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The New Nationalism 
 
 By 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 Ernest Hamlin Abbott 
 
 t 
 
 New York 
 
 The Outlook Company 
 
 1910 
 
TV. 
 
 Copyright 1 910, by 
 
 The Outlook Company 
 
 New York 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Norwood Press 
 
 y. S. Cusbing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood^ Mass. J U.S.A. 
 
 ^CU27S549 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction by Ernest Hamlin Abbott .• . vii 
 
 Part I — The New Nationalism 
 
 The New Nationalism, (Osawatomie) 
 The Nation and the States. (Colorado Legis 
 lature) ...... 
 
 Conservation. (Denver) 
 
 Natural Resources. (St. Paul) 
 
 The Commission Principle. (Sioux Falls) . 
 
 Labor and Capital. (Fargo) . 
 
 World Feats. (Omaha) ... 
 
 Part II — The Old Moralities 
 
 The Crook. (Kansas City) . • 
 
 The Public Press. (Milv^^aukee) 
 The Good Citizen. (Pueblo) . 
 
 Part III — The Word and the Deed 
 
 Corruption. (Hamilton Club, Chicago) . . 205 
 
 Law, Order, and Justice. (Columbus) . .218 
 
 5 
 
 ' 34 
 
 • 49 
 
 . 77 
 
 . 106 
 
 . 125 
 
 . 144 
 
 . 161 
 
 . 177 
 
 . 197 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 Part IV — The New Nationalism and the Old 
 Moralities 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The New Nationalism and the Old Moralities. 
 
 (Syracuse) . . . . . .231 
 
 Criticism of the Courts. (Signed Editorial in The 
 
 Outlook) ...... 245 
 
 Historical Summary. (An Outlook Editorial by 
 
 Lyman Abbott) . , . . ,261 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Between the twenty-third of August and 
 the eleventh of September, this year, Mr. 
 Roosevelt made a journey of nearly five 
 thousand five hundred miles. In the course 
 of that journey he gave addresses in fourteen 
 States. The audiences which gathered at 
 the meetings which had been arranged in 
 advance numbered certainly a third of a 
 million. How many hundreds of thousands 
 more formed the throngs which greeted him 
 in the streets, at the railway stations, and in 
 numerous informal but none the less for- 
 midable assemblages I do not venture to 
 guess. I made no record of even the num- 
 ber of meetings; and I could not make a 
 reckoning of them without more labor than 
 the inaccurate result would warrant. The 
 fact is that all of us who made this journey 
 were so interested in the substance of what 
 was happening that no one kept any statisti- 
 cal account of its form. The extent of the 
 audiences Mr. Roosevelt really addressed 
 was, however, not even remotely suggested 
 
 vii 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 by the swaying, crowding thousands in the 
 midst of whom for nearly three weeks we 
 almost continually lived. The number of 
 those whom Mr. Roosevelt's words reached 
 was Hmited only by the circulation of the daily 
 press. All the important press associations 
 and several of the daily newspapers sent spe- 
 cial correspondents in a car to be attached to 
 every train on which Mr. Roosevelt traveled 
 from the beginning of the journey to the 
 end; others sent correspondents for part of 
 the way; and in every city or locality in 
 which he appeared the local newspapers ar- 
 ranged for a special report of his speeches 
 and the occurrences that accompanied them. 
 
 How did this journey of Mr. Roosevelt's 
 come about I What was the significance of 
 his addresses? What effect did this trip 
 have ? 
 
 If an unprejudiced, thoughtful American 
 who had left his country in 1895, and spent 
 fifteen years in a remote region away from 
 all news of the world, had returned in the 
 summer of 19 10, he would, within a few days 
 of his arrival, have been impressed with the 
 change that had taken place in public opinion, 
 and even in the public point of view. When 
 he left, public opinion was hard, rather 
 sordid, decidedly materialistic, very com- 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 placent. Political discussion centered about 
 factories, dividends, and dinner pails. Po- 
 litical appeals were made chiefly to private 
 selfish interests. Political action was judged 
 largely as it was supposed to affect wages or 
 profits. It is true, there was interest in civil 
 service reform, but it was confined to a rather 
 limited circle ; it is true, there were bodies of 
 men who expressed strong convictions regard- 
 ing the public rights in relation to railways 
 and big corporations, but they were regarded 
 with scorn as Populists. Even on the score 
 of material prosperity, the public vision was 
 narrowed to the prosperity of manufacturing 
 interests. The welfare of the farmer was 
 almost overlooked. The nearly sole excep- 
 tion was exhibited in the distribution of 
 public land to settlers, and this was con- 
 ducted with too great indifference as to 
 whether such land might fall into the hands 
 of men who were not settlers. There was, 
 it is true, an organization called the Farmers' 
 Alliance, but the country as a whole did not 
 regard it very seriously. As for the riches 
 of the public domain, no public opinion re- 
 garding them was really formed, because no 
 political organization made them its concern. 
 It is true, a few public men had been devot- 
 ing their time and thought to the protection 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 of this public property in the interest of the 
 whole people, as was shown in President 
 Harrison's proclamation creating the first Na- 
 tional Forest, but the service they performed 
 was little appreciated or even known. There 
 was a rudimentary interest in the navy, and 
 occasional spasmodic excitement over some 
 international question, but no widespread 
 sense of responsibility for the wise and 
 courageous conduct of foreign affairs or for 
 the performance of duties by the United 
 States as a world power. 
 
 Suppose this American had returned to 
 his country this year. He would find a 
 change in the attitude of the public on all 
 these matters. Although he would find 
 people discussing high prices and the cost 
 of living, he would miss the once familiar 
 arguments about the "full dinner pail," and 
 the former public interest in appeals for the 
 preservation of dividends. Instead he would 
 find the people aroused not only over every 
 charge that public office had been used for 
 personal reward, but even over questions, 
 such as direct nominations, which involve 
 the principle of making public officers re- 
 sponsible to the popular will; he would 
 find not only the matter of railway rates a 
 subject of common interest, but the whole 
 
INTRODUCTION, xi 
 
 problem of the control of public utilities a 
 subject of lively interest; he would find the 
 welfare of the manufacturers no longer the 
 accepted measure of the prosperity of 
 the country, but alongside of that he would 
 find as an object of public concern the 
 welfare of the farmer. Indeed, he would 
 note with surprise that the study of the prob- 
 lems of rural life is regarded as a legitimate 
 duty of a public official. He would be as- 
 tonished to learn that the whole country is 
 in debate over the proper methods of protect- 
 ing and conserving the wealth of the public 
 domain, and is ready to hear what might be 
 said as to the regulation of even privately 
 owned wealth in the interest of the pubHc. 
 He would hear with surprise that even the 
 tariff question, which was once merely a 
 question of compromise between rival in- 
 terests, has become a question of subordinat- 
 ing all private interests to the interest of the 
 pubHc. And with all this change in public 
 opinion regarding domestic problems, he 
 would find an equally fundamental change 
 in public opinion regarding foreign problems 
 — a new pride in military efficiency, a new 
 sense of international obligations, a new con- 
 ception of responsibility on the part of the 
 Nation toward other peoples and other races. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is time that this new view of national 
 interests and national duties had a name, 
 and the name which has been given it de- 
 scribes it exactly — it is the New NationaKsm. 
 
 It was not by chance that this name, 
 which in a few days became current through- 
 out the country, should have been chosen 
 by Mr. Roosevelt to describe his political 
 beliefs, because it is he more than any other 
 one man that has given this national con- 
 sciousness concrete expression. Utterance 
 had been given to this national conscious- 
 ness by other leaders of public opinion ; 
 and as a name for the body of political 
 views which this national consciousness had 
 been developing The Outlook had already 
 used the phrase, "The New Federalism." 
 Every great popular movement, however, is 
 a compound of public feeling and personal 
 leadership; and in this popular movement it 
 was Theodore Roosevelt who preeminently 
 supplied the element of personal leadership. 
 During the seven years of his presidency, he 
 was the figure whom the people recognized as 
 the embodiment of their new conceptions, and 
 he was equally recognized as such by those 
 who, for various reasons, sought to check 
 and thwart this movement. He himself has 
 explained his relation to the new public senti- 
 
INTRODUCTION xiil 
 
 ment. In his speech at Cheyenne, Wyoming 
 (which is not included in this volume), he 
 pointed out that the one predominant char- 
 acteristic of the frontiersman was his free- 
 dom from provincialism, — his feeling that 
 every part of the United States is of con- 
 cern to him, his desire to uphold the inter- 
 ests of all other Americans, his sense of 
 partnership with all his fellows in the work 
 of progress, his feehng of comradeship, which, 
 when applied nationally, becomes a determi- 
 nation to work for the common good. And 
 in a later speech — that at Sioux Falls, South 
 Dakota, which is to be found printed in this 
 volume — he explained that when, as Presi- 
 dent, he acted in accord with this popular 
 feeling, it was not because he used any 
 means to divine the popular feehng, but 
 because, as a result of his experience as a 
 ranchman on the frontier, he had come to 
 think that way himself. 
 
 His presidency having come to an end, 
 Mr. Roosevelt spent over a year abroad — 
 in Africa and Europe. During his absence 
 the popular movement which he had fostered 
 continued to develop. At the same time the 
 opposition to that movement also grew in 
 intensity. He had, however, become so 
 much identified with the movement that he 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 could no more have withdrawn from it than 
 Lincoln could have withdrawn from the 
 cause of the Union. His duty to continue 
 to exercise his gifts and his prestige on behalf 
 of the nation was obvious. This duty he 
 himself recognized. On the day of his return, 
 indeed within a few minutes after he had once 
 more set foot on American soil, he addressed 
 to a small portion of the great throng gathered 
 to greet him the following words : — 
 
 I thank you, Mayor Gaynor. Through you, I thank 
 your committee, and through them I wish to thank the 
 American people for their greeting. I need hardly 
 say I am most deeply moved by the reception given me. 
 No man could receive such a greeting without being 
 made to feel both very proud and very humble. 
 
 I have been away a year and a quarter from America, 
 and I have seen strange and interesting things alike in the 
 heart of the frowning wilderness and in the capitals of the 
 mightiest and most highly polished of civilized nations. 
 
 I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am 
 more glad than I can say to get home, to be back in my 
 own country, back among people I love. And I am 
 ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am able, in 
 helping solve problems which must be solved if we, of 
 this the greatest democratic republic upon which the sun 
 has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level 
 of our hopes and its opportunities. 
 
 This is the duty of every citizen, but it is peculiarly my 
 duty; for any man who has ever been honored by being 
 made President of the United States is thereby forever 
 after rendered the debtor of the American people, and is 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 bound throughout his life to remember this as his prime 
 obligation, and, in private life as much as in public life, 
 so to carry himself that the American people may never 
 have cause to feel regret that once they placed him at their 
 head. 
 
 Observance of the duty he thus acknowl- 
 edged made it absolutely impossible for him 
 to shut himself off from public occasions. 
 Invitations to make addresses had reached 
 him as soon as he left the wilderness of 
 Africa, and before he had been in America 
 two months some two thousand such invita- 
 tions had been sent to him. Some principle 
 of selection had to be adopted in determining 
 which he should accept. One of the first 
 invitations to reach him was for the Frontier 
 Celebration at Cheyenne. Mr. Roosevelt's 
 admiration for the spirit and record of the 
 pioneers led him to accept this; and around 
 it others were naturally grouped, in such an 
 order that a practicable journey could be 
 arranged. His itinerary thus brought him 
 before a grange meeting at Summit Park 
 near Utica, New York; an assemblage of 
 two or three hundred prominent men at 
 breakfast in Buffalo; a gathering in a public 
 square in Council Bluffs, Iowa; a great 
 crowd at the celebration in Cheyenne; a 
 huge gathering in Denver, and, in the State 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 Capitol in the same city, the Legislature 
 of Colorado and their guests; an assemblage 
 \. at the laying of a cornerstone in Pueblo; 
 a great crowd at the dedication of the John 
 Brown battlefield at Osawatomie, Kansas; 
 a great audience at Kansas City, Missouri; 
 another such audience at Omaha; a throng 
 in a baseball park at Sioux City, Iowa; an- 
 other such throng in and about a large tent 
 '^ in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; two great 
 . audiences in Fargo, North Dakota — one of 
 which assembled at the laying of the corner- 
 stone of a library building at Fargo College, 
 the other of which overran a park at the 
 Labor Day celebration; the delegates to the 
 Conservation Congress and others who 
 V crowded the big auditorium at St. Paul, and 
 then the vast assemblage of ninety or a hun- 
 , dred thousand at the State Fair in the same 
 city; two big audiences at Milwaukee; an 
 outdoor gathering at a picnic at Freeport, 
 Illinois, in behalf of a home for disabled 
 railway men; the members of the Hamilton 
 Club at a banquet in Chicago; an audience 
 in the big music hall at Cincinnati, in con- 
 nection with an exposition ; a mass of people 
 in a public park in Columbus, Ohio; and, 
 finally, an outdoor crowd at night in Pitts- 
 burg, followed by a meeting of people 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 engaged in civic and philanthropic effort, 
 both meetings arranged under the exceed- 
 ingly competent management of the Pitts- 
 burg Civic Commission. In addition to 
 these audiences, he addressed, in compliance 
 with the numerous telegrams and letters that 
 came to him en route, crowds that gathered 
 at nearly every station where the train stopped 
 between an early hour in the morning and 
 a late hour at night. By these speeches, 
 ranging from those which occupied but a 
 minute or two to those which occupied an 
 hour and a half, he reasserted his belief in 
 the poHcies which had become famihar to 
 the American people as "the Roosevelt 
 poHcies," and the fundamental moral prin- 
 ciples on which he beHeved they rested. 
 
 In this volume only a portion of even the 
 more important speeches which Mr. Roose- 
 velt made in the course of this journey are 
 included. But, it is believed, those that do 
 appear fairly represent the political belief 
 to which he gave utterance. They are not 
 arranged chronologically. In the first part 
 is a group of speeches which in the main are 
 devoted to the poHcies of the New National- 
 ism ; in the second part is a group devoted to 
 the fundamental moral principles on which 
 these policies are based; in the third are 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 two speeches which supply interesting ex- 
 amples of the dramatic application of those 
 principles to particular exigencies; in the 
 fourth are a speech and a signed editorial from 
 The Outlook, both of which were prepared 
 by Mr. Roosevelt after the end of the 
 journey, but both of which expound with 
 more detail certain statements which appear 
 in condensed form in a speech in the West. 
 
 What the effect of these speeches will be 
 on the history of the country any one may 
 surmise, no one can know; but some of the 
 immediate effects upon public opinion, and 
 in particular upon the audiences who heard 
 them, were, to one who made this journey, 
 very obvious. 
 
 All of the speeches here printed were re- 
 ceived with remarkable demonstrations of 
 approval. They fulfilled the first requisite 
 of public address: they conveyed ideas 
 from the speaker to his hearers with no evi- 
 dence of substantial loss in the process of 
 transmission. In some cases the throng was 
 so vast that only a part could form literally 
 the audience; but those who heard made it 
 perfectly plain that they understood. In 
 that respect many a Western crowd proved 
 itself apparently more intelligent than some 
 metropolitan editors. The great mass of the 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 American people, it is evident from these 
 speeches, do not mistake Mr. Roosevelt's 
 meaning. 
 
 Those speeches which discuss the policies 
 of the New Nationalism had a double effect 
 of unification. They unified present political 
 issues, and they unified present political 
 forces. In one state, for example, the 
 paramount issue had been direct nomina- 
 tions; in another the tariff; in another 
 political corruption; in another the control 
 of public service corporations. Each of 
 these states saw its own issue, but little of 
 the others. Mr. Roosevelt's speeches made 
 the thoughtful people, and especially the 
 pubHc-spirited leaders, see that these were 
 all a part of the same general issue. As a 
 consequence these speeches united the forces, 
 for they enabled the leaders who were fight- 
 ing on behalf of the pubHc in one state to 
 see that they were really comrades of those 
 who were fighting on behalf of the public in 
 
 another. 
 
 Those speeches which discuss fundamental 
 ethical principles (those which I have placed 
 in the second group) had that moral effect 
 which always is evident when a mass of 
 people feel that they have a leader whom 
 they know they can follow. It is the effect 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 that some generals, some football captains, 
 some orchestral conductors have upon their 
 men. 
 
 Those speeches which dealt with special 
 exigencies (and I include in this the speech to 
 the Colorado Legislature as well as the two 
 speeches in Part Three), had the effect of 
 suddenly clearing the air. The political strug- 
 gle in Colorado has been of the most serious 
 character. Corruption and slander have been 
 common; and when Mr. Roosevelt, invited 
 to the very arena of the struggle, struck at 
 both, he wrung applause out of both factions. 
 In Illinois there was, at the time of his visit 
 to Chicago, a legislative scandal of great 
 extent, reaching up to high public officials. 
 When Mr. Roosevelt spoke there, he not only 
 refused to sit at dinner with the Senator 
 whose election created the scandal, but made 
 plain the ugliness of the evil about which 
 men had been timidly silent. In Columbus 
 Mr. Roosevelt spoke at the critical time of a 
 great strike, in which a dispute between a 
 street railway company and its men had 
 resulted in the intimidation of the public. 
 Again Mr. Roosevelt made his words weapons 
 with which to fight the evils that had cowed 
 public opinion. In each of these three cases, 
 the speech was an act which seems simple, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 but which no one else had had both the 
 courage and strength to perform. 
 
 There are some Americans who are skepti- 
 cal concerning democracy, some who regard 
 vested wrongs as entitled to the same security 
 that should be assured to vested rights, and 
 some who covet unearned privilege. Such 
 as these can, out of their own brains, con- 
 struct explanations of this Western Journey 
 that will suit themselves. For such this 
 introduction is entirely superfluous. There 
 are other Americans, however, who, though 
 not distrustful of democracy, though not 
 confused in their thinking about vested rights, 
 and though not selfishly prejudiced, have 
 so often seen the office-holder use his office 
 as personal property that they cannot think 
 any public man capable of an impulse really 
 to serve. Such as these, I hope, can see in 
 Mr. Roosevelt's journey an eminent example 
 of the sort of disinterested public service 
 which is rendered, often more obscurely 
 but as conscientiously, by many other pubHc 
 men. And in proportion as the great popu- 
 lar movement on behalf of the public 
 interest advances, such disinterested public 
 service will become more and more common. 
 
 E. H. A. 
 
 October 12, 1910. 
 
PART I 
 
 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 SPEECH AT OSAWATOMIE 
 31 August, 1910 
 
 We come here to-day to commemorate one 
 of the epoch-making events of the long 
 struggle for the rights of man — the long 
 struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our 
 country — this great repubhc — means noth- 
 ing unless it means the triumph of a real 
 democracy, the triumph of popular govern- 
 ment, and, in the long run, of an economic 
 system under v^hich each man shall be 
 guaranteed the opportunity to show the best 
 that there is in him. That is why the history 
 of America is now the central feature of the 
 history of the world; for the world has set 
 its face hopefully toward our democracy; 
 and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you 
 carries on your shoulders not only the burden 
 of doing well for the sake of your own country, 
 but the burden of doing well and of seeing 
 that this nation does well for the sake of 
 mankind. 
 
 There have been two great crises in our 
 country's history: first, when it was formed, 
 
 3 
 
4 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 and then, again, when it was perpetuated; 
 and, in the second of these great crises — in 
 the time of stress and strain which culminated 
 in the Civil War, on the outcome of which 
 depended the justification of what had been 
 done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, 
 you men who fought through the Civil War, 
 not only did you justify your generation, 
 not only did you render life worth living for 
 our generation, but you justified the wisdom 
 of Washington and Washington's colleagues. 
 If this republic had been founded by them 
 only to be split asunder into fragments when 
 the strain came, then the judgment of the 
 world would have been that Washington's 
 work was not worth doing. It was you who 
 crowned Washington's work, as you carried 
 to achievement the high purpose of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Now, with this second period of our his- 
 tory the name of John Brown will be forever 
 associated; and Kansas was the theater 
 upon which the first act of the second of our 
 great national life dramas was played. It 
 was the result of the struggle in Kansas 
 which determined that our country should 
 be in deed as well as in name devoted to both 
 union and freedom; that the great experi- 
 ment of democratic government on a national 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM s 
 
 scale should succeed and not fall. In name 
 we had the Declaration of Independence in 
 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the 
 words of the Declaration of Independence 
 until 1865; and words count for nothing 
 except in so far as they represent acts. This 
 is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it 
 should be truest of all in political Hfe. A 
 broken promise is bad enough in private 
 life. It is worse in the field of politics. 
 No man is worth his salt in public life who 
 makes on the stump a pledge which he does 
 not keep after election; and, if he makes such 
 a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out 
 of public life. I care for the great deeds of 
 the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward 
 in the present. I speak of the men of the 
 past partly that they may be honored by 
 our praise of them, but more that they may 
 serve as examples for the future. 
 
 It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevi- 
 table with all such struggles, it had also a 
 dark and terrible side. Very much was done 
 of good, and much also of evil; and, as was 
 inevitable in such a period of revolution, 
 often the same man did both good and evil. 
 For our great good fortune as a nation, we, 
 the people of the United States as a whole, 
 can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, 
 
6 ,THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 to remember it without bitterness, and to 
 fix our eyes with pride only on the good that 
 was accomplished. Even in ordinary times 
 there are very few of us who do not see the 
 problems of life as through a glass, darkly; 
 and when the glass is clouded by the murk 
 of furious popular passion, the vision of the 
 best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking 
 back, we are all of us now able to do justice 
 to the valor and the disinterestedness and the 
 love of the right, as to each it was given to 
 see the right, shown both by the men of the 
 North and the men of the South in that con- 
 test which was finally decided by the attitude 
 of the West. We can admire the heroic 
 valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown 
 ahke by the men who wore the blue and the 
 men who wore the gray; and our sadness 
 that such men should have had to fight one 
 another is tempered by the glad knowledge 
 that ever hereafter their descendants shall 
 be found fighting side by side, struggling in 
 peace as well as in war for the uplift of their 
 common country, all alike resolute to raise 
 to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness 
 the nation to which they all belong. As for 
 the veterans of the Grand Army of the Re- 
 public, they deserve honor and recognition 
 such as is paid to no other citizens of the 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 7 
 
 republic; for to them the republic owes 
 its all; for to them it owes its very existence. 
 It is because of what you and your comrades 
 did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, 
 each of us, head erect, and proud that we 
 belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling 
 contemptible commonwealths, but to the 
 mightiest nation upon which the sun shines. 
 
 I do not speak of this struggle of the 
 past merely from the historic standpoint. 
 Our interest is primarily in the application 
 to-day of the lessons taught by the contest 
 of half a century ago. It is of little use for 
 us to pay Hp loyalty to the mighty men of 
 the past unless we sincerely endeavor to 
 apply to the problems of the present pre- 
 cisely the qualities which in other crises 
 enabled the men of that day to meet those 
 crises. It is half melancholy and half amus- 
 ing to see the way in which well-meaning 
 people gather to do honor to the men who, 
 in company with John Brown, and under 
 the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and 
 solved the great problems of the nineteenth 
 century, while, at the same time, these same 
 good people nervously shrink from, or fran- 
 tically denounce, those who are trying to 
 meet the problems of the twentieth century 
 in the spirit which was accountable for the 
 
8 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 successful solution of the problems of Lin- 
 coln's time. 
 
 Of that generation of men to whom we 
 owe so much, the man to whom we owe 
 most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our 
 debt to him is because he forecast our 
 present struggle and saw the way out. He 
 said : — 
 
 I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve 
 not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating 
 mankind. 
 
 And 
 
 agam : — 
 
 Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital 
 is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if 
 labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capi- 
 tal, and deserves much the higher consideration. 
 
 If that remark was original with me, I 
 should be even more strongly denounced as 
 a communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. 
 It is Lincoln's. I am only quoting it; and 
 that is one side; that is the side the capitalist 
 should hear. Now, let the workingman hear 
 his side. 
 
 Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of 
 protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this 
 lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property 
 is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable ; is a 
 positive good in the world. 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 9 
 
 And then comes a thoroughly Lincolnlike 
 sentence : — 
 
 Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of 
 another, but let him work diligently and build one for 
 himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be 
 safe from violence when built. 
 
 It seems to me that, in these words, Lin- 
 coln took substantially the attitude that we 
 ought to take; he showed the proper sense 
 of proportion in his relative estimates of 
 capital and labor, of human rights and prop- 
 erty rights. Above all, in this speech, as in 
 many others, he taught a lesson in wise kind- 
 liness and charity; an indispensable lesson 
 to us of to-day. But this wise kindliness and 
 charity never weakened his arm or numbed 
 his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind 
 ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us 
 to-day. The issue is joined, and we must 
 fight or fail. 
 
 In every wise struggle for human better- 
 ment one of the main objects, and often the 
 only object, has been to achieve in large 
 measure equality of opportunity. In the 
 struggle for this great end, nations rise from 
 barbarism to civilization, and through it 
 people press forward from one stage of en- 
 lightenment to the next. One of the chief 
 
10 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 factors in progress is the destruction of special 
 privilege. The essence of any struggle for 
 healthy liberty has always been, and must 
 always be, to take from some one man or 
 class of men the right to enjoy power, or 
 wealth, or position, or immunity, which has 
 not been earned by service to his or their 
 fellows. That is what you fought for in the 
 Civil War, and that is what we strive for now. 
 At many stages in the advance of humanity, 
 this conflict between the men who possess 
 
 \^ more than they have earned and the men 
 who have earned more than they possess is 
 the central condition of progress. In our 
 day it appears as the struggle of free men to 
 gain and hold the right of self-government as 
 
 V against the special interests, who twist the 
 V methods of free government into machinery 
 for defeating the popular will. At every 
 stage, and under all circumstances, the 
 essence of the struggle is to equalize oppor- 
 tunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life 
 and citizenship of every individual the highest 
 possible value both to himself and to the 
 commonwealth. That is nothing new. All 
 I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the 
 Civil War. I ask that civil life be carried on 
 according to the spirit in which the army 
 was carried on. You never get perfect jus- 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM ii 
 
 tice, but the effort in handling the army was 
 to bring to the front the men who could do 
 the job. Nobody grudged promotion to 
 Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, 
 because they earned it. The only complaint 
 was when a man got promotion which he did 
 not earn. 
 
 Practical equality of opportunity for all 
 citizens, when we achieve it, will have two 
 great results. First, every man will have a 
 fair chance to make of himself all that in 
 him Hes; to reach the highest point to which 
 his capacities, unassisted by special privilege 
 of his own and unhampered by the special 
 privilege of others, can carry him, and to get 
 for himself and his family substantially what 
 he has earned. Second, equality of oppor- 
 tunity means that the commonwealth will . 
 get from every citizen the highest service of 
 which he is capable. No man who carries 
 the burden of the special privileges of an- 
 other can give to the commonwealth that 
 service to which it is fairly entitled. 
 
 I stand for the square deal. But when I 
 say that I am for the square deal, I mean not 
 merely that I stand for fair play under the 
 present rules of the game, but that I stand . 
 for having those rules changed so as to 
 work for a more substantial equality of 
 
12 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 opportunity and of reward for equally good 
 service. One word of warning, which, I 
 think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When 
 I say I want a square deal for the poor man, 
 I do not mean that I want a square deal for 
 the man who remains poor because he has 
 not got the energy to work for himself If a 
 man who has had a chance will not make 
 good, then he has got to quit. And you men 
 of the Grand Army, you want justice for the 
 brave man who fought, and punishment for 
 the coward who shirked his work. Is not 
 that so? 
 
 Now, this means that our government, 
 national and state, must be freed from the 
 sinister influence or control of special interests. 
 Exactly as the special interests of cotton and 
 slavery threatened our political integrity 
 before the Civil War, so now the great 
 special business interests too often control 
 and corrupt the men and methods of govern- 
 ment for their own profit. We must drive 
 the special interests out of politics. That is 
 one of our tasks to-day. Every special in- 
 terest is entitled to justice — full, fair, and 
 complete, — and, now, mind you, if there 
 were any attempt by mob violence to plunder 
 and work harm to the special interest, what- 
 ever it may be, that I most dislike, and the 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 13 
 
 wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for 
 whom I have the greatest contempt, I would 
 fight for him, and you would if you were 
 worth your salt. He should have justice. 
 For every special interest is entitled to justice, 
 but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, 
 to a voice on the bench, or to representation in 
 any public office. The Constitution guaran- 
 tees protection to property, and we must 
 make that promise good. But it does not 
 give the right of suffrage to any corporation. 
 
 The true friend of property, the true con- 
 servative, is he who insists that property 
 shall be the servant and not the master of 
 the commonwealth; who insists that the 
 creature of man's making shall be the serv- 
 ant and not the master of the man who 
 made it. The citizens of the United States 
 must effectively control the mighty com- 
 mercial forces which they have themselves 
 called into being. 
 
 There can be no effective control of cor- 
 porations while their political activity re- 
 mains. To put an end to it will be neither 
 a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. 
 
 We must have complete and effective 
 publicity of corporate affairs, so that the 
 people may know beyond peradventure 
 whether the corporations obey the law and 
 
14 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 whether their management entitles them to 
 the confidence of the public. It is necessary 
 that laws should be passed to prohibit the 
 use of corporate funds directly or indirectly 
 for political purposes; it is still more neces- 
 sary that such laws should be thoroughly 
 enforced. Corporate expenditures for po- 
 litical purposes, and especially such expen- 
 ditures by public service corporations, have 
 supplied one of the principal sources of cor- 
 ruption in our political affairs. 
 
 It has become entirely clear that we must 
 have government supervision of the capital- 
 ization, not only of public service corpora- 
 tions, including, particularly, railways, but 
 of all corporations doing an interstate busi- 
 ness. I do not wish to see the nation forced 
 into the ownership of the railways if it can 
 possibly be avoided, and the only alternative 
 is thoroughgoing and effective regulation, 
 which shall be based on a full knowledge of 
 all the facts, including a physical valuation 
 of property. This physical valuation is not 
 needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, 
 for fixing rates; but it is needed as the basis 
 of honest capitalization. 
 
 We have come to recognize that franchises 
 should never be granted except for a limited 
 time, and never without proper provision 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 15 
 
 for compensation to the public. It is my 
 personal belief that the same kind and degree 
 of control and supervision which should be 
 exercised over public service corporations 
 should be extended also to combinations 
 which control necessaries of life, such as 
 meat, oil, and coal, or which deal in them 
 on an important scale. I have no doubt 
 that the ordinary man who has control of them 
 is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he 
 would like to do well, but I want to have 
 enough supervision to help him realize that 
 desire to do well. 
 
 I beheve that the officers, and, especially, 
 the directors, of corporations should be held 
 personally responsible when any corporation 
 breaks the law. 
 
 Combinations in industry are the result 
 of an imperative economic law which cannot 
 be repealed by political legislation. The 
 effort at prohibiting all combination has 
 substantially failed. The way out lies, not 
 in attempting to prevent such combinations, 
 but in completely controlHng them in the 
 interest of the public welfare. For that 
 purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations 
 is an agency of first importance. Its powers, 
 and, therefore, its efficiency, as well as that 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 
 
i6 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 should be largely increased. We have a 
 right to expect from the Bureau of Corpora- 
 tions and from the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission a very high grade of public 
 service. We should be as sure of the proper 
 conduct of the interstate railways and the 
 proper management of interstate business as 
 we are now sure of the conduct and manage- 
 ment of the national banks, and we should 
 have as effective supervision in one case as 
 in the other. The Hepburn Act, and the 
 amendment to the Act in the shape in which 
 it finally passed Congress at the last session, 
 represent a long step in advance, and we 
 must go yet further. 
 
 There is a widespread belief among our 
 people that, under the methods of making 
 tariffs which have hitherto obtained, the 
 special interests are too influential. Prob- 
 ably this is true of both the big special inter- 
 \ \ ests and the little special interests. These 
 methods have put a premium on selfishness, 
 and, naturally, the selfish big interests have 
 gotten more than their smaller, though equally 
 selfish, brothers. The duty of Congress is 
 to provide a method by which the interest 
 of the whole people shall be all that receives 
 consideration. To this end there must be 
 an expert tariff commission, wholly removed 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 17 - 
 
 from the possibility of political pressure or 
 of improper business influence. Such a 
 commission can find the real difference 
 between cost of production, which is mainly 
 the difference of labor cost here and abroad. 
 As fast as its recommendations are made, I 
 believe in revising one schedule at a time. 
 A general revision of the tariff almost inevi- 
 tably leads to log-rolling and the subordina- 
 tion of the general public interest to local 
 and special interests. 
 
 The absence of effective state, and, espe- 
 cially, national, restraint upon unfair money 
 getting has tended to create a small class of . ^^ 
 enormously wealthy and economically pow- 
 erful men, whose chief object is to hold and 
 increase their power. The prime need is 
 to change the conditions which enable these 
 men to accumulate power which it is not for 
 the general welfare that they should hold or 
 exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which 
 represents his own power and sagacity, when "' 
 exercised with entire regard to the welfare 
 of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, 
 take the lesson from your own experience. 
 Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried 
 in the promotion of the great generals who 
 gained their promotion by leading the army 
 to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no 
 
IS THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably 
 obtained and well used. It is not even enough 
 that it should have been gained without 
 doing damage to the community. We should 
 permit it to be gained only so long as the 
 gaining represents benefit to the community. 
 This, I know, implies a policy of a far more 
 active governmental interference with social 
 and economic conditions in this country 
 than we have yet had, but I think we have 
 got to face the fact that such an increase in 
 governmental control is now necessary. 
 
 No man should receive a dollar unless that 
 dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar 
 received should represent a dollar's worth of 
 service rendered — not gambling in stocks, 
 ^' but service rendered. The really big for- 
 tune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact 
 of its size acquires qualities which differen- 
 tiate it in kind as well as in degree from what 
 is possessed by men of relatively small means. 
 Therefore, I believe in a graduated income 
 tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which 
 is far more easily collected and far more 
 effective — a graduated inheritance tax on 
 big fortunes, properly safeguarded against 
 evasion and increasing rapidly in amount 
 with the size of the estate. 
 The people of the United States suffer 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 19 
 
 from periodical financial panics to a degree 
 substantially unknown among the other 
 nations which approach us in financial 
 strength. There is no reason why we should 
 suffer what they escape. It is of profound 
 importance that our financial system should 
 be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly 
 and effectively revised as to make it certain 
 that hereafter our currency will no longer 
 fail at critical times to meet our needs. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to repeat 
 that I believe in an efficient army and a navy 
 large enough to secure for us abroad that 
 respect which is the surest guarantee of peace. 
 A word of special warning to my fellow citi- 
 zens who are as progressive as I hope I am. 
 I want them to keep up their interest in our 
 internal affairs; and I want them also con- 
 tinually to remember Uncle Sam's interests 
 abroad. Justice and fair dealing among 
 nations rest upon principles identical with 
 those which control justice and fair dealing 
 among the individuals of which nations are 
 composed, with the vital exception that each 
 nation must do its own part in international 
 police work. If you get into trouble here, 
 you can call for the poHce; but if Uncle Sam 
 gets into trouble, he has got to be his own 
 policeman, and I want to see him strong 
 
20 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations 
 of other peoples in connection with us. I 
 believe in national friendships and heartiest 
 good will to all nations; but national friend- 
 ships, like those between men, must be 
 founded on respect as well as on liking, on 
 forbearance as well as upon trust. I should 
 be heartily ashamed of any American who 
 did not try to make the American govern- 
 ment act as justly toward the other nations 
 in international relations as he himself would 
 act toward any individual in private rela- 
 tions. I should be heartily ashamed to see 
 us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang 
 my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong 
 from a stronger power. 
 
 Of conservation I shall speak more at 
 length elsewhere. Conservation means de- 
 velopment as much as it does protection. 
 I recognize the right and duty of this genera- 
 tion to develop and use the natural resources 
 of our land ; but I do not recognize the right 
 to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, 
 the generations that come after us. I ask 
 nothing of the nation except that it so behave 
 as each farmer here behaves with reference 
 to his own children. That farmer is a poor 
 creature who skins the land and leaves it 
 worthless to his children. The farmer is a 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 21 
 
 good farmer who, having enabled the land 
 to support himself and to provide for the 
 education of his children, leaves it to them a 
 little better than he found it himself. I be- 
 heve the same thing of a nation. 
 
