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 Copy 1 
 
 FIFTEENTH CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE BIRTHDAY OF 
 
 SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Montauk Club of Brooklyn 
 April 27, 1907 
 
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 OCT SO ma 
 
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 \ 
 
 FIFTEENTH CELEBRATION ^^ /) 
 
 I I I 111 !:lix I III ' . , ' 'I- 
 
 SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 II V TIIK 
 
 Montauk Club of Brcx)klyn 
 April 27, 1907 
 
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 On Saturday night, April 27, 1907, the Montauk Club 
 gave its fifteenth successive annual dinner celebrating the 
 birthday of Senator Depew. iLietrtewnit Governor Wood- 
 rufif presided. Each of these occasipus has had a dis- 
 tinctive souvenir. This tune it wi^s a'plft)tograph, taken 
 for the occasion, and a song written by a member of the 
 Club and sung, with the accompaniment of an orchestra, 
 by the two hundred and twenty-five gentlemen who were 
 the hosts. 
 
 Senator Depew spoke as follows : 
 
 Governor Woodruff and Friends: I am glad that the 
 Governor, w-hom we all love, is able to be present with us 
 to-night, and as President of the Club to take the chair. I 
 was fearful that something might happen to him. I read 
 in one of the great New York journals the other day that 
 he had acted for that newspaper as the chairman of a 
 committee to decide who was the most beautiful woman 
 in New York. The picture of the lady he selected con- 
 vinced me of his excellent judgment. I thoughtlessly 
 said to my wife, 'This picture represents the handsomest 
 Avoman in the State." She replied, "I do not think so." 
 That the Governor escaped with his life from this arbi- 
 tration and decision is wonderful. Mrs. Woodruff, I 
 understand, returned immediately from abroad. 
 
 Reminiscences are the characteristics of a birth- 
 day. They necessarily include a hasty inventory 
 of the net results of a lifetime. Of course the bal- 
 ance sheet is not all credits, but fortunatelv for mankind 
 
there is almost always a surplus of happiness. It would 
 be a dull and stupid existence which presented no con- 
 trasts. All good luck and success would create phenom- 
 enal and disagreeable egotists and mollycoddles. It re- 
 quires frequent knock-downs and knock-outs to keep the 
 successful man's head within its natural limits and his 
 views of the world normal. When a distinguished and 
 powerful gentleman in official or political life 
 is noticed by his friends to be twirling his 
 fingers in the air some distance from his head believing 
 that he is scratching it, the only remedy is bankruptcy or 
 political misfortune. 
 
 It is fifteen years since this club began to pay me these 
 annual compliments. Harrison was President, Flower 
 was Governor and I was fifty-eight years of age. More 
 things have happened affecting our country and our state 
 within that period than during any other in our history 
 except the civil war. I return thanks to God, and take 
 courage that in the powers and strength allotted by na- 
 ture, I know no difference between fifty-eight, sixty-eight 
 and the seventy-three of to-night. There is no doubt that 
 the span of life wath the retention of vigor is extending. 
 Alabama has just re-elected Senator Pettus at eighty-six 
 and IMorgan at eighty-four for six years more of sena- 
 torial life. Senator Pettus has really with his unexpired 
 term eight years yet to serve. When he was making a 
 speech at the close of the last session, one of the elders 
 of the Senate was listening intently, though he was im- 
 patient because of a pressing engagement in his commit- 
 tee room. When Pettus said, "I still have eight years wath 
 you Senators," my elderly colleague remarked, "Well, if 
 he is going to be here eight years more I will have an op- 
 portunity to hear him again, so I will go out." Cullom at 
 78 has also been unanimously re-elected for six years, and 
 Allison at jd is the venerated, honored and beloved elder 
 of that body, while the ever sprightly, always youthful, 
 absolutely irrepressible Speaker, Joe Cannon, w^ho enters 
 blissfully upon the procession of the seventies, is younger 
 
in spirits, in capacity for work, in intuitive grasp of 
 political situations, in appreciation of popular opinion and 
 of the needs of the country than any of his colleagues in 
 the House. 
 
