HE 
 
 Hi
 
 UNIVERSITY OFCALSFORN5A 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 LATER SPEECHES 
 
 OF 
 
 Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, LL.D. 
 
 At the Twenty-first Annual Dinner given by the Montauk Club 
 of Brooklyn, in Celebration of Senator Depew's Seventy-eighth 
 Birthday, May 4, 1912. 
 
 At the Pilgrims' Coronation Dinner, Savoy Hotel, London, June 28, 
 -1911, in Honor of the Special Ambassador to the Coronation, 
 Hon. John Hays Hammond. 
 
 At the Banquet given by the American Chamber of Commerce of 
 Paris, France, July 4, 1911. 
 
 At the Meeting in Memory of Cornelius N. Bliss, held by the Repub- 
 lican Club of the City of New York, November 5, 1911. 
 
 At the Dinner of the New England Society of New York, December 
 22, 1911, in Response to the Toast: "The Puritan Survival." 
 
 At the Annual Dinner of the Society of the Genesee, at the Hotel 
 Knickerbocker, New York City, January 20, 1912. 
 
 At the Celebration of the Treaty of Peace between France and the 
 United States, made February 6, 1778, being the first Treaty 
 Ever Made by the United States, February 6, 1912, at Cafe 
 Martin, New York City. 
 
 At the Twenty-sixth Annual Lincoln Dinner of the Republican 
 Club of the City of New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria, Feb- 
 ruary 12, 1912. 
 
 At the Celebration by the New York State Society t>f the Cincin- 
 nati of the One Hundred and Eightieth B.irlhday of George 
 Washington, at the Waldorf-Astoria, February 22, 1912. 
 
 At the Dinner given by the United Swedish Societies and the 
 John Ericsson Memorial Association, March 9, 1912, at the Park 
 Avenue Hotel, New York City, in Celebration of the Fiftieth 
 Anniversary of the Battle between Monitor and Merrimac. 
 
 At the Dinner given by the Lotos Club of New York to Mr. Justice 
 Pitney, of the Supreme Court, May 2, 1912.
 
 ' 

 
 
 &Hg^eo^
 
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Twenty-first Annual Dinner Given by 
 the Montauk Club of Brooklyn, in Celebra- 
 tion of his Seventy-eighth Birthday, May 
 4, 1912. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: To-night this series 
 
 of birthday dinners comes of age. For twenty-one successive 
 
 years you have honored me with this compliment. Some 
 
 members have died, but their sons, introduced to me here 
 
 tn when they were boys, are now succeeding their fathers among 
 
 >; my generous hosts. I know nothing in the way of friendly 
 
 = greeting from a large body of men which compares with it. 
 
 33 Some things have occurred at this table during this period 
 
 which have been widely published and discussed. Through 
 
 ^ them the Montauk Club has been mentioned and known all 
 
 ^ over the world. I remember some years ago walking down 
 
 *. the Strand in London with Governor Woodruff, how both 
 
 z of us were astonished to hear the newsboys shouting, "Speech 
 
 of Chauncey Depew at the Montauk Club," and to see the 
 
 name in black letters on every news stand under the heading 
 
 g of the newspaper which featured the event. Multitudes be- 
 
 ^ came familiar with the Montauk Club who had never before, 
 
 o and have never since, heard of Brooklyn. 
 
 The presence here of my friends Governor Woodruff and 
 lz Comptroller Prendergast suggests an illuminating incident 
 showing the effects of the Presidential primary on the citizen. 
 They live in the same Congressional district which is entitled 
 to two delegates to the National Republican Convention. It 
 is a most intelligent community brought up under the elo- 
 quence of Henry Ward Beecher and the Reverend Dr. Storrs, 
 
 Senator Depew's birthday is April 236, but, owing to local conditions, 
 the celebration of the event this year was May 4th. 
 
 44634P
 
 two of the most remarkable orators of this generation. Wood- 
 ruff announced that he was for Taft. Prendergast declared 
 emphatically for Roosevelt, and this constituency elected both 
 unanimously. 
 
 In the varying periods at which people arrive at intelli- 
 gent maturity, it is hard to determine how twenty-one came 
 to be selected as the proper date for every degree of intelli- 
 gence. In my own experience I have known many who were 
 fully qualified for the responsibilities of manhood several years 
 before twenty-one and others who never became of age. For 
 some unaccountable reason they fail to grasp the opportunities 
 which come to every man in a greater or less degree during 
 his life. Their progress is arrested somehow and they never 
 get beyond the station where they have landed, while others 
 make a tremendous splurge in their progression but never 
 arrive. Many in their intellectual equipment present a Queen 
 Anne front with a Mary Ann back. They seem to possess 
 everything necessary for success, and yet their friends are 
 always disappointed in them and can never tell what screw is 
 loose in their machinery. 
 
 In looking over the record of the seventy-eight years of 
 my life, of which more than sixty years have been intensively 
 active, during which time I have been blessed with rare oppor- 
 tunities for acquaintances and worldwide observations, I find 
 no place for the pessimism of to-day which is so prevalent in 
 every organ of public opinion and at every gathering of the 
 people. They tell us that the family bond is loosening and 
 the sacred tie of marriage has lost strength in the knot. There 
 are twenty millions of married people in the United States, 
 and the percentage of them who have sought relief in the 
 courts from their bond is not appreciable compared with the 
 whole. They say suicides are increasing. There are ninety 
 millions of people in the United States, and a suicide is so 
 rare that it occupies the headlines for that one unfortunate. 
 They complain that there is an increase in breaches of trust. 
 There have been in the last twenty years continuously in 
 places of the highest trust in corporations and fiduciary rela- 
 tions with individuals at least twenty-five thousand people, 
 and yet a breach of trust is so rare in a great institution or in
 
 the administration of an estate that it arrests and occupies the 
 attention of the whole country. They tell us that religion 
 has been superseded by doubt, but the churches were never so 
 near together, never worked so harmoniously in common, never 
 were rendering such efficient service and never so open. Their 
 contributions were never so large nor so efficiently applied. 
 There were never so many assisting organizations, like the 
 Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, the Epworth 
 League, the Christian Endeavor Society, the Young Men's and 
 Young Women's Christian Associations, and now this newly 
 organized and aggressive force, gathering strength from day 
 to day, the Religion and Forward Movement. 
 
 There is unrest in the world it is true. It is more acute 
 than ever before. It is in all countries. It has come from the 
 increase in education and the enlargement of world view to 
 the individual everywhere, but, with the exception of the 
 infinitesimally small number of anarchistic leaders, it is an 
 honest, earnest and wholesome striving for better conditions, 
 and, in the end, for more harmonious relations between all 
 classes and conditions of the community. 
 
 In our annual celebrations during these twenty-one years, 
 we have touched lightly, for it could only be lightly, upon 
 the happenings of the twelve months preceding. We have 
 always drawn from them. the lesson of hope and the inspira- 
 tion of progress. As we look back over the whole twenty-one 
 years they are pregnant with lessons. The principal lesson is 
 the value of discussion and education in affairs affecting the 
 government and the people as a whole. I have ceased to be 
 frightened or greatly disturbed over tumultuous popular up- 
 risings which seem to threaten the very foundations. The 
 Ark of the Covenant may rock on rough roads, or with incom- 
 petent guides, or the efforts of impious hands to see what 
 would follow the destruction of faith, and yet after proper 
 efforts, after the lazy have been energized, after the atmos- 
 phere has been cleared by the heat of debate, the social and 
 political fabric is not rebuilt but improved and remains stable 
 for another long period. 
 