 Moreover, I beHeve that the natural re- 
 sources must be used for the benefit of all 
 our people, and not monopoHzed for the bene- 
 fit of the few, and here again is another case 
 in which I am accused of taking a revolu- 
 tionary attitude. People forget now that one 
 hundred years ago there were public men 
 of good character who advocated the nation 
 selHng its public lands in great quantities, 
 so that the nation could get the most money 
 out of it, and giving it to the men who could 
 cultivate it for their own uses. We took the 
 proper democratic ground that the land 
 should be granted in small sections to the 
 men who were actually to till it and Hve on it. 
 Now, with the water power, with the forests, 
 with the mines, we are brought face to face 
 with the fact that there are many people 
 who will go with us in conserving the re- 
 sources only if they are to be allowed to 
 exploit them for their benefit. That is one of 
 the fundamental reasons why the special 
 interests should be driven out of poHtics. 
 Of all the questions which can come before 
 
22 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 this nation, short of the actual preservation 
 of its existence in a great war, there is none 
 which compares in importance with the great 
 central task of leaving this land even a 
 better land for our descendants than it is for 
 us, and training them into a better race to 
 inhabit the land and pass it on. Conserva- 
 tion is a great moral issue, for it involves the 
 patriotic duty of insuring the safety and con- 
 tinuance of the nation. Let me add that 
 the health and vitality of our people are at 
 least as well worth conserving as their for- 
 ests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this 
 great work the national government must bear 
 a most important part. 
 
 I have spoken elsewhere^ also of the great 
 task which lies before the farmers of the 
 country to get for themselves and their wives 
 and children not only the benefits of better 
 farming, but also those of better business 
 methods and better conditions of life on the 
 farm. The burden of this great task will 
 fall, as it should, mainly upon the great 
 organizations of the farmers themselves. 
 I am glad it will, for I believe they are all 
 well able to handle it. In particular, there 
 are strong reasons why the Departments 
 
 * In a speech at Utica, New York, not included in 
 this volume. — E. H. A. 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM aj 
 
 of Agriculture of the various states, the 
 United States Department of Agriculture, 
 and the agricultural colleges and experiment 
 stations should extend their work to cover 
 all phases of farm life, instead of limiting 
 themselves, as they have far too often limited 
 themselves in the past, solely to the question 
 of the production of crops. And now a 
 special word to the farmer. I want to see 
 him make the farm as fine a farm as it can 
 be made; and let him remember to see that 
 the improvement goes on indoors as well as 
 out; let him remember that the farmer's 
 wife should have her share of thought and 
 attention just as much as the farmer himself. 
 Nothing is more true than that excess of 
 every kind is followed by reaction; a fact 
 which should be pondered by reformer and 
 reactionary alike. We are face to face with 
 new conceptions of the relations of property 
 to human welfare, chiefly because certain 
 advocates of the rights of property as against 
 the rights of men have been pushing their 
 claims too far. The man who wrongly holds 
 that every human right is secondary to his 
 profit must now give way to the advocate 
 of human welfare, who rightly maintains that 
 every man holds his property subject to the 
 general right of the community to regulate 
 
\ 
 
 w 
 
 24 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 its use to whatever degree the public welfare 
 may require it. 
 
 But I think we may go still further. The 
 right to regulate the use of wealth in the 
 public interest is universally admitted. Let 
 us admit also the right to regulate the terms 
 and conditions of labor, which is the chief 
 element of wealth, directly in the interest 
 of the common good. The fundamental 
 thing to do for every man is to give him a 
 chance to reach a place in which he will 
 make the greatest possible contribution to 
 the public welfare. Understand what I say 
 there. Give him a chance, not push him up 
 if he will not be pushed. Help any man 
 who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor 
 job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy 
 man, try your best to see that he gets a chance 
 to show the worth that is in him. No man 
 can be a good citizen unless he has a wage 
 more than sufficient to cover the bare cost 
 of living, and hours of labor short enough 
 so that after his day's work is done he will 
 have time and energy to bear his share in 
 the management of the community, to help 
 in carrying the general load. We keep count- 
 less men from being good citizens by the con- 
 ditions of life with which we surround them. 
 We need comprehensive workmen's com- 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 25 
 
 pensation acts, both state and national laws 
 to regulate child labor and work for women, 
 and, especially, we need in our common 
 schools not merely education in book learn- 
 ing, but also practical training for daily 
 life and work. We need to enforce better 
 sanitary conditions for our workers and to 
 extend the use of safety appHances for 
 our workers in industry and commerce, 
 both within and between the states. Also, 
 friends, in the interest of the workingman 
 himself we need to set our faces like flint 
 against mob violence just as against corporate 
 greed; against violence and injustice and 
 lawlessness by wage workers just as much 
 as against lawless cunning and greed and 
 selfish arrogance of employers. If I could 
 ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, 
 my request would be that, whenever they go 
 in for reform, they remember the two sides, 
 and that they always exact justice from one 
 side as much as from the other. I have 
 small use for the public servant who can 
 always see and denounce the corruption of 
 the capitalist, but who cannot persuade 
 himself, especially before election, to say a 
 word about lawless mob violence. And I 
 have equally small use for the man, be he 
 a judge on the bench, or editor of a great 
 
26 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 paper, or wealthy and influential private 
 citizen, who can see clearly enough and de- 
 nounce the lawlessness of mob violence, but 
 whose eyes are closed so that he is blind 
 when the question is one of corruption in 
 business on a gigantic scale. Also remem- 
 ber what I said about excess in reformer 
 and reactionary alike. If the reactionary 
 man, who thinks of nothing but the rights 
 of property, could have his way, he would 
 V bring about a revolution; and one of my 
 chief fears in connection with progress comes 
 because I do not want to see our people, for 
 lack of proper leadership, compelled to fol- 
 low men whose intentions are excellent, but 
 whose eyes are a little too wild to make it 
 really safe to trust them. Here in Kansas 
 there is one paper which habitually denounces 
 me as the tool of Wall Street, and at the 
 same time frantically repudiates the state- 
 ment that I am a SociaHst on the ground 
 that that is an unwarranted slander of the 
 Socialists. ^| 
 
 National efficiency has many factors. It 
 is a necessary result of the principle of con- 
 servation widely applied. In the end it will 
 determine our failure or success as a na- 
 tion. National efficiency has to do, not only 
 with natural resources and with men, but it 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 27 
 
 is equally concerned with institutions. The 
 state must be made efficient for the work 
 which concerns only the people of the state; 
 and the nation for that which concerns all 
 the people. There must remain no neutral 
 ground to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, 
 and especially for lawbreakers of great 
 wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cun- 
 ning which will teach them how to avoid both 
 jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the 
 national legislature fails to do its duty in 
 providing a national remedy, so that the only 
 national activity is the purely negative activity 
 of the judiciary in forbidding the state to 
 exercise power in the premises. 
 
 I do not ask for overcentralization;. but 
 I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad 
 and far-reaching nationalism when we work 
 for what concerns our people as a whole. 
 We are all Americans. Our common inter- 
 ests are as broad as the continent. I speak 
 to you here in Kansas exactly as I would 
 speak in New York or Georgia, for the most 
 vital problems are those which affect us all 
 alike. The national government belongs to 
 the whole American people, and where the 
 whole American people are interested, that 
 interest can be guarded effectively only by 
 the national government. The betterment 
 
vv 
 
 28 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 which we seek must be accomplished, I be- 
 lieve, mainly through the national govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The American people are right in demand- 
 ing that New Nationalism, without which 
 we cannot hope to deal with new problems. 
 The New Nationalism puts the national 
 need before sectional or personal advantage. 
 It is impatient of the utter confusion that 
 results from local legislatures attempting 
 to treat national issues as local issues. It is 
 still more impatient of the impotence which 
 springs from overdivision of governmental 
 powers, the impotence which makes it possible 
 for local selfishness or for legal cunning, 
 hired by wealthy special interests, to bring 
 national activities to a deadlock. This New 
 Nationalism regards the executive power as 
 the steward of the public welfare. It de- 
 mands of the judiciary that it shall be in- 
 terested primarily in human welfare rather 
 than in property, just as it demands that the 
 representative body shall represent all the 
 people rather than any one class or section 
 of the people. 
 
 I believe in shaping the ends of govern- 
 ment to protect property as well as human 
 welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the 
 ends are the same; but whenever the alter- 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 29 
 
 native must be faced, I am for men and not 
 for property, as you were in the Civil War. I 
 am far from underestimating the importance 
 of dividends; but I rank dividends below 
 human character. Again, I do not have any 
 sympathy with the reformer who says he 
 does not care for dividends. Of course, 
 economic welfare is necessary, for a man 
 must pull his own weight and be able to 
 support his family. I know well that the 
 reformers must not bring upon the people 
 economic ruin, or the reforms themselves 
 will go down in the ruin. But we must be 
 ready to face temporary disaster, whether or 
 not brought on by those who will war against 
 us to the knife. Those who oppose all re- 
 form will do well to remember that ruin in 
 its worst form is inevitable if our national 
 life brings us nothing better than swollen 
 fortunes for the few and the triumph in both 
 politics and business of a sordid and selfish 
 materialism. 
 
 If our political institutions were perfect, 
 they would absolutely prevent the political 
 domination of money in any part of our 
 affairs. We need to make our political rep- 
 resentatives more quickly and sensitively 
 responsive to the people whose servants they 
 are. More direct action by the people in 
 
30 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 their own affairs under proper safeguards is 
 vitally necessary. The direct primary is a 
 step in this direction, if it is associated with 
 a corrupt practices act effective to prevent 
 the advantage of the man willing recklessly 
 and unscrupulously to spend money over his 
 more honest competitor. It is particularly im- 
 portant that all moneys received or expended 
 for campaign purposes should be pubHcly 
 accounted for, not only after election, but 
 before election as well. Political action 
 must be made simpler, easier, and freer from 
 confusion for every citizen. I believe that the 
 prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent 
 public servants should be made easy and sure 
 in whatever way experience shall show to be 
 most expedient in any given class of cases. 
 
 One of the fundamental necessities in a 
 representative government such as ours is to 
 ^ make certain that the men to whom the 
 
 XiV people delegate their power shall serve the 
 people by whom they are elected, and not 
 the special interests. I believe that every 
 national officer, elected or appointed, should 
 be forbidden to perform any service or re- 
 ceive any compensation, directly or indirectly, 
 from interstate corporations; and a similar 
 provision could not fail to be useful within 
 the states. 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 31 
 
 The object of government is the welfare 
 of the people. The material progress and 
 prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly 
 so far as they lead to the moral and material 
 welfare of all good citizens. Just in propor- 
 tion as the average man and woman are 
 honest, capable of sound judgment and high 
 ideals, active in public affairs, — but, first of 
 all, sound in their home life, and the father 
 and mother of healthy children whom they 
 bring up well, — just so far, and no farther, 
 we may count our civilization a success. We 
 must have — I believe we have already — a 
 genuine and permanent moral awakening, 
 without which no wisdom of legislation or 
 administration really means anything; and, 
 on the other hand, we must try to secure the 
 social and economic legislation without which 
 any improvement due to purely moral agita- 
 tion is necessarily evanescent. Let me again 
 illustrate by a reference to the Grand Army. 
 You could not have won simply as a dis- 
 orderly and disorganized mob. You needed 
 generals; you needed careful administration 
 of the most advanced type; and a good 
 commissary — the cracker line. You well 
 remember that success was necessary in many 
 different lines in order to bring about general 
 success. You had to have the administration 
 
32 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 at Washington good, just as you had to have 
 the administration in the field; and you had 
 to have the work of the generals good. You 
 could not have triumphed without that ad- 
 ministration and leadership; but it would all 
 have been worthless if the average soldier had 
 not had the right stuff in him. He had to 
 have the right stuff in him, or you could not 
 get it out of him. In the last analysis, there- 
 fore, vitally necessary though it was to have 
 the right kind of organization and the right 
 kind of generalship, it was even more vitally 
 necessary that the average soldier should 
 have the fighting edge, the right character. 
 So it is in our civil life. No matter how 
 honest and decent we are in our private 
 lives, if we do not have the right kind of 
 law and the right kind of administration of 
 the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. 
 That is imperative; but it must be an addi- 
 tion to, and not a substitution for, the quali- 
 ties that make us good citizens. In the last 
 analysis, the most important elements in any 
 man's career must be the sum of those 
 qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak 
 of as character. If he has not got it, then 
 no law that the wit of man can devise, no 
 administration of the law by the boldest and 
 strongest executive, will avail to help him. 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM 33 
 
 We must have the right kind of character — 
 character that makes a man, first of all, a 
 good man in the home, a good father, a good 
 husband — that makes a man a good neigh- 
 bor. You must have that, and, then, in ad- 
 dition, you must have the kind of law and 
 the kind of administration of the law which 
 will give to those qualities in the private 
 citizen the best possible chance for develop- 
 ment. The prime problem of our nation is 
 to get the right type of good citizenship, and, 
 to get it, we must have progress, and our pub- 
 lic men must be genuinely progressive. 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 SPEECH BEFORE THE COLORADO LEGIS- 
 LATURE 
 
 29 August, 1910 
 
 I WAS very much pleased by your invita- 
 tion to me to address you to-day. It is 
 nearly twenty-nine years ago that I began 
 my service in politics as a member of the 
 Lower House of the New York State Legis- 
 lature. I always felt that I graduated from 
 Harvard, went into the New York Legisla- 
 ture, and began my education. I realize 
 the great importance of the work of a state 
 legislator, the difficulties under which he 
 does that work, the temptations to which he 
 is exposed; and I sympathize with the men 
 who, having worked well, have the bitter 
 knowledge that their good work has not 
 been appreciated. If Colorado is at all like 
 New York, there are occasional men who do 
 not work well at all, and the extent of whose 
 shortcomings should be practically appre- 
 ciated more than it is. Since then, I have 
 served in many different positions, including 
 Governor and the position of Deputy Sheriff 
 in the cow country under an employee of 
 
 34 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 35 
 
 mine who was Sheriff; and, looking back, I 
 can say with sincerity that I do not know any 
 place where it is more necessary to have 
 good work done, or where, together with bad 
 work, there is more disinterested honest 
 work done, than in the state legislatures of 
 our country. Three or four gentlemen to- 
 day have expressed the hope that I would 
 speak to you about some of your own troubles. 
 To relieve the obvious nervousness of the 
 Assembly, I shall say that I am not going 
 to do it, one reason being that, though each 
 of those who addressed me felt very strongly 
 that I should speak to you, each radically 
 differed from all the others as to what I 
 should say. There are troubles and failings 
 connected with all legislative bodies about 
 which I could speak; and of some of these 
 I should speak to you now if I were not to 
 make a speech this evening where I shall 
 take them up at length. 
 
 I want now, as a man recently connected 
 with the national government, to call atten- 
 tion to the great need that there shall be 
 more coherent work in the future than in the 
 past between the state and the national 
 governments. The legislative and execu- 
 tive officers of our country, national and 
 state, but, above all, the judicial officers. 
 
36 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 are to blame for the fact that there has grown 
 up a neutral land — a borderland — in the 
 spheres of action of the national and the 
 state governments — a borderland over which 
 each government tends to claim that it 
 has the power, and as to which the action 
 of the courts unfortunately has usually been 
 such as to deny to both the power. Now, 
 we have what I think is, on the whole, and 
 with all its shortcomings and imperfections, 
 the most satisfactory form of government 
 that has yet been devised by men. I am 
 accustomed to speak as a historian. There 
 are plenty of defects in our system of govern- 
 ment that I could point out; but, compared 
 with the systems of government of other 
 countries, good though some of them are, 
 ours, I think, is the most satisfactory. One 
 of the most valuable features is the largely 
 realized effort to have the affairs that con- 
 cern all of us throughout the land treated 
 by the central or national legislature, while 
 the affairs which concern us only in each 
 of our several localities are treated by our 
 state legislatures. That is the wisest pos- 
 sible method so long as no areas are left 
 uncovered by them; so long as there are no 
 spaces that are not filled in by government 
 control. 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 37 
 
 Unfortunately, the course of governmental 
 construction by the courts, as also the 
 course of governmental action by legislator 
 and executive, has not kept pace in this 
 nation during the last forty years with the 
 extraordinarily complex industrial develop- 
 ment. We have changed from what was pre- 
 dominantly an agricultural people, where all 
 were on planes of livelihood not far apart, 
 and where business was simple, into a com- 
 plex industrial community with a great devel- 
 opment of corporations, and with conditions 
 such that by steam and electricity the busi- 
 ness of the nation has become completely 
 nationaUzed. In consequence, the needs 
 have wholly changed. There was no need 
 in the old days, of the law taking special 
 care of the rights of the farm laborer; for 
 he could take care of himself, and, if he was 
 not treated right, he could move on and take 
 up a farm himself. If he did not succeed on 
 a farm, he could go to a city, or he could 
 go West. But at present the relations of 
 employer and employee are wholly different 
 from what they were before. We now have 
 to protect the employee to a degree unnec- 
 essary half a century ago. We now have to 
 recognize the desirability of the right of col- 
 lective bargaining on the part of the employ- 
 
38 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 ees face to face with the great corporation, as 
 was not necessary when the employer was one 
 man or a partnership of two or three men 
 employing half a dozen or half a score of 
 men. So a hundred years ago, when the sail- 
 boat and the canal boat and the wagon and 
 the pack train represented the only means of 
 communication, the states could each take 
 care of the business within the state. Now, 
 as we have had to recognize in laws for the 
 control of railroad business and of other inter- 
 state business, the national government is 
 obliged to act. 
 
 It happens, probably inevitably, that the 
 courts occupy a position of importance in our 
 government such as they occupy in.no other 
 government, because, instead of dealing only 
 with the rights of one man face to face with 
 his fellow men, as is the case with other gov- 
 ernments, they here pass upon the fundamental 
 governmental rights of the whole people as 
 exercised through their legislative and execu- 
 tive officers. Unfortunately, the courts, in- 
 stead of leading in the recognition of the new 
 conditions, have lagged behind ; and, as each 
 case has presented itself, have tended by a 
 series of negative decisions to create a sphere 
 in which neither nation nor state has effective 
 control; and where the great business inter- 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 39 
 
 ests that can call to their aid the ability of 
 the greatest corporation lawyers escape all 
 control whatsoever. Let me illustrate what 
 I mean by a reference to two concrete cases. 
 Remember that I beHeve in state's rights 
 wherever state's rights mean the people's 
 rights. On the other hand, I beHeve in 
 national rights wherever national rights mean 
 the people's rights; and, above all, I beHeve 
 that in every part of our complicated social 
 fabric there must be either national or state 
 control, and that it is ruinous to permit gov- 
 ernmental action, and especially judicial ac- 
 tion, which prevents the exercise of such con- 
 trol. I am for a fact, not a formula; I am 
 for the rights of the people first and foremost, 
 and for the " rights " of the nation or state, 
 in any given series of cases, just in propor- 
 tion as insistence upon them helps in securing 
 popular rights. 
 
 The first case to which I shall refer is the 
 Knight Sugar Trust case. In that case the 
 Supreme Court of the United States handed 
 down a decision which rendered it exceedingly 
 difficult for the people to devise any method 
 of controlHng and regulating the business use 
 of great capital in interstate commerce. It 
 was a decision nominally against national 
 rights, but really against popular rights — 
 
40 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 against the democratic principle of govern- 
 ment by the people. 
 
 The second case is the so-called New York 
 Bakeshop case. In New York City, as in 
 most large cities, the baking business is 
 likely to be carried on under unhygienic 
 conditions — conditions which tell against 
 the welfare of the general public. The 
 New York Legislature passed, and the New 
 York Governor signed, a bill remedying 
 these unhealthy conditions. New York State 
 was the only body which could deal with 
 them; the nation had no power whatever 
 in the matter. Acting on evidence which to 
 them seemed ample and sufficient, acting in 
 the interest of the public and in accordance 
 with the demand of the public, the only 
 governmental authority having affirmative 
 power in the matter, the Governor and the 
 Legislature of the State of New York, took 
 the action which they deemed necessary, 
 after what inquiry and study was needed 
 to satisfy them as to the conditions and as to 
 the remedy. The Governor and the Legis- 
 lature alone had the affirmative power to 
 remedy the abuse. But the Supreme Court 
 of the United States possessed — and, un- 
 fortunately, exercised — the negative power 
 of not permitting the abuse to be remedied. 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 41 
 
 By a five to four vote they declared the action 
 of the State of New York unconstitutional, 
 because, forsooth, men must not be deprived 
 of their "liberty" to work under unhealthy 
 conditions. 
 
 All who are acquainted with the effort to 
 remedy industrial abuses know the type of 
 mind (it may be perfectly honest but is abso- 
 lutely fossilized) which declines to ' allow 
 us to work for the betterment of conditions 
 among the wage earners on the ground that 
 we must not interfere with the "liberty" of 
 a girl to work under conditions which jeop- 
 ardize life and limb, or the "liberty" of a 
 man to work under conditions which ruin 
 his health after a limited number of years. 
 
 Such was the decision. The court was, 
 of course, absolutely powerless to make the 
 remotest attempt to provide a remedy for 
 the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and 
 its refusal to permit action by the state 
 did not confer any power upon the nation 
 to act. The decision was nominally against 
 state's rights, really against popular rights. 
 
 Such decisions, arbitrarily and irresponsi- 
 bly limiting the power of the people, are of 
 course fundamentally hostile to every species 
 of real popular government. Representa- 
 tives of the People of Colorado, here assem- 
 
42 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 bled in your legislative capacity, we as a 
 nation should see to it that the people, through 
 their several legislatures, national and state, 
 have complete power of control in all matters 
 that affect the public interest. There should 
 be no means by which any man or set of men 
 could escape the exercise of that control. 
 
 We should get the power; that is the first 
 requisite. Now, then, the second is to see 
 that the power be exercised with justice and 
 moderation. The worst enemy of wise con- 
 servatism that I know is the type of conser- 
 vative who tries to prevent wrongs from being 
 remedied because the wrongs have existed 
 for a long time; and, on the other hand, the 
 worst enemy of true progress is the dema- 
 gogue, or the visionary, who, in the name 
 of progress, leads the people to make blunders 
 such that in the resulting reaction they tend 
 to distrust all progress. Distrust the dema- 
 gogue and the mere visionary just as you 
 distrust that hidebound conservative who 
 too often, though an honest man himself, 
 proves to be one of the most efficient friends 
 of corruption. Remember that if you fall 
 into the Scylla of demagogism, on the one 
 hand, it will not help you that you have 
 avoided the Charybdis of corruption and 
 conservatism on the other. If you are in 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 43 
 
 one gulf, it is perfectly true that you are not 
 in the other. But you are in one. 
 
 Be progressive. A great democracy has 
 got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to 
 be either great or a democracy; but rem.em- 
 ber, no matter what your enthusiasm, that 
 if you make rapid progress in the wrong direc- 
 tion you will merely have to undo it before 
 you get to the right path again. As I have 
 said before, each one of our localities has its 
 own special problems to work out; and as 
 to those special problems, an outsider is not 
 competent to speak; but there are certain 
 things to which all of us in every state should 
 pay heed, we in New York and you in Col- 
 orado, the people of every state and the 
 people of the national capital. 
 
 If I were asked to name the three influ- 
 ences which I thought were most dangerous 
 to the perpetuity of American institutions, 
 I should name corruption in business and 
 politics aHke, lawless violence, and mendac- 
 ity, especially when used in connection with 
 slander. 
 
 Corruption : You cannot afford to tolerate 
 in your ranks the corrupt man, and the first 
 duty of a constituency should be to see that 
 its representative is not merely honest in the 
 sense that he cannot be legally shown to be 
 
44 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 dishonest, but that he is a dead straight man 
 whom no one can think of as crooked. I 
 do not want it to be praise to a man that he 
 is honest; I want it to be an impossible sup- 
 position for a representative to be thought 
 of as anything else; but you cannot get that 
 honesty unless you insist upon it among 
 yourselves in your own relations of life. If 
 you train up your children to hear a shady 
 scoundrel spoken of with a certain half ad- 
 miration as, **Well, he is smart''; if you let 
 your children hear a man's crookedness 
 excused on the ground that he is clever, that 
 he is a cheat, but that he cheats mighty well, 
 you have yourselves to blame if your legis- 
 latures betray you. More than that, distrust 
 anything in the nature of class privilege; 
 distrust the labor leader who will inveigh 
 against corruption only when it is shown 
 by the rich man; and distrust equally the 
 rich man who will subscribe heavily to put 
 down lawbreaking among small politicians, 
 and who is shocked at corruption among 
 labor leaders, but who leaves you instantly 
 as soon as you try to bring the big corpora- 
 tion to book. If you elect a man because 
 you think he will be honest towards your 
 class, — capitalists, farmers, laborers, — and 
 if you are indifferent as to whether he is 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 45 
 
 honest towards other people, you can make 
 up your minds absolutely that he will betray 
 you if he gets the chance. You cannot afford 
 not to have a man honest all the way through, 
 because if he is not, you do not know quite 
 where the breaking down will come. 
 
 Lawless violence: Here again remember 
 that in time of mob violence all reform has 
 to wait until order is restored. As a people 
 it is gravely to our discredit that there should 
 be so much unpunished murder, so many 
 deeds of lawlessness and mob violence. Let 
 the friend of the people who is severe upon 
 the corruption of wealth make up his mind 
 that he is a mighty poor public servant if he 
 does not set his face against disorder when 
 it takes the form of violence, just as much 
 as against corruption. The man who can 
 only see evil in the corruption of the rich, 
 and the man who can only see evil in the 
 lawless violence of the poor, stand on the same 
 plane of bad citizenship. Keep order. War 
 both against corruption and against lawless 
 violence. That is what you and public 
 officials need to keep in mind. 
 
 Now as to critics. I don't like the thief, 
 but I like the liar just as little. The very 
 fact that we need to have corruption in every 
 phase unflinchingly exposed, the very fact 
 
46 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 that we need to have every man shown up 
 who has acted improperly, because it is not 
 merely a disgrace but a vital injury to us to 
 permit corruption in public life or corruption 
 in business life, that very fact emphasizes 
 the wrong done by the man who without 
 warrant accuses another of corruption. He 
 has committed one of the cardinal sins against 
 the body politic. It is not merely an injury 
 to the man accused, it is an injury of the 
 deepest type to the body politic, because 
 after awhile, when accusations are contin- 
 ually and sweepingly made against all men, 
 good and bad, the public as a whole grow 
 to believe in each accusation a little and in 
 no accusation entirely, so that they grow to 
 believe that there is a little something bad 
 about the decent man and that there is not 
 much bad about the crook. No greater harm 
 can be done to the body politic than by those 
 men who, through reckless and indiscriminate 
 accusation of good men and bad men, honest 
 men and dishonest men alike, finally so hope- 
 lessly puzzle the public that they do not be- 
 lieve that any man in public life is entirely 
 straight ; while, on the other hand, they lose all 
 indignation against the man who really is 
 crooked. Greatly though I scorn and despise 
 the corrupt public servant, greatly though I 
 
THE NATION AND THE STATES 47 
 
 wish to see him punished with the utmost 
 seventy of the law, my scorn and contempt for 
 him are no greater than for the man who by 
 mendacity and through slander attacks the 
 character of honest men just as he attacks 
 the character of dishonest men, and thereby 
 does his best, be that best great or small, 
 to tear down the pillar of the temple and bury 
 us all under the ruins. I speak of the man 
 who writes in the daily press. {Loud ap- 
 plause.) I trust that it is not because this 
 is a legislative assembly that you have 
 applauded this more than what I said about 
 public officials ! .Now, I will go with you to 
 the last point in condemning the man who 
 in the public press writes an untruth, if you 
 will go with me to the last point in condemn- 
 ing equally actively the legislator who acts 
 corruptly. Now, I will resume my sentence 
 where I left off. I speak of the man who 
 writes in the public press. I speak of the 
 man who writes in the magazines. I speak 
 of the politician on the stump. {A pause — 
 silence.) Applaud ! (Loud applause.) I 
 knew I would get it when I pointed out the 
 need of it ! Judge men not by the class to 
 which they belong, but by their conduct as 
 individuals. The only man who I think is a 
 little more useful than the wise and honest 
 
48 THE NATION AND THE STATES 
 
 public official is the wise and honest man in 
 the press, and the only man who I think is a 
 little more noxious than the dishonest public 
 official is the untruthful man in the public 
 press. I will make myself perfectly clear. I 
 ask you to stand by the official who is honest; 
 I ask you to stand by the newspaper man and 
 magazine writer who truthfully exposes cor- 
 ruption; and I ask you to stand against the 
 official scoundrel who is dishonest and his 
 equally base brother in the press who falsely 
 accuses an honest man of dishonesty. 
 
 I thank you for the patience with which 
 you have listened to me, and I am very glad 
 I finally got all the applause I wanted at the 
 points I wanted it. 
 
CONSERVATION 
 
 SPEECH AT DENVER BEFORE THE COLORADO 
 LIVE STOCK ASSOCIATION 
 
 29 August, 1 9 10 
 
 I WAS profoundly touched by the invita- 
 tion to address you to-day. I have been pro- 
 foundly touched by the reception in the city 
 this morning; and, most of all, by the greet- 
 ing I now receive and by the way that greet- 
 ing has been phrased by the Governor and 
 the Mayor. I value it all the more inasmuch 
 as they and I do not belong to the same party; 
 because there are many things that stand 
 infinitely above party; because when we 
 come to the great essentials — to the things 
 that make in their aggregate the character 
 of a good citizen — we come to the things 
 which dwarf parties and classes into absolute 
 insignificance. 
 
 And now, my friends, I came here expect- 
 ing to make an address on Conservation to 
 an audience of perhaps fifteen hundred 
 people specifically interested in it; and I 
 only hope that you will have patience with 
 E 49 
 
so CONSERVATION 
 
 me because I cannot travel as far afield as 
 I would like in addressing an audience like 
 this. 
 
 And, first, let me make clear what I do 
 not mean by Conservation. Conservation, 
 as I use the term, does not mean nonuse or 
 nondevelopment. It does not mean tying 
 up the natural resources of the states. It 
 means the utilization of these resources under 
 such regulation and control as will prevent 
 waste, extravagance, and monopoly; but at 
 the same time, not merely promoting, but 
 encouraging such use and development as 
 will serve the interests of the people generally. 
 
 And if any man can point out where by the 
 action of those who think as I do the develop- 
 ment of the natural resources is being held 
 up, I will join with him against my friends 
 and followers and do my best to see that 
 the development is not interfered with; but 
 I want him to be sure of the facts before he 
 comes. I wish you would read the report 
 of Mr. Graves, of your Chamber of Com- 
 merce here, when charges aflFecting the 
 Forestry Department and its alleged with- 
 holding of agricultural lands were made — 
 and they were very grave and very large 
 charges until it was required that they should 
 be made definite, and then they dwarfed 
 
CX)NSERVATION 51 
 
 until they became well-nigh invisible. I will 
 go with you to the limit in trying to alter any 
 legislation or administration that improperly 
 prevents the development of the natural re- 
 sources; but when you come and tell me 
 about it, tell me about the act itself — give 
 me specific facts and not general accusations. 
 It is time we should wake up the country 
 as to the need of using foresight and com- 
 mon sense as regards our natural resources. 
 We of this generation hold the land in part 
 for the use of the next generation, and not 
 exclusively for our own selfish enjoyment. 
 Mr. Mayor, in building up Denver, you 
 had been thinking of it with an eye, not 
 merely to your own administration, not 
 merely to the welfare of the citizens now 
 living, but with an eye to the welfare of the 
 Denver that is to be. Governor, you are 
 serving, not only for the Colorado now, but 
 for the Colorado of your children's children 
 — of those who are not voters to-day. So it 
 must be with us as a whole in dealing with 
 the natural resources. We have passed the 
 time when we will tolerate the man whose 
 only idea is to skin the country and move 
 on. As it is with him, so it is with the 
 nation. That farmer is a good citizen who 
 leaves his farm improved, and not impaired, 
 
52 CONSERVATION 
 
 for his children; and he is a bad citizen if 
 he has used up his farm and passes it on to 
 his children who inherit it. So, the nation 
 behaves well if it treats the natural resources 
 as assets which it must turn over to the next 
 generation increased, and not impaired, in 
 value; and behaves badly if it leaves the land 
 poorer to those who come after it. That is 
 all I mean by the phrase, Conservation of 
 natural resources. Use them; but use them 
 so that as far as possible our children will 
 be richer, and not poorer, because we have 
 lived. 
 
 In the second place, these natural re- 
 sources must be developed promptly, com- 
 pletely, and in orderly fashion. I am no 
 friend of holding off. Development is an 
 indispensable part of the Conservation plan. 
 The forests, the mines, the water powers, 
 and the land itself must be put in use. Those 
 err who think that the opposite course is 
 advocated by any whom I regard as genuine 
 friends of Conservation. 
 
 In the third place, and so far as possible, 
 these resources must be kept for the whole 
 people and not handed over for exploitation 
 to any single individual or group of indi- 
 viduals. We do not intend to discourage 
 individual enterprise by diminishing un- 
 
CONSERVATION 53 
 
 wisely the reward for that enterprise. On 
 the contrary, we believe that the men of 
 exceptional abilities should have exceptional 
 rewards up to, but not beyond, the point 
 where the reward becomes disproportionate 
 to the services, up to the point where the 
 abilities are used to the detriment of the 
 people as a whole. I honor the captain of 
 industry, and I am glad to see him rewarded 
 so long as he acts honestly and so long as his 
 reward is not wholly disproportionate to the 
 work he has done. If he does not act hon- 
 estly, then I hope the laws will be so framed 
 and so administered as to go at him just as 
 if he were the smallest sneak thief in the 
 slums of a great city. And if his reward is 
 utterly disproportionate to his great services, 
 then I will join with those who try to shape 
 conditions so that the reward and the serv- 
 ices shall stand in better relation. What I 
 say of the individual applies to the corpora- 
 tion. I am for the corporation which does 
 right. I recognize the absolute need of the 
 corporation in our business life to-day. I 
 believe the corporation is entitled to protec- 
 tion in its rights; but it is not entitled to 
 vote, and it is not entitled to proprietorship 
 in any pubHc man. We are for the Hberty 
 of the individual up to, and not beyond, the 
 
54 CONSERVATION 
 
 point where it becomes inconsistent with the 
 welfare of the community. Thus, our con- 
 sistent aim is to favor the actual settler — 
 the man who takes as much of the public 
 domain as he himself can cultivate, and 
 there makes a permanent home for his 
 children who come after him; but we are 
 against the man, no matter what his ability, 
 who tries to monopolize, at the expense of 
 such settler, large masses of public land. 
 
 State and Federal Control 
 
 Now, to preserve the general welfare, to 
 see to it that the rights of the public are 
 protected, and the liberty of the individual 
 secured and encouraged consistent with this 
 welfare, and curbed when it becomes incon- 
 sistent therewith, it is necessary to invoke the 
 aid of the government. There are points in 
 which this governmental aid can best be 
 rendered by the states; that is, where the 
 exercise of state's rights helps to secure popu- 
 lar rights ; and where this is true — where 
 state's rights mean popular rights — I believe 
 in state's rights. But there are large classes 
 of cases where only the authority of the 
 national government will secure the rights 
 of the people ; and where this is the case, I 
 
CONSERVATION 55 
 
 am a convinced and thoroughgoing believer 
 in the rights of the national government. 
 Let me take an example in connection with 
 Conservation. Big business is no longer an 
 affair of any one state. Big business has 
 become nationahzed, and the only effective 
 way of controlling and directing it and pre- 
 venting the abuses in connection with it is 
 by having the people nationaHze the govern- 
 mental control in order to meet the national- 
 ization of the big business itself. People 
 speak as if it were an innovation to national- 
 ize control by the government of big business. 
 The innovation came on the part of the busi- 
 ness men who nationahzed their businesses. 
 All we wish to do on behalf of the people is 
 to meet the nationaHzation of the big busi- 
 ness by nationahzed government control. 
 All commerce on a scale sufficiently large to 
 warrant any control over it by the govern- 
 ment nowadays is interstate or foreign com- 
 merce; and until this fact is heartily acknowl- 
 edged and acted upon by both courts and 
 legislative bodies, national and state ahke, 
 the interest of the people will suffer. 
 
 In the matter of Conservation, I heartily 
 approve of state action where, under our 
 form of government, the state, and the state 
 only, has the power to act. I cordially join 
 
56 CONSERVATION 
 
 with those who desire to see the state, within 
 its own sphere, take the most advanced 
 position in regard to the whole matter of 
 Conservation. I have taken exactly this 
 attitude in my own state of New York. 
 Unfortunately, in the East we are more back- 
 ward than the West. Where the state alone 
 had the power to act, I have done all I could 
 to get it to act in the most advanced manner; 
 and where the nation could act, I have done 
 all I could to get national action in the same 
 direction. Unfortunately, in the East, in this 
 matter we have paid the penalty of not having 
 our forest lands under national control; and 
 the penalty has been severe. At this moment, 
 states in New England, states in the South- 
 east, and the states through which the Appa- 
 lachian Mountains run are paying the penalty 
 of the inability of their state governments to 
 do what they know ought to be done. The 
 forests in the White Mountains and in the 
 Appalachian ranges are being maltreated 
 because they are under the control of eastern 
 state governments; and we are doing our 
 best by legislation in Congress at this mo- 
 ment, through the help of the western sena- 
 tors and congressmen, to get back the 
 national control over those forests which the 
 nation ought to have; and as the penalty 
 
CONSERVATION 57 
 
 of undertaking this control so late, the 
 nation will be put to an expense of millions 
 of dollars to get from the control of states 
 that which the whole nation ought always 
 to hold under the control of the national 
 government. Most of the states — although 
 they are old states — have not protected their 
 forests, each faihng to act by itself, because 
 the action was really the common concern 
 of all; and where action is the common con- 
 cern of all, experience has shown that it can 
 only be profitably undertaken by the national 
 government. 
 