 I have had my full share of enjoyable gifts in my 
 several departments of activities, but none of them has 
 given me so much unalloyed pleasure as these continuing, 
 non-partisan and cordial greetings by the members of the 
 Montauk Club. Work and cheerfulness have been our 
 annual texts. A French philosopher said, "Laugh and 
 the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone." 
 That man lives best who labors to the limit of his life 
 and dies in the harness. The epitaph placed by his com- 
 rades on the cowboy's grave, "Here lies Bill Jones. He 
 done his damnedest. Angels could do no more," 
 roughly fills the bill. I have always depre- 
 cated retirement from one's business or profession at any 
 time. I tried it last year on the doctor's prescription for 
 rest : The country side, out of doors, the study of nature, 
 some golf, some motoring — any form of recreation — a 
 few friends, no newspapers and absolute abstinence 
 from work. I could say with Tennyson every day, "Bet- 
 ter fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 
 
 When one has been, like myself, fifty-one years upon 
 the platform, with its infinite opportunities to study 
 human nature and to meet all the men and women who 
 have risen into temporary or permanent observation in 
 this or other countries, the failure to have kept a diary is 
 regrettable. The death of an English notable is regarded 
 with terror by his contemporaries. He always leaves an 
 autobiography, the attractiveness of which depends upon 
 its portraitures of the men and women he has known, and 
 yet they are most valuable contributions to history. The 
 habit is not yet common with us. My old friend, An- 
 drew D. White, has made a notable contribution to this 
 department of literature, and Mark Twain is daily re- 
 cording his experiences. I attempted to relieve the tedium 
 of rest bv this kind of work, but found its difficulties 
 
almost insuperable because of the loss of the touch and 
 union with the men, the circumstances and the hour re- 
 corded in a daily diary when the impression was fresh. 
 When I think over the Presidents I have known well, 
 from Lincoln to Roosevelt, the educators from Woolsey 
 to Hadley, the men of letters from Ralph Waldo Emer- 
 son to I\Iark Twain, the captains of industry from Com- 
 modore Vanderbilt to those now in the public eye, the 
 great orators from Wendell Phillips down, the great 
 preachers from Theodore Parker, Beecher and Storrs. 
 the great generals from Scott, of the elders, to Grant, 
 Sherman and Sheridan, the admirals from Farragut to 
 Dewey, the masterful politicians from Thurlow Weed to 
 Senator Quay, the great journalists from Greeley, Bennett 
 and Raymond to their successors of to-day, the travelers 
 from Bayard Taylor and Stanley, and foreigners not only 
 great in their own country, but of international fame, it 
 seems as if the world had lost something because I did 
 not carry a mental camera, which snap shot on the en- 
 during page impressions and facts which the biographer 
 cannot gather from the family archives or the library, 
 and which would present a picture of the men and women 
 as they were and the spirit of the times when I was for- 
 tunate enough to meet them. However, the memory of 
 it all, though incomplete, embodies treasures gathered in 
 an active life, which give exquisite pleasure and can never 
 be dissipated. 
 
 A wave of municipal reform started from a widely 
 heralded remark made at this table at our first meeting. 
 We have never discussed politics, and have escaped with- 
 out difficulty a consideration of the causes of the panic 
 of '94-95, of the craze of sixteen to one of '96, which 
 nearly captured the country, of jNIcKinley prosperity, the 
 Spanish war and the acquisition of the Philippines. But 
 new conditions like those which existed prior to and dur- 
 ing the civil war, affecting the fundamental structure of 
 our government, seem to make it impossible at any gath- 
 ering now not to consider the tendencies of the times. 
 
 4 
 
A calm consideration of the trend of public opinon leads 
 tc the conclusion that it is rapidly crystalizing for increas- 
 ing the power of the Executive, with a consequent de- 
 crease in the authority of the Legislative and Judicial 
 branches. A brief review of our political history will 
 demonstrate this. 
 