 Our experiment of government started with the Con- 
 federation. It was found to be a rope of sand. With that
 
 experience our Fathers framed the present Constitution and 
 created a Republic of sovereign States with a supreme central 
 government. They threw every possible check around hasty 
 and immature action and every guard which wisdom and 
 forethought could devise against revolution. The result is 
 that our Constitution is the only one in the world which lives 
 to-day as it did one hundred and twenty-five years ago and is 
 found as adaptable for all the wants, all the desires, all the 
 aspirations and all the development of ninety millions of people 
 and forty-eight States as it was for three millions of people 
 and thirteen States. 
 
 I well remember the years of the slavery discussion from 
 '48 to '6 1. It began with a few Abolitionists who were regarded 
 as anarchists. With discussion and debate, it got so far as 
 to safeguard the institution where it existed and to prohibit 
 its extension into the States that were to be formed out of 
 the new territories. On that issue and the preservation of 
 the Union we fought the Civil War and slavery was abolished 
 and the Union was triumphant. Then came the long discus- 
 sion of reconstruction. Had the extremist prevailed the States 
 which went into rebellion would have remained subject prov- 
 inces with a certainty of frequent revolutions. Again discussion 
 and debate allayed passions, buried resentments, recognized 
 that the country must live, if it live.d at all, under the Consti- 
 tution of the Fathers and with a central government and 
 sovereign States as they originated it. That settled forever 
 the question of the Union of the States and of. the powers of 
 the Federal Government as distinguished from those of the 
 state sovereignties. 
 
 We can all remember the cowardice of the public men 
 of all parties in the United States during the period of irre- 
 deemable currency and fiat money. Again discussion and 
 debate, aided by frequent panics and frightful bankruptcies, 
 brought us to the resumption of specie payments. Then for 
 twenty years cowardice among those who knew, and there were 
 not many, and the desire to catch the fleeting sentiment of the 
 hour by demagogues, and there were many, and the passionate 
 belief in silver which was almost universal ruled and nearly 
 ruined the country. Again discussion and debate, and the
 
 wholesome discipline of financial disturbances anJ industrial 
 disasters and general bankruptcies clarified the air and that 
 question was disposed of. We came to a gold standard like 
 all the rest of the highly organized industrial nations of the 
 world. 
 
 We then entered at once upon an extraordinary period of 
 development of resources, of extension of enterprises, of 
 settlement of new lands, of organization of growing communi- 
 ties and a general prosperity such as the world has never wit- 
 nessed. 
 
 The Presidents during this period, and I will only speak 
 of those who have joined the majority, were Harrison, Cleve- 
 land and McKinley. 
 
 Harrison was one of the ablest of our Presidents. He 
 was a great lawyer and had a wonderful and intuitive grasp 
 of our internal policy and foreign relations. He had an unfor- 
 tunate manner, though a very warm, genial, loving and lovable 
 disposition. I have known many public men who failed long 
 before they reached the presidency because of unfortunate 
 manners. I have known many business men who were most 
 unpopular for the same reason. It comes usually from the 
 hard struggle in the beginning of a career. It comes some- 
 times from timidity and distrust of one's self. I have known 
 people who were most rude and discourteous, which was their 
 only method of asserting their individuality and equality with 
 others who, for some reason which they could not account for, 
 they distrusted or feared. General Harrison said to me one 
 day, "My whole life has been one of struggle and fight. No 
 one ever did me a favor or lent me a helping hand. I began 
 alone without fortune or acquaintances. Every step of my 
 career has been against violent, and often virulent, opposition." 
 In that brief expression I saw the secret of his unpopularity. 
 Everyone with whom he came in contact was a possible enemy, 
 but when the story of his administration comes to be written 
 his fame will grow brighter as the narrative advances. 
 
 Harrison offered me a place in his Cabinet at the begin- 
 ning of his administration and the position of Secretary of 
 State when Elaine resigned, which I declined, but promised to 
 accept if he was re-elected. This brought about an opportunity
 
 8 
 
 for intimacy with and study and appreciation of this remark- 
 able man who won laurels on battlefields as a soldier, distinc- 
 tion at the Bar and an enduring place in our history as a 
 statesman. 
 
 Cleveland I knew at the Bar a strong, robust, virile, 
 self-reliant, aggressive, courageous and honest personality. I 
 have met all the leaders of the Bar of the last fifty years, and 
 he certainly was an original. While President of the New 
 York Central Railroad I offered him the attorneyship of the 
 company in Western New York. I said to him that he could 
 so organize his office as to keep his present practice which 
 was worth ten thousand dollars a year, while the place I 
 offered him would add fifteen thousand to it. His answer was 
 unique "I have set for myself a limit of the work I will do 
 and reserve time enough for pleasure and sport and to fish. 
 I have reached my limit in my private practice, and a hundred 
 thousand dollars a year would not tempt me to add an hour 
 more to what I am doing." His convictions were adamant. 
 He had been brought up in the Democratic faith and would 
 put into practice its theories. When the Wilson Tariff Bill 
 was passed, which was a compromise between Democratic 
 theories and protection practices within his party, he denounced 
 it as a scheme of perfidy and dishonor and withheld his signa- 
 ture. He demanded the repeal of the Silver Purchase Bill 
 which threatened endless trouble to our currency, and with 
 the aid of Republican votes secured it. He vetoed the Bland 
 Silver Bill which was the Waterloo of Silver, either by itself 
 or in the double standard, being the standard of value in the 
 United States. 
 
 Those three things lost him the support of his party. He 
 retired from office with a unanimity never equalled because the 
 Republicans were naturally against him and he did not have a 
 corporal's guard of political friends in his own party. But 
 his rugged figure will ever be a conspicuous one among Ameri- 
 can statesmen. His style in his public documents and addresses 
 had a Johnsonian characteristic which was new in our political 
 literature. I asked him where he acquired it and how. He 
 said, "'My father was a clergyman. His means were limited 
 and he could not afford to send me to the academies, and so I
 
 9 
 
 was educated at home. He took particular pains with my 
 compositions, and naturally he taught me the style of his 
 sermons." The result was, he said, that while at the Bar in 
 Buffalo when a member died he was always called upon to 
 write the obituary. 
 
 McKinley was the most genial and lovable of our Presi- 
 dents. He would give a visitor a Pink from the bouquet which 
 was always on his table in a manner which led the recipient to 
 believe that none other of the millions of men and women and 
 children in the United States had ever received such a distinc- 
 tion. Yet he gave Pinks to everybody who called without de- 
 stroying this illusion. 
 
 He was the most accomplished campaigner among our 
 Presidents and had few equals upon the platform in popularity 
 and persuasion. He sensed, as it were, the public temper and 
 how it might be moved as few have ever done. His campaign 
 for the Presidency was an extraordinary illustration of the 
 thought, which I have been advancing, that with discussion, 
 argument and debate the American people in the end come 
 out right no matter how wrong they may have been from 
 temporary causes for a period. Mark Hanna, the most prac- 
 tical statesman who ever lived, raised and spent four millions 
 of dollars in that canvass, not to buy votes but to erect a 
 platform and put a speaker on it in every school district in 
 the United States, to secure space in the columns of news- 
 papers in every locality and to print tons of literature and 
 send colporteurs to distribute it in buggy-wagons throughout 
 all the highways and byways of the land. That was what won 
 the gold standard over the silver craze under most unfavorable 
 conditions. 
 
 Mr. McKinley sent for me during this campaign and said, 
 "I wish you could take your car and go down through those 
 disaffected regions where the farmers are all Republicans, but 
 where they are in distress because corn is fifteen cents and 
 wheat sixty cents a bushel, and they cannot pay the interest 
 on their mortgages and have hard work with their taxes. They 
 think fifty-cent silver, if it has the stamp of the United States 
 upon it, will give them double for their corn, wheat, cattle and 
 hogs, and then they can use it at par to pay the interest on
 
 IO 
 
 their mortgages and their taxes, and the other things which 
 they would ordinarily desire they can go without for a long 
 time." 
 
