I
would demand it also on grounds of self-interest.
Now I want to say a word about the children. Nothing pleases me more
than to see the care you are devoting to education in this State; and
among the many splendidly heroic deeds credited to the Southern people
in peace as well as in war is the fact of having to face, as they
did, the future in the midst of a broken and war-swept country, they
not only built up their industrial prosperity, but they have provided
steadily for the education of the coming generation.
The successful performance of political duty depends absolutely upon
the successful performance of domestic, of social, duty. There never
can be, there never will be a good government in which the average
citizen is not a decent man in private life. It is a contradiction in
terms to speak of a good government if the good government does not
rest upon cleanliness and decency in the home, respect of husband and
wife for one another, tenderness of the man for those dependent upon
him, performance of duty by woman and by man, and the proper education
of the children who are to make the next generation. The vital things
in life are the things that foolish people look upon as commonplace.
The vital deeds of life are those things which it lies within the
reach of each of us to do, and the failure to perform which means the
destruction of the State.