 We live under a written constitution, happily described 
 by Gladstone as the most extraordinary instrument ever 
 struck oft at one time by the hand of man. 'Slnny start- 
 ling" changes have occurred and been upheld by the courts 
 without altering a letter of the great charter, and whether 
 it be the process of evolution or the swing of the pendu- 
 lum, the rapidity of these changes within the past few 
 years is phenomenal. We have a centralization of power 
 and executive authority beyond the dreams of Hamilton, 
 and it is the popular will. The fathers of the republic, 
 alarmed by the usurpations of George III., had at first in 
 their articles of federation no executive and no authority 
 for the enforcement of laws. When finally by a series 
 of compromises the constitution was created, its de- 
 signers intended that here should be three independent 
 branches of government — executive, legislative and judi- 
 cial — and that the Congress should be the source of power, 
 subject only to the veto of the President, which could 
 be overcome by a two-thirds vote, and to the decisions 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States on constitu- 
 tional restrictions. They also intended that Federal au- 
 thority should be limited to powers granted and by the 
 sovereignty and jurisdiction reserved by the states, but 
 John Marshall, for 34 years Chief Justice of the United 
 States, read into the law interpretations of the constitu- 
 tion which enabled Andrew Jackson to defeat nullifica- 
 tion, and x\braham Lincoln to fight the civil war, conquer 
 the rebellious states and emancipate the slaves. Two 
 millions of men tramping across state boundaries to pre- 
 serve the union became the teachers for their generation 
 and the young men who come after them of the concen- 
 tration of national authority. Ten millions of immi- 
 
 5 
 
grants who have come from many lands to escape reli- 
 gious or poHtical persecution, or to better their condi- 
 tions, know little and care less for state sovereignty, but 
 give their allegiance and enthusiasm to the flag under 
 whose folds they have secured liberty and homes. 
 More of our people travel than those of any other coun- 
 try, and to them as they fly over our great distances state 
 lines are figments of the imagination, except as an arbi- 
 trary regulation governing liquid refreshments on the 
 dining car irritates them because what they desire is de- 
 nied at one meal and granted at the next because the 
 train has run into another State. The utterance of our 
 distinguished Secretary of State, Elihu Root: "It may 
 be that such control could better be exercised in particu- 
 lar instances by the Government of the States, but the 
 people will have the control they need either from the 
 States or from the National Government; and if the 
 States fail to furnish it in due measure, sooner or later 
 constructions of the Constitution will be found to vest 
 the power wdiere it will be exercised by the National Gov- 
 ernment," would have created a revolution within years 
 which we can remember, but now it does not even make 
 a partisan issue ; while President Roosevelt's stronger as- 
 sertion of the same idea in the following words: "We 
 need, through executive action, through legislation and 
 through judicial interpretation, and construction of law, 
 to increase the power of the Federal Government. If we 
 fail thus to increase it, we show our impotence," is re- 
 ceived with little dissent. 
 
 The rate bill passed by the last Congress was a tre- 
 mendous advance in federal authority, while anti-lottery 
 laws, pure food laws and other federal acts, within what 
 were presumed to be the health and police powers of the 
 States, receive general approval, and in the appropriation 
 of eighty millions of dollars at the last session for rivers 
 and harbors, State rights men, sharing in the benefits 
 and forgetting the veto of one of their Presidents of a 
 similar bill because of its unconstitutionality, and the 
 
failure of another to sign for the same reason, hailed 
 with joyous acclaim the wise liberality of the federal 
 srovernment. There is a lot of human nature in the 
 world, and at times it works mightily against political 
 principles. The swing of the pendulum is noticed in the 
 significance of words. "Radical"' has always been the 
 terror of our religion and politics. "Too radical" has de- 
 feated candidates and parties. It has closed the church 
 to professors of new religious ideals and conventions 
 to men of opinions in advance of their party. But we 
 have passed so far beyond the things we feared that a 
 radical is one not up with the times. Our peril now is a 
 reactionary. 
 
 But still more remarkable than centralization is the 
 expansion of popular appreciation of the executive ofifice. 
 The Presidency has grown into proportions which over- 
 shadow the Congress and the Courts. The people ex- 
 pect the President not only to deliver the messages con- 
 templated by the constitution, but to instruct their repre- 
 sentatives on all matters of interest. The formative or 
 restraining hand of the Executive is on every detail and 
 proposed amendment of leading measures. There are 
 ninety Senators and three hundred and eighty-six mem- 
 bers of the House of Representatives, but apparently the 
 people believe their functions are to ratify recommenda- 
 tions, and they resent independent Congressional sugges- 
 tions which alter bills or opposition to their enactment. 
 