 "But," I said, "Mr. McKinley, I am President of a great 
 railroad and with a private car those people would mob me." 
 He said, "Nothing of the kind. It is the shock which will 
 secure their attention and then your talk will convince them 
 of their error." I remember once from a great audience a 
 farmer arose, when I thought I was making an impressive 
 argument against silver, and said, "Chauncey Depew, we are 
 glad to see you, but what right have you to come among us 
 in our distress when the present prices of the things we have 
 to sell do not pay for the raising of them, while we think with 
 fifty-cent silver we will get double the price. But that is not 
 what I complain of; it is that you, President of a great rail- 
 road, with a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year, and in a 
 private car, should come down here and attempt to instruct 
 us." I lost the audience at once. There is a favorite song in 
 Yale "Audacia! Audacia! It is the word I love the best." I 
 stepped to the front of the platform while a great hush came 
 over the audience and said, "Sir, my father gave me my educa- 
 tion and profession and then figuratively threw me out of the 
 window to look out for myself and never helped me after- 
 ward. I began in a little village, with no capital but my legs, 
 my hands and my head. I had a hard struggle trying cases 
 before country Justices of the Peace, where I would furnish 
 my own horse and wagon and ride ten, fifteen or twenty miles 
 and back after the case was tried for five dollars or less. An 
 opportunity came to me to be the attorney of a railroad. I 
 saw that meant that instead of one client and petty grievances, 
 every one of the thousands of stockholders of the company 
 would be my clients, as represented in the Board of Directors 
 vvhpm they elected every year, so that at one leap instead of 
 having a score or so of clients I got ten thousand. 
 
 "A railroad counsel's business is mairily to prevent the 
 strong and masterful men who have come up from the bottom 
 and are running the corporation from violating the law and to 
 keep them straight within the law. Now I am President, and 
 getting a big salary, as you say, and I am here in a private car
 
 II 
 
 which is all part of my compensation. I understand (this I 
 did not know, but it happened to be true) that you have at 
 college a son who is your pride and hope ; that after he gradu- 
 ates at the coming Commencement you intend to make him a 
 lawyer and you are making great sacrifices to put him through 
 college and give him his profession. Now, if you are doing 
 that in order that he shall practice law for his health, then I 
 have no right to be here, but if you wish him to start where I 
 did, with the chance of getting where I am, then I do not think 
 that you can criticise me." He yelled so you could hear him a 
 mile, "Go on, Chauncey, you are all right." There is no sub- 
 ject so interesting as what is effective in political discussion 
 before an audience. That little incident, illustrative of the 
 possibilities of American Citizenship for the youth of the land, 
 had more influence than all the argument which could be 
 presented. 
 
 Mr. McKinley sent for me again and said, "Mr. Bryan 
 is producing a tremendous impression in our State, and a very 
 dangerous one, not by what he says, but by his endurance. 
 No one has ever gone through our State of Ohio who has 
 spoken so often and so many hours in a single day. The 
 papers are full of his last performance. I want you to go 
 over that route and do the same thing. As you are nearly 
 twice his age, it will be the most effective counterblast I can 
 think of." I did as he requested, starting at seven o'clock in 
 the morning, stopping at the same places, scheduled for the 
 same length of time, with enormous audiences everywhere, 
 and capped it by adding a two-hour speech to a great audience 
 at night. The endurance test as a qualification for the Presi- 
 dency passed out of the canvass. 
 
 With the exception of the war for the preservation of the 
 Union, all our perils under the Constitution have been averted 
 by discussion and debate. A busy people, engrossed in their 
 various occupations, have little time to study serious questions 
 of government. The ability to transact the affairs of the peo- 
 ple, the same as the affairs of a corporation, or a firm, or a 
 co-operative society, or a charitable or religious organization, 
 or a labor union, does not depend upon superior intelligence 
 but upon experience and the time which can be taken from
 
 12 
 
 one's other pursuits to serve a large constituency. It is because 
 the lawyer or the plumber, the doctor or the carpenter, the 
 minister or the mason, knows more about his particular busi- 
 ness and the performance of it in the interests of others than 
 the whole mass can that society is thus divided, and each 
 employs the others for its comfort, safety and enterprises. So, 
 representative government became established by the selection 
 by busy people of competent men to do this special and most 
 needful work. 
 
 At present, however, there is a new agitation which has 
 much force and is progressing rapidly and is exciting in many 
 minds the greatest alarm. We are better educated than ever 
 before and that has created our unrest. At the same time our 
 minds are open to a quicker apprehension of the right and 
 wrong of all propositions by more education. 
 
 I have not time here, nor have you, to enter upon this 
 discussion, except to briefly state a few self-evident facts. The 
 appeal made by their projectors to the people for these new 
 policies is that the people do not have their share in their own 
 government. As ours is absolutely a government by the people, 
 with frequent elections to test the capacity and ability of the 
 officials whom they have elected, it is hard to see how the 
 people do not have their share in the government. 
 
 Pushed to the extreme, the claim is that the people do 
 not need mayors and boards of aldermen for their cities, 
 or presidents and village trustees for their villages, or boards 
 of supervisors for their counties, or governors and legislatures 
 for their States, or Presidents and Congresses for the general 
 government, nor courts to protect the weak against the strong 
 and to administer justice without fear or favor of power, or 
 wealth or influence. It is proposed as soon as a governor or a 
 congressman or a judge is elected to allow a small percentage 
 of the people to immediately, by petition, suspend his functions 
 and compel him to submit to another election. When an un- 
 popular verdict was rendered the other day, some of the most 
 advanced of this school added to their program also the recall 
 of the jury. These propositions are not new. They were 
 fully argued by Aristotle over twenty-three hundred years ago 
 and declared by him to substitute a government by anarchy
 
 13 
 
 for a government by law. But, then, the new school tells us 
 that there is no virtue or wisdom in the past which we are 
 bound to follow. The old fogies who framed the Constitution 
 are all right in their niches in the temple of fame, but except 
 as models for monuments to ornament parks their usefulness 
 long since departed. 
 
 There was an article recently in the papers that the litera- 
 ture class at one of our greatest colleges had been permitted 
 to discard history and the classics and study only recent litera- 
 ture. Aristotle was quoted favorably by one of the authors 
 in the day's lesson, and the professor asked in what period 
 Aristotle wrote. The answer was, "about 1840; certainly not 
 earlier." 
 
 I discovered while in the Senate that there are statesmen 
 who, especially on questions in which labor unions are inter- 
 ested, will prepare and present bills which are transparently 
 unconstitutional. For fear that they may lose the authorship, 
 they will not permit any changes. Their colleagues let them 
 have their way on account of the strength o-f Senatorial cour- 
 tesy, and also for fear that an attempt to amend will be 
 regarded as hostility to the measure by the labor unions. When 
 the Supreme Court decides the act unconstitutional, the author 
 berates the court and shouts that the people do not govern 
 themselves and wants the judges recalled. He neglects to state 
 that the court invariably says in its decision how that act can 
 be made constitutional and effect the same purpose. The court 
 simply performs its duty and throws back upon the legislative 
 body the necessity of performing its duty intelligently. 
 
 We have long had the referendum in our State on Con- 
 stitutional questions. The Constitutional amendments, how- 
 ever, have been thoroughly prepared and passed by two legis- 
 latures before they are submitted, and have been discussed in 
 the press and on the platform. A table made up recently 
 showed this startling result; that on all the constitutional 
 amendments which have been submitted to the people of this 
 State only thirty per cent of those who voted for public officers 
 at the time voted at all on the constitutional amendments, and 
 a majority of this thirty per cent put the amendments into the 
 Constitution, the result showing that a minority of about six-
 
 14 
 
 teen per cent of the voters of the State who voted at the same 
 elections amended the fundamental law. In the submission 
 last year the amendments, most of which were most valuable, 
 were defeated. I met at the polls a doctor of great reputation 
 and extensive practice and a mechanic who does a great deal 
 of work for me. I said, "How about the constitutional amend- 
 ments?" and each answered substantially, "I have not had 
 time to read and study them, and so voted against them all 
 on the ground that we seem to have a pretty good Constitution 
 and I do not propose to change it without more study and 
 reflection." 
 