 As a result of the impossibility of getting 
 such wise action by the several state govern- 
 ments in the East, we are doing our best to 
 get national legislation under which the 
 national government, at the expense of 
 millions of dollars, shall undertake to do as 
 regards the Appalachians and White Moun- 
 tains of the East what it is now doing in the 
 Rocky Mountains here out West. It would 
 be both a calamity and an absurdity for the 
 national government now to fail to do in 
 the West the very thing that at a heavy 
 pecuniary cost it is trying to do in the East. 
 By actual experience in the East we have 
 found to our cost that the nation, and not 
 the several states, can best guard the interests 
 
58 CONSERVATION 
 
 of the people in the matter of the forests 
 and the waters; and I am at this moment 
 doing all I can to increase in the East the 
 power of the national government at the 
 expense of the power of the several state 
 governments of the eastern states, because 
 we have found by bitter experience that 
 only thus can we adequately protect our 
 natural resources. If the national govern- 
 ment fails to attempt this duty at the outset, 
 it will later on have to pay heavily in order 
 to be allowed to take up the work, which, 
 because it is done so late, cannot be so well 
 done as if it had been begun earlier. 
 
 Water Power 
 
 Take the question of the control of the 
 water power sites. The enormous impor- 
 tance of water power sites to the future indus- 
 trial development of this country has only 
 been realized within a very few years. Un- 
 fortunately, the realization has come too late 
 as regards some of the power sites; but 
 many yet remain with which our hands are 
 free to deal. We should make it our duty 
 to see that hereafter the power sites are kept 
 under the control of the general government 
 for the use of the people as a whole. Now, 
 
CONSERVATION 59 
 
 my fellow citizens^ I wish I could impress 
 upon you the importance of acting in that 
 matter now. You still have the power. If 
 you do not act now, your children will rage 
 fruitlessly because they have lost the power 
 to act with effect, and will be driven to pro- 
 pose radical and revolutionary measures if 
 the time for taking moderate measures has 
 been allowed to go by. True conservatism 
 is that conservatism which is also the em- 
 bodiment of the wise spirit of progress. It 
 is that conservatism which acts conservatively 
 before that has happened which will inflame 
 men to madness. The fee should remain 
 with the people as a whole, while the use is 
 leased on terms which shall secure an ample 
 reward to the lessees ; which shall encourage 
 the development and use of the water power, 
 but which shall not create a permanent mo- 
 nopoly or permit the development to be anti- 
 social, to be in any respect hostile to the pub- 
 lic good. Keep the fee so that our children 
 shall be able to determine for themselves what 
 they will do about the water powers in the 
 end. 
 
 There is something fairly comic in the 
 appeal made by many of these men in favor 
 of state control when you reaHze that the 
 great corporations seeking the privileges of 
 
6o CONSERVATION 
 
 developing the water power in any given 
 state are at least as apt to be owned outside 
 that state as within it. In this country nowa- 
 days capital has a national and not a state 
 use. I remember when it became our duty 
 when I was President to move against the 
 Northern Securities Company, against rail- 
 roads running through Wisconsin, Montana, 
 Idaho, and Oregon. We found that the cor- 
 poration was a corporation of what state ? 
 Of New Jersey ! They had been paying 
 heed to state's rights, and so it was left to 
 New Jersey to protect the rights of Wisconsin 
 and Montana. The great corporations which 
 are managed and largely owned in the old 
 states are those which are most in evidence 
 in developing and using the mines and 
 water powers and forests of the new terri- 
 tories and the new states, from Alaska to 
 Arizona. Now, don't misunderstand me. 
 These great corporations can do good. I 
 am heartily with them in their proposal to 
 develop these mines, and I wish to see the 
 men at the head of them receive ample re- 
 ward for the work they do. All that I ask 
 — I do not ask it, I demand it — on behalf 
 of the people is that these corporations sub- 
 mit to such supervision and control as shall 
 insure that, together with the development, 
 
CONSERVATION 6i 
 
 together with the benefit to the men making 
 the development, there shall go good to the 
 public to whom belong the resources that 
 have been developed. 
 
 I have been genuinely amused during the 
 past two months at having arguments pre- 
 sented to me on behalf of certain rich men 
 from New York, and even Ohio, for instance, 
 as to why Colorado and other Rocky Moun- 
 tain states should manage their own water 
 power sites. Now, many of these men may 
 be good citizens according to their lights; 
 but naturally enough their special interest 
 obscures their sense of the public need; and 
 as their object is to escape an efficient con- 
 trol, exercised in the interest of all the 
 people of the country, they clamor to be put 
 under the state instead of under the nation. 
 If we are foolish enough to grant their re- 
 quests, we shall have ourselves to blame 
 when we wake up to find that we have per- 
 mitted another privilege to entrench itself 
 and another portion of what should be kept 
 for the public good to be turned over to in- 
 dividuals for purposes of private enrichment. 
 During the last session of Congress, bills 
 were introduced to transfer the water power 
 sites in the national forests and the pubHc 
 domain to the control of the states. I can- 
 
62 CONSERVATION 
 
 not state too strongly my belief that these 
 measures are unwise and that it would be 
 disastrous to enact them into law. In sub- 
 stance, their effect would be to free these 
 great special interests from all effective con- 
 trol. The passage of such a bill would be 
 a victory of the special interests over the 
 general welfare, and a long backward step 
 down the hill of progress we have of late 
 been climbing. 
 
 Our people have for many years proceeded 
 upon the assumption that the nation should 
 control the public land. It is to this assump- 
 tion of national outlook that we owe our 
 wisest land legislation, from the Homestead 
 Law to the Irrigation Law. The wise use 
 of our public domain has always been con- 
 ditioned upon national action. The states 
 can greatly help, but the nation must take 
 the lead, as regards the land, as regards 
 the forests and waters; and perhaps pecul- 
 iarly in the case of the waters, because 
 almost all streams are really interstate 
 streams. 
 
 Coal Lands 
 
 The same principle appHes with peculiar 
 force to the coal lands, and especially to the 
 
CONSERVATION 63 
 
 coal lands in Alaska, whose protection and 
 ownership by the Federal Government is so 
 necessary, both for full and free industrial 
 development in the West and for the needs 
 of our fleet in the Pacific. The coal mines 
 should be leased, not sold, and those who 
 mine the coal should pay back a part of the 
 profits to the people. Now, understand me 
 again. I would have them leased in such 
 quantities and on such terms as will guarantee 
 an ample reward to the lessee; and I would 
 see such control kept in the hands of the 
 general government as shall insure the work 
 to the lessee accruing not only to his advan- 
 tage, but to the advantage of the people of 
 the states. It is the right and duty of the 
 people to demand the most vigilant trustee- 
 ship on the part of that branch of the Federal 
 Government in charge of the fuel resources 
 of the United States. 
 
 The Neutral Ground 
 
 Remember also that many of the men who 
 protest loudly against effective national action 
 would be the first to turn round and protest 
 against state action, if such action in its 
 turn became effective, and would then un- 
 hesitatingly invoke the law to show that the 
 
64 CONSERVATION 
 
 state had no constitutional power to act. I 
 have had experience with this attitude. As 
 Governor of New York I fought for the pas- 
 sage of the franchise tax, and the men from 
 the city railroads came to me and said, "If 
 you turn us over to the localities, each lo- 
 cality will tax us to the death ; each county 
 or city will try to get out of us improperly 
 as much money as they can, and we will be 
 ruined. If we must be put under govern- 
 ment control, let it be under the control of 
 the state." I concluded that they were right; 
 and got the bill passed. Almost before the 
 ink was dry, those same men turned round 
 and started legal procedure to declare that 
 the act was unconstitutional because they had 
 been put under state and not local control ! 
 Long experience has shown that it is by no 
 means impossible, in cases of constitutional 
 doubt, to get one set of judicial decisions 
 which render it difficult for the nation to act, 
 and another set which render it impossible 
 for the state to act. In each case the privi- 
 leged beneficiaries of the decision invoke 
 the aid of those who treat the Constitution, 
 not as a healthy aid to growth, but as a fetish 
 to prevent growth; and they assail the ad- 
 vocates of wise and cautious progress as being 
 opponents of the Constitution. Those of 
 
CONSERVATION 65 
 
 you who are old enough will remember that 
 in i860 and 1861 Abraham Lincoln was 
 denounced as having violated the Constitu- 
 tion because, as his opponents stated, while 
 it was undoubtedly unconstitutional to secede, 
 it was equally unconstitutional to interfere 
 with secession. As I have said before, I am 
 a strong believer in efficient national action, 
 where such action offers the best hope of 
 securing and protecting the interest of the 
 whole people as against the interest of a few. 
 But I am emphatically in favor of state 
 action where state action will best serve the 
 purpose; and I am no less emphatically in 
 favor of cordial and hearty cooperation be- 
 tween the nation and the state where their 
 duties are identical or overlap. 
 
 If there is one thing which is more unwise 
 than another, it is the creation by legislation, 
 by executive, or by judicial action of a neutral 
 ground in which neither the state nor the 
 nation has power, and which can serve as a 
 place of refuge for the lawless man, and 
 especially for the lawless man of great wealth, 
 who can hire the best legal talent to advise 
 him how to keep his abiding place equally 
 distant from the uncertain frontiers of both 
 state and national power. 
 
(J^ CONSERVATION 
 
 The Open Range 
 
 I am here at the invitation of the Colorado 
 Live Stock Association; and I desire to 
 express my appreciation of their steadfast 
 stand for decency and progress in the han- 
 dling of public lands and national forests. 
 They have met and overcome the unrelenting 
 opposition of some of the most influential 
 stockmen of the state; they have won 
 because they have been right. I Mrant to 
 express also my appreciation of the work 
 of the American National Live Stock As- 
 sociation. It has been one of the really 
 important forces working toward eflFective 
 railroad legislation, while its support of the 
 policy of Federal range control has given it 
 a large place in national affairs. As an old 
 time stockman, I realize that the present 
 order of things on the open range cannot 
 continue, and that the sure way to protect 
 the range itself, prevent the increase of big 
 outfits, promote the equitable use of the 
 grazing lands, and foster genuine home- 
 stead settlement, is to extend over the open 
 range a system of range control somewhat 
 similar to that now in effect in the national 
 forests. 
 
 Whatever system of range control may be 
 
CONSERVATION e^ 
 
 adopted in detail, there are two things it 
 must not do. It must not handicap or 
 exclude the small man by requiring him to 
 spend more money for fences than he can 
 afford, and it must leave every acre that can 
 be settled by bona fide homesteaders freely 
 open to such settlement. If you find it 
 excludes any small man, and you will bring 
 any specific facts to me, I will do my best 
 to remedy it. In speaking to this audience 
 I do not suppose that there is a very large 
 proportion of the homestead men present; 
 but I know that all of you agree with me that 
 it is the homestead men, the small settlers, 
 the actual homemaker, whose interests we 
 must do most to preserve. I do not believe 
 that a single acre of our public lands should 
 hereafter pass into private ownership, except 
 for the single purpose of homestead settle- 
 ment; and I know that the stockmen stand 
 with me in their desire to remove every ob- 
 stacle from the path of the genuine home- 
 steader, and to put every possible obstacle 
 in the pathway of the man who tries to get 
 public lands by misrepresentation or fraud. 
 This is absolutely necessary on the agri- 
 cultural lands. It is at least equally neces- 
 sary on the mineral lands. It would be a 
 calamity whose baleful effect on the average 
 
68 CONSERVATION 
 
 citizen we can scarcely exaggerate, if the 
 great stores of coal and other mineral fuels 
 still owned by our people in Alaska and 
 elsewhere should pass into the unregulated 
 ownership of monopolistic corporations. 
 
 The Forest Service 
 
 You progressive stockmen have stood 
 heartily by the Conservation movement, 
 and with you have stood many others through- 
 out the West, to whom large credit is due, 
 such as the lumbermen in Washington and 
 Oregon, the irrigators in California, and 
 the supporters of the country life movement 
 in and around Spokane. I want to make 
 my acknowledgments in particular to the 
 Colorado Forestry Association, which has 
 supported the forest work of the government 
 with such unselfish zeal. The Forest Service 
 has enemies because it is efficient. It would 
 have no enemies if it did not do anything. 
 Some of its best work has been met by the 
 bitterest opposition. For example, it has 
 done a real service by blocking the road 
 against the grabbers of water power for 
 themselves, and again by standing like a rock 
 against the demands of bogus mining concerns 
 to exploit the national forests. I have always 
 
CONSERVATION 69 
 
 done my best to help the genuine miner. 
 I believe that one of the first duties of the 
 government is to encourage honest mining 
 on the public lands. But it is equally im- 
 portant to enforce the law firmly against 
 the particularly dangerous class which makes 
 its living off the public through fraudulent 
 mining schemes. 
 
 I have already spoken of the claims made 
 without justification that the Forest Service 
 keeps the actual homesteader out of the 
 enjoyment of the agricultural lands. Much 
 of the opposition to the Forest Service, like 
 much of the opposition to Conservation, takes 
 the form of direct misrepresentation. For 
 example, the cry is often heard that the 
 national forests inclose great areas of agri- 
 cultural land, which are thus put beyond the 
 reach of settlement. This statement seems 
 plausible only till the facts are known. In 
 the first place. Congress has especially pro- 
 vided that whatever agricultural lands there 
 may be in any national forest shall be open, 
 under proper safeguards, to homestead settle- 
 ment. And in the second place, when the 
 opponents of Conservation are asked to point 
 out the great stretches of inclosed agricultural 
 land on the ground and in the presence of ex- 
 perts, instead of in speeches in a hall, they fail. 
 
70 CONSERVATION 
 
 The Reclamation Service 
 
 The National Irrigation Congress is to hold 
 a session in the city of Pueblo late in Septem- 
 ber. I am keenly sorry that I could not have 
 accepted the invitation to be present; but 
 you in Denver v^ill pardon me if I put you 
 first. I could have gone to Pueblo; but in 
 order to make my engagements possible to 
 fulfill then it w^as out of the question for me 
 to go back to Colorado at this time. I 
 sincerely regret it. I have never been to 
 Colorado but that I have enjoyed myself. 
 I must, however, be in the East at that time. 
 But since I cannot be present then to ex- 
 press my keen, long-held, and deep-felt 
 interest in the reclamation of arid lands by 
 the Federal Government, I desire to do so 
 now. There is no more effective instru- 
 ment for the making of homes than the 
 United States Reclamation Service, and no 
 government bureau while I was President 
 had reached a higher standard of efficiency, 
 integrity, and devotion to the public wel- 
 fare. 
 
 Like the Forest Service, the Reclamation 
 Service has clashed with certain private 
 interests, and has had to pay the penalty 
 of its service to the public in the form of 
 
CONSERVATION 71 
 
 bitter opposition from those with whose 
 profit it has interfered. The cry has been 
 raised against it that the government must 
 not do for its citizens at a less cost what 
 private interests are ready to make them pay 
 for at higher prices. And those of you who 
 have been connected with getting a water 
 supply for a big city know what kind of 
 opposition that is to be encountered. Now, I 
 believe fully in the private development of 
 irrigation projects which the government 
 cannot undertake There is a large and 
 legitimate field for such work. But the 
 essential thing is to make homes on the land 
 rather than to enable individuals to profit 
 from the necessities of the men who make 
 those homes. Now, I put the issue straight. 
 If you believe primarily in the mere amassing 
 of money in the aggregate by the citizens of 
 the state, then you are right in supporting 
 a system under which money will be made 
 by private corporations which distribute the 
 water at the expense of the users. If you 
 believe, as far as may be just, in the welfare 
 of the average citizen, you will favor a system 
 that will give him, as long as he works hard 
 and deserves it, the first chance of getting 
 water from the government at as near cost 
 price as may be. There is no more warrant 
 
72 CONSERVATION 
 
 for objection to the reclamation of arid lands 
 by the government than there would be for 
 protest against the government for patenting 
 agricultural lands directly to the actual 
 settler instead of settling them in block 
 through a middleman who could make a 
 profit from the transaction. The men who 
 assert their right to get something for them- 
 selves at the cost of the community instead 
 of by service to the community we have 
 always had with us, and doubtless we always 
 shall have; but there is no reason why we 
 should yield to them. The Reclamation 
 Service has not done so, and that is the chief 
 reason for the attacks upon it. 
 
 I do not think that there is one among 
 you who is a better and a more thorough- 
 going Westerner than I am. There has been 
 no support given to the Conservation policies 
 so welcome as that which came from the 
 West, and none in the West more welcome 
 than that which came from Colorado. There 
 are men and organizations in Colorado, and 
 I mention Delta in particular, whose support 
 of the Conservation policies has been of the 
 greatest value to the nation. It has not 
 always been an easy thing for them to stand 
 for what was right; to stand for the real 
 ultimate good as against the seeming tern- 
 
CONSERVATION 73 
 
 porary good; but they have stood for it 
 steadily, nevertheless. 
 
 I have told you how we are working in 
 the East trying to make good our mistakes; 
 that now we have bills for passage through 
 the national legislature endeavoring to get 
 back for the nation the control which other 
 bills have been introduced to do away with 
 in the West. Gentlemen for whom I have 
 personally the friendhest feelings introduced 
 bills to try to get the nation to do in the West 
 the very things which we are now proposing 
 that the nation shall pay many millions of 
 dollars to undo in the East. 
 
 From the standpoint of Conservation the 
 East has wasted much of its own superb 
 endowment; and as an American, as a lover 
 of the West, I hope that the West will profit 
 by the East's bitter lesson, and will not 
 repeat the mistakes of the East. The East 
 has wasted its resources; it suffers from the 
 effect of this waste, which now puts it at a 
 disadvantage compared to the West, and it 
 is sorry. Most of the capital and very many 
 of the men now attempting to monopolize 
 your western resources are from the East. 
 The West should learn the lesson of the 
 East's mistakes; and it should^ remember 
 that Conservation in the West will help the 
 
74 CONSERVATION 
 
 West first and most, and that the movement 
 for Conservation is most earnest, most vig- 
 orous, and most effective in the West and 
 among western men. That is one strong 
 reason why the Conservation policy has come 
 to stay. 
 
 I have just come back from a very inter- 
 esting trip in the Old World. I spent a year 
 of comparative holiday in Africa, and a 
 quarter of a year of fairly vigorous work 
 in Europe, during most of which it seemed 
 to be the kind purpose of my hosts to make 
 me feel thoroughly at home. {Laughter and 
 applause^ 
 
 Although I have always felt a genuine 
 friendliness for foreign peoples, and have 
 come back with that feeling increased, yet 
 I feel thankful that I can with sincerity say 
 that with all our faults and shortcomings — 
 and I know them well, and have striven to 
 help in correcting a certain number of them in 
 my time — there is not anywhere else on the 
 face of the earth a land where life is so su- 
 premely well worth living, where the chance 
 for the average man is as good, as it is here. 
 (Cheers.) There is any amount that needs 
 to be improved — and I do not think much 
 of you if you simply cheer the fact that I say 
 you are mighty good people, and then go 
 
CONSERVATION 75 
 
 home and do not try to make things better; 
 but I think it is perfectly possible to com- 
 bine a full knowledge of the evil that exists, 
 not only with a determination to cut out that 
 evil, but with a clear understanding of the 
 great good that exists also. There were 
 two things that struck me especially abroad. 
 One was that, to the average man with 
 whom life had gone hard, America stood as 
 a name that symbolized hope; that sym- 
 bolized the golden chance of allowing a man 
 or woman to lead his or her life fully and 
 freely to the utmost possible advantage to 
 himself or herself and to his or her fellow 
 men and women. America stood as a name 
 of hope to the average man on the other side. 
 But there is this also that was true. Almost 
 every man whom I met on the other side 
 and conversed with, and who was a well- 
 wisher of America, would after a while ask 
 me anxiously about some features of national 
 corruption in America, of business corrup- 
 tion or of political corruption; and every 
 reactionary, every enemy of democratic gov- 
 ernment, every opponent of free institutions 
 hailed with sardonic laughter each and every 
 such instance of corruption in business or 
 in politics as proof that it was an empty 
 dream to believe that people can govern them- 
 
76 CONSERVATION 
 
 selves honestly, wisely, and well. It is prob- 
 ably true that if we are unwilling to insist 
 on honesty for our own sakes, we shall not 
 do it for the sake of others; and yet, my 
 friends, I think that we here should realize 
 that we are not only custodians of the hopes 
 of our children, but that in a peculiar sense 
 we are custodians of the hope of the world ; 
 and shame, triple shame, is ours if we shatter 
 the ideal of the world by shattering the world's 
 belief in the possibilities of popular govern- 
 ment on a continental scale. And I ask 
 that you here do not confine yourselves 
 simply to hearing me and enjoying a little 
 thrill of pleasure over the sentiments ex- 
 pressed, but that you, men and women of 
 Colorado, will go back to your homes and 
 your daily lives with the resolute purpose to 
 war for honesty in its deepest and broadest 
 significance both in our business and in our 
 politics; not only for our own sake, not only 
 for the sake of our children who inherit the 
 land after us, but for the sake of the peoples 
 of the world who stand and watch this great 
 experiment of free democracy in the West, 
 so that their hope shall not be dead. 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 SPEECH AT ST. PAUL 
 6 September, 19 lo 
 
 Minnesota has almost always taken the 
 lead in any great work, and Minnesota has 
 been one of the first to take hold of the Con- 
 servation policy in practical shape; and she 
 has done a great work and set an admirable 
 example to the rest of us. It is a work well set 
 forth in your Governor's address yesterday; 
 and I am glad this Congress is held in such a 
 state where we can listen to such an address 
 made by a Governor who has a right to make 
 it. Much that I have to say on the general 
 policy of Conservation will be but a repetition 
 of what was so admirably said on this general 
 policy by the President of the United States 
 yesterday. In particular all true friends 
 of Conservation should be in heartiest agree- 
 ment with the policy which the President 
 laid down in connection with the coal, iron, 
 and phosphate lands; and I am glad to see 
 that at its last session Congress finally com- 
 pleted the work of separating the surface title 
 to the land from the mineral beneath it. 
 
 77 
 
78 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 Now, my friends, America's reputation for 
 efficiency stands deservedly high throughout 
 the world. We are efficient probably to the 
 full limits that are permitted any nation to 
 attain by the methods hitherto used. The 
 average American is an efficient man who can 
 do his business; and it is recognized through- 
 out the world that this is so. There is great 
 reason to be proud of our achievements; 
 and yet no reason to believe that we cannot 
 excel our past. Through a practically un- 
 restrained individualism, we have reached 
 a pitch of literally unexampled material 
 prosperity, although the distribution of this 
 prosperity leaves much to be desired from 
 the standpoint of justice and fair dealing. 
 But we have not only allowed the individual 
 a free hand, which was in the main right; 
 we have also allowed great corporations to 
 act as though they were individuals, and to 
 exercise the rights of individuals, in addition 
 to using the vast combined power of high 
 organization and enormous wealth for their 
 own advantages. This development of cor- 
 porate action, it is true, is doubtless in large 
 part responsible for the gigantic development 
 of our natural resources, but it is not less 
 responsible for waste, destruction, and mo- 
 nopoly on an equally gigantic scale. 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 79 
 
 The method of reckless and uncontrolled 
 private use and waste has done for us all the 
 good it ever can ; and it is time to put an end 
 to it before it does all the evil it easily may. 
 We have passed the time when heedless waste 
 and destruction and arrogant monopoly are 
 longer permissible. Henceforth we must 
 seek national efficiency by a new and better 
 way, by the way of the orderly development 
 and use, coupled with the preservation, of 
 our natural resources, by making the most of 
 what we have for the benefit of all of us, 
 instead of leaving the sources of material 
 prosperity open to indiscriminate exploita- 
 tion. These are some of the reasons why it 
 is wise that we should abandon the old point 
 of view, and why Conservation has become 
 a great moral issue in becoming a patriotic 
 duty. 
 
 Waterways 
 
 One of the greatest of our Conservation 
 problems is the wise and prompt development 
 and use of the waterways of this nation. 
 There are classes of bulky freight which can 
 always go cheaper and better by water if 
 there is an adequate waterway; and the 
 existence of such a type of waterway in itself 
 helps to regulate railroad rates. The Twin 
 
8o NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 Cities, lying as they do at the headwaters 
 of the Mississippi, are not upon the direct 
 Hne of the proposed Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep 
 waterway. And yet Minnesota, with its 
 vast iron resources and its need of abundance 
 of coal, has peculiar interest in that problem; 
 and the Twin Cities, therefore, have their 
 own personal concern in the deepening and 
 regulation of the Mississippi to the mouth of 
 the Missouri and to the Gulf. I have spoken 
 of how progressive Minnesota is and how 
 progressive these cities are; but there are 
 other progressive cities in the West, too. I 
 have just come from Kansas City. The 
 merchants there have themselves undertaken, 
 by raising more than a million dollars, to 
 start the improvement of the waterway at 
 their door, so that they shall be able to 
 benefit by it. It is sometimes said that the 
 waterway projects are backed by people 
 who are delighted to see the government 
 spend its money, but who are not willing to 
 show their faith in the proposition by spend- 
 ing their own. Kansas City is spending its 
 own. The project for a great trunk water- 
 way, an arm of the sea, extending from the 
 Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, should 
 not be abandoned. A report thereon in full 
 should be made to the government, so that 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 8i 
 
 the government can act in the interest of the 
 whole people and without regard to the pres- 
 sure of special interests. But, subject to the 
 action of such a body, the Lakes-to-the-Gulf 
 deep waterway, and the development of the 
 rivers which flow into it, should be pushed to 
 completion vigorously and without delay. 
 
 But we must recognize at the outset that 
 there are certain conditions without which 
 the people cannot hope to derive from it the 
 benefits they have a right to expect. In 
 nearly every river city from St. Paul to the 
 Gulf the water front is controlled by the rail- 
 ways. Nearly every artificial waterway in the 
 United States, either directly or indirectly, 
 is under the same control. It goes without 
 saying that (unless the people prevent it in 
 advance) the railways will always attempt 
 to take control of our water^vays as fast as 
 they are improved and completed. I do not 
 mention this to blame them in the least, but 
 to blame us for permitting them to do so. 
 If Uncle Sam cannot take care of himself, 
 then there is no particular reason why any 
 railroad man should act as his guardian, and 
 if he attempted the feat, he would merely find 
 himself alone among other railroad men, 
 and Uncle Sam would not be materially 
 benefited. Uncle Sam has got to do the 
 
82 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 job himself. We must see to it that adequate 
 terminals are provided in every city and town 
 on every improved waterway, terminals open 
 under reasonable conditions to the use of 
 every citizen and rigidly protected against 
 monopoly; and we must compel the rail- 
 roads to cooperate with the waterways 
 continuously, effectively, and under reason- 
 able conditions. Unless we do so, the rail- 
 way lines will refuse to deliver freight to the 
 boat lines, either openly or by imposing pro- 
 hibitory conditions; and the waterways, 
 once improved, will do comparatively little 
 for the benefit of the people who pay the 
 bill. 
 
 Adequate terminals properly controlled 
 and open through lines by rail and boat are 
 two absolutely essential conditions to the 
 usefulness of inland waterway development. 
 I believe, furthermore, that the railways 
 should be prohibited from owning, control- 
 ling, or carrying any interest in the boat 
 lines on our rivers, unless under the strictest 
 regulation and control of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, so that the ship- 
 per's interests may be fully protected. 
 
 Now, here another word in supplement. 
 You, the people, ought not to sit supine and 
 let the railroads gain control of the boat lines 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 83 
 
 and then turn around and say that the men at 
 the head of the railroads are very bad people. 
 If you leave it open to them to control boat 
 lines, some of them are sure to do so; and 
 it is to our interest that the best among 
 them should do so. Don't let any of them 
 do it, excepting under conditions we lay 
 down. In other words, when you of your 
 own fault permit the rules of the game to be 
 such that you are absolutely certain to get 
 the worst of it at the hands of some one else, 
 don't blame the other man; change the rules 
 of the game. 
 
 Drainage 
 
 Take the question of drainage. It is 
 almost as important in certain states as irri- 
 gation is in other states. Where the drain- 
 age area of the swamp and overflow lands is 
 wholly within the lines of a particular state 
 it may be well, at least for the present, to 
 leave the handling of it to state or private 
 action; but where such a drainage area is 
 included in two or more states, the only wise 
 course is to have the Federal Government act. 
 Land should be deeded from the state back 
 to the Federal Government, and it then should 
 take whatever action is necessary. Much 
 of this work must be done by the nation in 
 
84 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 any case as an integral part of inland water- 
 way development. It affords a most prom- 
 ising field for cooperation between the states 
 and the nation. 
 
 The National Forests 
 
 The people of the United States believe 
 in the complete and rounded development of 
 inland waterways for all the useful purposes 
 they can be made to serve. They believe 
 also, as you here in Minnesota have done, 
 in forest protection and forest extension. 
 The fight for our National Forest in the West 
 has been won, and if, after winning it, we now 
 go ahead and lose it, that is our affair. We 
 are not going to do it. After a campaign 
 in which the women of Minnesota did work 
 which should secure to them the perpetual 
 gratitude of their state, Minnesota won her 
 National Forest, and will keep it; but the 
 fight to create the Southern Appalachian and 
 White Mountain Forests in the East is not 
 yet over. The bill has passed the House, 
 and will come before the Senate for a vote 
 next February. The people of the United 
 States, regardless of party or section, should 
 stand solidly behind it, and see that their 
 representatives do likewise. And, friends, 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 85 
 
 in the East, thanks to the fact that our ances- 
 tors did not have sufficient foresight, the 
 nation is now being obliged to spend great 
 sums of money to take back from the eastern 
 states what those eastern states have shown 
 themselves unable adequately to protect and 
 handle. I have been a Governor of an eastern 
 state myself, and we of the states of the East 
 could not do the work as well as the national 
 government, and we are now permitting the 
 national government to take these lands and 
 do the work. In the light of what we are 
 now doing in the East it seems to me the 
 wildest folly to ask us to start in the West to 
 repeat the same blunders that are now being 
 remedied. My language shall at least be 
 free from ambiguity. 
 
 If any proof were needed that forest pro- 
 tection is a national duty, the recent destruc- 
 tion of forests in the West by fire would supply 
 it. Even with the aid of the army added to 
 that of the Forest Service, the loss has been 
 severe. Without either it would have been 
 vastly greater. 
 
 But the Forest Service does more than 
 protect the national forests against fire. 
 It makes them practically and increasingly 
 useful as well. During the last year for 
 which I have the figures, the national forests 
 
86 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 were used by 22,000 cattlemen, with their 
 herds, 5000 sheepmen, with their flocks, 
 5000 timbermen, with their crews, and 45,000 
 miners; and yet people will tell you that they 
 have been shut up from popular use. More 
 than 5000 persons used them for other special 
 industries. Nearly 34,000 settlers had the 
 free use of wood. The total resident popula- 
 tion of the national forests is about a quarter 
 of a million, which is larger than the popu- 
 lation of certain states. More than 700,000 
 acres of agricultural land have been patented 
 or listed for patent within the forests, and the 
 reports of the forest officers show that more 
 than 400,000 people a year use the forests 
 for recreation, camping, hunting, fishing, and 
 similar purposes. All this is done, of course, 
 without injury to the timber, which has a 
 value of at least a thousand million dollars. 
 Moreover, the national forests protect the 
 water supply of a thousand cities and towns, 
 about 800 irrigation projects, and more than 
 300 power projects, not counting the use of 
 water for these and other purposes by indi- 
 vidual settlers. I think that hereafter we 
 may safely disregard any statements that the 
 national forests are withdrawn from settle- 
 ment and use. 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 87 
 
 A Country Life Institute 
 
 The investigations of the Country Life 
 Commissions have led the farmers of this 
 country to realize that they have not been 
 getting their fair share of progress and all 
 that it brings. Some of our farming com- 
 munities in the Mississippi Valley and in 
 the middle West have made marvelous 
 progress, yet even the best of them, like 
 communities of every other kind, are not 
 beyond improvement, while much needs to 
 be done in some other sections to improve 
 country life. As yet we know comparatively 
 little of the basic facts of rural civilization, 
 compared with those of industrial life. The 
 means for better farming we have studied 
 with care; but to better living on the farm 
 and to better business on the farm the farmers 
 themselves have given scant attention. I 
 mean by that, having the farmer use the 
 middleman where it is to the farmer's advan- 
 tage to do so, and not to be used by the middle- 
 man chiefly to the advantage of the middle- 
 man. One of the most urgent needs of our 
 civiHzation is that the farmers themselves 
 should undertake to get for themselves a 
 better knowledge along these lines, and then 
 to apply it. Sir Horace Plunkett, an Irish- 
 
88 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 man, for many years a Wyoming cattleman 
 and now devoting himself in Ireland to the 
 country life problem there, has suggested 
 in his recent book on the "Country Life 
 Problem in America" the creation of a Coun- 
 try Life Institute as a center where the work 
 and knowledge of the whole world concern- 
 ing country life may be brought together 
 for the use of every nation. I am strongly 
 in sympathy with this idea, and hope to see 
 it carried out with the cooperation and assist- 
 ance of our own people. Last spring, while 
 visiting the capital of Hungary — Buda- 
 Pesth — I was immensely impressed by the 
 Museum of Country Life, containing an 
 extraordinary series of studies in agriculture, 
 in stock-raising, in forestry, in mining. It 
 was one of the most interesting places I have 
 ever visited. The exhibits were of the ut- 
 most practical importance, and were also 
 intensely interesting and instructive. I felt 
 rather ashamed that I, a citizen of what we 
 suppose to be a "very go-ahead country," 
 should be in Hungary obliged to confess we 
 had nothing at all like that in our own coun- 
 try. I greatly wish we had such a museum 
 in Washington; and some of your farmer 
 congressmen ought to get a full and detailed 
 report of this Buda-Pesth museum to be 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 89 
 
 printed for distribution in a public docu- 
 ment. I would like to see a study made of 
 such museums, so that we may take what is 
 good of them for our own use in America. 
 
 Human Efficiency 
 
 As a people we have not yet learned to 
 economize. One of the virtues we Americans 
 need is thrift. It is a mere truism to say 
 that luxury and extravagance are not good 
 for a nation. So far as they affect character, 
 the loss they cause may be beyond compu- 
 tation. But in the material sense there is a 
 loss greater than is caused by both extrava- 
 gance and luxury put together. I mean the 
 needless, useless, and excessive loss to our 
 people from premature death and avoidable 
 diseases. Wholly apart from the grief, suffer- 
 ing, and wretchedness which they cause, 
 the material loss each year has been calcu- 
 lated at nearly twice what it costs to run the 
 Federal Government. In addition to the 
 state and city health officers and organiza- 
 tions, there is urgently needed a Federal 
 Bureau of Health, to act, so far as the na- 
 tional government properly may, to relieve 
 our people from this dreadful burden. 
 
90 NATURAL RESOURCES^ 
 
 The National Conservation Commission 
 
 One of the most important meetings in 
 our recent history was that of the Governors 
 in the White House in May, 1908, to consider 
 the Conservation question. By the advice of 
 the Governors the meeting was followed by 
 the appointment of a National Conservation 
 Commission. The meeting of the Governors 
 directed the attention of the country to Con- 
 servation as nothing else could have done, 
 while the work of the Commission gave the 
 movement definiteness and suppHed it with 
 a practical program. Now, my friends, 
 so far I have had nothing but praise to speak 
 of Minnesota. I cannot continue to speak 
 only words of praise. At the moment when 
 the Commission was ready to begin the 
 campaign for putting its program into effect, 
 an amendment to the Sundry Civil Bill was 
 introduced by a congressman from Minne- 
 sota v/ith the purpose to put a stop to the 
 work so admirably begun. Congress passed 
 the amendment. Its object was to put an 
 end to the work of a number of commissions, 
 which had been appointed by the President, 
 and whose contribution to the public welfare 
 had been simply incalculable. Among these 
 were the commission for reorganizing the 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 91 
 
 business methods of the government, the 
 Public Lands Commission, the Country Life 
 Commission, and the National Conservation 
 Commission itself When I signed the Sun- 
 dry Civil Bill containing this amendment, I 
 transmitted with it as my last official act a 
 memorandum declaring that the amendment 
 was void, because it was unconstitutional 
 interference with the rights of the Executive, 
 and that if I were to remain President, I 
 would pay to it no attention whatever. 
 