 Andrew Johnson was placed on trial and escaped im- 
 peachment by the narrow margin of one vote for antago- 
 nizing Congress, and several of the statesmen who with 
 great courage and independence voted for his acquittal 
 were ostracized by their constituents and driven from 
 public life, but the pendulum has swung to the other ex- 
 treme, as was witnessed during the last session by resolu- 
 tions from the Legislature of one of the newer states, in- 
 structing their Senators and Members to ascertain the 
 President's wishes before voting and to follow his direc- 
 tions. The drastic criticism in a message to Congress 
 
of a Federal Judge for his decision against the constitu- 
 tionahty of a law, greatly desired by the President, would 
 in recent years have formed the basis of bitter debate, 
 and the opposition would have tried for partisan advan- 
 tage by appealing to popular reverence for the Court, 
 and shouting for the independence of the Judiciary. But 
 the President's position was almost unanimously ap- 
 proved by the press, and the deputy leader of the opposi- 
 tion in the House of Representatives followed it up by 
 introducing a proposition to make Judges removable at 
 the pleasure of the President, which would make the 
 Judiciary an echo of the President's will. While this ex- 
 pansion of executive power is in harmony with the views 
 and practice of one of the ablest, most independent and 
 resourceful of our Presidents, even his supreme genius 
 for moulding public opinion could not have produced 
 these results if the trend of the popular mind had not 
 been in that direction. The people are supreme and 
 whatever happens is what they demand. The absorption 
 of the time and mind of the citizen by the competitive in- 
 tensity, higher standards and increased cost of our eco- 
 nomic life, are rapidly relegating to some trusted leader 
 the individual initiative which has been the characteristic 
 of our political development, and the glorious mission of 
 government by town meeting. 
 
 The swing of the pendulum from distribution to con- 
 centration of power is more marked even in our State of 
 New York. In our earlier constitutions the Governor 
 was everything. He was the source of patronage in 
 every department, restrained only by a council which he 
 dominated. In process of time this scheme built up the 
 most influential political machine ever known. The Al- 
 bany Regency made and unmade the fortunes of aspi- 
 rants for office, and its strength was felt in every locality 
 in the State and in all measures in the Legislature. It 
 controlled through its patronage general and local con- 
 ventions, and members of the Legislature and county of- 
 ficials were alike its creatures. Even the Judiciary, ap- 
 
pointed to meet its purposes, was dangerously amenable 
 to its ambitions or revenges. The people at length re- 
 volted and through the Convention of 1846 adopted a 
 constitution by which they took to themselves both power 
 and patronage, and stripped the Governor of most of his 
 prerogatives. John T. Hoffman felt so keenly the limi- 
 tations of his office that he tried to secure the appoint- 
 ment and removal of all administrative officers by the 
 Governor, and the making of Constitutional officers, like 
 Secretary of State, Attorney General, Comptroller and 
 Treasurer, members of a cabinet and subject to the will 
 of the Executive, but the memory of the Albany Re- 
 gency w^as still fresh and the effort received little support. 
 The creation of many new departments and the growth 
 of old ones, caused by our financial and industrial devel- 
 opment and constitutional amendments, have greatly in- 
 creased the power and responsibility of the Governor. 
 The ideas of Governor Hoft'man have become popular, 
 and if submitted now to the people would probably be 
 adopted. With characteristic frankness and lucidity 
 Governor Hughes advocates the concentration of power 
 and responsibility in the Executive. 
 
 The Texas idea of municipal government which abol- 
 ishes local legislatures, either of two houses or one, and 
 substitutes a Mayor and board of four directors whose 
 powers are practically unlimited in the management of 
 the affairs of cities, is being widely adopted. Our State 
 Senate, when sitting as a court of impeachment, is en- 
 gaged in one of its highest duties, and yet the press 
 voices impatience and intolerance that Senators should 
 act independently upon their judgment on the testimony 
 and not ascertain and follow the Executive wish. Twen- 
 ty-five years ago as an attorney I opposed railway com- 
 missions. I became convinced that such supervision by 
 the State was for the best interests of the people and 
 the railroads. With the consent of my clients I joined 
 the commercial bodies in advocating the measure, but it 
 was passed with great difficulty owing to the jealousy of 
 