 I have twice been a Member of the Legislature of our 
 State and twelve years a United States Senator. It has given 
 me much experience in the way laws are made. An act is 
 prepared, more or less carefully, and then passes the scrutiny 
 of a committee, and then attention and debate in the whole 
 house, and then review by the Governor. Even with this care 
 many laws fail to meet the object for which they were enacted, 
 and are amended or repealed at the next session. Under the 
 initiative a small minority, wishing to accomplish some definite 
 object, prepares a statute, and the majority of those who vote, 
 which may be much less than a majority of the whole elec- 
 torate, command the Legislature to enact and the Governor 
 to sign this law just as this little body prepared it. I know 
 of no device so potent for able, scheming, plausible, unscrupu- 
 lous and rich men to defraud and injure the public. 
 
 With us in New York City the evils of our local govern- 
 ment become so great at times that the people arise in their 
 might and men of all parties unite in a reform movement 
 which places clean and able representatives of the people in 
 power. As soon as the reform has accomplished its purpose, 
 the various elements disband, and, except under similar revo- 
 lutionary efforts years afterward, can never be brought to- 
 gether. This reform movement elected Mayor Gaynor, who 
 has proved to be an admirable executive, Comptroller Pren- 
 dergast, one of the best financial officers the City has ever had, 
 and the Borough Presidents who are doing excellent work. 
 In addition, it elected several Justices of the Supreme Court. 
 Under the recall, when Tammany had once more come into
 
 15 
 
 power and we had forgotten, as we do so rapidly, the causes 
 which elected the reform ticket, ten per cent of the voters 
 could recall them and within a year they would all be out of 
 office and the old order in authority. 
 
 During this period there has been greater progress for 
 universal peace among the nations than in all preceding time, 
 and yet the last year shows how frail, as yet, are ties of peace. 
 The lure of the Orient captured the imagination of Rome 
 three thousand years ago, for the destruction of Carthage, the 
 control of the Mediterranean and the conquest of Africa. 
 After thirty centuries there is a recrudescence of the same 
 spirit, which seizes Tripoli and brings on a war with Turkey, 
 producing international complications, the result of which no 
 one can predict. 
 
 I met last summer an old diplomat who was a mine of the 
 secrets of his profession. He told a story which illustrated 
 how near we were, for a while, to the most disastrous war of 
 modern times. The German Emperor, one of the greatest 
 rulers his country ever had, made his delphic utterance that 
 Germany must have her place in the Sun. From the German 
 standpoint, and after her success in acquiring Alsace and 
 Lorraine, there was no country which could be crowded out to 
 make room for Germany, except France. There was a revolt 
 against the Sultan of Morocco and anarchy existed at the 
 Moroccan capital. Germany said to France, "As you have the 
 controlling influence in Morocco, you must restore order, so 
 our people will not be molested in their trade and commerce, 
 or we will do it." France said, "Very well, we will assume 
 the responsibility." The French army marched to Fez, sub- 
 dued the rebellion, restored order and saved the Sultan. Ger- 
 many then said, "This success of yours has given France such 
 undue prominence in Africa that Germany must be compen- 
 sated." But France replied, "We undertook this at your 
 request, and not for conquest, and we will retire at once and 
 move our army back to Algiers." Germany said, "That will 
 not help. Your government has been given prestige, and that 
 is an undue power, and so we must be compensated." 
 
 German cruisers appeared in Moroccan ports, and an 
 army of 700,000 men, the strongest, best disciplined and best
 
 i6 
 
 equipped in the world, was ready to move across the French 
 frontier on an hour's notice. England emphatically declared 
 herself an ally of France, and Russia was not far behind. It 
 was discovered that the French army was more efficient than 
 since Napoleon, and that there was a patriotic spirit in France 
 which had not been equalled in any period since the Republic. 
 Then began the famous conversations between my old friend 
 Ambassador Cambon and the German foreign minister von 
 Kinderlen-Waechter. Cambon is a delightful conversation- 
 alist, but even his powers must have been strained to keep 
 up the interest for hours every day during several months. 
 The conversations resulted, however, in granting France suzer- 
 ainty over Morocco, which may cause more trouble than it 
 will give profit, and Germany secured its bigger place in the 
 Sun by taking from France a large part of her African pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 Contempt for the wisdom of the past is also not new. My 
 father was a plain-spoken man with the characteristics of the 
 earlier people whose ancestors settled along the Hudson River. 
 In his declining years he was accustomed to sit on the piazza, 
 smoke his cigar and read his paper. There were some college 
 students practicing for a boat race in the bay. Returning 
 after their exercises, they jumped onto the wall of the terrace 
 in front of the house and began discussing the superiority of 
 the present generation over the preceding ones. One of them 
 said triumphantly, "My father is seventy-five years old and 
 for his period a very intelligent man, but with the opportunities 
 there are to-day I know more and have more intelligence than 
 my father has at seventy-five," and turning around he shouted 
 to my father, "Well, old gentleman, what do you think of 
 that?" Father's answer was, "I was thinking what a damned 
 fool your father must be." 
 
 No American can fail to be a progressive. The story of 
 American progress during the one hundred and twenty-five 
 years under our form of government is a most thrilling narra- 
 tive. It surpasses in romance and reality the progress of all 
 preceding ages. We only need to study to learn that most of 
 these new notions are not progress, but they were tried thor- 
 oughly and ended in lamentable disasters in ancient and
 
 mediaeval republics and in the revolutions of modern govern- 
 ments. 
 
 Talleyrand, fleeing from the guillotine in the French Revo- 
 lution, and coming to America, wrote to Madame de Stael 
 that he found here thirty-two religions and only one sauce, 
 but when Talleyrand's countrymen arrive on the occasion of 
 the celebration of the unveiling of the monument to Champlain 
 this week, they will discover that probably we have more forms 
 of religion and religious sects than existed in Talleyrand's 
 time, but we have as many sauces in our restaurants and hotels 
 as are to be found in Paris. 
 
 We think there is nothing new under the sun, and Wall 
 Street remarks, as if it was the discovery of that self-sufficient 
 body, that there is danger in advance information, but this 
 wise old Frenchman Talleyrand also wrote that in betting on 
 certainties he lost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
 
 I met a friend the other day whom I have not seen for a 
 long time and whom I thought had joined the majority be- 
 cause he was a consumptive. He seemed to be as he had been 
 twenty years before, and said, "No, Chauncey, it was not 
 consumption but asthma, and you can live forever if you only 
 have asthma and the grace of God." 
 
 One of my experiences while in Europe -is to be asked 
 about expatriated Americans who have assumed titles of 
 nobility. A French lady of the bluest blood said to me last 
 summer, "A countryman of yours who claims French descent 
 has sent to us an extraordinary genealogy. It surpasses in 
 distinction that of the oldest and most distinguished of our 
 nobility. Do you know how he came by it?" "Oh, yes," I 
 said, "his ancestor fought gloriously at Agincourt in 1415, 
 and was killed at Waterloo." 
 