 The National Conservation Commission 
 thereupon became dormant. The suspen- 
 sion of its work came at a most unfortunate 
 time, and there was serious danger that the 
 progress already made would be lost. At 
 this critical moment the National Conserva- 
 tion Association was organized. It took up 
 the work which otherwise would not have 
 been done. If it had not done it, we would 
 not have had this meeting here; and it exer- 
 cised a most useful influence in preventing 
 bad legislation, in securing the introduction 
 of better Conservation measures at the past 
 session of Congress, and in promoting the 
 passage of wise laws. It deserves the con- 
 fidence and support of every citizen interested 
 in the wise development and preservation of 
 our natural resources, and in preventing 
 
92 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 them from passing into the hands of uncon- 
 trolled monopolies. It joins with the Na- 
 tional Conservation Congress in holding this 
 meeting. I am here by the joint invitation of 
 both. 
 
 Pan-American Conservation 
 
 When the government of the United 
 States awoke to the idea of Conservation 
 and saw that it was good, it lost no time in 
 communicating the advantages of the new 
 point of view to its immediate neighbors 
 among the nations. A North American 
 Conservation Conference was held in Wash- 
 ington, and the cooperation of Canada and 
 Mexico in the great problem of developing 
 the resources of the continent for the benefit 
 of its people was asked and promised. The 
 nations upon our northern and southern 
 boundaries wisely realized that their oppor- 
 tunity to conserve the natural resources was 
 better than ours, because with them destruc- 
 tion and monopolization had not gone so 
 far as they had with us. So it is with the 
 republics of Central and South America. 
 Obviously, they are on the verge of a period 
 of great material progress. The development 
 of their natural resources — their forests, 
 their mines, their water, and their soils — 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 93 
 
 will create enormous wealth. It is to the 
 mutual interests of the United States and 
 our sister American republics that this de- 
 velopment should be wisely done. Our 
 manufacturing industries offer a market for 
 more and more of their natural wealth and 
 raw material, while they will increasingly 
 desire to meet that demand in commercial 
 exchange. The more we buy from them, 
 the more we shall sell to them. Their pros- 
 perity is inseparably involved with our own. 
 Thank Heaven, we of this hemisphere are 
 now beginning to reaHze, what in the end 
 the whole world will reahze, that normally it 
 is a good thing for a nation to have its neigh- 
 bor nations prosper. We of the United 
 States are genuinely and heartily pleased to 
 see growth and prosperity in Canada, in 
 Mexico, in South America. 
 
 I wish I could impress upon certain small 
 repubHcs of the South, whose history has not 
 always been happy, that all we desire is that 
 they shall be prosperous and peaceful. We 
 do not want to interfere; it is particularly a 
 thing we disHke to do. All that we ask of any 
 nation on this continent is that it shall be 
 prosperous and peaceful, able to do reason- 
 able justice w^ithin its own boundaries to the 
 stranger within its gates; and any nation 
 
94 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 able to do that can count upon our heartiest 
 and most cordial support. 
 
 It is clear that unless the governments of 
 our southern neighbors take steps in the 
 near future by wise legislation to control the 
 development and use of their natural re- 
 sources, they will probably fall into the 
 hands of concessionaires and promoters, 
 whose single purpose, without regard to the 
 permanent welfare of the land in which they 
 work, will be to make the most possible 
 money in the shortest possible time. There 
 will be shameful waste, destructive loss, and 
 shortsighted disregard of the future, as we have 
 learned by bitter experience here at home. 
 
 Unless the governments of all the Ameri- 
 can republics, including our own, enact in 
 time such laws as will both protect their 
 natural wealth and promote their legitimate 
 and reasonable development, future genera- 
 tions will owe their misfortunes to us of 
 to-day. A great patriotic duty calls upon 
 us. We owe it to ourselves and to them to 
 give the American republics all the help we 
 can. The cases in which we have failed 
 should be no less instructive than the cases 
 in which we have succeeded. With prompt 
 action and good will the task of saving the re- 
 sources for the people is full of hope for us all. 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 95 
 
 State and Federal Control 
 
 But while we of the United States are 
 anxious, as I believe we are able, to be of 
 assistance to others, there are problems of 
 our own which must not be overlooked. 
 One of the most important Conservation 
 questions of the moment relates to the con- 
 trol of water power monopoly in the public 
 interest. There is apparent to the judicious 
 observer a distinct tendency on the part of 
 our opponents to cloud the issue by raising 
 the question of state as against Federal juris- 
 diction. We are ready to meet this issue, if 
 it is forced upon us. But there is no hope 
 for the plain people in such conflicts of juris- 
 dictions. The essential question is not one 
 of hairsplitting legal technicalities. It is not 
 really a question of state against nation. 
 It is really a question of special corporate 
 interests against the popular interests of this 
 nation. If it were not for those special cor- 
 porate interests, you never would have heard 
 of the question of state as against the nation. 
 The question is simply this: Who can best 
 regulate the special interests for the public 
 good ? Most of the great corporations, and 
 almost all of those that can be legitimately 
 called the great predatory corporations, have 
 
96 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 interstate affiliations. Therefore, they are 
 out of reach of effective state control, and 
 fall of necessity within the Federal jurisdic- 
 tion. One of the prime objects of those 
 among them that are grasping and greedy is 
 to avoid any effective control, either by state 
 or nation; and they advocate at this time 
 state control simply because they believe it 
 to be the least effective. If it should prove 
 effective, many of those now advocating it 
 would themselves turn round and say that 
 such control was unconstitutional. I had 
 my own experience. I will give you an ex- 
 ample of it. When I was Governor of New 
 York there came up a bill to tax the fran- 
 chises of certain big street railway corpora- 
 tions. As originally introduced, the bill pro- 
 vided that the taxation should be imposed 
 by the several counties and localities in which 
 those corporations did business. Represent- 
 atives of the corporations came to me and 
 said that this was going to work a great 
 hardship upon them; that the state au- 
 thority would be more just than the local 
 authority; especially if a railroad were to 
 run through two or three towns or counties, 
 they would each endeavor to get the whole 
 benefit of the whole taxation for their own 
 locahty; and, in the name of justice, I ought 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 97 
 
 to agree to have the state, and not the locali- 
 ties, made the taxing power. I thought 
 their plea just, and recommended and sanc- 
 tioned the change, and the bill was made a 
 law; and those same corporations instantly 
 entered suit against it upon the ground that 
 it was unconstitutional, — that it was un- 
 constitutional to take the power of taxation 
 away from the localities and give it to the 
 state — and they carried the suit up to the 
 Supreme Court, where, during my own term 
 as President, it was decided against them. 
 In the great fight of the people to drive the 
 special interests from the domination of our 
 government, the nation is stronger, and its 
 jurisdiction is more effective, than that of any 
 state. 
 
 And now I want to say another thing 
 which the representatives of those corpora- 
 tions did not at the moment believe, but 
 which, I am sure, in the end they will find 
 out: because of the fact that the Federal 
 Government is better able to exact justice 
 from them, I also believe that it is less apt 
 in some sudden gust of popular passion to 
 do injustice to them. 
 
 I want you to understand my position. I 
 do not think that you will misunderstand it. I 
 will do my utmost to secure the rights of every 
 
 H 
 
98 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 corporation. If a corporation is improperly 
 attacked, I will stand up for it to the best of 
 my ability. I would stand up for it even 
 though I were sure that the bulk of the people 
 were misguided enough for the moment to 
 take the wrong side and be against it. I should 
 fight hard to see that the people, through 
 the national government, did full justice to 
 the corporations; but I do not want the 
 national government to depend upon their 
 good will to get justice for the people. Most 
 of these great corporations are in a large part 
 financed and owned in the Atlantic states, 
 and it is rather a comic fact that many of 
 the chief and most serious upholders of states' 
 rights in the present controversy are big 
 business men who live in other states. 
 The most eflFective weapon is Federal laws 
 and the Federal executive. That is why 
 I so strongly oppose the demand to turn 
 these matters over to the states. It is fun- 
 damentally a demand against the interest of 
 the plain people, of the people of small 
 means, against the interest of our children 
 and our children's children; and it is pri- 
 marily in the interest of the great corpora- 
 tions which desire to escape effective gov- 
 ernment control. 
 
 And I ask you to consider two more things 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 99 
 
 in connection with this. Waters run. They 
 do not stay in one state. That fact seems 
 elementary; but it tends to be forgotten. I 
 have just come from Kansas. Practically 
 all the water in Kansas runs into Kansas 
 through another state, and out of it into other 
 states. You cannot have effective control of 
 a watershed unless the same power controls 
 all the watersheds. Sometimes the water 
 actually runs out of one country into another. 
 One of the great irrigation projects of Mon- 
 tana has been delayed because waters that 
 make the Milk River rise in Montana, flow 
 north into Canada, and then come back 
 into Montana. You cannot settle the mat- 
 ter except through the national government. 
 Take the experience of other nations. Take 
 the experience of the little republic of 
 Switzerland. It actually tried what some 
 of our people wish to try; it actually tried 
 the experiment of letting each canton handle 
 its own water; and the conflict of jurisdiction 
 wrought so much injustice that it became 
 necessary about nine years ago for the 
 national government to assume control of 
 the waters of Switzerland on the explicit 
 ground that all of the waters belonged to 
 all of the citizens of the Svdss nation. Now, 
 I am not asking that we go ahead recklessly; 
 
100 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 but I am only asking that we do not go back- 
 ward where other countries have gone ahead. 
 
 7he Conservation Fight 
 
 As the President yesterday pointed out, 
 one of the difficulties that we have to meet in 
 our fight for putting into practice the Con- 
 servation idea is that our aim is continu- 
 ously misrepresented, that the effort is made 
 to show that we are anxious to retard de- 
 velopment. It has been no slight task to 
 bring before ninety million people a great 
 conception like that of Conservation, and 
 convince them that it is right. This much 
 we have accomplished; but there remains 
 much to be cleared up, and many mis- 
 understandings to be removed. These mis- 
 understandings are due in part at least to 
 direct misrepresentation by the men to 
 whose interest it is that Conservation should 
 not prosper. For example, we find it con- 
 stantly said by men who should know bet- 
 ter that temporary withdrawals, such as the 
 withdrawals of coal lands, will permanently 
 check development. Yet the fact is that these 
 withdrawals have no purpose except to pre- 
 vent the coal lands from passing into private 
 ownership until Congress can pass laws to 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES loi 
 
 open them to development under conditions 
 just alike to the public and to the man who 
 will do the developing. Understand here, if 
 there is any doubt as to whether the con- 
 ditions are liberal enough to the men who 
 are doing the developing, I would always 
 solve the doubt in favor of liberality to those 
 men. I want to give them every chance to 
 do well for themselves, but I want to see that 
 in doing well for themselves they also do 
 well for the rest of us. If there is delay, 
 the responsibility for it rests, not on the 
 men who made the withdrawals to protect 
 the public interests, but on those who pre- 
 vent Congress from passing wise legislation 
 and so putting an end to the need for with- 
 drawals. 
 
 Abuses committed in the name of a just 
 cause are familiar to all of us. Many un- 
 wise things are done and many unwise meas- 
 ures are advocated in the name of Conserva- 
 tion, either through ignorance, or by those 
 whose interest Hes not in promoting the 
 movement, but in retarding it. For ex- 
 ample, to stop water power development by 
 needless refusal to issue permits for water 
 power or private irrigation works on the 
 public lands inevitably leads many men, 
 friendly to Conservation and believers in its 
 
102 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 general principles, to assume that its prac- 
 tical application is necessarily a check upon 
 progress. Nothing could be more mistaken. 
 The idea, widely circulated of late, that Con- 
 servation means locking up the natural re- 
 sources for the exclusive use of later genera- 
 tions, is wholly mistaken. Our purpose is 
 to make full use of these resources, but to 
 consider our sons and daughters as well as 
 ourselves, just as a farmer uses his farm in 
 ways to preserve its future usefulness. Con- 
 servation is the road to national efficiency, 
 and it stands for wise and ample develop- 
 ment. 
 
 But in spite of these difficulties, most of 
 which are doubtless inevitable in any move- 
 ment of this kind, Conservation has made 
 marvelous progress. I have been astounded 
 and delighted on my return from abroad at 
 the progress made while I was away. We 
 have a right to congratulate ourselves on this 
 marvelous progress; but there is no reason 
 for believing the fight is won. In the begin- 
 ning, the special interests, who are our chief 
 opponents in the Conservation fight, paid 
 little heed to the movement, because they 
 neither understood it nor saw that if it won 
 they must lose. But with the progress of 
 Conservation in the minds of the people, the 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 103 
 
 fight IS getting sharper. The nearer we ap- 
 proach to victory, the bitterer the opposition 
 that we must meet and the greater the need 
 for caution and watchfulness. Open oppo- 
 sition we can overcome, but I warn you 
 especially against the men who come to 
 congresses such as this, ostensibly as dis- 
 interested citizens, but actually as the paid 
 agents of the special interests. I wish to 
 say that I heartily approve of the attitude of 
 any corporation which comes here openly 
 and because it is interested in the delibera- 
 tions of a meeting such as this; which comes 
 hither to advocate, by its openly accredited 
 agents, views which it believes the meeting 
 should have in mind. I approve of the cor- 
 poration that does that; and I would despise 
 any of our people who feared instantly to 
 give the most ample and respectful hearing 
 and real consideration to any such plea thus 
 put forward. The corporation, through its 
 agents, not only has a right to be heard, 
 but if it does not desire to be heard, we 
 should see that its case should be presented. 
 My protest is not against the man who 
 comes here as the corporation agent; but 
 against the man who comes here ostensibly 
 for something else but really is for the 
 corporation. 
 
104 NATURAL RESOURCES 
 
 This congress is a direct appeal to the 
 patriotism of our whole people. The nation 
 wisely looks to such gatherings for counsel 
 and leadership. Let that leadership be 
 sound, definite, practical, and on the side of 
 all the people. It would be no small mis- 
 fortune if a meeting such as this should ever 
 fall into the hands of the open enemies or 
 false friends of the great movement which it 
 represents. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 It is our duty and our desire to make this 
 land of ours a better home for the race; but 
 our duty does not stop there. We must also 
 work for a better nation to live in this 
 better land. The development and con- 
 servation of our National Character and our 
 free institutions must go hand in hand with 
 the development and conservation of our 
 natural resources, which the Governors' 
 Conference so well called the foundation of 
 our prosperity. Whatever progress we may 
 make as a nation, whatever wealth we may 
 accumulate, however far we may push 
 mechanical development and production, 
 we shall never reach a point where our 
 welfare can depend in the last analysis 
 on anything but the fundamental qualities of 
 
NATURAL RESOURCES 105 
 
 good citizenship — upon honesty, courage, 
 and common sense. The homely virtues are 
 the lasting virtues, and the road which leads 
 to them is the road to genuine and lasting 
 success. 
 
 What this country needs is what every 
 free country must set before it as the great 
 goal toward which it works — an equal 
 opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness for every one of its citizens, 
 rich and poor, great and humble alike. To 
 achieve this end we must put a stop to the 
 improper political dominion of the great 
 special interests. This country, its natural 
 resources, its natural advantages, its op- 
 portunities, and its institutions belong to 
 all its citizens. They cannot be enjoyed 
 fully and freely under any government in 
 which the special interests as such have a 
 voice. The supreme political task of our 
 day, the indispensable condition of national 
 eiEciency and national welfare, is to drive 
 the special interests out of our public life. 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 SPEECH AT SIOUX FALLS 
 
 3 September, 1910 
 
 It is more than thirty years ago that I first 
 came into what was then the territory of 
 Dakota, and twenty-seven years ago that I 
 ran my cattle on the Little Missouri. The 
 first occasion that I ever got into that part of 
 the territory that is now the state of South 
 Dakota was a couple of years later on, when 
 about a dozen of us went down to the Indian 
 roundup to hunt up cattle, and we came 
 pretty near being run in by the Indian police. 
 So that I came very close to making my first 
 appearance in South Dakota under arrest. 
 
 My friends, I never can sufficiently express 
 the obligations I am under to the territory 
 of Dakota, for it was here that I lived a num- 
 ber of years in a ranch house in the cattle 
 country, and I regard my experience during 
 those years, when I lived and worked with 
 my own fellow ranchmen on what was then 
 the frontier, as the most important educa- 
 tional asset of all my life. It is a mighty good 
 thing to know men, not from looking at 
 
 106 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 107 
 
 them, but from having been one of them. 
 When you have worked with them, when 
 you have Hved with them, you do not have 
 to wonder how they feel, because you feel it 
 yourself. Every now and then, I am amused 
 when newspapers in the East, — perhaps, I 
 may say, not always friendly to me, — having 
 prophesied that I was dead wrong on a cer- 
 tain issue, and then finding out that I am 
 right, express acid wonder how I am able to 
 divine how people are thinking. Well, some- 
 times I don't and sometimes I do; but when 
 I do it comes simply from the fact that this 
 is the way I am thinking myself. I know 
 how the man that works with his hands and 
 the man on the ranch are thinking, because 
 I have been there and I am thinking that 
 way myself. It is not that I divine the way 
 they are thinking, but because I think the 
 same way. 
 
 Friends, I have come here to the West this 
 time to visit the people I know so well and 
 in whom I believe with all my heart, and to 
 talk of certain things that interest none of 
 us in a merely party sense, but do interest 
 all of us as American citizens. Parties are 
 good as instruments, and only as instruments. 
 The thing that Americans should recollect 
 is that what matters is not the opinions that 
 
io8 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 divide them one from another so much as it 
 is the great fundamentals upon which they 
 are united. We must have our differences; 
 and it w^ould be a very unhealthy thing if all 
 of us thought alike. We need the friction 
 with people different from ourselves; and 
 my experience with my fellow countrymen is 
 that there will always be plenty of them who 
 will think different ways. We need the in- 
 tellectual differences that come from such 
 friction, and we must resolutely, but with 
 mutual respect and forbearance among our- 
 selves, battle for our respective opinions. 
 That is good and wholesome; but it is not 
 merely good and wholesome, but vital, to re- 
 member that on the really great issues we 
 must all unite. Take what I mean when I 
 speak of the "square deal." I mean not only 
 that each man should act fairly and honestly 
 under the rules of the game as it is now 
 played, but I mean also that if the rules 
 give improper advantage to some set of 
 people, then let us change the rules of the 
 game. Now, I make this discrimination 
 between men. When a man cheats, if he 
 swindles the public, if he corrupts a legis- 
 lature, or if, as a member of the legislature, 
 he tries to blackmail any one else, drive that 
 man out of politics or business if you can; 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 109 
 
 but when you find a man who is just like the 
 rest of us, who tries to manage his business 
 just about the same way as the rest of us 
 manage ours; if you find that he has made a 
 disproportionate fortune or has obtained other 
 advantages which it is not healthy for the 
 country that he should have, do not blame 
 him — he has just done what the average 
 citizen would have done in his place; do 
 not blame him, but change the rules of the 
 game. 
 
 Now, that has direct reference to the matter 
 of the tariff. Whenever men just like our- 
 selves — possibly not much better, but prob- 
 ably not in the least worse — continually 
 fail to give us the results we have a right to 
 expect from their efforts, we may just as 
 well make up our minds that the fault lies, 
 not in their personalities, but in the con- 
 ditions under which they work; and profit 
 comes, not from denouncing them, but from 
 seeing that the conditions are changed. 
 This is especially true of tariff making. It 
 has been conclusively shown, by experiments 
 repeated again and again, that the methods 
 of tariff making by Congress, which have 
 now obtained for so many years, cannot, 
 from the very nature of the case, bring really 
 satisfactory results. With the present tariff, 
 
no THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 made by the same methods as its predecessor 
 and as that predecessor's predecessor, there 
 is grave dissatisfaction. The people know 
 that there are some things in it which are 
 not right, and therefore they tend to suspect 
 the, as I think, more numerous things in it 
 which are right. They know that the system 
 on which it was made, the same system on 
 which its predecessors were made, encourages 
 a scramble of selfish interests, to which the 
 all-important general interest of the public 
 is necessarily more or less subordinated. 
 There was a time when this scramble was 
 regarded as the natural course in tariff 
 making, and was not resented. The people 
 demand, and rightly, that the profit of the 
 special interests shall be subordinated to the 
 general welfare in every case. It is this 
 attitude — practically a new attitude — of 
 the people which must be met in dealing 
 with the present tariff, and with proposals 
 to amend the present tariff. Very little im- 
 provement, indeed, will follow any attempt 
 to revise the tariff by methods hitherto used. 
 The thing to do is to change the methods. 
 I believe that this country is fully committed 
 to the principle of protection; but it is to 
 protection as a principle; to protection 
 primarily in the interest of the standard of 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE in 
 
 living of the American workingman. I be- 
 lieve that when protection becomes, not a 
 principle, but a privilege and a preference — 
 or, rather, a jumble of privileges and prefer- 
 ences — then the American people disap- 
 prove of it. Now, to correct the trouble, 
 it is necessary, in the first place, to get in 
 mind clearly what we want ; and, in the next 
 place, to get in mind clearly the method by 
 which we hope to obtain what we want. 
 What we want is what I have already said 
 — a square deal in the tariff as in every- 
 thing else; a square deal for the wage earner; 
 a square deal for the employer, and a square 
 deal for the general public. To obtain it, 
 we must have a thoroughly efficient and well- 
 equipped tariff commission. 
 
 The tariff ought to be a material issue, and 
 not a moral issue; but if, instead of a square 
 deal, we get a crooked deal, then it becomes 
 very emphatically a moral issue. What we 
 desire — when I say **we" I am speaking 
 of the American people — in a tariff is such 
 a measure of protection as will equalize the 
 cost of production here and abroad; and 
 as the cost of production is primarily labor 
 cost, this means primarily a tariff sufficient 
 to make up for the difference in labor cost 
 here and abroad. The American public 
 
112 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 wants the American laboring man put on an 
 equality with other citizens, so that he shall 
 have the ability to achieve the American 
 standard of living and the capacity to enjoy; 
 and to do this, we must see that his wages 
 are not lowered by improper competition 
 with inferior wage workers abroad — with 
 wage workers who are paid poorly and who 
 live as no Americans are willing to live. 
 But the American public does not wish to 
 see the tariff so arranged as to benefit prima- 
 rily a few wealthy men. 
 
 As a means toward the attainment of the 
 end in view, we have as yet devised nothing 
 in any way so effective as a tariff commission. 
 There should be a commission of well-paid 
 experts; men who should not represent any 
 special interest or industry; who should be 
 masters of their subjects; men of the very 
 highest character, who should approach the 
 matter with absolute disregard of every out- 
 side consideration. I do not want to see 
 these men of one party or another or of one 
 trade or another; but experts, single-minded 
 in finding out, and telling, the truth. These 
 men should take up in succession each 
 subject with which the tariff deals and in- 
 vestigate the conditions of production here 
 and abroad; they should find out the facts 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 113 
 
 and not merely accept the statements as to 
 the facts of interested parties; and they 
 should report to Congress on each subject 
 as soon as the subject has been covered. 
 Then, action can be taken at once on the 
 particular schedule concerned, while the 
 commission immediately proceeds to in- 
 vestigate another. By these means log- 
 rolling V70uld be avoided, and each subject 
 treated on its merits, while there would be no 
 such shock to general industry as is implied 
 in the present custom of making sweeping 
 changes in the whole tariff at once. Finally, 
 it should be the duty of some governmental 
 department or bureau to investigate the con- 
 ditions in the various protected industries, 
 and see that the laborers really are getting 
 the benefit of the tariff supposed to be enacted 
 in their interest. And if, from an investiga- 
 tion of a certain industry, it appears that the 
 tariff, supposed to be imposed for the benefit 
 of the wage worker, results in such shape 
 that the benefit does not reach him, the 
 tariff on that industry should be taken off. 
 Moreover, to secure good treatment abroad, 
 we should keep the maximum and minimum 
 provision. 
 
 I would apply the same principle of com- 
 mission in another matter, — the improvement 
 
114 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 of the rivers and harbors. At present, a river 
 and harbor bill, like a tariff bill, tends to be 
 settled by a squabble among a lot of big 
 selfish interests and little selfish interests, 
 with scant regard to the one really vital 
 interest, that of the country as a v^hole. 
 In this matter the national legislature 
 would do well to profit by the example of 
 Massachusetts. Until within a year Massa- 
 chusetts dealt with its land and harbor 
 legislation just as in Washington the Federal 
 tariff and river and harbor laws have been 
 dealt with; and there was just the same 
 pulling and hauling, the same bargaining and 
 logrolling, the same subordination of the 
 general interest to various special interests. 
 Last year the Governor took up the matter, 
 and on his recommendation the legislature 
 turned the whole business over to a commis- 
 sion of experts; and all trouble and scandal 
 forthwith disappeared. Incidentally, this 
 seems to me to be a first-class instance of 
 progressive legislation. 
 
 And now, friends, the same principle that 
 I believe should be applied in deahng with the 
 tariff should be applied in the questions that 
 come before us for settlement by legislation. 
 I do not mean appointing a commission. 
 I mean the principle of giving justice and 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 115 
 
 demanding justice. Take corporations. A 
 corporation that behaves well, that justifies 
 itself by service to the public, should be well 
 treated; and it is just as much our duty to 
 hunt out of public life the corrupt public ser- 
 vant who seeks to blackmail a corporation as 
 it is to hunt out the man who improperly and 
 corruptly serves a corporation. Now, let me 
 give you an example in my own experience 
 here in the old territory of Dakota in the cat- 
 tle days. In those days there were no fences 
 in the cow country, and we kept track of our 
 herds by branding each calf with the brand 
 of the cow that it followed. I do not have 
 to explain that to you; but I do to an Eastern 
 audience; and there must be plenty of you 
 who know what mavericks are. By range law 
 at that time, when we found a maverick, 
 — an unclaimed, unbranded yearling, — we 
 would put on the brand of the ranch on which 
 it was found. Close to me was a man with the 
 Thistle brand. I had hired a new puncher, 
 and was out with him one day on the range, 
 and we struck a maverick. He got out his 
 rope, we threw the maverick, I made a little 
 bit of fire of sagebrush, and took a cinch 
 ring and heated it to run on the brand. It 
 was on the range, and I said to the puncher, 
 "Put on the Thistle brand." He said, "All 
 
ii6 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 right, Boss; I know my business." "Hold on 
 a minute," I said; "you are putting on my 
 brand." He said, "I always put on the 
 Boss's brand." And then I said, "Oh! all 
 right; go back and get your time." He said, 
 "What's that for.?" And I said, "My 
 friend, if you will steal for me, you will steal 
 from me." And the same way with the 
 public man. If he will steal for you, if he 
 will act dishonestly on your behalf, he will 
 steal from you and he will act dishonestly 
 against you if he gets a chance. Do justice 
 to the corporation. It is entitled to justice; 
 but it is not entitled to own any man in public 
 life. At this moment I think that the most 
 important question of the various important 
 questions before us is the divorce of big busi- 
 ness from politics. 
 
 Each man of great wealth is entitled abso- 
 lutely to the protection of the law. He is 
 entitled to it exactly as much as the small 
 man; and you are not to be excused if you do 
 not give him as much as the small man; but 
 neither are you to be excused if you give him 
 more. Do you see what I mean ? Remem- 
 ber that justice means justice to both sides. 
 If there was danger of an assault on the prop- 
 erty or person of any very rich man, even 
 though he were only one of a not inconsider- 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 117 
 
 able number of very rich men with whom I 
 happen to get on badly — if there was danger 
 of an assault on him in person or property, I 
 would count myself a worthless American citi- 
 zen if I did not come myself to his protection, 
 and I would think the same of you. But after 
 protecting him I would then do my level best, 
 in company with the rest of my fellow citi- 
 zens, to see that he did not have a chance to 
 do anything crooked on his side. In other 
 words, I believe that we should try to do entire 
 justice to such a man and exact entire justice 
 from him. Do not ever for one moment 
 fix your eyes only on one particular kind of 
 wrongdoing, or on one particular class of 
 your fellow citizens as being wrongdoers. 
 I know men, you know men, who will loudly 
 inveigh against the corruption of the rich 
 man; but you cannot get them — especially 
 if they are politicians — just before election 
 time to say anything against the violence of 
 the mob for fear that they will hurt the 
 feelings of the labor vote. I remember on 
 one occasion being introduced as the poor 
 man's friend. I said, "Now, let us amend 
 that. I am the poor man's friend if the poor 
 man is straight, and I am the rich man's friend 
 if the rich man is straight; but if a man is 
 crooked, I am against him, rich or poor." 
 
ii8 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 If a body of labor men commit a deed of vio- 
 lence, — turn themselves into a mob, — the 
 first duty of decent citizens is to put down 
 the violence and disperse the mob. You 
 have got to have order and the supremacy 
 of the law, or you cannot have civilization. 
 If a rich man acts corruptly and dishonestly, 
 if he arrogates privileges to himself, and dis- 
 regards the rights of others, then it is our 
 prime duty to punish that rich man and to 
 make the conditions such that he cannot 
 again repeat his offense. 
 
 Lawless violence and the corruption that 
 eats into the vitals of honest government 
 are equally dangerous to the welfare of the 
 people. Under other forms of government 
 there may be an appearance of success and 
 an appearance of prosperity, even when the 
 average citizen is not straight. It cannot 
 be so with us. We here, we of this great 
 democracy, we who are engaged in the 
 greatest and most hopeful, and yet the most 
 difficult, governmental experiment that has 
 ever been tried — the experiment of securing 
 self-government for a people on a continental 
 scale — we cannot afford not to have the 
 highest quality of individual citizenship. 
 The stream will not rise higher than its 
 source. If the average man is not a decent, 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 119 
 
 straight man, knowing his rights and insist- 
 ing upon them, and knowing his duties and 
 performing them, we cannot have good gov- 
 ernment. Frown upon the corrupt man, 
 frown upon the man who violates the law; 
 and remember this, that if he steals in small 
 things he will steal in big things if he gets 
 the chance. 
 
 Send to represent you in public life men 
 who are literally incorruptible, men who will 
 not only not do what is wrong if tempted 
 with money, but who will not do what is 
 wrong even if tempted by popular applause. 
 You have the right to have your representa- 
 tives represent you; but, mind you, always 
 remember that if you ask them to do what is 
 wrong, you ask them to misrepresent all that 
 is best in you. 
 
 Demand the highest ideals in your repre- 
 sentatives, and shape your political action 
 with two things in view. 
 
 In the first place, try to get by legislation, 
 national and state, a better chance for the 
 average man, a greater equality of oppor- 
 tunity for that man. This country is founded 
 on the theory that it is a great deal better that 
 the average man should have a good living 
 than that the exceptional man should have 
 a great profit. Shape your laws so that the 
 
I20 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 man shall have a great profit only if he ren- 
 ders a great service to his fellov^s. We must 
 have exceptional men, and we must give them 
 exceptional rewards; but the rewards should 
 bear some kind of proportion to the services 
 rendered. I do not think that the American 
 public grudges an exceptional reward to an 
 exceptional man if it is commensurate with 
 what he has done, but it does grudge it when 
 he gets an exceptional reward for what is in 
 its essence swindling, or when although he has 
 rendered a service the reward is out of pro- 
 portion to the service rendered. 
 
 It is a bad thing for our community i£ any 
 considerable class of people lead their lives 
 under conditions so hard that they cannot be 
 good citizens. It is almost equally damaging 
 to a man not to have enough work and to have 
 so much that he is crushed under it. Our 
 steady effort should be, so far as possible, 
 to so shape the work of our lawmaking bodies 
 as to help the average man and the average 
 woman do their work under the most favor- 
 able conditions. Now that is the first thing 
 we should do — do what we can by legisla- 
 tion and an honest administration of the laws 
 to equahze conditions, to make opportunity 
 really fairly equal for all men, and do away 
 with conditions that tend to break down and 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 121 
 
 depress any given set of workers. That is 
 the first part. 
 
 Now, the second part is this: After every- 
 thing has been done that can be done by 
 legislation, remember that the fundamental 
 factor in any man's success in life must be 
 that man's own character. The wisest laws 
 and the best government will not help a man 
 who will not work, or who cannot work well 
 and wisely. Every man of us stumbles at 
 times; there is not one of us here who does 
 not sometimes stumble, and who, therefore, 
 ought not to have a helping hand stretched out 
 to him. Shame upon us if we fail to stretch 
 out a helping hand to the man who stumbles; 
 but if he lies down, you cannot carry him. 
 You can help him most by helping him to 
 help himself. ^ 
 
 Another thing. Let each man remember 
 his rights, and also let him remember the 
 rights of others; and especially let the man 
 who is conscious of his wrongs see that he 
 does not put any of them on the shoulders of 
 the woman who happens to be his wife. I 
 have met more than one agitator, whom you 
 could always see in the crossroads store, 
 inveighing against the inequality of the social 
 system that kept him down, and all the while 
 he lived at all only because his wife took in 
 
122 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 washing, or did something of that kind. 
 Distrust also the man who would like to 
 reform the whole world, but who cannot keep 
 his family decently clothed and fed. The 
 first duty of every man and woman is their 
 duty in the family — to those nearest to them. 
 If a man is not a good father, a good husband, 
 he is a poor citizen. That is not enough; 
 but he has got to be that or he is a poor citi- 
 zen. Then, further. If he is not a good 
 neighbor, if he is not a man you are willing 
 to deal with, to work alongside of, he is not 
 going to be of much good to the state at large. 
 If there is one day when it is our duty to 
 serve the state, there are a hundred days 
 when it is our duty to serve our families; 
 but we ought all of us to be ready to serve 
 the state when the day comes. Woe unto 
 the nation which is unable to endure in such 
 a season; woe unto the nation whose sons 
 shrink from making a sacrifice that only 
 heroic natures can make. Take an example 
 from the men of the Civil War. I was proud 
 to-day to have the National Guard here and 
 see them march by. I have been a guards- 
 man myself. I wished to see them because 
 I like to see our men keep alive the spirit 
 which enabled the men of the dark years of 
 '6i--'65 to do their duty. And I want you 
 
THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 123 
 
 to remember the lesson that they taught us. 
 
 You may notice, friends, that I have not been 
 
 promising you the millennium if you vote my 
 
 way. I have not been telling you, and shall 
 
 not tell you, that if you do your duty you will 
 
 have a life of ease and pleasure. I do not 
 
 think we shall have the millennium, but I 
 
 think we are not to be excused if we do not 
 
 try measurably to improve our condition. I 
 
 am not advising you to act so as to make 
 
 life more easy for you; I am not advising 
 
 you to act in a spirit that shall disregard 
 
 what is difficult; I am not advising you to 
 
 get around obstacles; but I am advising 
 
 you so that you can overcome them. I think 
 
 all of you here know the unwise man, — I 
 
 am sorry to say, as often the unwise woman, — 
 
 who, because he or she has had a hard time 
 
 in life, fooHshly refuses to teach the children 
 
 how best to meet the difficulties in life. It 
 
 often happens that such a woman wishes her 
 
 daughter "brought up like a lady," meaning 
 
 thereby that the daughter shall be brought 
 
 up a perfectly useless individual; and I 
 
 think we all know rich men who leave to 
 
 their sons riches which are millstones around 
 
 their necks because they have brought them 
 
 up to do nothing useful and to lead that most 
 
 hopeless and dismal of all possible lives — a 
 
124 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 
 
 life devoted to pleasure as a business. It is 
 not only the poorest business, but the funny 
 thing is, they do not get any pleasure out 
 of it. 
 
 Bring your children up not so that they will 
 shirk difficulties, but so that they will over- 
 come them ; not so that they will try to have 
 a soft time of selfish ease, but so that they 
 will have the greatest joy that comes to man- 
 kind — the satisfaction of knowing, whenever 
 the end may come, that they have led worthy 
 lives. 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 SPEECH AT FARGO 
 
 5 September, 1910 
 
 To-day — on Labor Day — I speak in one 
 sense to those especially personally and 
 vitally interested in the labor struggle; and 
 yet I speak of this primarily as one aspect of 
 the larger social struggle growing out of the 
 attempts to readjust social conditions and 
 make them more equitable. 
 