the Legislature to delegating its powers. The commis- 
 sion thus created on the Massachusetts plan with 
 advisory powers removed the evils then existing, and 
 the railroads were obedient to its orders. There have been 
 no scandals attached to its administration. It is the duty 
 of the government to prevent discrimination by railroads 
 in favor of or against localities, corporations and indi- 
 viduals, to prohibit unreasonable rates, to enforce effi- 
 ciency and safety, to supervise increases of stock and to 
 insure publicity in details of management, and this we 
 have secured in our State. But complaints, mainly 
 against local transportation service and lighting com- 
 panies in cities, have accelerated the swing of the pendu- 
 lum to autocratic State control. 
 
 A Public Utilities Bill is presented to the Legislature 
 for its approval. It confers powers never known before 
 and if adopted here will be followed in other States. 
 Government ownership buys from the stock and bond 
 holders their securities at a fair valuation. This is 
 equitable to investors in railway securities, of 
 whom, counting depositors in savings banks and 
 policyholders in life and fire insurance companies, 
 there are several millions. But government ownership of 
 railroads is generally condemned, and in that I 
 think we all agree. Under this measure, however, 
 every attribute of ownership is conferred on a com- 
 mission controlled by the Governor, except responsi- 
 bility for returns on the capital invested. It can order 
 everything which the President and Directors can in ex- 
 penditures and on motive power, signals, patent appli- 
 ances, equipment, tracks and bridges and the number and 
 character of employees on the one hand and regulate 
 earnings on the other by control of rates for fares and 
 freight, but without any accountability for results. This 
 is in its effect upon property and employment the most 
 far reaching measure which any Legislature has ever had 
 to consider, and yet the apparent popular tendency of 
 the hour is to deny to either the Senate, with its fifty- 
 
 10 
 
one members, and the House, with one hundred and 
 fifty, all recently elected by the people, the right to alter 
 or amend the provisions of the proposed law in any 
 essential feature, especially as to conferring upon the 
 Senate the power of removal or upon the courts the 
 right of review of the orders of the commission. 
 
 This apparent impatience with the Legislative branch 
 of our government happens at a period when in character, 
 equipment and ability the standard of the Legislature was 
 never higher. 
 
 Assemblyman Merritt in his very able and interesting 
 speech on the bill before the Westchester Bar Associa- 
 tion last Saturday evening, said that it made the com- 
 missioners associate Directors in the railroad Boards. 
 But there is this difference between the commissioners as 
 Directors and the Directors elected by the stockholders; 
 The Commissioner Directors are supreme. They can 
 nullify any action by the others, but if the Stockholder 
 Directors fail to adopt the orders of the Commissioner 
 Directors the company pays a heavy daily fine and the 
 Directors elected by the stockholders go to jail, and there 
 is no appeal. 
 
 As an indication of the way in which railroad meas- 
 ures are adopted in other states, the Michigan House 
 of Representatives passed a two-cent fare bill last week 
 without debate or reference to committee, with only one 
 dissenting vote and then, according to the report in the 
 Detroit News, "business was suspended and the jovial 
 big ex-sheriff and member from Mount Clemens, Bill 
 Nank, led off w'ith everybody who could sing, in an an- 
 them and requiem, closing with the following stanzas : 
 
 With bills and resolutions great, 
 
 Michigan, my Michigan; 
 We'll save this great and glorious State, 
 
 Michigan, my ^Michigan; 
 Our railroad fare we hate to pay, 
 In gold or greenbacks every day, 
 And T\-ish we had the good old way, 
 
 Michigan, my Michigan. 
 
 II 
 
But wlien the summer days shall come, 
 
 Michigan, my Michigan; 
 That bring the legislators home, 
 
 Michigan, my Michigan; 
 With flowers strewn along the way. 
 We'll hear the people loudly say, 
 What mighty work for meager pay, 
 
 Michigan, my Michigan." 
 
 I wonder if the shade of Michigan's great statesman, 
 Lewis Cass, was present. 
 