 Well, my friends, the beautiful lesson which we can draw 
 from these recurring anniversaries and their review of the past 
 is what a glorious world we live in and what a mighty privilege 
 it is to live. We were not created to dream or to long for idle 
 days and hours, but to so work that in its accomplishments we 
 derive pleasure from our work and to so play that our amuse- 
 ments are our health restorers and our sanatoriums, to so 
 love that we can derive comfort and instruction and happiness
 
 i8 
 
 from the whole circle, not only of our friends but of our 
 acquaintances, and to have faith so firm in our country and 
 its future that without fear and without doubt, but with hope 
 eternal, we can, after we have done our share as citizens, 
 leave it unimpaired to those who come after us.
 
 (Stenographic Report) 
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Pilgrims' Coronation Dinner, Savoy 
 Hotel, London, Wednesday, June 28, 1911, 
 in Honor of the Special Ambassador to the 
 Coronation, Hon. John Hays Hammond. 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN : I am very glad to be 
 here because for one reason I had the pleasure of making a 
 speech at the Pilgrims' Dinner in New York for Mr. Ham- 
 mond as Special Ambassador to the Coronation. I assured 
 him at the time that he would be dined by the Pilgrims' Society 
 in London when he arrived, and again by the Pilgrims' Society 
 in America when he returned, and I advised him that in a 
 mission of peace among men, and especially between English 
 speaking peoples, the thing for him to do to promote good- 
 will and friendship between the people of the United States 
 and the people of Great Britain was to accept every invitation 
 which was offered him on this side and give as many in 
 return as he could. Now I am happily relieved from the 
 limitations which fall upon a Special Ambassador and upon 
 all Ambassadors. I am three months out of office. There is 
 no Sword of Damocles hanging over my head, but as an in- 
 dependent citizen I can acquire more influence at home by 
 saying imprudent things as a private citizen than I can by 
 talking solid sense. (Laughter.) And there is another special 
 reason which gratifies me in being here to-night, and that is that 
 we are under the Chairmanship of Mr. Balfour (applause) 
 because all Americans remember that at a critical period in 
 our history, when we were in danger of having a little dif- 
 ficulty of ours enormously exaggerated by a Continental com- 
 bine against us, that combine was defeated largely by the 
 personal influence of Mr. Balfour. (Cheers.) Now I wonder 
 because on occasions like this marvelous Coronation, and 
 I have been at all the demonstrations of Empire which have 
 occurred in Great Britain, there are certain things which oc- 
 cur to a man who has been many years, and I have been so
 
 2O 
 
 many that I will not acknowledge them, in touch with public 
 affairs I wonder whether if John Adams, mentioned by Mr. 
 Birrell, Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson, the four great 
 creators of our Republic, had been re-incarnated and, in frve- 
 guinea seats (laughter) had witnessed that marvelous pro- 
 cession, with Canada, the elder daughter of the Empire, at the 
 head, they would have regretted that they were not at the 
 head, as they would have been if we had not separated. My 
 impression is that they would not. (Laughter.) If I was an 
 Ambassador and had been in jail, I would not have said that, 
 but what they would have thought is that in the evolution of 
 the two countries which has occurred since the separation, 
 each carrying out its own ideas in its own way to its manifest 
 destiny, they have worked upon each other in the development 
 of liberty as they never could have done if they had been 
 together. (Applause.) 
 
 Now, Daniel Webster, who was the greatest of our 
 -orators, in a remarkable figure, as I remember it, said: 
 " Whose morning drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping 
 company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous 
 and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." His 
 idea, eighty years ago, was that those martial strains meant 
 power, the power of the white race over subject peoples. But 
 the music which went round the world on the day of the 
 Coronation was entirely different, because it was an anthem 
 which reached a continuous circle of the same blood and same 
 people, saying that the succession of independent states belting 
 the Globe were united in one Empire in a glory and strength 
 greater than men of Webster's period ever dreamed of. 
 (Applause.) Now we over in our country, I do not know 
 how it is here, are considerably disturbed on the subject of 
 germs. (Laughter.) We have, in a measure, exterminated 
 the mosquito, and just before I left some scientific health 
 people had organized in every village a society called " Swat 
 the House-fly." (Laughter.) During nearly eighty years the 
 microbes have been fighting and having a jolly time in my 
 blood, but, so far as I know, without any disturbance to 
 myself; and neither my digestion nor appetite nor health have 
 ever been interfered with by germs or microbes. I dismiss,
 
 21 
 
 therefore, the health side; but it occurred to me as I was 
 coming across the. Channel, and reading the marvelous ac- 
 counts of the Coronation ceremonies, that there is something 
 in the germ in the historical sense. 
 
 Up in Litchfield, Connecticut, is an old Puritan church, 
 and the Pastor of that church, during the Revolutionary War, 
 preached a sermon when some American troops were going 
 through to join General Washington at West Point, and he 
 was so proud of it that he entered it on the Parish Register. 
 I read it there; it was a long sermon. General Howe was 
 coming across the ocean with reinforcements for the British 
 in New York, and the good parson said : " Oh, Lord, I pray 
 Thee that on that fleet Thy lightnings will play and Thy thun- 
 ders will roar, and that the waters may rise and bury them 
 in the deep, and that they may go to that reward of eternal 
 fire where they will be properly received, for Thy glory and 
 the safety of Thy Saints, among this Thy people." (Loud 
 laughter.) Now that germ has grown, so that Brother Birrell 
 wrote 7,000 words describing the procession to a great New 
 York newspaper, and so that in every considerable place in 
 the United States the churches were open for religious services 
 for the health and prosperity of the British people and the 
 King just consecrated. (Applause.) Now these germs, the 
 germ of Runnymede, for instance, when those glorious old 
 athletes who did not think learning amounted to anything 
 except for the parson and the lawyer, and therefore with the 
 hilts of their swords put their mark upon the seals of Magna 
 Charta, they enclosed in that charter a germ which in the 
 evolution of the centuries produced the principles which Jef- 
 ferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, which Lin- 
 coln wrote in the proclamation emancipating the slaves, and 
 which for you has created a democracy which, while retain- 
 ing the forms and ceremonies of the past, has so united 
 Medisevalism with Modernism that you have a democratic 
 government more democratic in its immediate responsiveness 
 to the people than any which exists. 
 
 Well, my friends, since I have been here I have heard 
 that there is a fear, which mars somewhat the pleasure of 
 our visit, that we are seeking Canada. Now I want to assure
 
 22 
 
 you that there are no signs of that. Uncle Sam does not mean 
 anything of the kind, and is not serious in his intentions, 
 though rather tumultuous in his ardor, and the beautiful Lady 
 of the Snows up North understands him perfectly. This 
 reciprocity treaty shows that she is quite able to take care 
 of herself, and of contributing something to the general wel- 
 fare of the Empire to which she belongs. We have acquired 
 within the last ten years Hawaii and Porto Rico and the Phil- 
 ippines, and we think we have not, but still we have, Cuba. 
 (Loud laughter.) So we are in a position on this question 
 of annexation and of not wanting any more territory of the 
 opulently gifted lady in the sense of avoirdupois, who was 
 a suburbanite, whom I saw getting on the train one day with 
 lir arms full of bundles, as suburbanite ladies always are, 
 and as she put a foot on the step of the car one fell off, 
 and when she picked it up two fell off. A neighbor said to 
 her, " I am detained in the City to-night, may I add this parcel 
 to yours for my wife?" and she answered: "No, I have 
 troubles enough of my own." .(Laughter.) 
 