 The nineteenth century was distinctly one 
 of economic triumphs — triumphs in the 
 domain of production, including transporta- 
 tion and the mechanics of exchange. The 
 marvelous progress made during that hun- 
 dred years in these respects multiplied man's 
 productive power to an almost inconceivable 
 degree. In the matter of the production of 
 wealth, as much progress was made during 
 the nineteenth century as during all previous 
 periods since history dawned. I am not 
 speaking hyperbolically; I mean that liter- 
 ally. When this nation was founded, steam 
 and electricity were unknown. Our whole 
 modern industrial system had not yet come 
 
 125 
 
126 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 into being ; and the means of transportation 
 for men and goods were the same as those 
 that were in existence in the time of Trajan's 
 empire and the days of Egypt and Nineveh; 
 that is, the changes brought on in a single 
 century through machinery and steam have 
 been greater than the sum total of the changes 
 of the preceding thousands of years; and 
 these very changes and this material progress 
 have thrust upon us social and political 
 problems of the first magnitude. The 
 triumphs of the physical sciences in the nine- 
 teenth century represented progress pri- 
 marily in the material elements of civilization. 
 That was their problem; but the most press- 
 ing problems that confront the present 
 century are not concerned with the material 
 production of wealth, but with its distribution. 
 The demands of progress now deal not so 
 much with the material as with the moral 
 and ethical factors of civilization. Our 
 basic problem in the twentieth century is to 
 see that the marvelously augmented powers 
 of production bequeathed to us by the nine- 
 teenth century be made to administer to the 
 needs of the many rather than be exploited 
 for the profit of the few. 
 
 The American wage earner faces this larger 
 social problem in a dual capacity : first, as 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 127 
 
 a citizen of the republic charged with the 
 full duty of citizenship; and, next, as a 
 wage earner — as a wage worker — who, 
 together with his fellow workers, is vitally 
 concerned in the question of wages and 
 general conditions of employment, which 
 affect not only his well-being and that of his 
 wife and children, but the opportunities of 
 all workers for a higher development. 
 
 It is true of wage workers, as of all other 
 citizens, that most of their progress must 
 depend upon their own initiative and their 
 own efforts. Nevertheless, there are three 
 different factors in this progress. There is, 
 first, the share which the man's own in- 
 dividual qualities must determine. This is 
 the most important of all, for nothing can 
 supply the place of individual capacity. Yet 
 there are two other factors of prime impor- 
 tance, namely : what can be done by the 
 wage workers in cooperation with one an- 
 other, usually through unions; and what 
 can be done by government — that is, by 
 the instrument through which all the people 
 work collectively. Wages and other most 
 important conditions of employment must 
 remain largely outside of government con- 
 trol; must be left for adjustment by free 
 contract between employers and wage earners, 
 
128 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 subject — and I call your attention to the 
 proviso — to legislation which will prevent 
 conditions which compel men or women to 
 accept wages representing less than will insure 
 decent living. But to attempt to leave 
 the question of contract between employer 
 and employee merely to individual action 
 means the absolute destruction of individ- 
 ualism ; for where the individual is so weak 
 that he, perforce, has to accept whatever 
 a strongly organized body chooses to give 
 him, his individual liberty becomes a mere 
 sham and mockery. It is indispensably 
 necessary, in order to preserve to the largest 
 degree our system of individualism, that there 
 should be effective and organized collective 
 action. The wage earners must act jointly, 
 through the process of collective bargaining, 
 in great industrial enterprises. Only thus 
 can they be put upon a plane of economic 
 equality with their corporate employers. 
 Only thus is freedom of contract made a real 
 thing and not a mere legal fiction. There 
 are occasional occupations where this is not 
 necessary; but, speaking broadly, it is 
 necessary throughout the great w^orld of 
 organized industry. I believe this practice of 
 collective bargaining, effective only through 
 such organizations as the trades unions, to 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 129 
 
 have been one of the most potent forces 
 in the past century in promoting the prog- 
 ress of the wage earners and in securing 
 larger social progress for humanity. Wher- 
 ever there is organized capital on a consider- 
 able scale I believe in the principle of or- 
 ganized labor and in the practice of collective 
 bargaining, not merely as a desirable thing 
 for the wage earners, but as something 
 which has been demonstrated to be essential 
 in the long run to their permanent progress. 
 Where capital is organized, as it must be 
 organized under modern industrial conditions, 
 the only way to secure proper freedom — 
 proper treatment — for the individual laborer 
 is to have labor organize also. 
 
 This does not mean that I unequivocally 
 indorse any or all practices that labor or- 
 ganizations may happen to adopt, or any or 
 all principles that they may choose to enun- 
 ciate. Labor organizations have the weak- 
 nesses and defects common to all forms of 
 human organizations. When any man tells 
 you that the laboring man never goes wrong, 
 make up your minds that he is telling you 
 what he knows to be an untruth, and dis- 
 trust him accordingly; for it is a good old 
 principle to act upon in the long run, that the 
 most uncomfortable truth is a safer traveling 
 
 K 
 
I30 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 companion than the pleasantest falsehood. 
 Sometimes labor organizations act very well, 
 and sometimes, like the rest of mankind, they 
 act very badly; and I am for them when 
 they act well, and I am against them when 
 they act badly. I believe that their existence 
 is a necessity; I believe that their aims and 
 purposes are generally good; and I believe 
 that all of them have occasionally made 
 mistakes, and that some of them have been 
 guilty of wrongdoing. Just in so far as they 
 are strong and effective they tempt designing 
 men who seek to control them for their own 
 interests, and stimulate the desires of am- 
 bitious leaders who may be clever, crooked 
 men, or who may be honest but visionary 
 and foolish. In other words, in treating of 
 labor unions, as in treating of corporations, 
 or of humanity generally, we shall do well to 
 remember Abraham Lincoln's saying that 
 "there is a deal of human nature in man- 
 kind." Whether in a man or in an organized 
 body of men, the power to do good means 
 that such power may be twisted into evil; 
 and in proportion as the power grows so it 
 becomes steadily more important that it 
 should be handled aright. Just in propor- 
 tion as in its proper function power is im- 
 portant to social progress, so in its improper 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 131 
 
 function it becomes fraught with social dis- 
 aster. 
 
 Outside critics should appreciate the neces- 
 sity of organized labor, and understand and 
 sympathize with what is good in it instead 
 of condemning it indiscriminately. On the 
 other hand, those within its ranks should 
 fearlessly analyze the criticisms directed 
 against it, and ruthlessly eliminate from the 
 practices of its organization those things 
 which justify such criticism and attack. In 
 other words, let the outsider realize the good 
 — the necessity — of organized labor, and 
 let the men within the organization realize the 
 necessity of keeping the organization straight. 
 This is the path, not only of right, but of 
 wisdom and safety. Public opinion in the 
 United States is daily becoming more alert 
 and more intelligent and more forceful; and 
 no organization, whether trades union or 
 corporation, whether industrial or nonindus- 
 trial, can endure or permanently amount 
 to a social force if it does not harmonize 
 with a wise and enlightened public opinion. 
 Hitherto we Americans have been over- 
 occupied with material things, and have 
 neglected to watch the play of the social 
 forces about us. But now we are awakening 
 from that indifference; and every form of 
 
132 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 organization representing an important eco- 
 nomic, political, or social force must undergo 
 a closer scrutiny than ever before. 
 
 I think that the next quarter of a century- 
 will be important politically in many ways 
 (I do not use the word "politically" in the 
 way of party politics; but I am speaking of 
 the social development of our people); and 
 in none more so than in the labor movement. 
 Not only are the benefits of labor organiza- 
 tions more clearly understood than before, 
 but any shortcoming or vice displayed in 
 connection therewith is also more clearly 
 understood and more quickly resented. Just 
 as it is with corporations, just so it is with 
 railroads. Forty years ago the railroads 
 could do with absolute impunity, and with- 
 out any criticism, things which would cause 
 well nigh a revolution if they attempted 
 them now. The public is growling more 
 and more to understand that, in a contest 
 between employer and employee — a cor- 
 poration and a trades union — not only the 
 interests of the contestants, but the interests 
 of the third party — the public — must be 
 considered. Anything like levity in provok- 
 ing a strike, on the one hand or on the 
 other, is certain more and more to be resented 
 by the public. Strikes are sometimes nee- 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 133 
 
 essary and proper; sometimes they repre- 
 sent the only way in which, after all other 
 methods have been exhausted, it is possible 
 for the laboring man to stand up for his 
 rights; but it must be clearly understood 
 that a strike is a matter of last resort, and, of 
 course, violence, lawlessness, and mob rule 
 must be promptly and sternly dealt with, no 
 matter what the cause may be that excites 
 them. Our social organization is too com- 
 plex for us to fail quickly to condemn those 
 who, with levity or in a spirit of wanton 
 brutality, bring about far-reaching and dis- 
 astrous interference with normal processes. 
 More and more we are growing to understand 
 that corruption and lawless disorder are twin 
 foes of the body politic, and that neither can 
 be tolerated. All that I can do to help in 
 bettering social conditions, to help in making 
 things better for the man who has had a hard 
 time in Hfe, will be done; but when he 
 resorts to lawless violence, when there comes 
 a question of mob rule, all questions of re- 
 form must be left in abeyance until the 
 laws are absolutely obeyed. The pubHc 
 sympathizes cordially with any movement for 
 a good standard of living and for moderate 
 hours of employment. (I personally, for 
 instance, cordially beheve in eight hours a 
 
134 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 day, and in one day in seven for complete 
 rest.) Where men and women are worked 
 under harsh and intolerable conditions, and 
 can secure no relief without a strike, or, in- 
 deed, where the strike is clearly undertaken 
 for things which are vitally necessary — and 
 then only as a last resort in the effort to 
 achieve the end in any other ways — public 
 sympathy will favor the wage workers; but 
 it will not favor them unless such conditions as 
 these are fulfilled, and it will condemn them 
 if they resort to lawless violence. There- 
 fore, it is becoming more and more important 
 that the labor movement should combine 
 steady, far-seeing leadership with discipline 
 and control in its ranks; and I am glad that 
 this afternoon I can say, when I speak of 
 the proper type of leadership, you have an 
 instance in the gentleman who has spoken 
 to us this afternoon on behalf of labor. 
 Dishonest leadership is a curse anywhere, 
 but nowhere is it a greater curse than in 
 the labor movement. If there is one lesson 
 which I would rather teach my fellow Ameri- 
 cans than any other, it is to hound down 
 the dishonest man — no matter what his 
 condition — and to brush aside with impa- 
 tient contempt the creature who denounces 
 dishonesty only when it is found in some 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 135 
 
 special social stratum. Hunt down the dis- 
 honest man without regard to class; and if 
 he belongs to your class, hunt him down a 
 little quicker. Take a case in politics. When 
 I was President I sought so to carry myself 
 that there should not be any need of saying, 
 "Put the other party in to turn the rascals 
 out," because I would turn them out myself. 
 I will cinch the dishonest man of the other 
 party; and if he is a member of my own 
 party I will cinch him just a little bit quicker. 
 Let the labor leader, the politician who needs 
 the votes of the labor leaders, remember 
 that it is their duty to hunt down the dis- 
 honest man in the labor movement; and let 
 the man of means, the business man, the 
 editor of the big paper that is financed by 
 business men, remember that it is their duty 
 to hunt down the dishonest man of great 
 wealth, 
 
 I cannot help saying just a word more 
 about the delight it gave me this afternoon 
 to hear the utterances of a Federal judge 
 who looks ahead, a Federal judge who not 
 only stands for honesty and righteousness 
 in the conventional forms in which we have 
 been accustomed to see them for generations, 
 but who understands changed conditions and 
 realizes that the Constitution of the United 
 
136 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 States must be administered, if it is to be 
 administered wisely, by men who sympathize 
 with, and understand, the needs of the wage 
 worker, just as they sympathize with, and 
 understand, the needs of all other American 
 citizens. 
 
 For many years I have been more or less 
 closely associated with representative leaders 
 of labor, organized and unorganized. Some 
 of these men are among my close friends, 
 whom I respect and admire as heartily as I 
 do any men in America. There are some 
 of them to whom I go as freely for assistance 
 and guidance, for aid and help, in making 
 up my mind how to deal with our social 
 problems, as I go to the leaders of any busi- 
 ness or profession. I cannot pay too high a 
 tribute to the worth and energy of these 
 men — to their sincerity and good judgment 
 as leaders. But no movement — no leader- 
 ship — however honest, can endure unless 
 the rank and file live up to their duties, and 
 search for such leadership and support it 
 when they find it. If the best men in a 
 labor union leave its management and con- 
 trol to men of a poorer type, the effect will 
 be just as disastrous as when good citizens 
 in a city follow the same course as regards 
 city government. The stay-at-home man in 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 137 
 
 a union is just as much responsible for the 
 sins of omission and commission of his 
 organization as the stay-at-home man in a 
 city is for the civic conditions under which he 
 suffers and about which he complains. 
 
 All that properly can be done should be 
 done by all of us to help upward the standard 
 of living and improve the ability of the 
 average man to reach that standard. There 
 are still in the United States great masses of 
 skilled and unorganized labor whose condi- 
 tions of work and living are harsh and pit- 
 iable. It is a shocking indictment of our 
 industrial condition to be told in a matter- 
 of-course way in a government report that 
 thousands of workers in this country are 
 compelled to toil every day in the week, 
 without one day of rest, for a wage of J 45 a 
 month. Such a condition is bad for them, 
 and, in the end, bad for all of us. Our com- 
 mercial development should heartily be en- 
 couraged; but it must not be allowed to 
 commercialize our minds. That is not only 
 the affair of the wage workers; it is the 
 affair of all of us. If one set of our fellow 
 citizens is degraded, you can be absolutely 
 certain that the degradation will spread more 
 or less to all of us. This government is 
 founded on the theory that "all men up" is 
 
138 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 a safer motto than "some men down." We 
 must make it good. 
 
 It is not merely the duty of the wage 
 earner, but it is also the duty of the general 
 pubHc, to see that he has safe and healthy 
 conditions under which to carry on his work. 
 No worker should be compelled, as a condi- 
 tion of earning his daily bread, to risk his 
 Hfe and Hmb, or be deprived of his health, 
 or have to work under dangerous and bad 
 surroundings. Society owes the worker this 
 because it owes as much to itself. He should 
 not be compelled to make this matter of 
 contract; he ought not to be left to fight 
 alone for decent conditions in this respect. 
 His protection in the place where he works 
 should be guaranteed by the laws of the land. 
 In other words, he should be protected 
 during his working hours against greed and 
 carelessness on the part of unscrupulous 
 employers, just as outside of those working 
 hours both he and his employer are protected 
 in their lives and property against the mur- 
 derer and the thief. 
 
 This opens a vitally important field of 
 legislation to the national government and 
 to the state alike. As Judge Amidon has 
 said, it is humihating to think how far we 
 of this country are behind most of the other 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 139 
 
 countries in such matters. Practically all 
 civilized countries have for more than a 
 decade prohibited by the strictest regulations 
 the poisonous match industry; yet v^e had 
 not done anything at all until very recently 
 to protect the laborers against this horrible 
 danger. The national government made 
 an investigation a year ago into this industry, 
 which showed a condition of things unspeak- 
 ably shocking and revolting. Legislation to 
 prevent these abuses was introduced in Con- 
 gress, which was not passed. Since then 
 the companies in fault have ostentatiously 
 announced that they have done away with 
 the objectionable conditions. I hope so; 
 but whether they have or not, a law should 
 be passed in stringent form to prevent any 
 possible backsliding. 
 
 So it is in the matter of injuries to em- 
 ployees. In what is called "employers' 
 liability" legislation, other countries have 
 accepted the principle that the industry must 
 bear the monetary burden of its human 
 sacrifices, and that the employee who is 
 injured shall have a fixed and definite sum. 
 The United States still proceeds on an out- 
 worn and curiously improper principle, in 
 accordance with which it has too often been 
 held by the courts that the frightful burden 
 
I40 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 of the accident shall be borne in its entirety 
 by the very person least able to bear it. 
 Fortunately, in a number of states — in Wis- 
 consin and New York, for instance — these 
 defects in our life are either being remedied, 
 or else are being made a subject of intelligent 
 study with a view to their remedy. In New 
 York a bill embodying moderate compensa- 
 tion for accidents has already been passed. 
 Other states will undoubtedly follow in the 
 same path. The Federal Government has, 
 so far as its own employees are concerned, 
 been the first to recognize and put into shape 
 this principle. However, this pioneer law 
 was not made comprehensive enough; it 
 does not cover all the employees of the Federal 
 Government that ought to come within its 
 provisions, and the amount paid for per- 
 manent disability or death is entirely inade- 
 quate. Nevertheless, it was a great step in 
 advance to have this principle of working- 
 men's compensation accepted and embodied 
 in the Federal statutes ; and the recent action 
 of Congress in providing for a commission to 
 study and report upon the subject gives 
 promise that the same principle will soon be 
 applied to private firms that come within the 
 jurisdiction of the Federal Government. 
 Women and children should, beyond all 
 
LAEOR AND CAPITAL 141 
 
 question, be protected; and in their cases 
 there can be no question that the govern- 
 ment should act. They should be particular 
 objects of our solicitude; and they should 
 be guarded in effective fashion against the de- 
 mands of a too greedy commercialism. On 
 my recent trip in the neighborhood of Scran- 
 ton and Wilkes-Barre, every one I spoke to 
 agreed as to the immense improvement that 
 had been wrought by the effective enforce- 
 ment of the laws prohibiting children under 
 the age of fourteen from working, and pro- 
 hibiting women from working more than ten 
 hours a day. Personally, I think ten hours 
 a day too long; but, be this as it may, ten 
 hours a day was a great advance. 
 
 Among the planks in the platform of the 
 American Federation of Labor, there are 
 some to which I very strongly subscribe. 
 They are : — 
 
 1. Free schools; free textbooks; and 
 compulsory education. 
 
 2. A workday of not more than eight 
 hours. 
 
 3. Release from employment one day in 
 seven. 
 
 4. The abolition of the sweatshop system. 
 
 5. Sanitary inspection of factory, work- 
 shop, mine, and home. 
 
142 LABOR AND CAPITAL 
 
 6. Liability of employers for injury to body 
 or loss of life. 
 
 (I regard the demand in this form as in- 
 adequate. What we need is an automatically 
 fixed compensation for all injuries received 
 by the employee in the course of his duty, 
 this being infinitely better for the employee 
 and more just to the employer. The only 
 sufferers will be lawyers of that undesirable 
 class which exist chiefly by carrying on law- 
 suits of this nature.) 
 
 7. The passage and enforcement of rigid 
 anti-child-labor laws which will cover every 
 portion of this country. 
 
 (Similar laws limiting women's labor should 
 be enacted.) 
 
 8. Suitable and plentiful playgrounds for 
 children in all the cities. 
 
 Inasmuch as prevention is always best, 
 especial attention should be paid to the 
 prevention of industrial accidents by passing 
 laws requiring the use of safety devices. At 
 present the loss of life and limb among the 
 industrial workers of the United States is 
 simply appalling, and every year equals in 
 magnitude the killed and wounded in a fair- 
 sized war. Most of these casualties are pre- 
 ventable; and our legislative policy should 
 be shaped accordingly. It would be a good 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL 143 
 
 idea to establish in each city a museum of 
 safety devices, from which the workingmen 
 could get drawings of them and information 
 as to how they could be obtained and used. 
 
 The matter of compensation for injuries 
 to employees is, perhaps, more immediately 
 vital than any other. The report of the com- 
 mission which has begun to look into this 
 matter on behalf of the New York Legisla- 
 ture is well worth reading. The bill presented 
 by the Federation of Labor at Wisconsin on 
 this subject seems excellent. In all danger- 
 ous trades the employer should be forced to 
 bear the burden of the accident, so that the 
 shock may not be borne by the community 
 as a whole. This would be a measure of 
 justice in itself, and would do away with a 
 fruitful source of antagonism between em- 
 ployer and employed. 
 
 Our ideal should be a rate of wages suffi- 
 ciently high to enable workmen to live in a 
 manner conformable to American ideals 
 and standards, to educate their children, 
 and to provide for sickness and old age; the 
 abolition of child labor; safety device legis- 
 lation to prevent industrial accidents; and 
 automatic compensation for losses caused by 
 these industrial accidents. 
 
WORLD FEATS 
 
 SPEECH AT OMAHA 
 7. September, 1910 
 
 I AM glad to be with you to-day; and I 
 enjoyed the modest tribute to your worth 
 made by the Senator, and I agree with every 
 word of it. I am particularly pleased to be 
 introduced by the Senator, because he was 
 one of the men upon whom I especially 
 relied while I was President, both while he 
 was in the House and afterwards when he 
 was in the Senate. On one occasion he paid 
 a tribute to me, which may have been 
 entirely unmerited, in which he described 
 what the typical American public servant 
 must be. In my own case all I can say is 
 that I endeavored to live up to that descrip- 
 tion, and that I was able to accomplish what 
 I did accomplish in Washington only because 
 of the way I was backed up by men like 
 Senator Burkett; and, as we have here to- 
 day a guest from Iowa, let me say also, like 
 Senator Dolliver. 
 
 My friends, I come here — back to the 
 
 144 
 
WORLD FEATS 145 
 
 West, back to my own people whom I know 
 so well and in whom I believe so deeply 
 because they are such typical Americans. I 
 have returned from a trip abroad, and I think 
 that any one who goes out of this country 
 ought to realize that party lines stop at 
 the water's edge; that infinitely more im- 
 portant than the questions that divide us 
 one from another within our limits are the 
 great fundamental questions upon which we 
 stand alike without regard to party differ- 
 ences simply as Americans; and that the great 
 feats of which America is proud and the 
 great things which she has done are to be 
 credited to all good Americans. 
 
 In traveling in Europe last spring, one 
 thing which especially struck me was the fact 
 that the two feats which made the deepest 
 impression abroad were the cruise of the 
 battle fleet around the world and the digging 
 of the Panama Canal. Wherever I went, 
 wherever I met the great statesmen of foreign 
 nations, I found out that these two feats, 
 among all the feats credited to the American 
 people during the last two decades, had most 
 deeply and favorably affected foreign judg- 
 ment of our people. 
 
 Remember, friends, that foreign judgment 
 of us depends not in the least upon what 
 
146 WORLD FEATS 
 
 we say we can do, but upon what we can do. 
 I hate to see an American boast in the pres- 
 ence of a foreigner; it exposes him and his 
 country to laughter. It does no good to boast 
 that we are the greatest nation on the face of 
 the earth; but it does help us when we do a 
 great deed that no other nation has done. 
 
 During the past fifteen years we have 
 built up our Navy, and the building up of 
 that Navy has been the most potent means of 
 making the United States respected abroad. 
 Some time after we began to build it up the 
 great military nations abroad sneered and 
 said, "Yes; the Yankees can build ships; 
 but they don't know how to handle them; 
 they cannot do anything with them when 
 they have been built." No nation had ever 
 ventured on the experience of sending a great 
 battle fleet around the world. Other nations 
 have tried it with small squadrons halfway 
 around the world, and they had plenty of 
 difficulties and plenty of failures even with 
 such a small task; but Uncle Sam once for 
 all put an end to this talk about his fleet when 
 he had that fleet undertake a cruise that is to 
 the credit of no other nation under the sun. 
 
 Now, there is no use of a nation claiming 
 to be a great nation unless it is prepared to 
 play a great part. A nation such as ours 
 
WORLD FEATS 147 
 
 cannot possibly play a great part in inter- 
 national affairs, cannot expect to be treated 
 as a weight in either the Atlantic or the Paci- 
 fic, or to have its voice as to the Monroe 
 Doctrine, or the management of the Panama 
 Canal, heeded, unless it has a strong and 
 thoroughly efficient Navy. Within the last 
 decade the American Navy has been about 
 trebled in strength and much more than 
 trebled in efficiency, due to its extraordinary 
 progress in markmanship and maneuvering. 
 And, friends, that Navy is not an affair of 
 the seacoast only. There is not a man who 
 lives in the grass country, in the cattle coun- 
 try, or among the Great Lakes, or alongside 
 the Missouri who is not just as keenly inter- 
 ested in that Navy as if he dwelt on the New 
 England coast, or the Gulf coast, or on Puget 
 Sound. The Navy belongs to all of us. 
 If it wins credit for the nation, it wins for 
 all of us. Now, my friends, more than once 
 in my experience in public life I have found 
 that I got better support from the men in 
 the interior than from the men of the coast 
 when I appealed to them for the upbuilding 
 of the Navy. Take this very instance of 
 sending the battle fleet around the world. As 
 you gentlemen in the Senate and the House 
 remember, there was a great panic along the 
 
148 WORLD FEATS 
 
 Atlantic coast when I announced that the 
 fleet was going around the world. It is not a 
 good thing for any one proud of this country 
 to think he has the sole proprietary interest 
 in the fleet or the army or anything else. I 
 wanted to have it understood by ourselves and 
 by foreign powers, not as a menace, but as 
 the strongest kind of provocation to friendli- 
 ness. That fleet was just as much at home 
 in the Pacific as it was in the Atlantic, and it 
 could go anywhere and would go anywhere 
 when it was necessary. When I announced 
 that it was going around the world, some 
 good people on the Atlantic slope became very 
 much concerned, and some who were a little 
 less good threatened a great outcry, and it 
 was announced that the fleet would not sail. 
 It did sail. Some of my friends of the co- 
 ordinate branch of the government, as dis- 
 tinguished from the type of friend I have with 
 me to-day, announced that it should not sail 
 because I should not have the money to let 
 it sail; that it should stay where it was, — to 
 which the answer was easy. I said I had the 
 money to send it to the Pacific, and I intended 
 to send it there, and then, if they did not 
 want to appropriate the money to get it back, 
 it was their affair. After this announcement 
 the discussion subsided, except for the con- 
 
WORLD FEATS 149 
 
 ventional and perfunctory remarks that I 
 had been guilty of usurpation of authority. 
 Now, so far from this growth of our Navy 
 representing on our part either a menace of 
 aggression to weaker nations or a menace 
 of war to stronger nations, it has told most 
 powerfully for peace. Everywhere in Europe 
 the cruise of the battle fleet around the world 
 was accepted not only as an extraordinary 
 feat, reflecting the highest honor upon our 
 Navy, but as one of the movements which 
 tended markedly to promote peaceful stability 
 in international relations. No nation re- 
 garded the cruise as fraught with any menace 
 of hostility to itself; and yet every nation 
 accepted it as proof that we were not only 
 desirous ourselves to keep the peace, but able 
 to prevent the peace being broken at our 
 expense. No cruise in any way approaching 
 it has ever been made by any fleet of any 
 other power; and the best naval opinion 
 abroad had been that no such feat was pos- 
 sible; that is, that no such cruise as that 
 we actually made could be undertaken by a 
 fleet of such size without innumerable break- 
 downs and accidents. The best naval people 
 on the other side sneered when I said " The 
 fleet will start;" and they said that the battle- 
 ships and torpedo boats would be strewed 
 
150 WORLD FEATS 
 
 around every part of the globe making 
 repairs. As a matter of fact, the fleet was 
 never, in the whole year and a quarter of its 
 absence in its circumnavigation of the globe, 
 excepting once when there was a typhoon, 
 five minutes late in keeping the schedule time 
 every day, and never did a single vessel fail 
 to put in its appearance at the appointed 
 time of visit. The success of the cruise, per- 
 formed as it was without a single accident, 
 immeasurably raised the prestige, not only of 
 our fleet, but of our nation; and was a dis- 
 tinct help to the cause of international peace. 
 As regards the Panama Canal, I really 
 think that outside nations have a juster idea 
 than our own people of the magnitude and 
 success of the work. I wish our people 
 realized what is being done on the Isthmus. 
 If a man of intelligence who had never left 
 the country asked me whether I would advise 
 him to make a short trip to Europe or a trip 
 to the Panama Canal, I would without hesi- 
 tation advise him to go to the Panama Canal. 
 He would there see in operation the com- 
 pleting of one of the great achievements of 
 modern times. Colonel Goethals, and the 
 men working under him, are rendering a 
 service to this country which can only be 
 paralleled in our past history by some of 
 
WORLD FEATS 151 
 
 the services rendered in certain wars. No 
 feat of the kind or of anything Hke the mag- 
 nitude has ever been successfully carried out, 
 and hardly ever been attempted. No other 
 nation has to its credit a task of such m.agni- 
 tude, of such importance, as we will have three 
 years hence when that canal is completed. 
 
 Six years ago last spring the American 
 government took possession of the Isthmus. 
 The first two years were devoted to the sani- 
 tation of the Isthmus, to assembling the plant 
 and working force, and providing quarters, 
 food, and water supplies. In all these points 
 the success was extraordinary. From one of 
 the plague spots of the globe, one of the most 
 unhealthy regions in the entire world, the 
 Isthmus has been turned into a singularly 
 healthy place of abode, where the death rate 
 is small, and where hundreds of children are 
 now being raised under as favorable condi- 
 tions as in most parts of the United States. 
 The quarters, food, and water supply are 
 excellent, and the plant the best ever gathered 
 for such a purpose. Active excavation on a 
 large scale did not begin until January, 1907. 
 Three and a half years have gone by since 
 then, and three fifths of the total excavation 
 has already been accomplished. I had no 
 idea that such a rate of progress was possible. 
 
152 WORLD FEATS 
 
 Our people are really not awake to the fact 
 that such a rate has obtained. The amount 
 taken out has passed anything which previous 
 experience warranted us in believing to be 
 possible. In 1908 and 1909 the monthly 
 average of rock and earth removed was three 
 million yards, notwithstanding the fact that 
 nine months of each year constituted a season 
 of very heavy rainfall. There remains to be 
 excavated only about sixty million cubic 
 yards. If we could keep up the past average 
 of excavation, this should be done in twenty 
 months; but it is impossible to maintain such 
 a ratio as the depth increases, for the output 
 necessarily diminishes as the field of opera- 
 tion narrows. Still, it is certain that such a 
 rate can be maintained as will enable the 
 workers to finish the excavation considerably 
 in advance of the date fixed for the opening 
 of the canal, January i, 1915. When I an- 
 nounced on the authority of the experts that 
 the canal would be opened on New Year's 
 Day, 1915, even the friends of the canal said, 
 *'Ah! of course, it is very nice to say so; 
 but these things are never done as quickly 
 as people hope; and it will be some years 
 after." Well, instead of being some time 
 after the date fixed, it will be some time be- 
 fore the date fixed. I believe that the canal 
 
WORLD FEATS 153 
 
 will be opened from six months to a year 
 before. 
 
 The work has two great features : the 
 Culebra Cut, which I have been considering; 
 and the great dam at Gatun. The latter is 
 to imprison the waters of the Chagres and 
 other streams into a lake with an area of one 
 hundred and sixty-four square miles. This 
 work is advancing steadily, and just as 
 successfully as the work on the Culebra Cut. 
 The water which is ultimately to fill the lock 
 is now flowing through the concrete spillway 
 in the center of the dam, the Chagres having 
 been diverted from its bed and placecj under 
 complete control. The construction of the 
 dam has advanced sufficiently to convince the 
 engineers in charge of the work of its absolute 
 stability and imperviousness. The concrete 
 work on the lock is advancing so rapidly that 
 the first double-set at Gatun will be completed 
 this coming November, and the engineer in 
 charge has announced that all the concrete 
 in all the locks will be in place two years 
 hence. The date of final completion and for- 
 mal opening of the canal to the commerce of 
 the world will be determined by the time 
 consumed in placing one great steel gate, 
 emergency dams, and all appliances for 
 operating the docks. But those in charge 
 
154 WORLD FEATS 
 
 of the work announce without hesitation 
 that everything will be finished well in ad- 
 vance of January i, 1915. 
 
 This is a stupendous record of achieve- 
 ment. As a people, we are rather fond of 
 criticizing ourselves, and sometimes with 
 very great justice; but even the most pessi- 
 mistic critic should sometimes think of what 
 is to our credit. Among our assets of the 
 past ten years will be placed the extraordinary 
 ability, integrity, and success with which we 
 have handled all the problems inherited as 
 the result of the Spanish War; the way we 
 have handled ourselves in the Philippines, 
 in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in San Domingo, and 
 in Panama. The cruise of the battle fleet 
 around the world was a striking proof that 
 we had made good with the Navy; and what 
 we have done at Panama represents the 
 accomplishment of one of the great feats of 
 the ages. It is a feat which reflects the high- 
 est honor upon our country; and our grati- 
 tude is due to every man who has taken an 
 honorable part in any capacity in bringing 
 about its performance. 
 
 So far, I have been speaking of what we 
 have done, and you have applauded it. It 
 is very interesting to tell what we have done; 
 but that is not the important thing. The 
 
WORLD FEATS 155 
 
 important thing is to do the next job well. 
 We have now a further duty to perform in 
 connection with the canal, and that is forti- 
 fying it. We took that canal upon the ground 
 that Uncle Sam was big enough to tackle the 
 job, and now we have got to show that Uncle 
 Sam is big enough to make a good job of it. 
 We are in honor bound to fortify it ourselves, 
 and only by so doing can we effectively guar- 
 antee its neutrality; and, moreover, effectively 
 guarantee that it shall not be used against 
 us. I want the good will of every nation; 
 I want to deserve it; but in vital matters I 
 do not want to trust to it. The good will is 
 felt immensely if we have a first-class Navy 
 and adequate fortifications; but nothing will 
 help us keep in a state of profound peace 
 more than a knowledge that our men can 
 shoot straight, and will, if they have to. The 
 chief material advantage — certainly one of 
 the chief material advantages — which we 
 shall gain by the canal's construction is the 
 way in which it will, for defensive purposes, 
 double the power of the United States Navy. 
 We must either have a Navy so big that we 
 shall be able to put half in the Atlantic and 
 half in the Pacific, or must be able to put into 
 either ocean a Navy of the present size. It 
 is not a blunder, but a crime, to divide the 
 
156 WORLD FEATS 
 
 present Navy between the two. We must 
 either double it, or we must be able to trans- 
 fer our fleet from the Pacific to the Atlantic 
 when we need it. That can be done only 
 through a canal. 
 
 To refuse to fortify the canal, and, above 
 all, to consider for a moment such an act of 
 utter weakness and folly as to invite other 
 nations to step in and guarantee the neutrality 
 of this purely American work (and thereby 
 really to make it certain that, in the event of 
 war, we should find the canal used against 
 us, as our fleets would be forbidden to pass 
 through it, or else our opponent's fleets per- 
 mitted to) would be to incur, and quite right- 
 fully, the contempt of the world. It would 
 mean the complete abandonment of the 
 Monroe Doctrine ; it would be a wicked blow 
 to our prestige in the Pacific; and, moreover, 
 it would be in its essence treason to the des- 
 tiny of this repubHc. We built that canal 
 ourselves, and we do not have to have any- 
 body else to come in and say how it shall be 
 used. If it was not our intention to have our 
 sayso in the management of that canal, we 
 had no business to undertake it, or to go into 
 the expenditure of the scores of millions 
 involved. It is not an act showing a peaceful 
 disposition to ask other nations to come in 
 
WORLD FEATS 157 
 
 and do all that we ought to do. I want Uncle 
 Sam to be peaceful; I want Uncle Sam to 
 show scrupulous regard for the rights of 
 others; but I want to see Uncle Sam owe his 
 safety to two facts : in the first place, that he 
 will do nothing but good to men; and, in the 
 second place, that he will submit to wrong 
 from no man. Therefore, I am glad we 
 have an efficient fleet; therefore, I am glad 
 that we have completed in such splendid and 
 successful fashion the Panama Canal; and, 
 therefore, I say that unless, as a people, we 
 intend to occupy a contemptible attitude, we 
 will fortify and police and defend that canal 
 ourselves, and see that it is used impartially 
 by all the nations of the earth, and at the same 
 time see that no nation shall use it against 
 our own interests. 
 
PART II 
 THE OLD MORALITIES 
 
THE CROOK 
 
 SPEECH AT KANSAS CITY 
 1 September, 19 lo 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the more 
 than kind words that you have said. I dis- 
 agree with some of them. The American 
 people owe nothing to the man whom they 
 have honored by making him President 
 compared to what that man owes to the 
 American people. I am most deeply sensible 
 of what I owe to the people of the United 
 States, and I shall try to carry myself as, in 
 my opinion, every man who has been Presi- 
 dent should carry himself— as a man bound 
 in every action of his private life to try to 
 justify the faith that the people reposed in 
 him. I particularly appreciate what the 
 Chairman said when he said that I had always 
 put patriotism above party. In my judg- 
 ment, no man is a good American who is not, 
 of course, an American first — an American 
 before he is a member of any section of the 
 American people such as a party or a class. 
 I hold that the only real service which a 
 party man can render his party is to make 
 
 M 161 
 
i62 THE CROOK 
 
 that party more responsive to the needs of 
 the American people. 
 