 What of the future? Can we count upon the indef- 
 inite continuance of our present high standard of execu- 
 tive administration and responsibihty which we have with 
 Governor Hughes? There has never been a corrupt 
 Governor of the State of New York. But some of them, 
 in beHeving that "all is fair in love and war," and that "to 
 the victor belong the spoils," have felt that they best 
 served the commonwealth by strengthening their party 
 organization by patronage, favors or fear. 
 
 In a contest for control within the party or a close fight 
 with the opposite party, the glittering prize of power in 
 influencing the earnings on hundreds of millions of capi- 
 tal and the employment of thousands of men, would tempt 
 an ordinary mortal, and ambitious politicians are not 
 extraordinary. In Pennsylvania the machine was over- 
 whelmingly defeated two years ago, and my brilliant 
 friend from college days, Wayne IMacVeagh, who has 
 been fighting it for a quarter of a century when obedi- 
 ence would have crowned him with every honor in the 
 state and nation, celebrated the victory in most illuminat- 
 ing articles in the North American Review. "We have 
 won," he claimed, "more than we ever hoped for — ballot 
 reform, registration of voters, strict primaries, pure elec- 
 tion laws and the abolition of corporation favors." But 
 in the recent election the machine won as triumphantly 
 as it was disastrously defeated. I asked one of its 
 leaders how the miracle occurred. "Because," he replied, 
 "with our perfect organization the primary is a cinch, and 
 
 12 
 
the tired irregulars of reform could not withstand our 
 trained veterans. There can be no longer the charge of 
 stuffed ballot boxes, false returns and thugs. Our im- 
 pregnable title now and for the future is from an un- 
 questioned majority of the people." 
 
 But we turn from these storm signals of the time to 
 the birthday joyousness of the hour. When the Black 
 Crook first shocked and bewildered us years ago, the 
 master of ceremonies shouted as the music blared and 
 the ballet balanced on tip toe, "Let joy be unconfined." 
 We can pass our evening without the scraps of the 
 Peace Congress. I was a delegate to a peace congress 
 in London which received scant notice abroad or here. 
 Mr. Gladstone said to me he thought the movement ab- 
 surd with seven millions of men in arms in Europe. But 
 the congress held in New York a few days since was of 
 worldwide interest and influence. 
 
 While Professor Osier would chloroform all over forty, 
 and forty regards seventy as senile and superannuated, 
 three-score-and-ten looks with compassionate pity on his 
 juniors. He reckons the vast sum of love, fun and fight 
 they have not yet known and in the accidents of life 
 may never experience. A mining millionaire, struggling 
 for social recognition said to his mentor, who was order- 
 ing for him the dinner he was giving to the fashionable 
 elect, "Don't have peas. I can never keep them on my 
 knife." But the septuagenarian educated by his mistakes 
 has passed the period of doubt. The philosophy of a 
 client of mine has been to me in stress of misfortune an 
 invaluable asset. The day the stock exchange closed in 
 1873 he stood to lose everything and be overwhelmed 
 with debt when it opened. As we w^alked up Broadway 
 the old gentleman trod the pavement in silence, his coat 
 buttoned tight, the collar up and his hat over his eyes. 
 After the first two blocks he said, "It is mighty hard when 
 a man has been rich for forty years to walk under a poor 
 man's hat again." But at the end of the fourth b'ock he 
 threw open his coat, turned down the collar, and pushing 
 
 13 
 
his hat on the back of his head, cried bhthely, "Air. De- 
 pew, the world always has gone around. I guess it will 
 ■continue to go around." For him it did. In six months 
 in the remarkable rise in stocks his fortune was regained. 
 I met a gentleman of eighty who had done his full share 
 of good work and enjoyed enviable distinction and then 
 retired. He said to me, "My contemporaries are dead 
 and I am so lonesome." He should have kept young with 
 the young, and died with his boots on. The young are 
 shy of age, not unsympathetic. They welcome with glee 
 the old fellow who in being with, is of them, and can be 
 both a Nestor and a sport. Certainly no man with the 
 judgment which comes from maturity of years would 
 have lost his sweetheart as did a youth by this poem: 
 
 "I sipped the nectar from her lips 
 
 As 'neath the moon we sat, 
 And wondered if I'd ere before 
 
 Sipped from a mug like that." 
 