 I have noticed also that there is no difference in the 
 evolution of Parliamentary life between Great Britain and 
 the United States. If I may be reminiscent for a moment, 
 about twenty-five years ago Lord Rosebery invited me to go 
 after dinner to a Meeting in the interests of Empire Colonials 
 and the like. It was a small room and they were principally 
 colonial bishops. There was no talk but plenty of champagne 
 and cigars. In fact, it was a spiritual meeting. (Laughter.) 
 Well, there was not a word of it in next morning's papers. 
 Twenty-five years have passed, and in the hall of Rufus, the 
 seat of the mother of Parliaments, this same Lord Rosebery 
 recently presided at a great banquet to the colonial representa- 
 tives of these empires in themselves, yet all affiliated in in- 
 terest and patriotism with the central government, working 
 out their own destinies, united somewhat as our States are, 
 with our central government. That assembly listened to one 
 of the happiest speeches from Lord Rosebery, one of the most 
 gifted of your orators, voicing the sentiment of Empire, for 
 Great Britain. Mr. Gladstone once said to me that if he 
 could select from among all the years of recorded time a half
 
 23 
 
 century, the half century he would select would be that in 
 which he had lived, because it was a half century of emancipa- 
 tion. If he could have lived twenty-five years more and wit- 
 nessed this progress of which he never dreamed, he would, 
 I think, have felt that the half century which closed on the 
 day "when King George V. was anointed and crowned was 
 infinitely grander than the half century of which he was so 
 proud. I have been listening to speeches in the United States 
 Senate for the last twelve years, and I read your speeches 
 and I am still alive. I notice that the development of politics 
 among statesmen and politicians is the same with you as it 
 is with us, until a question is decided. In one of the last 
 debates in the Senate when I was there six months ago, a 
 Senator was evolving his ideas on a critical question in the 
 country which was specially acute in his own State, and he 
 was a candidate for re-election. (Laughter.) He was on the 
 fence, not, as one of your statesmen happily has said, with 
 his flag nailed to it. A witty colleague of mine said " That 
 speech reminds me of an old farmer in my State who came 
 to town carrying a family clock, and said to the maker, ' I 
 do not know what is the matter with this clock. When it 
 strikes twelve and the hand points to four, I know it is half 
 past two, and nobody knows it but me.' ' : Well, my friend 
 President Taft has done many happy things since he has 
 been President of the United States. He has succeeded in 
 having more of his policies enacted into laws than almost any 
 President since Lincoln, his plea for International Arbitration 
 marks a new era of peace among nations. He has been singu- 
 larly happy in his appointments to office. His appointments 
 to the Supreme Court of the United States have led to that 
 wonderful decision in the Standard Oil and other cases which 
 have clarified the air and made our old Constitution good for 
 another 125 years, because now all great problems are to be 
 judged by the light of reason. The foolish virgins were put 
 out of business because they had no oil. Standard Oil is 
 to be put out of business because they have too much. 
 (Laughter.) One of the happiest appointments of President 
 Taft was when he determined to wipe out that jail record of 
 Hammond by making him Special Ambassador on this oc-
 
 24 
 
 casion. We, as Americans, believe he could have made no 
 better selection. It was my privilege to know for many years 
 the late King very well, and to appreciate, as only those 
 could who knew him socially, that he was the best representa- 
 tive of an English gentleman or a gentleman of any race; 
 that he was the most hospitable of hosts, the most charming 
 of companions, the most genial of men; and that, so far as 
 America and Americans were concerned, he was on all oc- 
 casions bringing all the power of his great place as Prince 
 of Wales and as King to the bettering of the relations between 
 our two countries. No man or woman arrived here from 
 America who was worthy of his recognition as an artist or who 
 was striving for some distinction, that he did not lend every aid 
 to put that person upon a platform where that talent could 
 be recognized. As a diplomatist, no one did so much to bring 
 about peace between Great Britain and other countries. Now, 
 the hope of every American represented by our Special Am- 
 bassador, and our regular Ambassador, represented by the 
 unanimous voice of the Press of the United States, is that the 
 popularity with his own people and that the success as a King 
 of George V. will be as great as, and if possible greater than. 
 was his father's. (Applause.)
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Banquet Given by the American 
 Chamber of Commerce of Paris, France, 
 July 4, igu. 
 
 Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, who had just returned 
 from the United States on a mission of peace by arbitration, 
 had closed a brilliant speech describing his visit and the result 
 of his mission, when Mr. Depew was asked to reply. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : I dislike at this late 
 hour to break the charm of the address which has just been 
 delivered by my friend Baron d'Estournelles de Constant. 
 No itinerary of the United States will ever be perfect which 
 does not include his description of our cities. No booming 
 Western City, especially Denver and Seattle, will be worthy 
 of the ambition which they have to outrival New York, unless 
 they scatter a leaflet reading "See what the baron says about 
 us." 
 
 The following little story about Boston and Chicago, I 
 think, fully illustrates the merits and virtues of both. A 
 Boston man found himself in Heaven,, and when Saint Peter 
 called his attention to all the wonderful things there, he 
 said, " Yes, very fine, but it isn't Boston." When a Chicago 
 man was being led about the other world he said to his at- 
 tendant, " I did not know that Chicago was so much like 
 Heaven," and the attendant replied, " Well, you are not in 
 Heaven." 
 
 I am not surprised that after the visit which our friend, 
 the baron, paid to Salt Lake City he no longer keeps quiet 
 on the subject of the girls. Really, the gentleman from 
 Boston Chamber of Commerce voiced the sentiment of the 
 evening when he said that here in Paris we Americans feel 
 at home. There has been no missionary going to the United 
 States in the interest of peace and amity, no missionary re- 
 calling to Americans what the French did for us, no mis- 
 sionary since Lafayette, who has received such a welcome, 
 because of the people whom he represented and the message 
 he brought, as did the orator who has just taken his seat,
 
 26 
 
 our friend the Baron d'Estournelles de Constant. There are 
 two places in the world where we Americans can celebrate the 
 Fourth of July with absolute unanimity. Every country 
 celebrates its natal day or its one great event within its own 
 boundaries, and among its own people, but it is possible 
 for Americans to celebrate their natal day with enthusiasm 
 on French territory and within the boundaries of our own 
 country. People speak of reciprocity as if it were a new 
 sentiment, a new doctrine recently discovered, but reciprocity 
 is 125 years. It was reciprocity which in our darkest hour, 
 when we were without funds, when our soldiers were bare- 
 footed, when we were nearly out of ammunition and guns, 
 that brought to us the French Army within, and the French 
 Navy without, and money and credit. 
 
 Now I am not a believer in germs. You know it is a 
 fixed American idea to have germs. In America everybody 
 is afraid to drink water or eat food, because of germs. I 
 have lived until my seventy-eighth year, and I have eaten and 
 drunk everything that has come my way, and there has been 
 going on in my veins that battle which they say is continually 
 raging between germs of one hard name and their enemies 
 with another. If one succeeds you are a "Conner," and if an- 
 other is victorious you are safe, but here I am, so far as I can 
 see without impaired digestion or vitality, and I only know that 
 the results are entirely satisfactory. However, speaking about 
 germs, there is a germ I do believe in, and that is the germ 
 in the origin of nations and their development. The most 
 noted germ that has ever come into this world since Christ, 
 is the germ of liberty which appeared in the United States, 
 and was voiced in the Declaration of Independence, but that 
 germ compressed in this sentence by Jefferson that " All men 
 are created equal with certain inalienable rights among which 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " meant little at 
 that time anywhere. In the United States was a landed 
 aristocracy, we had no universal suffrage, suffrage was de- 
 pendent upon property, and France at that time was an ab- 
 solute monarchy, with a few philosophers writing about the- 
 oretical liberty. But that germ in the course of 135 years 
 has, in our country, put us at the head of all nations, as the
 
 27 
 
 most populous, the most wealthy, the most liberty enjoying, 
 the happiest people in the world. That germ came over here 
 to France with Lafayette, Rochambeau and other French 
 soldiers returning from America, and it produced the French 
 Revolution, which destroyed absolutism in France, and through 
 many revolutions it has at last in our day led to a republic 
 which will be as perpetual as our own. 
 