 There are certain matters which should 
 never be treated as party matters; and fore- 
 most among these is the great and vital 
 virtue of honesty. Honesty should be treated 
 as a prime necessity to our success as a na- 
 tion. The minute that a question of honesty 
 as against dishonesty is involved, then we 
 must all act together as Americans, without 
 the slightest regard to party affiliations. I 
 do not care who a thief is ; I regard him as a 
 thief and not as a party man. The first man 
 to attack a scoundrel in any party should be 
 the man of that party. The Chairman was 
 kind enough to say that I had acted up to 
 my words; that I had not preached what 
 I had not at least tried to practice while in 
 office. I certainly did try always to proceed 
 upon the theory that there would be no need 
 of my political opponents raising the cry of 
 "Turn the rascals out," for I would turn 
 them out myself. With the invaluable aid 
 of Senator Bristow here, I turned the rascals 
 out of the Post Office Department; and we 
 discriminated just to this extent between 
 any Republican and any Democrat: we 
 gave the precedence to the Republican in 
 pitching him out. 
 
THE CROOK 163 
 
 And as we dealt with the crooked public 
 official, so we dealt with the crooked private 
 citizen. If satisfactory evidence was brought 
 before me in my capacity as President, I 
 had the Attorney-General of the United 
 States to proceed against the highest poli- 
 tician, whether it was a Republican Senator 
 in Oregon or in Kansas or a Democratic 
 Governor in Oklahoma. And I will add, 
 gentlemen, that the unfavorable opinions 
 entertained of me by the Senators, Govern- 
 ors, and other people in question I have 
 always considered as a tribute. I think I 
 value the ill will of those men almost as 
 much as I value the good will of the honest 
 Senators, the honest Governors, and honest 
 public men with whom it has been my great 
 privilege to work for the welfare of the 
 people. We gave the same justice to the 
 big man and to the little man, to the rich 
 and to the poor man. We never attacked a 
 man because he was a man of one political 
 faith or another, because he did or did not 
 possess wealth; and we never shielded him 
 because he was poor or rich, because he be- 
 longed to any particular church or to any 
 particular party. But I also wish you es- 
 pecially to remember that we never hesitated 
 to shield him and stand up for him once we 
 
i64 THE CROOK 
 
 were convinced that he was improperly 
 attacked. There is no greater foe of honesty 
 — no more evil enemy of honesty — than 
 the man who, for any reason, in any capacity, 
 attacks, or seeks to attack, an honest man 
 for a crime which he has not committed. 
 Falsely accusing an honest man of dis- 
 honesty is an act which stands on the same 
 level of infamy with that of the dishonest 
 man himself; and it is no higher duty to 
 attack the dishonest man than it is to ex- 
 onerate the honest man falsely accused; and 
 I should be ashamed to hesitate the fraction 
 of a second longer in one case than in the 
 other. 
 
 Remember that honesty cannot be uni- 
 lateral. Good citizens should cordially dis- 
 trust the man who can never see dishonesty 
 excepting in men of the class he dislikes. 
 The reckless agitator who invariably singles 
 out men of wealth as furnishing the only 
 examples of dishonesty; the equally unscru- 
 pulous — but no more unscrupulous — re- 
 actionary who can see dishonesty only in a 
 blackmailing politician or a crooked labor 
 leader; both stand on the same plane of 
 obnoxiousness. You will never get honesty 
 from politicians until you exact honesty from 
 business men; on the other hand, you brand 
 
THE CROOK i6s 
 
 yourselves as fools or as hypocrites if you 
 say that the corporation owner, or the em- 
 ployer, is always the dishonest man, and the 
 poor man never; that it is only the wealthy 
 man who corrupts the politician and never 
 the politician who blackmails the corpora- 
 tion. 
 
 Any man in his senses knows that there 
 are plenty of corporations in this country 
 that prosper by bribing legislators just as 
 they prosper by swindhng the public; and 
 any man in his senses ought to know, in 
 addition, that there are plenty of corrupt 
 men of small means who, in legislative or 
 other bodies, try to blackmail corporations, 
 and try to blackmail other people as well. 
 If they doubt this, let them look at the reve- 
 lations of corruption in my own state — New 
 York — and in yours, my hearers — here in 
 Missouri; let them look at what has occurred 
 in CaUfornia and what has occurred in 
 IlHnois. In Illinois, for instance, one of the 
 rascalities developed by the recent investiga- 
 tion was the existence of a combination of 
 legislators who blackmailed, not only wealthy 
 corporations, but poor fishermen along a 
 certain river, forcing them to pay to prevent 
 legislation which would have interfered with 
 their business. Remember that the reason 
 
i66 THE CROOK 
 
 in each case why a man committed a given 
 crooked act is usually to be found in the 
 fact that he was a scoundrel; it was not 
 because he happened to blackmail a rich 
 man or a poor man, but because he was 
 crooked and he blackmailed the first man 
 that came handy; and you help him if you 
 confine your denunciations of dishonesty to 
 include only the men of one class. Distrust 
 men who would teach you to hate only men 
 of wealth who go wrong; distrust equally 
 the man, judge, newspaper writer, or wealthy 
 private citizen, who cannot see wrong if it 
 is committed by the big business men with 
 whom he associates. Above all, distrust the 
 man who ever seeks to get you to support 
 him on the ground that he will do something 
 wrong in your interest. 
 
 Now, scoundrels who do these kinds of 
 things are, of course, the very men who, on 
 the one hand, will blackmail a corporation 
 if they get a chance, and, on the other hand, 
 will cheerfully, if the chance occurs, sell 
 themselves to the corporation against the 
 interests of the public. Their corruption is 
 no more due to the action of the corporation 
 than the corruption of the corporation is 
 due to their action; and evil, and not good, 
 is done by the honest but misguided man 
 
THE CROOK 167 
 
 who would persuade you that either fact is 
 true. Our duty is to war with equal stern- 
 ness against the corrupt man of great wealth 
 and the small man who makes a trade of 
 corruption; our fight is against both the 
 swindHng corporation and the blackmaihng 
 or bribe-taking politician. The politician 
 who whines that he is corrupted by a big 
 corporation and would have been good 
 enough if the corporation had let him alone 
 may safely be put down as a man whose 
 virtue was so frail that it was not worth 
 preserving. 
 
 We cannot afford to limit a campaign 
 against corruption to those who happen to 
 have a certain social status. We need laws 
 which shall put the corporation out of busi- 
 ness so far as concerns corrupting the serv- 
 ants of the public and betraying the rights 
 of the public. I believe that the great issue 
 now before the public is the doing away with 
 special privilege in all its forms; doing away 
 with the power of the big corporation to 
 control legislation in its interests and to 
 interfere in politics in order to secure privileges 
 to which it is not entitled. But I regard the 
 essential factor in this campaign as being an 
 aroused civic conscience which will unspar- 
 ingly condemn dishonesty in every form and 
 
i68 THE CROOK 
 
 in every man, high or low. It is not the 
 man who inveighs only against corruption as 
 seen in men of wealth who hopes to end all 
 corruption on the part of men of wealth. 
 It is the man who insists on honesty, who 
 strives to bring about a condition when 
 honesty shall be accepted as a matter of 
 course throughout our nation, and when the 
 conscience of the community — the popular 
 spirit in the community — will not tolerate 
 any man who is a crooked man or a dis- 
 honest man. The reckless would-be re- 
 former or reckless demagogue who, in speak- 
 ing or writing, seeks to persuade us that we 
 need pay heed to corruption only when it 
 shows itself in the rich man, is doing as 
 great a moral wrong as the rich man whose 
 low moral standard tends to lower the social 
 standard of the whole community. The 
 people of this country will get justice from 
 the corporations only if they both do justice 
 to them and rigidly exact it from them. 
 Unless they do justice to rich men, they put 
 a premium upon injustice and dishonesty 
 among rich men. Let us hold them to the 
 strictest accountability for any wrongdoing; 
 but let us insist upon honesty in our own 
 ranks no less than in theirs. Let us war on 
 crookedness of every kind in the man of 
 
THE CROOK 169 
 
 small means as well as the man of large 
 means, and in the man of large means 
 exactly as in the man of small means. Let 
 us judge each man by his conduct and not 
 by his social or financial condition. 
 
 My friends, you applaud these sentiments; 
 you could not do otherwise. It is a good 
 thing to applaud them; but the necessary 
 thing is to go back to your own homes and 
 in your daily lives to live up to them. Words 
 are of no consequence whatever except as 
 they are realized in deeds. The promise of 
 a candidate is worse than worthless if it is 
 not made good by his actions if he is elected. 
 A liar on the stump is, if anything, just a 
 shade worse than the Har off the stump; 
 and, on the other hand, if you come to pub- 
 lic meetings to indulge in the luxury of ap- 
 plauding fine sentiments which you forget as 
 soon as you leave the building, then all you 
 have done is to weaken a little the spring of 
 your own conscience. If I were asked to 
 name the three faults against which we of 
 this free republic should most unrelentingly 
 war, I should name dishonesty, lawless vio- 
 lence, and, in the third place, untruthfulness 
 and mendacity — especially mendacity which 
 takes the form of slander. I have been in 
 politics for thirty years. For thirty years I 
 
170 THE CROOK 
 
 have striven, so far as the power was given 
 me, to fight for the cause of decency; and I 
 feel that the greatest drawback in any such 
 struggle is the man who consistently speaks 
 what is not true until he misleads the public, 
 so that they cannot tell the true from the 
 false. I do not care whether that man is a 
 politician in the campaign or a writer in a 
 magazine or in the public press. The very 
 reason that makes it essential that we should 
 point out corruption and misconduct where 
 they exist also makes it essential that we 
 should not lie by saying that they exist 
 where they do not exist. The man that 
 falsely accuses a public servant, who is 
 honest, of dishonesty, is bringing joy to the 
 heart of every crooked man. Nothing so 
 pleases the dishonest man in public life as to 
 have an honest man falsely accused, for the 
 result of innumerable accusations finally is 
 to produce a habit of mind in the public 
 which accepts each accusation as having 
 something true in it and none as being all 
 true; so that, finally, they believe that the 
 honest man is a little crooked and that the 
 crooked man is not much more dishonest 
 than the rest. The enormous power of the 
 writers of the country in the public press 
 and in the magazines alike is such that 
 
THE CROOK 171 
 
 those wielding it should feel that their re- 
 sponsibility is as great as that of the public 
 servants themselves. 
 
 If, day after day, you read what is not 
 true, it becomes finally impossible for you to 
 tell what is black from what is white; and 
 you look upon all men, good and bad, alike. 
 The Har is as bad as the thief; and he is 
 the right-hand support of the thief. I think 
 that the very highest duty that can be per- 
 formed by any man who writes is to point 
 out corruption fearlessly and expose all that 
 is crooked — all that is evil; and only less 
 high, and less high by the merest shade, is his 
 duty to speak the truth only and never to 
 accuse an honest man of dishonesty. I do 
 not ask it on behalf of the honest man; I 
 ask it on behalf of the pubhc who by such 
 accusations are robbed of the power of dis- 
 crimination. In the long run the honest 
 man's reputation will take care of itself. It 
 is not for him, but it is for the people at 
 large who are so puzzled by seeing every 
 man, whether he is honest or not, attacked in 
 the same fashion, that they come to regard 
 all accusations as, on the whole, false, and 
 all men accused as having done something 
 that warrants accusation. 
 
 And, my friends, so of lawless violence. 
 
172 THE CROOK 
 
 I have said that I would strive to punish 
 equally the rich and the poor man who does 
 wrong. I would go a bit further, and would 
 punish the rich man a little more, because he 
 has had better opportunities. But be equally- 
 stern in dealing with crimes of violence. Do 
 you realize the danger that this country s in 
 from corruption, and do you realize the danger 
 also that comes from lawless violence ^ Take 
 the workingmen, the laboring men. I will 
 do everything in my power for them except 
 what is wrong, and that I would do neither 
 for them nor for any one else. In time of 
 civil disorder, when laws are set at naught 
 and mob violence rules, the first duty of every 
 honest and upright civil official is to restore 
 order. All question of reform must wait 
 until order is restored. While the mob rules 
 there is no time to find out the right and the 
 wrong of the question at issue between that 
 mob and any person or any corporation. 
 No civilization can exist unless the laws are 
 enforced in due and orderly fashion, and the 
 corrupt man who, with his wealth, plunders 
 his neighbors and corrupts the representatives 
 of the people is no worse than the man who 
 in any way incites his fellow men to violence 
 and murder. 
 
 I have just come from a trip to Africa, 
 
THE CROOK 173 
 
 and I had a very good time there. Afterwards 
 I passed through Europe, and I came back 
 thinking well of the countries I had visited, 
 with friendly feelings for them; but, O my 
 countrymen, I came back thinking more 
 strongly than ever before that, in spite of all 
 our shortcomings, and in spite of all the 
 things that we have left undone and ought 
 to have done, nowhere on the earth does 
 the average man or the average woman have 
 such a chance to get the best possible out 
 of life as here in our own land. Now, I 
 would not for one moment blind myself to 
 the need of hard work to drive out what is 
 evil in our own country. Let us face the 
 evil boldly, and do our best to overcome it. 
 Do not, however, let us make the mistake 
 of shutting our eyes to the good. On the 
 whole, in this great democracy of the West, 
 in this great republic which stands on a 
 continent, which grasps the ocean on either 
 side, popular rights are better guarded than 
 anywhere else, and the average man is given 
 a better chance than anywhere else. My 
 friends, be proud of that fact, and realize the 
 responsibility that accompanies it. 
 
 I was struck by two things especially while 
 traveling abroad. One was that in every 
 country I visited the name of America is the 
 
174 THE CROOK 
 
 symbol of golden hope for the people of 
 other lands. The man with whom life has 
 gone hard, — the man who feels that fate is 
 against him, the man who, do what he can, 
 is unable to succeed as he is entitled to 
 succeed, — looks longingly to this land as the 
 land which contains the promise for men like 
 him. But, my friends, there was another 
 and sadder side; there was something else. 
 The news of every crime of corruption, every 
 crime of lawless violence, committed here in 
 the United States is sent abroad. The news 
 goes abroad to sadden the hearts of those 
 who hope for the success of popular govern- 
 ment, and is cause for sardonic mirth to every 
 reactionary who desires to see the great demo- 
 cratic experiment of government by and for 
 the people fail here in the West. Every 
 time that there is an act of flagrant corrup- 
 tion here in the United States, or deed of 
 lawless violence by a mob, or corruption in 
 public life or business life, every time a 
 murderer is acquitted by a jury when he 
 ought to have been convicted, every time a 
 rich malefactor is let off on a technicality, or 
 otherwise there is a failure to secure justice 
 in any case — every time that such things 
 occur the heart of every opponent of free 
 government is gladdened, and the heart of 
 
THE CROOK 175 
 
 every man who hopes for the regeneration of 
 humanity through the appHcation of demo- 
 cratic principles to-day is saddened. I do 
 not suppose that if we refuse to do what is 
 right for our own sakes we can be expected to 
 do what is right for the sake of others. 
 Yet I beheve that you ought to feel a burden 
 of obligation resting upon you, not only be- 
 cause you are the citizens of this republic, but 
 because each of you is, in a measure, the cus- 
 todian of the hope of the world. If we fail 
 here, if we in America fail in our great experi- 
 ment of self-government, woe to us, and woe 
 also to all the nations of the earth, whom we 
 will forever rob of the brightest hope that they 
 now have. I ask of you men and women 
 here — I ask that, in your private and in your 
 public lives, you carry yourselves as you should 
 carry yourselves — you, the men and women 
 upon whose shoulders rests the proud fabric 
 of the greatest republic upon which the sun 
 has ever shone. I ask that you do this for 
 your own sakes; I ask more earnestly that 
 you do it for the sake of the children who are 
 to come after you, for the children who are 
 to inherit this our land and have a right to 
 ask that they receive it from us as we received 
 it from our fathers; that we shall pass it on 
 to them intact; and I ask this not only for 
 
176 THE CROOK 
 
 the sake of your own children, but for the 
 sake of the world, so that America shall 
 always stand as the symbol of golden hope 
 to the nations of mankind. 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 SPEECH AT THE MILWAUKEE AUDITORIUM 
 
 7 September, 1910 
 
 Before I come down to the subject of my 
 speech I wish to say a word about the trade 
 schools — the municipal trade school which 
 I visited this morning. When I received the 
 invitation from the Milwaukee Press Club 
 while I was in mid-Africa, I accepted it 
 promptly. I wished to come here to your 
 city, and I was particularly glad to come as 
 the guest of your Club, and I soon after- 
 wards made the stipulation that I should be 
 taken to see your municipal schools for boys 
 and girls. I wish it had been in my power 
 to do more than a fraction of the other things 
 that the very good people who are my hosts 
 wanted me to do, but it was simply a physi- 
 cal impossibility. In every city that I have 
 visited, my hosts, in the very nicest and 
 kindliest spirit, have proceeded to see that I 
 did not suiFer one minute from physical 
 stagnation, and they have also proceeded 
 upon the assumption that I could be happy 
 only if I were given not one minute to my- 
 self. I wish to say that while all did their 
 N 177 
 
178 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 duty in that respect, I think my hosts of 
 Milwaukee gave me a larger program 
 than an)Awhere I have yet visited. 
 
 I wanted to see the trade schools because 
 I regard you as having taken here in Mil- 
 waukee an all-important first step in in- 
 corporating these trade schools into your 
 common-school system. Our republic has 
 no justification unless it is a genuine democ- 
 racy — a democracy economically as well as 
 politically — a democracy in which there is 
 a really sincere eflFort to realize the ideal of 
 equality of opportunity for all men. And 
 there can be no such equality of oppor- 
 tunity if a man is either helped by special 
 privilege or hampered by the special 
 privileges which others have. Now, one 
 way to secure such equality of opportunity 
 is, so far as possible, to give equality of 
 start. In other words, give the full-grown 
 man, the full-grown woman, who starts in 
 life to make his or her way according to 
 the abilities given to him or her, as good a 
 chance as we are able to give them. That 
 means that it is our duty to provide such 
 means of education as will enable each man 
 to become a self-respecting unit in the com- 
 munity. If there is a large class of people 
 who, because good chances are denied to 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 179 
 
 theiUs live under intolerable and harsh condi- 
 tions, and are beaten down and degraded by 
 the forces against which they contend — if 
 there exists such a large class, it is not only a 
 bad thing for them, but it is a bad thing for all 
 of us. It might as well be accepted as axio- 
 matic that in the long run, speaking generally, 
 we are going to go up or down together. 
 And if there is a large class of people who 
 undeservedly find conditions intolerable, it will 
 be bad for the whole republic. Now, mind 
 you, I said undeservedly. There always will 
 be, as long as mankind continues as it is at 
 the present time, in every community a cer- 
 tain number of people who do not perform 
 their duty because they do not try. Now, I 
 have nothing to say in behalf of them. The 
 individual who is naturally vicious, naturally 
 lazy, and is a man of jealous disposition, or 
 a man of arrogant disposition, I am not 
 pleading for; and I have a hearty contempt 
 for those who try to excuse his shortcomings 
 upon the plea of bad social conditions. If a 
 man is lazy, if he is vicious, if he will not do 
 his whole work, I am very sorry for his wife 
 and children; but I am not in the least sorry 
 for him. There are too many people who 
 have a right to sympathy for me to waste it 
 upon those who have not the right to it. I 
 
i8o THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 not only have sympathy for those who are 
 oppressed through no fault of theirs, but I 
 believe that we should do all that we can do 
 for them. 
 
 Now, the trade schools here mark the be- 
 ginning of an effort to fit each man to do the 
 very best that lies in him in the world. There 
 is not a surplusage here, or anywhere, of 
 the highly skilled man who can do his par- 
 ticular job in the best possible manner; there 
 is always a demand for him in any walk of 
 life. When you get our average laboring 
 man — our average wage worker — turned 
 out of school that kind of man, you will have 
 gone a long way towards solving some of the 
 most difficult questions with which this 
 republic has to deal. Well, that is just 
 what I find you are doing here with the few 
 people — there are only very few — whom 
 you are turning out of these industrial 
 schools. The boy is not taken in until he 
 is about sixteen or eighteen. He must have 
 gone through a certain amount in the public 
 schools; he must be able to read and write 
 English; to do a certain amount of arith- 
 metic ; he must have reached about the eighth 
 grade in the grammar school. Many I found 
 had been but one or two years in the high 
 schools. Then he is put into this school, — 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS i8i 
 
 this trade school, — and then he graduates 
 at twenty or twenty-one, and he is able to 
 get a job at once. He is trained during 
 those two years to become a skilled work- 
 man, and, as a by-product to that industrial 
 school training, he unquestionably tends to 
 become a good citizen; he is pretty apt to be 
 a decent, law-abiding, self-respecting member 
 of the community. 
 
 There is another thing. I am sure that 
 we have all now awakened to the fact that 
 it is not well to have a system of education 
 which tends to educate people away from 
 their life work; and it is a very bad thing to 
 have a system of education which makes men 
 look down on skilled and trained muscular 
 exertion — the skilled and trained work of 
 the body. Too often the son of the skilled 
 mechanic, the blacksmith, the carpenter, feels 
 that he is rising if he becomes a third-rate 
 clerk. Now, that is a very unfortunate con- 
 dition of things. We ought to do our best 
 to see that reward and respect come in greater 
 proportion than at present to the man who 
 does the best form of manual labor. Person- 
 ally, it has never been any effort to me to give 
 that respect, because I could not help giving 
 it. I have always felt a very real regard, a 
 very real respect, for the man who works at a 
 
i82 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 handicraft with such skill as to show mastery 
 of his muscles. I cannot imagine a finer 
 type of citizen than the average engineer, 
 fireman, or trainman generally on the rail- 
 roads. I have prized many honors I have 
 received, but there has been no honor that 
 I have prized more than being elected an hon- 
 orary member of the Locomotive Firemen's 
 Brotherhood; and I prize it because those 
 men have the qualities that I would like to 
 have and that I admire in men. The smith, 
 the carpenter, the skilled mechanic of any 
 kind is as much entitled to respect as any 
 man who succeeds in any other profession; 
 and by giving him special training in these 
 special schools — a special training which will 
 bring a special reward — you are doing your 
 part to restore the equilibrium of regard in 
 which the professions and trades should be 
 held in the community. 
 
 I was almost more interested in the girls' 
 school than in the boys', because, important 
 though it is to have good men in a commu- 
 nity, It IS even more important to nave good 
 women; and while I beheve that the nor- 
 mal end striven for by every man and woman 
 aHke should be a happy family Hfe, — the 
 Hfe of husband and wife, father and mother, — 
 and therefore that woman's training should be 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 183 
 
 primarily for home work, yet, as girls under 
 modern conditions so often have to go into 
 industry, it is most important that if they do 
 go into it they should go properly equipped. 
 It is bad for a man to have to take em- 
 ployment at less than a living wage — at less 
 than a wage that will enable him to support 
 himself as a self-respecting man; but it is 
 worse for a girl to have to take such em- 
 ployment, for she is exposed to dangers to 
 which the man is not. These schools turn 
 out girls sufficiently trained to enable them 
 to get reasonable remuneration — a remuner- 
 ation which will enable them to live de- 
 cently, and remove them from the pitiable 
 condition of being untrained girls competing 
 with multitudes of other untrained girls for 
 an insufficient number of places which, if 
 obtained, yield a wage insufficient to enable 
 the girl to live. 
 
 I believe that the workingmen and work- 
 ingwomen of Milwaukee ought to realize 
 what chances these schools open to their 
 children, — to the boys, and, above all, to the 
 girls, — and ought to take advantage of them. 
 
 And now, my friends, I come to what 
 I have especially to say this evening. The 
 Press Club having sent all the way to Africa 
 to ask me to speak to them, I am going to 
 
i84 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 repay them with gross ingratitude by speaking 
 with frankness about their profession. 
 
 In our country I am incHned to think that 
 almost, if not quite, the most important pro- 
 fession is that of the newspaper man, includ- 
 ing the man of the magazines, especially 
 the cheap magazines, and the weeklies; and I 
 speak as a member of the brotherhood my- 
 self. The newspaper men — pubHshers, 
 editors, reporters — are just as much public 
 servants as are the men in the government 
 service themselves, whether those men be 
 elected or appointed officers. Now, we 
 have always held in higher honor the public 
 man who did his duty, and we have always 
 felt that the public man who did not do his 
 duty was deserving of a peculiar degree of 
 reprobation. And just the same way about 
 the newspaper man. The editor, the pub- 
 lisher, the reporter, who honestly and 
 truthfully puts the exact facts before the 
 public, who does not omit for improper rea- 
 sons things that ought to be stated, who does 
 not say what is not true, who does not color 
 his facts so as to give false impressions, who 
 does not manufacture his facts, who really 
 is ready, in the first place, to find out what 
 the truth is, and, in the next place, to state it 
 accurately — that man occupies one of the 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 185 
 
 most honorable positions in the community. 
 A number of years ago I knew a citizen of 
 Milwaukee who was just such a man as I have 
 described, and who was, I felt, not only one 
 of the most useful citizens of Milwaukee, 
 but one of the most useful citizens of the 
 United States — Horace Rublee. Now, it 
 is open to any man to disagree with Horace 
 Rublee on public questions. It is perfectly 
 possible that if he had lived to the present day, 
 he and I might not have agreed on all public 
 questions; but he was a man of such trans- 
 parent uprightness and honesty, of such 
 vehement scorn of what was corrupt and un- 
 true, of a virtue so nice, so sensitive, that the 
 mere thought of corruption could not enter 
 into any human being's mind in thinking 
 of him. He was so fearless — as fearless of 
 the mob as of the corrupt corporation — 
 that whatever the differences of your political 
 opinion, you could not but respect him; 
 you could not but feel that he was a very real 
 asset of value in the community. Now, 
 you compare the attitude of the man whom 
 I have just named with the attitude of certain 
 other men, whom I shall not name, and 
 whose reputation and character are such that 
 any man who works for them, or for whom 
 they work, always, when he finds himself in 
 
i86 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 decent society, mentions his occupation with 
 either defiance or apology. 
 
 Power always brings with it responsibility. 
 You cannot have power to work well without 
 having so much power as to be able to work 
 ill, if you turn yourselves that way. The 
 very fact that a newspaper has a great 
 power for good means that it has also a 
 great power for evil. I do not think that 
 is enough. I will go further. I think that 
 it is not enough for a newspaper man to 
 make up his mind that he won't use the paper 
 to debauch the public conscience; if he is 
 neutral about good and bad and makes his 
 profession, so far as he is able, neutral in 
 doing good and evil, it simply becomes a 
 profession for which you have not much use 
 in the way of blame and not much more use 
 in the way of praise. He must have high 
 ideals, and he must be able to get those ideals 
 adopted by a reasonable proportion of his 
 fellows, if the profession is to rank as high as 
 it ought to. 
 
 A few years ago, at a meeting of newspaper 
 men in New York, there was a speech made, 
 and, I am sorry to say, greeted with applause, 
 which always seemed to me to explain the 
 degradation of a portion of the press. The 
 speaker was connected in a high position with 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 187 
 
 one of the papers of great circulation, and in 
 addressing his fellow newspaper men, said, 
 in effect (I cannot pretend to quote his exact 
 words), that it was nonsense to talk about 
 a newspaper having a mission, whether to do 
 good or to advance reforms; that the news- 
 paper business was to sell as many copies 
 of the paper as possible, and that meant 
 giving the public anything the public wanted; 
 and if it wanted what was not good, then that 
 was the affair of the pubHc and not the affair 
 of the paper. The sentiment was applauded 
 by a good many of those present, and I am 
 sorry to say that the applause of many of them 
 was sincere, to judge by the way their papers 
 have since acted. The speaker said the 
 newspaper business was like any other busi- 
 ness; like that of storekeepers who tried to 
 give their customers what they wanted; that 
 the newspaper should do the same thing. In 
 the first place, he was wrong. A storekeeper 
 who now tried to give his customers every- 
 thing they wanted in the way of food would 
 be speedily arrested under the pure food 
 law; and there would be any number of 
 customers who, after their wants were grati- 
 fied, would find that they came under the 
 exercise of the police power of the state. So, 
 then, from even the lowest standpoint that 
 
i88 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 newspaper man was wrong. He was not 
 endeavoring to put the newspaper business 
 on the level of other businesses; he was 
 trying to put it below other businesses. 
 
 Now, the highest type of newspaper man 
 ought to try to put his business above all other 
 businesses. The editor, who stands as a 
 judge in a community, should be one of the 
 men to whom you would expect to look up, 
 because his function as an editor makes him 
 a more important man than the average 
 merchant, the average business man, the 
 average professional man can be. He wields 
 great influence; and he cannot escape the 
 responsibility of wielding it. If he wields it 
 well, honor is his beyond the honor that 
 comes to the average man who does well; if 
 he wields it ill, shame should be his beyond 
 the shame that comes to the average man 
 who does ill; and what I say of the editor 
 applies to every man who writes for a news- 
 paper or a magazine, or who is connected with 
 it in any capacity. If he is a good citizen, he 
 will take a pride in his work that will make 
 him feel that he must try to make it one of 
 the best types of work done by any man in 
 the whole community. If he is not the right 
 type of man, then he is mischievous just in 
 proportion as he has power to do good. 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 189 
 
 Exactly as I put as the first requisite of 
 the man in public life that he should be 
 honest, so I put as the first requisite of the 
 man writing for the newspaper that he should 
 tell the truth. Now, it is important that 
 he should tell the whole truth, for there can 
 be no greater service rendered than the ex- 
 posure of corruption in either public life 
 or in business, or in that intricate web of 
 pubHc life and business which exists too 
 often in America to-day. I cannot say with 
 sufficient emphasis how earnestly I hope 
 that corruption will be exposed wherever 
 found, and that a man ought to be especially 
 anxious to expose it in his own class or in 
 his own party. I will draw no distinction 
 between corrupt men of my own party and 
 those of the opposite party, excepting that I 
 will be just a trifle more anxious to get at 
 those of my own party, because I feel a little 
 more responsible for it. 
 
 If an article is published in a magazine, 
 exposing corruption, and the article tells the 
 truth, I do not care what it is, the writer has 
 rendered the greatest possible service by 
 writing it; but I want to be certain that he 
 is telling the truth, and if he does not tell the 
 truth he does wrong in more than one way. 
 It is not only that he wrongs one individual; 
 
190 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 he wrongs the public, because he deprives 
 them of the chance to discriminate between 
 honest men and scoundrels. The greatest 
 service that can be rendered to the scoundrel 
 in public life is to attack the honest man un- 
 truthfully. If the honest man is lied about, 
 either the lies are believed, and he and the 
 scoundrel are put on the same plane of scoun- 
 drelism, or else the lies themselves tend to 
 produce the impression in the public mind 
 that no statements about pubHc men are 
 true, and that, therefore, the truth when told 
 about corrupt men in pubHc life can be dis- 
 regarded also. Incessant falsehood inevitably 
 produces in the public mind a certain dis- 
 belief in good men and a considerable dis- 
 belief in the charges against bad men; so 
 that there results the belief that there are 
 no men entirely good and no men entirely 
 bad, and that they are all about alike and 
 colored gray. Now, that is the worst possible 
 frame of mind that can be induced in a democ- 
 racy like ours. It is essential that the pub- 
 lic should know the character of its servants; 
 and it is essential that the public should not 
 be misled into believing a dishonest public 
 servant honest and an honest public servant 
 dishonest. Those who mislead them are 
 doing as much damage as the dishonest men 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 191 
 
 themselves. Mark Twain, who was not only 
 a great humorist, but a great philosopher, 
 in his proverbs by Pudd'nhead Wilson, 
 said that there are eight hundred and sixty- 
 nine different kinds of Hes, but that the 
 only one authoritatively prohibited is bearing 
 false witness against your neighbor. The 
 politician — I am a politician — and the 
 writer for periodicals or the press — and I am 
 one again — should bear steadily in mind 
 that the eighth and ninth commandments are 
 equally binding: "Thou shalt not steal; 
 Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
 thy neighbor." So much for the newspaper 
 men, my friends. 
 
 Now, speaking for all of us, we have much 
 to do to make this republic a better place to 
 live in, to secure a better standard of justice 
 and fair deahng between man and man in 
 it. Much can be done by legislation and 
 much by honest administration of the law. 
 Do not understand me as minimizing that. 
 There are many laws, many schemes of legis- 
 lation, which I want to see put on the statute 
 books of both nation and state. There is 
 much that I desire to see done in the direc- 
 tion of doing away with special privileges 
 and divorcing corrupt business from political 
 activities, in the direction of securing a better 
 
192 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 chance for each man to show the stufF that 
 is in him. I realize to the full the importance 
 of what can be done by all of us acting col- 
 lectively, — through the government, — but 
 after all, when all has been said and done, the 
 thing that is most important is for each of 
 us to apply, in his or her way, the old hum- 
 drum, workaday virtues; and as regards 
 those, I know quite well that preaching does 
 not amount to anything unless the preaching 
 is transmuted into practice. Your opinions 
 depend at least as much on your actions as 
 your actions upon your opinions. You 
 fathers and mothers in the audience well 
 know that if you get your children to behave 
 in a certain fashion so that they always do 
 tell the truth, they will formulate the theory 
 that it is always right to tell the truth; that 
 their actions will influence their opinions 
 rather than their opinions their actions. 
 
 I remember a young fellow who came to 
 me for a little advice. He said he felt timid 
 about horses and asked how he could get over 
 the timidity, and I told him, by acting as if 
 he were not timid. It took him some time to 
 realize that the only way to get rid of the 
 wrong sensation was to perform the act as if 
 he were enjoying the right sensation. He 
 did not make himself act as a brave man 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 193 
 
 because he was not afraid, but finally ceased 
 to be afraid because he acted like a brave 
 man. Now, I want you to do the same way 
 in citizenship. It is a fine thing to come to a 
 public meeting like this; but it is not doing 
 you or me a mite of good if I speak insin- 
 cerely and you merely listen and applaud and 
 don't do anything else after you get to your 
 homes. If I preach to you what I do not try 
 to live up to myself, I am a despicable char- 
 acter, and you have no business to listen to 
 me; and if you find yourselves applauding 
 sentiments of justice and righteousness, and 
 then go back home and encourage and con- 
 nive at dishonesty or mendacity, then the 
 right stuff is not in you. The only value of 
 words uttered or Hstened to comes when they 
 are transmuted into deeds. 
 
 I believe in the future of this republic, and 
 I believe in it primarily because I believe that, 
 more and more, our citizens are waking up to 
 the need of making practice conform to pro- 
 fession, and are declining to listen to spread- 
 eagle heroics, which they accept merely as 
 intellectual efforts divorced from all practical 
 application, and are insisting that the con- 
 duct of their representatives and leaders shall 
 measurably conform to the standards which 
 they have in the abstract accepted as desir- 
 
194 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 able. I don't want you to put your ideals so 
 high that you feel that there is no use in try- 
 ing to live up to them, because you cannot 
 do it. I don't want you to show that kind of 
 citizenship which thinks that a conscientious 
 announcement on Sunday that one is a sinner 
 condones active participation in sin the other 
 six days. 
 
 In a democracy like ours we cannot expect 
 the stream to rise higher than its source. 
 If the average man and the average woman 
 are not of the right type, your pubHc men will 
 not be of the right type. The average man 
 must be a decent man in his own home, he 
 must pull his own weight, he must be a decent 
 neighbor, and a man with whom you like to 
 work and with whom you like to deal, or he 
 cannot be a good citizen. That is good as a 
 beginning; but it is not enough. He must 
 show in his relations with his fellows and in 
 his dealing with the state the essentials of 
 good citizenship. Genius is not necessary. 
 Genius is a fine thing; but fortunately char- 
 acter is not only more common, but better. 
 What he needs to show is character, and there 
 are three essential qualities going to make up 
 character. 
 
 In the first place, there is honesty. The 
 bolder a man is the worse he is, if he hasn't 
 
THE PUBLIC PRESS 195 
 
 honesty. Don't be misled by that unfor- 
 tunate trait sometimes shown by our people — 
 the trait of deifying mere smartness, meaning 
 thereby mental subtlety and ability unen- 
 cumbered by any sense of responsibility. 
 
 But honesty is not enough. I don't care 
 how honest a man is, if he is timid he is no 
 eood. I don't want to see a division of our 
 citizenship into good men who are afraid and 
 bad men who are not at all afraid. The 
 honest man who is afraid is of just as little 
 use in civic life as in war. 
 
 You need honesty and then you need 
 courage; but both of them together are not 
 enough. I don't care how honest a man is 
 and how brave he is; if he is a natural-born 
 fool you can do nothing with him; and 
 perhaps this applies particularly to people 
 in the profession of politics. Of course, the 
 bolder a politician is, if he is dishonest, the 
 worse he is; hunt him out of pubHc life; and 
 a feeble, well-meaning, timid politician, like 
 the other good, timid people, is of no use; 
 but the bold, incorruptible politician who 
 stupidly goes wrong may be just as useless 
 to a community in the long run as if he were 
 hired by some dishonest man to do his work. 
 So there is a third quality; that is, you must 
 possess the saving grace of common sense. 
 