 The Society of Ananias and Sapphira is becomnig 
 overcrowded. I remember an incident which shows how 
 little the Scriptural story of this couple was understood 
 among public men some years ago. Now there is no 
 part of the Bible so well known. One of our Presidents, 
 who, though the perfection of form in public, dearly 
 loved his joke in private, introduced a very distinguished 
 statesman to some friends of his at the White House by 
 saying they were the principal officers of the Society of 
 Ananias and Sapphira. "Glad to meet you, gentlemen," 
 said the statesman. "I assure you I have no sympathy 
 with the prevalent hostility to corporations. They are 
 most useful in the upbuilding of our country and we 
 cculd not do without them." "But," said the President, 
 fearing he might make an enemy when the statesman 
 caught on later, "it was the corporation of Ananias and 
 Sapphira I referred to." "Yes," said the visitor, "I re- 
 member now receiving at one time a certificate of mem- 
 bership of that society and was proud of the honor." 
 
 14 
 
There is a motto that saints have a past, but only 
 sinners a future. I dissent, believing that for all Ameri- 
 cans there is a happy future in this life, and the beyond 
 will be what they make it. My Calvinistic mother fixed 
 in me faith in special Providences, and the United States 
 is the most conspicuous proof of this truth. 
 
 Over half a century upon the platform and in affairs 
 has taught me one supreme lesson. It is that revolution 
 and evolution, errors of legislation or crazes of the hour, 
 crystalizing into policies, may check for the moment our 
 development, but cannot stay our progress. The resist- 
 less spirit of American enterprise overcomes all obstacles. 
 Sanity is our normal condition, and brain storms at rare 
 intervals and for brief periods lift one foot from the 
 ground, never both. With an archaic monetary system 
 which produces periodical panics, raises the rate of in- 
 terest on money to a hundred per cent, per annum, and 
 prevents our occupying our natural position as the 
 world's center of finance, we have yet built a commercial 
 empire and reaped the harvest of a productive energy 
 beyond the experience of any nation and all periods. We 
 have no merchant marine and persistently refuse to adopt 
 the methods by which rival nations keep their fleets on 
 the ocean, and though we pay the freight to foreigners 
 our producers manage to maintain a strong position in 
 the markets of the world. 
 
 A cyclone in Wall street a few weeks since dropped the 
 market value of stocks and bonds a thousand millions of 
 dollars, but no banks suspended, no mercantile houses 
 failed and no manufactories shut down. Railroad man- 
 agers, because of the present difficulties in borrowing 
 money at reasonable rates, canceled contracts for the 
 year, amounting to four hundred and fifty millions of 
 dollars. This was nearly all for labor, and yet labor was 
 never before so scarce or commanded such high wages. 
 Two of the most venerable and famous Universities, Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge, are each appealing with little suc- 
 cess to England's wealth and South African multi-mil- 
 
 15 
 
lionaires for five millions of dollars to put their ancient 
 foundations abreast of the times. But, not reckoning the 
 liberal contributions of others, Rockefeller, Carnegie and 
 Mrs. Sage have given over a hundred millions for higher 
 education and advanced research in this country. 
 
 "The sun do move," said Parson Jasper to his colored 
 congregation in Richmond, defying the discoveries of the 
 astronomers. Not because, but in spite of violations of 
 economic laws in some of its policies and of many allur- 
 ing promises and some experiments under the leadership 
 of eloquent theorists, the United States expands and de- 
 velops beyond the wildest imaginings of the Fathers in 
 all which constitutes national power and wealth and the 
 welfare and happiness of its people. 
 
 I read this morning the noble oration delivered at the 
 opening of the Exposition at Jamestown yesterday by 
 President Roosevelt. It was worthy of the great occa- 
 sion. Its eloquent portrayal of the difficulties and dan- 
 gers which beset but could not discourage the early set- 
 tlers, the underlying causes of our marvelous develop- 
 ment during these three centuries, and the conditions and 
 problems of the present will remain one of the most val- 
 uable contributions to our patriotic literature. Three 
 hundred years of National life closed last evening and 
 today ushers in our fourth century. The lesson of the 
 cycles fills us all with pride in our country and abounding 
 faith in its future. 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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