 The Baron very happily spoke of dreams and sentiment. 
 I have always been a believer in dreams and sentiment. I 
 believe that sentiment is the one thing which has moved the 
 world more than anything else. Lord Rosebery, the most 
 eloquent of British orators, made a speech, partly serious, 
 partly badinage, in which he said it was a mistake for the 
 American Colonies to have separated from Great Britain, be- 
 cause had they remained, they would have drawn the King 
 to New York, Windsor Castle somewhere in Central Park, 
 and Buckingham Palace in City Hall Park. Here comes in 
 the sentiment, and the dream. Canada has been a self-govern- 
 ing colony just as long as the United States has been an in- 
 dependent Republic, Australia for more than fifty years has 
 been a self-governing colony. Canada has a territory as large 
 as the United States, two thirds of which is quite as pro- 
 ductive, yet she has two millions of inhabitants less than the 
 State of New York. Australia has a territory as large and 
 as productive as the United States, but has a population less 
 than -New York City, and four millions less than the State 
 of New York ; four millions in Australia, seven millions in 
 Canada, and ninety millions in the United States ! What is 
 the reason ? Emigration from Europe has created all these 
 countries. People left Europe to find civil and religious lib- 
 erty, but they have civil and religious liberty in Canada and 
 Australia as well as in the United States. People left Europe 
 to be able to govern themselves, but they govern themselves 
 as well in Canada and Australia as they do in the United 
 States, and they have every opportunity we enjoy but one, and 
 that is a shadow. That shadow is the sovereignty of Great 
 Britain. It is not exercised, except for their protection. Great 
 Britain taxes herself for their defence, but there is over them 
 the shadow of a power, in whose administration they have no
 
 28 
 
 voice, while in our country, on the contrary, ninety millions 
 feel independent and happy because with us there is no shadow 
 before the sun of liberty. Its beams shine undimmed on every 
 part of our land, and each citizen is a sovereign. 
 
 We have grown a good deal since you of the Amer- 
 ican Chamber of Commerce of Paris left to settle over here, 
 and we have many ideas there that you would grasp if you 
 came home more frequently. I was immensely impressed with 
 this the other day in London. In England every newspaper 
 praises the King. I read newspapers of all kinds, of all shades 
 of opinion, and most of their columns were devoted editorially 
 to praising and reporting the movements and popularity of the 
 King, while in America no newspaper would consider itself 
 worthy of circulation if it did not criticise the President. And 
 yet every nation must have some ideals which the newspapers 
 won't criticise, and which will inspire loyalty and love in the 
 citizen. What is ours? It is the old Constitution which 
 has stood by us without change for 125 years. England has 
 had twenty changes in her constitution in that time. France 
 has had fifteen or twenty new ones, Germany has had any 
 number, even Russia and Turkey are recognizing the progress 
 of liberty. But that old Constitution of ours prepared by those 
 gentlemen in knee breeches, buckles, and powdered wigs, 
 stood for three millions of people along the line of our At- 
 lantic Coast, and is equally able to take care of ninety mil- 
 lions within American Territory, and ten millions in the 
 Philippines, and the islands of the sea without, and it has 
 not been changed in its essence in 125 years. That is our 
 ideal, but recently there have been gentlemen with us who 
 delight to call themselves " Progressive " and " Insurgents." 
 I was associated with them for twelve years in the Senate 
 very pleasantly, but publicly they believe in unrest. They 
 have been attacking the Constitution because they say all 
 men do not have equal opportunities. Then came the trial 
 of the trusts, but recently the Supreme Court of the United 
 States has rendered a decision which has swept the plat- 
 form out from under them, and made the Constitution good 
 for another 125 years. That great decision says that every 
 trade combination in the United States which may be re-
 
 29 
 
 garded as unlawful, must be judged by the light of reason, 
 and if individuals or the corporations do not possess proper 
 reasons for their business they can go tp the Circuit Court 
 and be advised. So there is no danger of confiscation in the 
 United States any more. If that decision had sustained the 
 contention of the lawyers of the government that every com- 
 bination whatsoever, whether good or bad, is illegal, we would 
 have had chaos, and the greatest panic the world ever knew, 
 until we could have readjusted ourselves, but in the light 
 of reason we are all right. In the light of reason the foolish 
 virgins had no oil, so they were not allowed to the wedding 
 feast, and by the light of reason the Standard Oil had too 
 much and must reorganize. 
 
 We have another thing in our country in which we are 
 superior to all others, and that is though we have parties 
 we have no political animosities. The representatives of both 
 parties -in the Senate and the House of Representatives dis- 
 cuss in an academic way the things upon which they differ 
 without personal rancor or enmity. But when I was over 
 in England the other day, I discovered that they had got to 
 a point where we were at the close of the Civil War, with 
 the same passions and the same bitterness especially among 
 the women. When the women are bitter in politics, you 
 may make up your mind that a remarkable evolution is in 
 progress. I was sitting the other night at dinner talking to 
 a charming Englishwoman of high social position and rank 
 and of broad sympathies and benevolence, who is doing good 
 in every way that will benefit her people, and somehow, as 
 always happens now in England, the conversation switched 
 round to the present political crisis, and the enormous impend- 
 ing changes in their constitution including the abolition of the 
 Upper Chamber, and she said : " Do you know I wish we were 
 back in the good old days. I would like to assist in hanging 
 every member of the Government, and as for Winston 
 Churchill I would like to see him tortured first, and then put on 
 the string." I like Winston Churchill and respect his great 
 abilities. I was fond of his father, and am a great ad- 
 mirer of his mother. He is a brilliant young man destined 
 to a most promising future. I am a great admirer of
 
 30 
 
 Asquith. He is a very able statesman, and as an American 
 I should feel bad to see him hung on a string. We have 
 no such sentiment as that in the United States. Over in 
 London they said to me: "How can you talk of arbitration 
 and peace when you are trying to steal Canada indirectly ? " 
 Great Scott, gentlemen, we have got ice enough of our own. 
 We keep eggs in cold storage for a year, and we have our 
 own problems, which are quite sufficient. We have the Phil- 
 ippines whose people say they want to be free, in a way 
 that will permit them to do as they please, but leave us the 
 expense of maintaining their government and protecting them. 
 We have Guam, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, and we sometimes 
 think we have got rid of Cuba. I also said to my English 
 friends: "We have the South American Republics, who get 
 all they can of English, German, and French money, and then 
 when a Dreadnought goes over to collect it, they say to Uncle 
 Sam : " The sacred Monroe Doctrine must be safeguarded 
 by you." Our inventors at home are in the way of help- 
 ing everybody. There is Mr. Burbank, the wizard of Cali- 
 fornia. Not long ago he visited Pittsburgh, and when he went 
 home he commenced practising on the succulent which we all 
 love so well the pea and he has succeeded in producing a 
 square pea which will not roll off the blade of multi-mil- 
 lionaires who still eat with a knife. 
 