196 THE PUBLIC PRESS 
 
 When you get into your average citizen 
 honesty, — militant not merely passive hon- 
 esty, — courage, and common sense, you will 
 find that your representatives in public Hfe 
 will soon show the same traits; and when 
 they do, we shall have gone a long way 
 toward solving the questions which must be 
 solved and must be solved aright, if this 
 nation is to be, as it shall and will be, not 
 merely the greatest republic upon which the 
 sun has ever shone, but the nation which 
 holds out the lamp of hope to all the other 
 nations throughout the world. 
 
THE GOOD CITIZEN 
 
 SPEECH AT PUEBLO 
 30 August, 1910 
 
 In Colorado Springs, some years ago, I 
 laid the foundation stone of a Young Men's 
 Christian Association building. I am par- 
 ticularly glad to have the chance of doing 
 so here, where the Chairman, the man chiefly 
 concerned in the erection of the building, is 
 himself a veteran of the great war, because I 
 believe in the two qualities of manliness and 
 decency. I don't care a rap for the good 
 man who cannot do anything good because 
 he is timid; and as for the efficient scoun- 
 drel, the more efficient he is, the more I wish 
 to hunt him out of politics or business. 
 The Young Men's Christian Association 
 stands for decency, for the man who does 
 well in his family and in his home life, and 
 as a neighbor and with reference to the state 
 and the nation; and it also stands for the 
 manly virtues. Your Chairman, the head of 
 this Young Men's Christian Association, lost 
 an arm in battle; there is only one person 
 I will put just a little ahead of him, and 
 
 197 
 
198 THE GOOD CITIZEN 
 
 that is his wife, who has brought up six 
 children. I put the veteran of the great war 
 ahead of every man in the country; but I 
 put ahead even of him the good mother, the 
 mother who has done her duty and brought 
 up well a family of children. 
 
 My friends, yesterday I had the pleasure 
 of addressing your people in Denver on the 
 subject of Conservation. I noticed that some 
 well-meaning person spoke of the doctrine 
 as the new doctrine of Conservation. It is 
 the identical old doctrine that never has been 
 changed — of Conservation, which means 
 using as fully as possible the resources of 
 the country, but using them in the way that a 
 wise private farmer would use his farm; so 
 that our children shall be better off, and not 
 worse off, because we lived. And I want to 
 call attention to the wonderful work done by 
 the Forest Service in fighting the great forest 
 fires this year. With the very inadequate 
 appropriation made for the Forest Service, 
 nevertheless, that Service, because of the 
 absolute honesty and efficiency with which 
 it has been conducted, has borne itself so as 
 to make an American proud of having such 
 a body of public servants; and they have 
 shown the same qualities of heroism in bat- 
 tling with the fire, at the peril and sometimes 
 
THE GOOD CITIZEN 199 
 
 to the loss of their Hves, that the firemen of 
 the great cities show in dealing with burning 
 buildings. 
 
 One word more. I wish I could get down 
 to New Mexico and Arizona, your southern 
 and southwestern neighbors. I raised most 
 of my regiment in what were then the two 
 territories; and you, friends, know that you 
 have a peculiar feeling for the man who has 
 been in the trenches with you. I have been 
 asked by some there to advise them concern- 
 ing the constitutions of the new states. I do 
 not know enough of the facts to advise them, 
 excepting on this point: Don't let them tie 
 themselves up so that they cannot untie 
 themselves if the need comes. Whenever 
 a new constitution is formed, there are always 
 two sets of people whom you want to watch. 
 In the first place, the demagogue or the well- 
 meaning visionary who wants to reaHze the 
 millennium by putting what he regards as 
 portions of it in parts of the constitution ; 
 and in the next place, the big corporation 
 attorney, who is not after the millennium at 
 all, but who wants to put in, in unobtrusive 
 fashion, something that he thinks of advan- 
 tage to the special interest which he serves. 
 Now, because of both, and because of the 
 fact that the Convention may adopt the ad- 
 
200 THE GOOD CITIZEN 
 
 vice of one or the other, let the people insist 
 that when the constitution has been adopted, 
 the people shall be able to amend it as they 
 find its working necessitates. Do not tie up 
 the people so that if they do not like what 
 they have got, they have to keep it anyway. 
 Leave them so that they can make any 
 amendments that are necessary. 
 
 Now, friends, you have here a wonderful 
 state ; a state of wonderful resources, — agri- 
 cultural, pastoral, mineral, — a state of farms 
 and ranches, of mines and cities of industry. 
 You have a state with a wonderful industrial 
 future, and a state which also ought to be 
 the playground of America. More and more, 
 our people ought to realize that, for beauty 
 of scenery, they cannot do better than come 
 to Colorado; and as I do not think any 
 eastern man's education complete until he 
 goes west of Missouri, I want to have him 
 come here as much as possible. But though 
 I admire your natural resources, what I 
 really care for is the kind of man, the kind 
 of woman, you have in this state; and I pin 
 my faith to you primarily because I believe 
 in the type of citizenship of your state. I 
 think the average American a pretty good 
 fellow; and I think his wife a still better 
 fellow ! And I think that even in states 
 
THE GOOD CITIZEN 201 
 
 where she does not vote, too! And while 
 I am very glad to see all of you here, those 
 whom I am most glad to see are the men and 
 women who carry small folk. They are sure 
 to be good citizens. 
 
 In its essence, good government is nothing 
 very comphcated. What we need to insist 
 on is not genius, but the development of the 
 ordinary qualities that make man or woman 
 the kind of man or woman we care to meet in 
 private Hfe. If the man is a good husband, 
 and the woman a good wife; if they do their 
 duty as father and mother; if they are good 
 neighbors, then you have the foundations of 
 citizenship laid. But do not allow any man 
 to impose on you, especially a pubHc man, 
 by asking you to accept decency and domestic 
 virtue as an offset to profligacy in pubhc Hfe. 
 The pubhc man should be honest in the big- 
 gest and broadest acceptation of the term. 
 If he is not, then it is your fault if you toler- 
 ate him in pubhc hfe, no matter what he may 
 be in private hfe. Make it felt by your 
 representatives that the taint of corruption 
 ruins a man forever in your eyes. Make it 
 felt that you demand in your representative, 
 not merely law-honesty, not merely the 
 honesty that consists in escaping indictment, 
 but that you demand the honesty that entitles 
 
202 THE GOOD CITIZEN 
 
 a man to the good will of those who know 
 him intimately enough to tell whether or not 
 he is really straight. And remember that 
 you cannot have honesty in great things unless 
 you have it in small things. If you send 
 to Congress or to the legislature, or put in 
 executive office, a man who will try to black- 
 mail a corporation, you can guarantee that, 
 if the price is high enough, he will sell out to 
 the corporation. Make no mistake; never 
 trust a man who says that he is only a little 
 crooked, and that the crookedness is exercised 
 in your interest. If he will be crooked for 
 you, he will be crooked against you. So 
 I ask that our citizens insist in their public 
 representatives upon the same qualities which 
 they insist upon in private Hfe — upon cour- 
 age, upon honesty, and upon the saving 
 grace of common sense. 
 
PART III 
 
 THE WORD AND THE DEED 
 
CORRUPTION 
 
 SPEECH BEFORE THE HAMILTON CLUB, 
 CHICAGO 
 
 8 September, 1910 
 
 I HAVE had a long and, to me, a most 
 pleasant and profitable connection with this 
 club. I had known you before I had at- 
 tained any special prominence in public 
 life. When I came back from the Cuban 
 campaign it was a committee of your club 
 that was practically the first organization to 
 meet me at Montauk Point, and to ask me 
 to come to speak to you ; when I was in- 
 augurated as Governor, a body of representa- 
 tives of this club were present, and at that 
 time you gave me an Abraham Lincoln ink- 
 stand, which has stood on my desk ever 
 since, and which is the one I use now; and 
 I think it was this club which was practically 
 the first organization to be so unwise as to 
 formulate a desire to have me made Presi- 
 dent — a fact which, whenever any representa- 
 tive body from this club is in New York, I 
 shall do all I can to conceal from the knowl- 
 edge of Wall Street. 
 
 205 
 
2o6 CORRUPTION 
 
 I remember well that at the first dinner 
 of this club which I attended I was brought 
 around by that profound and learned law- 
 yer, the late James Norton, and I remember 
 that the following year he came on to New 
 York to the dinner of the New England 
 Society, I think it was, to speak on behalf 
 of Chicago, and the toastmaster, in introduc- 
 ing him, referred to the fact that Chicago was 
 popularly regarded as having rather a good 
 opinion of itself. And when Mr. Norton 
 got up, he responded that really Chicago had 
 never quite understood why it was not as 
 well entitled to think well of itself as New 
 York was to think well of London. 
 
 It was at an address here at the Hamilton 
 Club that I used the expression "strenuous 
 life," an expression which from that day to this 
 I have never more been able to use; and 
 whenever I have come to you, whenever I have 
 spoken either to this club or elsewhere in 
 Chicago, I have always addressed myself to 
 the instant needs of things; for it would not 
 be worth your while to have me come, and it 
 would not be worth my while to come, if I 
 could not speak exactly as I thought upon 
 the questions of the hour. I feel that when 
 I am in Chicago I am in my own city; that 
 I am in one of the centers of the expression 
 
CORRUPTION 207 
 
 of the vital American spirit. Your problems 
 are my problems, for your problems are the 
 problems of the American people. 
 
 Now, there are two chief sources of danger 
 to the American people : lawless violence and 
 corruption; lawless violence, which we most 
 often have to face from among the people 
 who have least of the world's goods; and 
 corruption, which we most often have to face 
 from among the people that have most of 
 the world's goods. 
 
 The last time I was in Chicago you were 
 engaged in a struggle with the first evil. It 
 was at the time of the great teamsters' 
 strike, that you remember here, and there 
 was some question of the city authorities not 
 being able to deal with it. You were then 
 face to face with an assault by lawless vio- 
 lence upon the foundation of the American 
 government. 
 
 I was coming back from the Rocky Moun- 
 tains at the time, and I had good friends 
 who earnestly advised me to go around 
 Chicago. I decided to go through it, and 
 stopped here. A deputation of the labor 
 men called upon me, and to them I said 
 what I subsequently said at a dinner at 
 which the then Mayor and the then Governor 
 were present, that, vitally interested though 
 
2o8 CORRUPTION 
 
 I was in all real reforms for the betterment 
 of our people, and eagerly though I desired 
 to help uplift those who were down, and so 
 far as was possible do away with the in- 
 equalities of fortune that come from the in- 
 equalities of opportunity, yet when there was 
 disorder, when there was lawless violence, 
 all questions of reform had to be postponed 
 until the orderly process of the law was 
 resumed; and that, while I hoped and be- 
 lieved that the municipal authorities them- 
 selves would be able to deal with the dis- 
 order, yet, if they found it impossible, back 
 of the city stood the state, and back of the 
 state the nation. 
 
 I did not hesitate to speak directly then, 
 and just as little shall I hesitate to speak 
 directly now. 
 
 In the program to-night you have done me 
 the honor to print certain quotations from 
 speeches I have made, mostly before the 
 Hamilton Club; and the final quotation is: 
 "We must see that there is civic honesty, 
 civic cleanliness, civic good sense, in our 
 whole administration of the city, state, and 
 nation." 
 
 My friends, the value of a sentence like 
 that consists exclusively in the way in which 
 we try to live up to it. The worth of what 
 
CORRUPTION 209 
 
 I have to say to you, and whether or not it 
 is worth your while to hsten to me, depends 
 upon the way in which we translate words 
 into deeds. It is all right to applaud a sen- 
 tence like that in favor of civic honesty, 
 stating that civic honesty is essential to the 
 welfare of a nation. It is well enough to 
 applaud it, but woe to you if you applaud 
 the sentence in the abstract and fail to act 
 up to it in the concrete. 
 
 It has been well said that the progress, 
 the true progress, of a people can best be 
 gauged by their standard of moral conduct, 
 by their judgment as to what conduct is 
 moral and what conduct is immoral, and 
 by the effectiveness with which they make 
 their approbation of the moral and their 
 disapprobation of the immoral felt. No re- 
 public can last if corruption is allowed to 
 eat into its public Hfe. No republic can last 
 if the private citizens sit supinely by and 
 either encourage or tolerate corruption among 
 their representatives. 
 
 Each state of the nation, each important 
 city of the Union, has from time to time to 
 face this question. More than once we 
 have been brought face to face with it in the 
 state of New York, You are face to face 
 with it now in the state of Illinois. 
 
2IO CORRUPTION 
 
 I have been reading the reports of the 
 investigations by the two state's attorneys, 
 which resulted in the indictment of four 
 members of the legislature, and together 
 with that I have read the reports of the con- 
 fession of four other members of the legisla- 
 ture. I was advised to-day by a very worthy 
 friend not to talk on this matter, because it 
 was a " delicate " subject, and he added that 
 no one had been convicted. Now, I feel most 
 strongly that we make the question of public 
 honesty a sham if we limit the use of the 
 word ** honesty" to mere law-honesty. 
 
 There are big business men whom I have 
 counted as among the most insidious enemies 
 of the real welfare of this republic, although 
 they have been so advised that it would be 
 impossible to convict them, and there have 
 been in the United States, including the state 
 of New York, many public men whose careers 
 have been a scandal throughout the country, 
 although they keep clear of the courts. 
 
 Read the confessions of the four men. 
 Read what was developed by the two state's 
 attorneys, one belonging to the one party 
 and one belonging to the other, about the 
 four men against whom they secured indict- 
 ments, and about other men also. Read 
 that, and I defy any honest man of intelligence 
 
CORRUPTION 211 
 
 not to come to the conclusion that the legis- 
 lature whose doings have been exposed was 
 guilty of the foulest and basest corruption, 
 and, therefore, of the most infamous treason 
 to American institutions. 
 
 Now, I am a good party man, but I 
 am an American first. When we come to 
 questions affecting the vital principles of 
 American Hfe, I know no party. When 
 such a question as corruption is involved, 
 we cannot afford to divide on party lines. 
 
 I take just this much account of party in 
 such a case. While I will do my best to get 
 hold of the thief of the opposite party, I will 
 try, if possible, a little harder to get hold of 
 the thief of my own party. 
 
 When I was President I endeavored to 
 act so that there should be no need of rais- 
 ing the cry among my opponents of "Turn 
 the rascals out," because I turned them out 
 myself just as fast as I could get at them. 
 
 Now, mind you, take my words as worth less 
 than nothing, unless, in looking back, you 
 can see that they were justified by my deeds. 
 
 Examine what went on in the Post Ofl&ce 
 Department, or anywhere else, when corrup- 
 tion was alleged with anything like an offer 
 of proof. 
 
 Now, in making these investigations I 
 
212 CORRUPTION 
 
 struck two different sets of cases. There was 
 one set of cases where prosecutions would 
 lie. In those cases I turned the matter over 
 to the Department of Justice. In addition, 
 there was the larger class of cases where 
 there was not sufficient ground for prosecu- 
 tion, but where it was evident that the man 
 was an unfit and an improper public servant; 
 and there I turned him out; and when now 
 and then the man back of him, occasionally 
 belonging to a coordinate branch of the 
 government, would come up and say: "Oh, 
 there is no conviction against him," I said, 
 "No, I dare say that he has practiced law- 
 honesty, but he is a crook, and out he goes.'* 
 Now, I could do that with the appointive 
 officers, who held office under me; with the 
 elective officers there is but one body that 
 can do that, and that is the people. It de- 
 pends upon you, upon the people of America, 
 whether you will permit a man to represent 
 you because he has been acquitted in a 
 court of law, or because there has been a 
 mistrial, so that enough jurors have believed 
 in him to get him off, — whether you will per- 
 mit that man to represent you, or whether 
 you will take the stand that where you have 
 evidence of a kind which may not be legal, 
 but which convinces every honest man of 
 
CORRUPTION 213 
 
 intelligence, you will not submit to the pol- 
 lution of American life by putting such a man 
 in high official position. 
 
 Now, in each nation, in every form of gov- 
 ernment, there are base flatterers. The same 
 individual who in a monarchy would be a 
 courtier and flatter the king, in a republic 
 turns demagogue and flatters those whom he 
 thinks will cast the most votes. They are of 
 just the same type. The one is just as bad 
 as the other; the only difi^erence is that they 
 are functioning under different conditions. It 
 is a favorite — I won't say argument — but a 
 favorite assertion of men of that type when 
 some public servant has been found guilty of 
 conduct that should disgrace him to say, "We 
 will go to the people for his vindication; we 
 will see if we can't secure him an election." 
 Sometimes they succeed. A great many 
 thoroughly good people, thoroughly good 
 citizens, have no special means of informa- 
 tion, are ignorant of what really has hap- 
 pened, and may on occasions like that be 
 misled; but if they are misled, and if they do, 
 so far as in them lies, attempt to vindicate 
 a dishonest and unfaithful public servant by 
 electing him, they don't vindicate him, they 
 merely disgrace themselves and us. 
 
 I call the attention of the people who 
 
214 CORRUPTION 
 
 make that argument to this fact: We pro- 
 duced in New York once an arch scoundrel 
 whose fame became international, — Boss 
 Tweed, — and after Tweed was convicted he 
 was elected to the state senate as a '"' vindica- 
 tion." Has that made any difference in the 
 judgment passed upon Tweed's honesty by 
 history ? Not a bit, but it shed an unfortu- 
 nate light upon the standards of some of the 
 citizens of New York at that time. They 
 did not help Tweed. They did not help his 
 reputation. They hurt themselves, and they 
 hurt the entire American body politic, for 
 none of us can commit such a folly without 
 having the effect felt both by ourselves and 
 by others. 
 
 If because a postmaster who had been 
 guilty of crooked transactions could not 
 have been convicted in a court of law I had 
 permitted him to continue in office, I would 
 not have made that man's character good; 
 I would merely have shown that mine was 
 bad; and the same thing applies to the body 
 politic. 
 
 In other forms of government than ours 
 there may be a certain kind of progress even 
 if the average man is not what he should be; 
 but in our government, in a great democ- 
 racy like ours, the stream cannot rise higher 
 
CORRUPTION 215 
 
 than its source. You cannot have honesty 
 in public life unless the average citizen de- 
 mands honesty in public life. 
 
 If the people of America are content to 
 send to represent them in the state or the 
 national legislature men who they know in 
 their heart of hearts have not obtained their 
 offices honestly, but have obtained their 
 offices dishonestly and by corruption, who 
 they know have practiced corruption in pub- 
 lic life, they may make up their minds that 
 they will get the government to which they 
 are entitled, and a bad government it will be. 
 
 Now, my friends, I do not suppose that if 
 we decline to be honest and to insist on 
 honesty in public life for our own sakes, 
 we can be expected to do so for the sake of 
 others; and yet, in addition to making the 
 appeal for honesty to you and to the citizens 
 of Illinois, for the sake of Illinois, and for 
 the sake of America, I make the appeal also 
 for the sake of the world. 
 
 Last spring, in Europe, there were two 
 things that struck me especially as I talked 
 with the average man. The first was that 
 the man looked toward America as the land 
 of golden hope, as the land of a partially 
 realized ideal, as a land where it was really 
 being shown that the people could govern 
 
2i6 CORRUPTION 
 
 themselves justly and righteously and in their 
 own interest. 
 
 And the second thing was that that faith 
 in America was continually being shaken by 
 stories that reached them of corruption in 
 American business and in American public 
 life. Every act of corruption here, every 
 gross scandal, every bit of flagrant dishonesty 
 in big business or in politics, or in connec- 
 tion with the complex web that weaves 
 together strands of big business and strands 
 of politics — every such instance, when car- 
 ried abroad, brings sneering satisfaction to 
 the heart of every reactionary, who is glad 
 to say: "Yes, that is what comes of democ- 
 racy. That is what you get when the people 
 try to govern themselves. It shows that they 
 cannot govern themselves." And every such 
 instance dims the hope of the poor and the 
 oppressed who strive to believe and haltingly 
 do believe that here, somehow or other, we 
 have arranged a condition of things in which 
 the injustices of the world elsewhere are at 
 least partially remedied. 
 
 My friends, I ask you men of Illinois that 
 you purify your politics, that you hold ac- 
 countable the scoundrel, great or small, who 
 has been guilty of corruption, that you insist 
 on cleanliness in your public life; and I ask 
 
CORRUPTION 217 
 
 it in your name and for your sakes; I ask 
 it for the sake of the American people; and 
 I ask it for the sake of all the nations of the 
 world, that their hope may not be made dim, 
 and that they may continue to cherish the 
 ideal of the possibility of having a govern- 
 ment of, by, and for the people, that shall 
 mean also a government of justice and a 
 government of honesty. 
 
LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 
 
 SPEECH AT COLUMBUS 
 
 lo September, 1910 
 
 Ever since I have been in Ohio I have been 
 hearing of the lamentable conditions here 
 in Columbus due to the street railway strike.^ 
 Both sides have written to me stating the 
 case as they saw it, and each side urged me 
 to come. While I freely say that I did not 
 like to come, I Hke still less to dodge. 
 
 As I had started to say,^ I find that my 
 speech was put down as being a speech upon 
 law and order. I have asked that it be 
 changed — that it be put down as a speech 
 upon law, order, and justice. 
 
 The first essential to the achievement of 
 justice is that law and order shall obtain, 
 
 ^ At the date of this speech there had been a strike ; 
 for months there had been violence, many policemen 
 had refused to do their duty, and many other officials 
 had failed to do theirs. — E. H. A. 
 
 ^ This speech was begun in the midst of such con- 
 fusion that the opening sentences were not generally 
 heard and could not be recorded. — E. H. A. 
 
 218 
 
LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 219 
 
 that violence shall be repressed, that the 
 orderly course of law shall be unobstructed, 
 and that those who commit violence shall be 
 sternly punished. But while this is the first 
 vital essential towards the achievement of jus- 
 tice, it is of value primarily as leading up to 
 justice. After law and order have been ob- 
 tained, — not before, after, — then comes the 
 question of seeing that absolute justice is 
 done. 
 
 I am not competent to speak as to the exact 
 facts, or in detail, of your trouble here. I 
 have received from reputable men conflicting 
 allegations as to what has occurred; so that 
 all I can do is to set forth certain general 
 principles which apply here as they apply in 
 all similar cases. 
 
 In the first place, there must be obedience 
 to the law; there must be a cessation of 
 violence and bad conduct. It is admitted by 
 almost every one that there have been re- 
 peated and brutal acts of violence, ranging 
 from actual assault to bomb-throwing, and, 
 finally, to the use of that weapon of the mean- 
 est, the basest, and the most cowardly type 
 of assassin — dynamite. There is not much 
 to choose among assassins; but the assassin 
 who tries to kill a man, or men, with dyna- 
 mite and himself escape all personal risk 
 
220 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 
 
 occupies an evil eminence on the table-land of 
 infamy. Now, the first requisite is to estab- 
 lish order; and the first duty of every official, 
 in state and city alike, high and low, is to see 
 that order obtains and that violence is 
 definitely stopped. One of the things of 
 which I am proud is my connection with the 
 New York police force. I have the greatest 
 regard for the policeman who does his duty. 
 I put him high among the props of the state ; 
 but the policeman who mutinies, or refuses 
 to perform his duty, stands on a level lower 
 than that of the professional lawbreaker.* 
 Such a policeman ranks with the soldier 
 who mutinies in the face of the enemy, and 
 should be consigned to the same pit of obliv- 
 ion. I ask, then, not only that civic officials 
 perform their duties, but that you, the people, 
 insist upon their performing them. You are 
 not to be excused if you fail to demand that 
 your representatives perform the first duty 
 of civilized people by seeing that violence is 
 stopped and that the laws are obeyed. 
 
 I ask this particularly of the wage workers, 
 and employees, and men on strike. It is 
 to the interest of everybody that law and 
 
 ^ Several of the policemen who were on duty about 
 the stand joined with special heartiness in the applause 
 that followed this sentence. — E. H. A. 
 
LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 221 
 
 order shall prevail; but it is specially to their 
 interest because the question of the rights 
 and wrongs of the controversy cannot be 
 settled as they should be settled until there 
 is order, until the law is observed. I ask 
 them, not merely passively, but actively, 
 to help in restoring order. I ask them to 
 clear their skirts of all suspicion of sympathiz- 
 ing with disorder, and, above all, the sus- 
 picion of sympathizing with those who com- 
 mit brutal and cowardly assaults. 
 
 If it be true — I don't know whether it is 
 true or not — but if it is, as alleged to me — 
 if it be true that the attorneys of the strikers 
 habitually appear for every miscreant who 
 is arrested for assaulting cars, for assaulting 
 other people, and furnish them bail bonds, 
 then, in their own interest and for their good 
 name, let the wage workers get rid of the 
 attorneys. Let them get rid of the attorney 
 who by such action inevitably tends to cast a 
 doubt upon the sincerity of the expressions 
 of the men who disclaim sympathy with those 
 outrages. 
 
 And, now, what I have said of the labor- 
 ing men applies just as much to the cap- 
 italists and the capitalists' representatives. 
 A year ago. Judge Sater sat in southern 
 Ohio on a case brought before him affecting 
 
222 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 
 
 the striking miners. An injunction was 
 asked for against the miners. He dedined 
 to give it, and read to both parties from 
 the bench a lecture to which, for their good 
 fortune, they paid heed. He told the miners 
 that their worst foes were among themselves, 
 among those members and sympathizers who 
 committed acts of violence ; and he told the 
 employers that if they, by their hired men 
 and representatives, committed acts of vio- 
 lence, they, in their turn, occupied the same 
 disgraceful position that their opponents oc- 
 cupied; that the law was the same for both, 
 and justice and good conduct were demanded 
 alike of each party to the controversy. 
 
 In all great labor struggles, not only are the 
 capitalists and the employees parties in inter- 
 est, but there is another party, and that third 
 party is the people as a whole. You here 
 are the party in interest, and peculiarly so 
 in a controversy like the present, where a 
 public service corporation is involved which 
 has a peculiar and special connection with the 
 government and with the people. 
 
 Now, then, your first duty is, as I have said, 
 to see that law and order obtain. It is the 
 duty of your representatives in public life 
 to demand it of the lawbreaker, not as a 
 favor, but as a right, which you will punish 
 
LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 223 
 
 him for failing to fulfill; and it is to the in- 
 terest of all of you to demand it, but, most of 
 all, it is to the interest of the wage workers. 
 But your duty does not stop there. It has 
 only just begun. There can be no justice 
 without law and order; but law and order 
 are well-nigh valueless unless used as a founda- 
 tion upon which justice is built up as a super- 
 structure. 
 
 As I have said to you, conflicting state- 
 ments have been made to me as to the 
 original cause of the trouble. It has been 
 alleged to me by reputable men that originally 
 the trouble began because of the discharge 
 of certain men who asked for an increase in 
 wages. It has been alleged to me that the 
 struggle has been continued because of the 
 open or covert determination of the employ- 
 ers not to permit a union to exist among 
 their employees. Both allegations have been 
 denied, and I have no facts before me which 
 enable me to decide whether or not they are 
 correct. 
 
 As to the first allegation, it would be an 
 act so infamous to discharge a man because 
 he asked for an increase in wages, that I can 
 hardly believe it can have occurred. But 
 it would be almost as bad to discharge a man 
 because he belonged to, or was preparing to 
 
224 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 
 
 enter, or organize, a union. I am an hon- 
 orary member of a union myself. If I were 
 a wage worker, I should certainly join a union; 
 but when I was in I would remember that I 
 was first of all an American citizen. Uncle 
 Sam comes on top in everything. I would 
 certainly join a union. In our modern in- 
 dustrial system the union is just as necessary 
 as the corporation, and in the modern field 
 of industrialism it is often an absolute neces- 
 sity that there should be collective bargain- 
 ing by the employees with the employers; 
 and such collective bargaining is but one of 
 the many benefits conferred by wisely and 
 honestly organized unions that act properly. 
 Of course, it is outrageous to force a man to 
 join a union, just as it is outrageous to take 
 part in, or encourage, the so-called secondary 
 boycott; but it is no less an outrage to dis- 
 criminate against him because he wishes to 
 have a union, or to refuse to deal with a 
 union when organized. The union has the 
 same right to exist that the corporation has, 
 and it is as unfair to refuse to deal with it as 
 it is to refuse to deal with the corporation. 
 Show your willingness to give the union its 
 full rights, and you will be stronger when 
 you set your faces like flint, as I have set 
 mine, against the union when it is wrong. So 
 
LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 225 
 
 that as soon as law and order have been ob- 
 tained, it becomes your duty, you, the people, 
 through your municipal or through your state 
 authorities, to insist upon a thorough inves- 
 tigation by competent and disinterested au- 
 thorities who will put before us an authori- 
 tative statement of the rights and wrongs of 
 both sides; and then demand a thoroughgoing 
 remedy for any wrong. 
 
 A case like this should be always a matter 
 for mediation or arbitration. If such is re- 
 fused by either party, shape your laws so that 
 mediation and arbitration can be secured. 
 If you need to have a constitutional amend- 
 ment for your purpose, amend the constitu- 
 tion; but don't wait for the amendment to 
 see substantial justice done in this case. See 
 to it. 
 
 I have got but two minutes more. I have 
 not spoken long; but you will admit I have 
 spoken to the point. See to it that you 
 find out the facts and find out what the cor- 
 poration has done. If it has acted properly, 
 decide in its favor; if it has not, decide against 
 it. If there has been injustice done, see that 
 the injustice is remedied. See that the public 
 service corporation acts for the service of 
 the people. If the municipal and the state 
 authorities mean business they can make the 
 
 Q 
 
226 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 
 
 corporation do what is right. See that the 
 evil is remedied, and that you are guaranteed 
 against a repetition of the evil. In short, 
 my friends, I can sum it up in this way : You, 
 the people here, have two duties in this crisis. 
 You have to face the need of exercising two 
 prime duties of American citizenship — in- 
 sistence upon law and order, and the use of 
 that insistence as a stepping-stone for obtain- 
 ing justice. Law and order first. 
 
 To-morrow is Sunday; to-morrow is a 
 time when you may be threatened with dis- 
 order. The wage workers and the repre- 
 sentatives of the companies should make it 
 evident that they wish the law absolutely 
 obeyed ; that there is no chance of saying that 
 either the labor organizations or the corpora- 
 tion favors lawbreakers or lawbreaking. But 
 let your public servants trust, not in the good 
 will of either side, but to the might of the civil 
 arm, and see that law rules, that order obtains, 
 and that every miscreant, every scoundrel 
 who seeks brutally to assault any other man 
 — whatever that other man's status — is 
 punished with the utmost severity. Keep 
 order now. Frown on disorder and violence 
 now, and put them down with ruthless sever- 
 ity; and then, friends, when you have obtained 
 law and order, remember that it is useless to 
 
LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 227 
 
 have obtained them unless upon them you 
 build a superstructure of justice. After finding 
 out the facts, see that justice is done; see 
 that injustice that has been perpetrated in 
 the past is remedied, and see that the chance 
 of doing injustice in the future is minimized. 
 Take these two positions, and you will have 
 deserved well, not only of the city of Colum- 
 bus, not only of the state ot Ohio, but of 
 the people of the great republic in which 
 we are living and in whose citizenship we 
 exult without measure. 
 
PART IV 
 
 THE NEW NATIONALISM AND 
 THE OLD MORALITIES 
 
THE NEW NATIONALISM AND THE 
 OLD MORALITIES 
 
 SPEECH AT SYRACUSE 
 
 17 September, 1910 
 
 Criticism has been made of certain of 
 my speeches in the West where I advocated 
 what has been called the "New Nationalism/' 
 But the New Nationalism really means 
 nothing but an application to new conditions 
 of certain old and fundamental moralities. 
 It means an invitation to meet the new 
 problems of the present day in precisely the 
 spirit in which Lincoln and the men of his 
 day met their new problems. In my western 
 speeches I said chiefly what I again and 
 again said in messages to Congress when I 
 was President. I very slightly developed 
 the doctrines contained in these presidential 
 addresses in order to meet the development 
 of the new conditions; and the chief way in 
 which I developed them was to include a 
 quotation from Abraham Lincoln and con- 
 strue it in connection with the very old 
 doctrine of eminent domain. 
 
 Now what I say in the West I of course 
 say here. Whether it is sound or not can, I 
 
 231 
 
232 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 think, be determined by the simple expedient 
 of asking whether any party is wilHng frankly 
 to take the other side of the propositions of 
 which complaint is made. If so, it would 
 be a good thing to have the issue made in 
 clean-cut fashion before the people; for in the 
 end the people would most certainly decide 
 in favor of the principles embodied in the 
 New Nationalism, because otherwise this 
 country could not continue to be a true 
 republic, a true democracy. 
 
 Take, for instance, what I said in reference 
 to two decisions of the Supreme Court. It 
 was in the course of an address in which I 
 dwelt upon the great need of having the 
 spheres of activity of the national and state 
 governments extended to cover the whole 
 field of our life that can properly be touched 
 by legislation at all, so that there shall not 
 be left a debatable land in which neither 
 nation nor state has real power, and which 
 can serve as a place of refuge for men who 
 wish to escape all effective control under the 
 law, and especially for the great corporations 
 which wish thus to escape control. One 
 decision was in the Knight Sugar case, in 
 which, according to the dissenting opinion 
 of Justice Harlan, the judgment of the court 
 placed the public "so far as national power 
 
AND THE OLD MORALITIES 233 
 
 is concerned [the only power which could be 
 effective] entirely at the mercy of combina- 
 tions which arbitrarily control the prices of 
 articles purchased to be transported from one 
 state to another state." I merely took the 
 view which the learned justice had thus 
 taken in his dissenting opinion. It is, in 
 my judgment, unquestionably the correct 
 view. The decision has been a bar in the 
 path of those who are honestly endeavoring to 
 secure adequate control over great corpora- 
 tions doing an interstate business. Those 
 who criticize me are also criticizing a justice 
 of the Supreme Court, Mr. Harlan. Do my 
 critics take the position that the people shall 
 not be able to control the management and 
 activities of these great monopolistic cor- 
 porations doing an interstate business .? If 
 so, let them frankly avow their position. If 
 not, let them cease their criticism. 
 
 The second decision was one against 
 state's rights, prohibiting the state of New 
 York to regulate in very moderate fashion the 
 hours of work in bakery and confectionery 
 estabhshments where the conditions are such 
 that excessive hours of labor continued day 
 in and day out may endanger the health and 
 shorten the lives of the workingmen. Here 
 what I said was based upon the dissenting 
 
234 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 opinions of Justices Harlan, White, Day, and 
 Holmes, who specifically upheld the view 
 that the state had the power to regulate the 
 hours of labor under such conditions, taking 
 the broad ground that "it is the primary 
 duty of the state to guard and protect the 
 health and safety of its people." Here I 
 held that the dissenting justices were right 
 in their views, and that, however honest 
 men may be who revive the long outworn 
 doctrine that the state shall not interfere 
 with the "liberty" of laborers who are driven 
 by grinding need to contract to work for an 
 excessive number of hours under unhealthy 
 conditions, yet such doctrine is essentially 
 anti-social, and is really a relic of a past 
 geological age in our social and economic 
 history. If my opponents disagree with me, 
 let them frankly say that the state has no 
 right to limit the hours of labor of men em- 
 ployed under conditions dangerous to their 
 health and welfare. If they do so, I take 
 issue with them. If they do not, then they 
 have no right to criticize what I have said. 
 
 Fifty-three years ago Abraham Lincoln 
 was assailed for his repeated criticisms of 
 the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. 
 As regards this decision he announced, not 
 once, but again and again, that he held it to 
 
AND THE OLD MORALITIES 235 
 
 be not merely the right but the duty of citi- 
 zens, who felt that judicial decisions were 
 erroneous and damaging, loyally to abide 
 by the decisions as long as they stood, but to 
 try hard to secure their reversal; his language 
 on one occasion being as follows : — 
 
 "We do not propose in any violent way [to] 
 disturb the rights of property thus settled. 
 . . . We propose so resisting it [the decision] 
 as to have it reversed if we can, and a new 
 judicial rule estabUshed upon this subject." 
 
 He repeated this statement in sHghtly 
 differing language in speech after speech. 
 
 Moreover, he used very strong language 
 about the decision, far stronger than I should 
 dream of using, or than it would be proper to 
 use, about the decisions with which I now deal. 
 But his view as to his right and duty to call 
 attention to an erroneous decision which 
 vitally affected the rights of the people was, 
 I think, entirely sound. At any rate, if I 
 have erred in commenting as I have com- 
 mented upon the decisions in question, I err 
 in company with Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The criticism of me is perhaps well sunimed 
 up in the following speech of an eminent 
 public man : — 
 
 "He makes war on the decision of the 
 Supreme Court. I wish to say to you, 
 
236 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 fellow citizens, that I have no war to make on 
 that decision, or any other ever rendered by 
 the Supreme Court. I am content to take 
 that decision as it stands delivered by the 
 highest judicial tribunal on earth, a tribunal 
 established by the Constitution of the United 
 States for that purpose, and hence that deci- 
 sion becomes the law of the land, binding on 
 you, on me, and on every other good citizen, 
 whether we like it or not. Hence, I do not 
 choose to go into an argument to prove, 
 before this audience, whether or not he [the 
 Chief Justice] understood the law better than 
 Theodore Roosevelt." 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I have made one change 
 in the above quotation. The last words 
 were not "Theodore Roosevelt," the last 
 words were "Abraham Lincoln," and this 
 attack, made nearly fifty-three years ago upon 
 Abraham Lincoln, is precisely and exactly 
 the kind of attack made upon me at the 
 moment. Abraham Lincoln felt and pro- 
 fessed, throughout his life, the same profound 
 respect for the Supreme Court that, of course, 
 I feel, and that I have again and again in 
 public speech and messages, as President of 
 the United States, expressed. An upright 
 judge is a higher and better public servant 
 
AND THE OLD MORALITIES 237 
 
 than any other man can possibly be, and it is 
 a cause of pride to every American citizen 
 that our Supreme Court is the most influen- 
 tial judicial tribunal in the entire world. I 
 have quoted Abraham Lincoln; let me quote 
 him again: "We beheve in obedience to and 
 respect for the judicial department of govern- 
 ment. We think its decisions on constitu- 
 tional questions when fully settled should 
 control." I agree absolutely with this sen- 
 tence of Abraham Lincoln, not the less 
 because I also beheve in what Lincoln said 
 immediately afterwards: "But we think 
 this decision erroneous, and we shall do what 
 we can to have it overruled." 
 
 Nor do I have to go only to the statesmen 
 of the past for precedents. The President 
 of the United States, Mr. Taft, has served 
 his country honorably and uprightly in many 
 positions, — as judge, as Governor of the 
 PhiHppines, as Secretary of War, and now 
 as President, — for to him and the Congress 
 acting with him, we owe the creation of a 
 Tariff Commission, the adoption of maxi- 
 mum and minimum tariff law treaties with 
 foreign powers, the proper treatment of the 
 PhiHppines under the tariff, the increase in 
 the efficiency of the Interstate Cornmerce 
 Law, the beginning of a national legislative 
 
238 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 program providing for the exercise of the 
 taxing power in connection with corpora- 
 tions doing an interstate business, a Postal 
 Savings Bank Bill, the constitution of a com- 
 mission to report a remedy for overcapitali- 
 zation in connection with the issue of stocks 
 and bonds; but few of his services are more 
 deserving of record than what he said in 
 this very matter of criticism of the judiciary. 
 Speaking as a United States circuit judge, 
 fifteen years ago, he said: "The opportunity 
 freely and publicly to criticize judicial action 
 is of vastly more importance to the body 
 politic than the immunity of courts and 
 judges from unjust aspersions and attack. 
 Nothing tends more to render judges careful 
 in their decisions and anxiously solicitous 
 to do exact justice than the consciousness 
 that every act of theirs is to be submitted to 
 the intelligent scrutiny and candid criticism 
 of their fellow men. In the case of judges 
 having a life tenure, indeed, their very inde- 
 pendence makes the right freely to comment 
 on their decisions of greater importance, 
 because it is the only practicable and avail- 
 able instrument in the hands of a free people 
 to keep such judges alive to the reasonable 
 demands of those they serve." 
 We who work for the New Nationalism 
 
AND THE OLD MORALITIES 239 
 
 are not working in any spirit of mere faction 
 or party. We recognize parties as necessary 
 instruments for government under popular 
 conditions, just as we recognize corporations 
 as necessary instruments in modern business, 
 and just as we recognize unions as necessary 
 instruments in the elevation of wage work- 
 ers under modern industrial conditions. But 
 we believe that true loyalty to a party consists 
 chiefly in making that party the efficient 
 servant of the whole people. 
 
 Among those who manage our government, 
 state and national, in legislative and in judicial 
 positions, we regard the one vital and essen- 
 tial matter to be honesty. The crook in pub- 
 He Hfe is the gravest menace to our political 
 institutions, and we call on all good citizens 
 to drive him out of pubHc life. Whether 
 his crookedness takes the form of blackmail 
 or of bribery — we care nothing whether 
 he receive the bribe or give it — is of small 
 consequence. In any event he is a traitor 
 to democracy and a foe to repubUcan insti- 
 tutions; and against him we war without 
 mercy; and we will reject without hesitation 
 any plea advanced on his behalf,^ no matter 
 what may be the influence, political, social, 
 or commercial, that stands behind him. 
 
 We beUeve in the hearty encouragement 
 
240 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 and reward of individual excellence, but we 
 believe also in steadily using the power of the 
 government to secure economic democracy 
 as well as political democracy. Our ideal is 
 to secure, so far as by law it is possible to 
 secure, a reasonable approximation to equal- 
 ity of opportunity for all men, so that (as 
 far as it is humanly possible to secure it) 
 each man shall have the chance to start fair 
 in the race of life and to show the stuff that 
 is in him, unhelped by special privilege for 
 himself and unhampered by special privilege 
 for others. We know that an ideal like this 
 can never be entirely realized, but we believe 
 it our duty to do whatever is possible to bring 
 about a measurable approximation to this 
 ideal. We entirely understand that after the 
 best possible laws have been obtained, and 
 after they have been enforced in the most 
 efficient possible manner, it will yet remain 
 true that the chief factor in each man's suc- 
 cess or failure must be that man's individual 
 character; but while fully recognizing this 
 fact, we nevertheless insist that good laws 
 and honest administration of these laws can 
 be made to play a very real and effective part 
 in the betterment of mankind. According 
 to our ability we intend to safeguard the rights 
 of the mighty; but we intend no less jeal- 
 
AND THE OLD MORALITIES 241 
 
 ously to safeguard the rights of the lowly. 
 Our ideal is equal justice for all; justice alike 
 for the rich man and the poor man who do 
 right; and the same stern justice for the 
 rich man and the poor man who do wrong. 
 
 We cordially believe in the rights of prop- 
 erty. We think that normally and in the 
 long run the rights of humanity, the rights of 
 mankind, coincide with the rights of property, 
 and that the two sets of rights are in large 
 part inextricably interwoven; and so we 
 would protect property in all its rights. But 
 we feel that if in exceptional cases there is 
 any conflict between the rights of property 
 and the rights of man, then we must stand 
 for the rights of man. And we believe that 
 where property has accumulated in such 
 masses that it becomes heaped-up wealth, 
 fairly fabulous in its extent and power, then 
 there arises a real reason not merely for 
 safeguarding the rights of wealth but for safe- 
 guarding the people against the wrongs and 
 abuses of wealth, and especially of wealth 
 in its corporate capacity, of wealth function- 
 ing as corporate capital. The great captains 
 of industry do well and are entitled to great 
 rewards only in so far as they render great 
 service; they are invaluable as long as they 
 in good faith act as efficient servants of the 
 
242 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 public; they become intolerable when they 
 behave as the masters of the public. The 
 corporation is the creature of the people ; and 
 it must not be allowed to become the ruler 
 of the people. 
 
 Politically we believe that the people should 
 act with justice and moderation, and that it 
 is eminently necessary that they should show 
 self-control. But] we also believe that this 
 should be literally self-control and not control 
 by outsiders; that they should be controlled 
 by themselves and not by political bosses, 
 or by the direct or indirect use of wealth, and 
 least of all by a combination between political 
 bossism and big business. People are apt 
 to say that bossism is merely another term 
 for leadership. I do not think that this is 
 so. Of course there are all degrees in boss- 
 ism; and of course the mere fact that a 
 man is a boss does not in the least justify 
 the kind of attack upon him that ought to be 
 made upon a corrupt and unfaithful public 
 servant. Nevertheless, we think that the 
 boss is a bad development in our politics. It 
 is necessary and desirable that there should 
 be leaders, but it is unnecessary and unde- 
 sirable that there should be bosses. The 
 leader leads the people; the boss drives the 
 people. The leader gets his hold by open 
 
AND THE OLD MORALITIES 243 
 
 appeal to the reason and conscience of his 
 followers; the boss keeps his hold by manipu- 
 lation, by intrigue, by secret ^ and furtive 
 appeals to many forms of self-interest, and 
 sometimes to very base forms of self-interest. 
 The leader wars on the crook and seeks to 
 drive him from power; the boss too often 
 protects the crook and seeks to profit by his 
 existence. The leader treats the unfaithful 
 public servant as the worst foe of the party 
 to which he nominally belongs, and refuses 
 entirely to recognize him as a party represent- 
 ative; the boss too often uses and shields 
 him. Leadership is carried on in the open 
 light of day ; bossism derives its main strength 
 from what is done under cover of darkness. 
 
 Of course leadership must not only be 
 brave and honest, but it must be sober and 
 must accord with the dictates of common 
 sense. Exactly as the conservative who 
 favors abuses and connives at corruption is 
 in reality the worst enemy of conservatism, so 
 the popular leader or reformer who acts in 
 the spirit of the demagogue, or of the wild- 
 eyed visionary, who incites to excess and to 
 rash action and stirs up class hatred, is him- 
 self the worst foe of progress, the most dan- 
 gerous enemy of the popular cause which 
 he professes to champion. There must be 
 
244 THE NEW NATIONALISM 
 
 progress; a great democracy which ceases 
 to be progressive soon also ceases to be either 
 great or democratic; but the progress must 
 be wise, sober, moderate, if it is to be perma- 
 nent. If we attempt merely to stand still, 
 we are certain to go backward. If under 
 the theory that we are making progress we 
 go in the wrong direction, we shall have to 
 waste much time in retracing our steps. 
 But progress there must and shall be. The 
 past century has been one of gigantic material 
 prosperity, of gigantic accumulation of pros- 
 perity. Our task is to preserve that pros- 
 perity, in the interest of all of us; but it is 
 also in the interest of all of us to work for a 
 less unequal division of the prosperity. We 
 believe in material well-being as absolutely 
 essential. It is only upon a foundation of 
 material well-being that the greatness of a 
 nation can be built. But the foundation 
 is in no way sufficient in itself. Material 
 well-being is a great good, but it is a great 
 good chiefly as a means for the upbuilding 
 upon it of a high and fine type of character, 
 private and public. Upon our national well- 
 being as a foundation we must upbuild 
 the structure of a lofty national life, raised 
 in accordance with the doctrine that " right- 
 eousness exalteth a nation." 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 SIGNED EDITORIAL IN THE OUTLOOK FOR 
 24 SEPTEMBER, IQIO 
 
 On August 29, at Denver, before the Col- 
 orado Legislature, I made an address dwell- 
 ing partly upon the necessity of good gov- 
 ernment, and specifically upon the need of 
 more coherent work between the state and 
 the national governments, and of action 
 on the part of the legislative, executive, and 
 judicial officers of the country, both national 
 and state, which would prevent the growth 
 and extension of a neutral territory or border- 
 land of ill-defined limits in which neither the 
 nation nor any state should be able to exer- 
 cise eiFective control, especially over big cor- 
 porations, in their relations to the public 
 at large and to their own employees. I spoke 
 in part as follows : — 
 
 The courts occupy a position of importance in our 
 government such as they occupy in no other government, 
 because, instead of dealing only with the rights of one 
 man face to face with his fellow-men, as is the case with 
 other governments, they here pass upon the fundamental 
 governmental rights of the people as exercised through 
 
 245 
 
246 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 their legislative and executive officers. Unfortunately, 
 the courts, instead of leading in the recognition of the 
 new conditions, have lagged behind, and, as each case 
 has presented itself, have tended by a series of negative 
 decisions to create a sphere in which neither nation nor 
 state has effective control, and where the great business 
 interests that can call to their aid the ability of the 
 greatest corporation lawyers escape all control whatso- 
 ever. Let me illustrate what I mean by a reference to 
 two concrete cases. Remember that I believe in states* 
 rights wherever states' rights mean the people's rights. 
 On the other hand, I believe in national rights wherever 
 national rights mean the people's rights; and, above all, 
 I believe that in every part of our complicated social 
 fabric there must be either national or state control, and 
 that it is ruinous to permit governmental action, and 
 especially judicial action, which prevents the exercise of 
 such control. 
 
 The first case to which I shall refer is the Knight 
 Sugar Trust case. In that case the Supreme Court of 
 the United States handed down a decision which rendered 
 it exceedingly difficult for the people to devise any 
 method of controlling and regulating the business use of 
 great capital in interstate commerce. It was a decision 
 nominally against national rights, but really against popu- 
 lar rights, against the democratic principle of government 
 by the people. 
 
 The second case is the so-called New York Bakeshop 
 case. In New York City, as in most large cities, the 
 baking business is likely to be carried on under unhygienic 
 conditions, conditions which [tell against the welfare of 
 the general public. The New York Legislature passed, 
 and the New York Governor signed, a bill remedying 
 these unhealthy conditions. New York State was the 
 only body which could deal with them; the nation had 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 247 
 
 no power whatever in the matter. Acting on evidence 
 which to them seemed ample and sufficient, acting in the 
 interest of the public and in accordance with the demand 
 of the public, the only governmental authority having 
 affirmative power in the matter, the Governor and the 
 Legislature of the State of New York took the action 
 which they deemed necessary, after what inquiry and study 
 were needed to satisfy them as to the conditions, and as to 
 the remedy. The Governor and the Legislature alone 
 had the power to remedy the abuse. But the Supreme 
 Court of the United States possessed, and unfortunately 
 exercised, the negative power of not permitting the abuse 
 to be remedied. By a five-to-four vote they declared the 
 action of the State of New York unconstitutional, because, 
 forsooth, men must not be deprived of their "liberty" 
 to work under unhealthy conditions. 
 
 All who are acquainted with the effort to remedy in- 
 dustrial abuses know the t pe of mind (it may be per- 
 fectly honest, but is absolutely fossilized), which declines 
 to allow us to work for the betterment of conditions among 
 the wage earners on the ground that we must not interfere 
 with the "liberty" of a girl to work under conditions which 
 jeopardize life and limb, or the "Hberty " of a man to work 
 under conditions which ruin his health after a limited 
 number of years. 
 
 Such was the decision. The Court was of course abso- 
 lutely powerless to make the remotest attempt to provide 
 a remedy for the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and 
 its refusal to permit action by the state did not confer 
 any power upon the nation to act. The decision was 
 nominally against states' rights, but really against pop- 
 ular rights. 
 
 Much exception was taken in the East to 
 this speech as an "attack" on the Supreme 
 
248 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 Court, some of the critics going so far as to 
 call it an attack upon the judiciary as a whole, 
 an incitement to riot, and an appeal to the 
 passions of the mob. The gloom caused by 
 the "attack'' was naturally deepest in that 
 section of the metropolitan press which is 
 owned and edited in the shadow of Wall 
 Street; but many good and honest people 
 were misled into a feeling of uneasiness on 
 the subject. 
 
 The address was not delivered before a 
 mob, or indeed at a popular meeting. It 
 was made by invitation to the two houses 
 of the Colorado Legislature assembled at 
 the capitol of the state. In addition to 
 the members of the Legislature there were 
 present the Governor and various other 
 state officers and various judges. There 
 were some hundreds of spectators who had 
 come by special invitation. The Speaker 
 and Lieutenant-Governor presided, and the 
 function was peculiarly dignified in character. 
 
 So much for the setting of the speech. 
 Now for the substance. Apart from simple 
 misrepresentation or misquotation, my critics, 
 as far as I can gather, take the view, first, 
 that I have taken an action without precedent 
 in questioning any decision of the Supreme 
 Court; second, that I have used too strong 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 249 
 
 language; and, third, that it is wrong ever 
 to criticize a decision of the Supreme Court. 
 I differ with them on all three points, and shall 
 consider them consecutively. 
 
 First, the question of precedent. The cen- 
 tral feature of Abraham Lincoln's famous 
 series of debates with Douglas was his attack 
 on the Supreme Court for its decision in the 
 Dred Scott case and Douglas's criticism of 
 him for making such an attack. Douglas 
 spoke of him as follows : — 
 
 He makes war on the decision of the Supreme Court. 
 ... I wish to say to you, fellow citizens, that I have no 
 war to make on that decision, or any other ever rendered 
 by the Supreme Court. I am content to take that decision 
 as it stands delivered by the highest judicial tribunal on 
 earth, a tribunal established by the Constitution of the 
 United States for that purpose, and hence that decision 
 becomes the law of the land, binding on you, on me, and 
 on every other good citizen, whether we like it or not. 
 Hence I do not choose to go into an argument to prove, 
 before this audience, whether or not he [the Chief Justice] 
 understood the law better than Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 If for Abraham Lincoln's name mine were 
 substituted, this paragraph would stand with 
 hardly an alteration as an exact summary of 
 the attacks made upon me at this moment 
 for what I said about the Court in the two 
 cases under consideration. Lincoln himself 
 during the debates, not once in the heat of 
 
250 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 fury, but again and again, in speech after 
 speech, from June, 1857, to October, 1858, 
 stated what I hold to be not merely a proper 
 view, but the only proper view, of the duty of 
 the citizen when the Supreme Court has made 
 decisions which he firmly believes to be against 
 the interests of the country. The following 
 are a few quotations from his speeches : — 
 
 We believe ... in obedience to, and respect for, the 
 Judicial department of Government. We think its deci- 
 sions on constitutional questions, when fully settled, should 
 control not only the particular cases decided, but the gen- 
 eral policy of the country. . . . But we think [this] 
 decision erroneous. We know the court that made it has 
 often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we 
 can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to it. 
 
 Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority 
 as precedents according to circumstances. That this 
 should be so accords both with common sense and the 
 customary understanding of the legal profession. 
 
 I now repeat my opposition to the decision. ... I 
 do not resist it. . . . We . . . abide by the decision, 
 but we will try to reverse that decision. 
 
 I think that in respect for judicial authority, my 
 humble history would not suffer in comparison with that 
 of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizen conform 
 his vote to that decision; the Member of Congress, 
 his; the President, his use of the veto power. He would 
 make it a rule of political action for the people and all 
 the departments of the Government. I would not. By 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 251 
 
 resisting it as a political rule, I disturb no right of prop- 
 erty, create no disorder, excite no mobs. 
 
 We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way. 
 . We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been 
 decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will 
 decide him to be free. We do not propose ... in any 
 violent way [to] disturb the rights of property thus settled. 
 . . . We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we 
 can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject. 
 
 I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go 
 for reversing it. 
 
 He also stated that the decision was due 
 to "apparent partisan bias," that it was "an 
 astonisher in legal history," "a new wonder 
 of the world," and "based upon falsehood in 
 the main as to the facts." 
 
 I do not see how the case could be put 
 more clearly or more strongly than it was 
 thus put by Lincoln. As was right and 
 proper, he used far stronger language in 
 denouncing the Dred Scott decision than I 
 did in speaking of the two decisions in ques- 
 tion, for the Dred Scott decision was a very 
 much worse decision than either of the two 
 decisions in question, though these are also 
 very bad. It should be clearly understood 
 that all men who deny the right to take ex- 
 ception in proper language to the decisions 
 
 T 
 
252 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 of the Supreme Court on some fundamental 
 question where they think the Supreme Court 
 has gone wrong must condemn Lincoln far 
 more unreservedly than they condemn me. 
 
 The second point raised by my critics is 
 that I have used too strong language. Now, 
 the critics who make this objection forget 
 that, as regards both these decisions, as in 
 the Dred Scott decision, dissenting opinions 
 were given. In the end, the dissenting 
 opinions in the Dred Scott case became the 
 law of the land, and no one now for a moment 
 justifies the action of the majority of the 
 Court in that case. I believe that such will 
 be the case as regards the two decisions I 
 have mentioned above, and I hold that it is 
 the duty of every good citizen to do as Abra- 
 ham Lincoln advised in the case of the Dred 
 Scott decision; that is, to abide by the 
 decision, but work for its reversal. My own 
 language was by no means as strong as the 
 language of the dissenting justices in the two 
 cases. In the Knight case. Justice Harlan 
 says of the decision of the Court: — 
 
 This view of the scope of the act leaves the public, 
 so far as National power is concerned, entirely at the 
 mercy of combinations which arbitrarily control the prices 
 of articles purchased to be transported from one State to 
 another State. I cannot assent to that view. In my 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 253 
 
 judgment, the General Government is not placed by the 
 Constitution in such a condition of helplessness that it 
 must fold its arms and remain inactive while capital com- 
 bines, under the name of a corporation, to destroy com- 
 petition, not in one State only, but throughout the entire 
 country. . . . The doctrine of the autonomy of the 
 States cannot properly be invoked to justify a denial of 
 power in the National Government to meet such an emer- 
 gency. . . . The common government of all the people 
 is the only one that can adequately deal with a matter 
 which directly and injuriously affects the entire commerce 
 of the country, which concerns equally all the people of the 
 Union, and which, it must be confessed, cannot be ade- 
 quately controlled by any one State. Its authority should 
 not be so weakened by construction that it cannot reach 
 and eradicate evils that, beyond all question, tend to 
 defeat an object which that Government is entitled, by 
 the Constitution, to accomplish. 
 
 The learned justice then continues to 
 apply to the judgment of the Court a quota- 
 tion running in part as follows: "* Powerful 
 and ingenious minds may, by a course of 
 well-digested but refined and metaphysical 
 reasoning, founded on these premises, ex- 
 plain away the Constitution of our country, 
 and leave it a magnificent structure, indeed, 
 to look at, but totally unfit for use. They 
 may so entangle and perplex the understand- 
 ing as to obscure principles which were before 
 thought quite plain, and induce doubts where, 
 if the mind were to pursue its own course, 
 none would be perceived.'" 
 
254 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 In the Bakeshop case, Justices Harlan, 
 White, and Day, dissenting, spoke as 
 follows : — 
 
 There are many reasons of a weighty, substantial 
 character, based upon the experience of mankind, in 
 support of the theory that, all things considered, more than 
 ten hours' steady work each day, from week to week, in a 
 bakery or confectionery establishment, may endanger the 
 health and shorten the lives of the workmen, thereby 
 diminishing their physical and mental capacity to serve 
 the State, and to provide for those dependent upon them. 
 
 If such reasons exist, that ought to be the end of this 
 case, for the State is not amenable to the judiciary, in 
 respect to its legislative enactments, unless such enact- 
 ments are plainly, palpably, beyond all question, inconsist- 
 ent with the Constitution of the United States. We are 
 not to presume that the State of New York has acted in 
 bad faith. Nor can we assume that its Legislature acted 
 without due deliberation, or that it did not determine this 
 question upon the fullest attainable information, and for 
 the common good. We cannot say that the State has 
 acted without reason, nor ought we to proceed upon the 
 theory that its action is a mere sham. Our duty, I sub- 
 mit, is to sustain the statute as not being in conflict with 
 the Federal Constitution, for the reason — and such is 
 an all-sufficient reason — it is rot shown to be plainly 
 and palpably inconsistent with that instrument. Let the 
 State alone in the management of its purely domestic 
 affairs, so long as it^does not appear beyond all question 
 that it has violated the Federal Constitution. This view 
 necessarily results from the principle that the health and 
 safety of the people of a State are primarily for the State 
 to guard and protect. 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 255 
 
 Justice Holmes spoke as follows : — 
 
 I strongly believe that my agreement or disagreement 
 has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody 
 their opinions in law. It is settled by various decisions of 
 this Court that State Constitutions and State laws may 
 regulate life in many ways which we as legislators might 
 think as injudicious or if you like as tyrannical as this, 
 and which equally with this interfere with the liberty to 
 contract. Sunday laws and usury laws are ancient ex- 
 amples. A more modern one is the prohibition of lot- 
 teries. The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as 
 he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the 
 same, which has been a shibboleth for some well-known 
 writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post- 
 Office, by every State or municipal institution which takes 
 his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he 
 likes it or not. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics." ... I think 
 that the word Hberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is 
 perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome 
 of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational 
 and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute pro- 
 posed would infringe fundamental principles as they have 
 been understood by the traditions of our people and our 
 law. It does not need research to show that no such 
 sweeping condemnation can be passed upon the statute 
 before us. A reasonable man might think it a proper 
 measure on the score of health. Men whom I certainly 
 could not pronounce unreasonable would uphold it as a 
 first installment of a general regulation of the hours of 
 work. 
 
 A glance at these dissenting opinions will 
 satisfy any one that I have not used language 
 
256 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 as strong as that used by the learned justices 
 who dissented from the two decisions. 
 
 Third. Now as to the question whether 
 it is ever proper to criticize a court. My 
 views on this point have been set forth at 
 length in the Message I sent to Congress 
 when I was President, on December 3, 1906, 
 which runs in part as follows : — 
 
 All honor cannot be paid to the wise and fearless judge 
 if we permit the growth of an absurd convention which 
 would forbid any criticism of the judge of another type, 
 who shows himself timid in the presence of arrogant dis- 
 order, or who on insufficient grounds grants an injunction 
 that does grave injustice, or who in his capacity as a con- 
 struer, and therefore in part a maker, of the law, in 
 flagrant fashion thwarts the cause of decent government. 
 The judge has a power over which no review can be exer- 
 cised; he himself sits in review upon the acts of both the 
 executive and legislative branches of the Government; 
 save in the most extraordinary cases he is amenable only 
 at the bar of public opinion ; and it is unwise to maintain 
 that public opinion in reference to a man with such power 
 shall neither be expressed nor led. 
 
 The best judges have ever been foremost to disclaim 
 any immunity from criticism. This has been true since 
 the days of the great English Lord Chancellor Parker, 
 who said: "Let all people be at liberty to know what 
 I found my judgment upon ; that, so when I have given it 
 in any cause, others may be at Hberty to judge of me." 
 . . . There is one consideration which should be taken 
 into account by the good people who carry a sound prop- 
 osition to an excess in objecting to any criticism of a 
 
CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 257 
 
 judge's decision. The instinct of the American people 
 as a whole is sound in this matter. They will not sub- 
 scribe to the doctrine that any public servant is to be above 
 all criticism. If the best citizens, those most competent 
 to express their judgment in such matters, and above all 
 those belonging to the great and honorable profession of 
 the bar, so profoundly influential in American life, take 
 the position that there shall be no criticism of a judge 
 under any circumstances, their view will not be accepted 
 by the American people as a whole. In such event the 
 people will turn to, and tend to accept as justifiable, the 
 intemperate and improper criticism uttered by unworthy 
 agitators. Surely it is a misfortune to leave [to] such 
 critics a function, right in itself, which they are certain to 
 abuse. Just and temperate criticism, when necessary, is 
 a safeguard against the acceptance by the people as a 
 whole of that intemperate antagonism toward the judi- 
 ciary which must be combated by every right-thinking 
 man, and which, if it became vridespread among the people 
 at large, would constitute a dire menace to the Republic. 
 
 I cannot state my position now more 
 clearly than I stated it then. I continue to 
 uphold the doctrine enunciated fifty-three 
 years ago by Abraham Lincoln as regards 
 criticism of the action of the courts. I feel 
 most strongly that the decisions to which I 
 object, and which I hope will be reversed, 
 are wrong, for the reasons set forth so ad- 
 mirably and with such convincing clearness 
 by Justices Harlan, White, Day, and Holmes. 
 If I am not right in my position as to these 
 
258 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 
 
 decisions, then I err in company with these 
 four justices of the Supreme Court. If I 
 am not right in exercising the Hberty to 
 question these decisions, and as a result to 
 endeavor to form a popular opinion which 
 shall directly or indirectly secure their rever- 
 sal, then I err in common with Abraham 
 Lincoln, 
 
HISTORICAL SUMMARY 
 
HISTORICAL SUMMARY 
 
 An Editorial in The Outlook 
 by lyman abbott 
 
 29 October, 19 10 
 
 The New Nationalism is simply a later 
 stage in the development of a continually 
 developing Nationalism. The relation be- 
 tween the States and the National Gov- 
 ernment was not settled once for all by the 
 written Constitution, and could not be. The 
 Constitution is not like the hoops of a bar- 
 rel that hold the staves together. Hoops 
 fitted for a barrel of thirteen staves 
 would not serve for a barrel of forty-eight. 
 It is like the bark of a tree that grows with 
 the growth of the tree and expands with its 
 expansion. Chief Justice Marshall, by his 
 interpretation of the Constitution, did almost 
 as much to make it what it is as did its origi- 
 nal framers. 
 
 Says Joseph H. Choate, in his interest- 
 ing address on Alexander Hamilton i^ — 
 
 For the five years that preceded the adoption of the 
 Federal Constitution the whole country was drifting 
 surely and swiftly toward anarchy. The thirteen States, 
 
 1" Abraham Lincoba and Other Addresses," pp. 105, 106. 
 261 
 
262 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 
 
 freed from foreign dominion, claimed, and began to 
 exercise, each an independent sovereignty, levying duties 
 against each other and in many ways interfering with 
 each other's trade. European nations, finding that 
 Congress had no power to protect American trade, pro- 
 ceeded to impose fatal restrictions upon it. They also 
 refused to enter into treaties with the United States be- 
 cause they could not tell whether they were dealing with 
 thirteen nations or with one. This only was sure, that 
 Congress could carry no treaty into effect. 
 
 Mr. Choate adds : " * It is clear to me as 
 A B C/ said Washington, who from his re- 
 tirement at Mount Vernon watched the course 
 of affairs with the utmost anxiety, 'that an 
 extension of Federal powers would make us 
 one of the most happy, wealthy, respectable, 
 and powerful nations that ever inhabited the 
 terrestrial globe. Without them we shall 
 soon be everything that is directly the re- 
 verse.* " In the formation of the Constitu- 
 tion, despite the jealousy of some States and 
 the fears of others, this extension of Federal 
 powers was given to the Central Govern- 
 ment, and by that gift the Nation was born. 
 But it was never the intention of the founders 
 that it should be always in its cradle; they 
 intended that the Federal powers should 
 grow with the growth of the Nation, that it 
 might, as a Nation, become happy, wealthy, 
 and respectable, because powerful. 
 
HISTORICAL SUMMARY 263 
 
 The New Nationalism, initiated by Wash- 
 ington in his call for an "extension of Federal 
 powers," was assailed by Calhoun nearly 
 half a century later. Calhoun's contention 
 may be here condensed into a sentence: 
 The powers of the Federal Congress are 
 enumerated powers; if it attempts to exer- 
 cise any power not in the Constitution enu- 
 merated, it transcends its authority, and its 
 act is null and void; and it is for the State 
 which gave the authority to decide whether the 
 authority has been exceeded. This was the 
 doctrine of nullification. Not so, replied 
 Chief Justice Marshall; it is for the Supreme 
 Court of the United States to decide whether 
 that authority has been exceeded. The 
 States did not accept Mr. Calhoun's theory; 
 they have, despite some strong opposition, 
 accepted Chief Justice Marshall's theory. 
 The creation of the Union of States consti- 
 tuted the first stage in the development of a 
 New Nationalism; the rejection of nullifi- 
 cation constituted the second stage in the 
 development of that New Nationalism. 
 
 A quarter of a century later Jefferson Davis 
 propounded the doctrine of secession. It 
 was at once more logical and more radical 
 than the doctrine of nullification. It was, 
 in brief, this : The Union is a union of sov- 
 
264 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 
 
 ereign States; it is the very essence of this 
 union that it is voluntary; if a State finds 
 itself dissatisfied in the Union, it may v^ith- 
 draw; there is no power given to the Federal 
 Government by the Constitution to forbid its 
 withdrawal. Not so, repHed Abraham Lin- 
 coln. This is an indestructible Union of 
 indestructible States; the right of self-pres- 
 ervation is inherent in the Nation as in the 
 individual. The defeat of secession and the 
 triumph of Unionism as the result of the Civil 
 War constituted the third important stage in 
 the development of the New Nationalism. 
 
 Prior to the Civil War banking had been 
 conducted by State banks and under State 
 regulation. In 1862 Abraham Lincoln pro- 
 posed a new extension of Federal powers: 
 "the organization of banking associations 
 under a general Act of Congress, well guarded 
 in its provisions," to which associations "the 
 Government might furnish circulating notes 
 on the security of United States bonds depos- 
 ited in the Treasury," which notes, "being 
 uniform in appearance and security, and con- 
 vertible always into coin, would at once pro- 
 tect labor against the evils of a vicious cur- 
 rency, and facilitate commerce by cheap and 
 safe exchanges." The recommendation was 
 adopted by Congress; and, despite the op- 
 
HISTORICAL SUMMARY 265 
 
 position of special interests and the fore- 
 bodings of the timid, was approved by the 
 people. Our currency ceased to be a State, 
 and became a National, currency. The 
 creation by the Federal powers of this 
 National currency constituted a fourth stage 
 in the development of the New Nationalism. 
 Thomas Jefferson in 1806 declared that 
 Congress had no Constitutional power to 
 appropriate money from the Federal treas- 
 ury for internal improvements, and pro- 
 posed a Constitutional amendment giving 
 such power. President Polk in 1846 vetoed 
 a bill making such appropriations. "The 
 Constitution has not," he said, "in my judg- 
 ment, conferred upon the Federal Govern- 
 ment the power to construct works of internal 
 improvements within the States, or to ap- 
 propriate money from the treasury for that 
 purpose." At the same time Abraham Lin- 
 coln made what was perhaps his most notable 
 speech as a Representative in Congress in 
 favor of this "extension of the Federal 
 powers," and the Republican party in its 
 first convention in 1856 took in its platform 
 the same ground. This power of the Federal 
 Government is now so universally recognized 
 by the Nation that probably most of the 
 readers of this article did not know that it 
 
?66 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 
 
 had ever been denied; but in fact its adop- 
 tion and exercise constituted another stage 
 in the development of the New Nationahsm. 
 
 Not until 1873, nearly a century after 
 the formation of the Constitution, was any 
 attempt made in Congress to use the Federal 
 powers granted to it over interstate com- 
 merce to regulate the National railways. 
 As late as 1883 President Arthur in his Mes- 
 sage to Congress regarded the powers of 
 Congress over the railways as a question 
 requiring careful consideration. Not until 
 1887 was an Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission constituted, and then with very 
 scanty powers. Not until 19 10 was power 
 given to it to exercise a really efficient regula- 
 tion. The extension of Federal powers over 
 the highways of the Nation constitutes an- 
 other stage in the New Nationalism. 
 
 The latest development of the New Na- 
 tionalism is Conservation. Conservation is 
 simply the doctrine that the Federal govern- 
 ment shall continue to retain the ownership of, 
 and therefore the power to control, the forest 
 lands, mineral lands, and swamp lands, and 
 the water power sites which now belong to it. 
 
 If the opponents of the New National- 
 ism in the successive stages of its devel- 
 opment could have had their way, the Con- 
 
HISTORICAL SUMMARY 267 
 
 stitution would never have been accepted 
 by the colonies, and the Federal Union would 
 not have been formed. 
 
 If formed, each State would have been 
 at liberty to decide whether laws enacted 
 by the Federal Congress were constitu- 
 tional, and to refuse obedience if it disap- 
 proved their constitutionality. 
 
 If its disapproval had been overruled, 
 and any attempt had been made to enforce 
 the law, it could have withdrawn from the 
 Union and set up as an independent sov- 
 ereignty on its own account. 
 
 Our currency would have been local and 
 provincial, and in traveling through the 
 United States the traveler would have had to 
 purchase gold or a letter of credit, as in going 
 to Europe. 
 
 Our rivers would have remained undredged 
 and our harbors unimproved, except as in- 
 dividual States might attempt some improve- 
 ments within their own boundaries, and our 
 coast would have resembled that of San 
 Domingo. 
 
 Our railways would have oscillated be- 
 tween a policy of cutthroat competition 
 ruinous to the stockholders and of monopo- 
 listic combination ruinous to the shippers, 
 and by the habit of giving special rates to 
 
268 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 
 
 favored shippers and favored localities would 
 have built up monopolies from which the 
 people would have been powerless to eman- 
 cipate themselves. 
 
 All the arguments against the extension 
 of Federal power which we hear in political 
 addresses and read in political journals, and 
 all the fears of Federal centralization which 
 are used to excite popular apprehension of 
 the latest phase of the growing and therefore 
 ever new Nationalism, are repetitions of the 
 arguments employed and the fears expressed 
 in every previous stage of national develop- 
 ment from the days of George Washington 
 to the present day. And the answer to them 
 can be given almost in George Washington's 
 words : It is clear to us as A B C that the 
 successive extensions of Federal powers have 
 made us one of the most happy, wealthy, 
 respectable, and powerful nations that ever 
 inhabited the terrestrial globe; and without 
 them we should have been everything that 
 is directly the reverse. 
 
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