 Well, my friends, I think the sentiment of this Fourth of 
 July Banquet I have been to nearly all that this Chamber 
 has celebrated, and each one has had some sentiment of its 
 own all of them for international commerce and goodwill 
 but this Fourth of July Banquet voices another and more 
 universal sentiment than any of its predecessors, and its grand 
 apostle is our guest here to-night Baron d'Estournelles de 
 Constant. This is a celebration largely in the interest of Peace 
 by Arbitration. Commencing with Abraham Lincoln I have 
 known every President of the United States very well, known 
 them in their peculiarities, in their faults, in their good qual- 
 ities, and in their great ones. For everyone of them was a 
 great man, or he could not have been by the suffrage of the 
 American people President of the United States. But of all 
 those Presidents, how many will be remembered 100 years
 
 from now? Lincoln, whom I first knew, yes, so long as the 
 Republic endures. Grant ? Yes, but among the rest ! Now 
 we have a President who differs from all others I have known, 
 because of characteristics I have never met in a politician 
 anywhere, and I think it is because his education has been not 
 political but judicial. He has been most of his life on the 
 bench, but there it has been his habit to listen patiently to the 
 arguments of both sides, to render his decision according to 
 the law and the Constitution, and then dismiss it, never think- 
 ing of himself one moment, nor how that decision would affect 
 his own fortunes, and so in the three years in which Taft has 
 been President he has succeeded in securing the enactment 
 into law of more of his recommendations than almost any 
 President of my time, and yet the underlying sentiment with 
 him has been, " This is right. The majority of my people may 
 be against it, but I think they are mistaken. My judgment is it 
 is the best for the country. I cannot for a moment consider 
 its effect upon my future." Mr. Taft, a man unaffected by 
 passion, partisanship, or faction at home has looked abroad 
 over the great field of international amity, brought to his at- 
 tention while Governor of the Philippines, and has set forth 
 to the world (and that is to be his monument) a Message of 
 Peace. While all nations are building larger battleships, in- 
 creasing the number of. their armies, and offering the highest 
 rewards for inventions in destructive machinery and explosives, 
 this calm Executive of the United States conceives the idea 
 that possibly even now there may be brought about such rela- 
 tions between the different countries of the world that war 
 may be abolished and peace established, and commerce and 
 amity be the governing principles of international relations. 
 Taft will live, because a principle like this, once started never 
 stops, and as President of the United States he has already 
 secured the cordial assent of Great Britain and France, and he 
 will live because he has brought into the relations of the peo- 
 ple of the world a recognition of the principle which was 
 founded on Calvary, and which has never yet been realized. 
 Peace among nations and Brotherhood among men.
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at a Meeting in Memory of Cornelius N. 
 Bliss, held by the Republican Club of the 
 City of New York, on Sunday Afternoon, 
 November 5, 1911. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : It is a most appro- 
 priate and fitting function of this Club that it should meet to 
 pay tribute to the memory of Cornelius N. Bliss. He was 
 one of the oldest of its members and one of its Presidents. 
 He was one of the most active of our associates in the public 
 work of this organization. The principles for which the club 
 stands and for which it has always labored were the ones in 
 which he firmly believed. That belief was not perfunctory 
 nor found its activity in the mere expression of opinion. He 
 thought business prosperity and the employment of labor 
 and capital and content and happiness among the people were 
 dependent upon these principles being crystallized into laws. 
 With that view he gave without stint both personal effort and 
 contributions for the promotion of the cause. 
 
 When he came to New York in 1866, forty-five years 
 ago, mercantile conditions in this city were such that a new- 
 comer had only a fighting chance in the field. Our merchants 
 had a national and international reputation and were jealous 
 to the point of active hostilities of any competition in their 
 various lines. A. T. Stewart, the Grinnells, Howland, Aspin- 
 wall, and a few others, were the merchant princes of the 
 times. The financial situation made the conduct of enter- 
 prises, and especially the starting of new ones, exceedingly 
 hazardous. We had just come out of the Civil War and the 
 country had not adjusted itself to normal conditions. We 
 had an irredeemable currency and as its necessary adjunct the 
 wildest speculation. The methods now of limiting competition 
 are for those who are engaged in the various branches of the 
 production of articles based upon a common product of raw 
 material to combine into great corporations. Against this
 
 34 
 
 method of either preventing or of limiting competition, Con- 
 gress, Legislatures and courts are actively at war. Methods of 
 accomplishing the same results forty-five years ago were more 
 effective and much simpler. The day of the great corporations 
 had not arrived, but the day of the masterful man was here, 
 as it has been for thousands of years and will be for thousands 
 of years to come, in every community, great or small. A. T. 
 Stewart was the pioneer in what is now known as the depart- 
 ment store. He was a genius in his line and his shrewdest 
 and keenest commercial sense was based upon a liberal edu- 
 cation. When a competitor was doing a prosperous business 
 in one of the lines which he sold; he immediately investigated 
 his condition. If it was cottons or silks or woolens, or what 
 not, that was this merchant's specialty, Stewart soon became 
 familiar with his financial standing, with the quality of his 
 goods and with the elements of his success. Then by wide 
 advertisements he would sell that special product away below 
 cost, relying upon the profit in other departments to make up 
 his own losses at the same time that this ruinous competition 
 drove the competitor into bankruptcy. If he was a man of 
 ability who was desirable, Stewart would annex him as an em- 
 ploye, but if there was no place the poor fellow joined the ranks 
 of the unsuccessful and the unfortunate. It is an interesting 
 question whether this merciless method which no law could 
 reach is better than combinations in a corporation, provided 
 that corporation's activities are governed by proper super- 
 vision by a bureau of the government to prevent monopoly 
 and restraint of trade. 
 
 Mr. Bliss had to meet, as his business grew, the full force 
 of this terrific onslaught. It shows how thoroughly he had 
 studied his field, how well he was entrenched in his sources 
 of supply and distribution that he successfully resisted the 
 attack and compelled recognition from these powerful inter- 
 ests as one who was able both to take care of himself, and, if 
 the struggle became too intense, to make it exceedingly un- 
 comfortable for them. 
 
 The frightful waste of the Civil War, the wild speculation 
 which followed, the trafficking in legislation to secure fran- 
 chises to be madly promoted, culminated in six years after Mr.
 
 35 
 
 Bliss entered upon business here in the disastrous panic of 
 1873. Only one like it, that of 1837, had any parallel with us 
 and few had been known in the whole history of finance and 
 commerce. The Stock Exchange closed, banks suspended, 
 mercantile houses went into bankruptcy, and thousands were 
 reduced from affluence to poverty and other thousands saw 
 business which they had spent a lifetime in building up shat- 
 tered to pieces. A statistician has proved that only one out 
 of two hundred of the men who enter mercantile business in 
 New York survive-the strain and competition. The rest sooner 
 or later succumb. But in the panic of 1873 this average of 
 one in two hundred went to a point where it might safely be 
 said that more than two-thirds of the business men came to 
 grief. It was eminently a time of the survival of the fittest. 
 Only level heads who had resisted the speculations in which 
 vast fortunes were made and lost between the close of the 
 Civil War and the panic, far-sighted brains which had fore- 
 seen the storm and prepared for it, were equal to the emer- 
 gency. It is a tribute to the sagacity of Mr. Bliss, to the 
 standing which he had attained in these few years with the 
 banks, and among his associates and competitors, that he came 
 out of this terrific struggle with his credit enhanced and his 
 position invulnerable. 
 
 After that his life as a merchant was one of widening 
 influence and operations. The financial disturbances which 
 shook the country, disturbed business and ruined individuals 
 and firms, growing out of the resumption of specie payments, 
 of the silver craze, of the gold standard, were all foreseen 
 and provided for by this able, accomplished and masterful 
 man. So that years before his death he was, in its best sense, 
 a merchant prince and had so systematized, co-ordinated and 
 perfected his great business that he could give more and more 
 of his time to public affairs and to his duties as a citizen. It 
 is this phase of his career as a public citizen that especially 
 interests us. The New York merchant and business man is 
 proverbially neglectful of civic duties and unwilling to assume 
 the burdens of civic responsibilities. 
 
 When I was a young man I was given a dinner by the lead- 
 ing merchants of New York for something which I had done
 
 36 
 
 for the city as a Member of the Legislature. I think it was in 
 1863. Having lived all my life in the country where everybody 
 participates in political activities, I was amazed to discover that 
 of the thirty gentlemen at this table, representing three-fourths 
 of the wealth and great business of the city, not one of them 
 ever voted except in Presidential elections, none of them be- 
 longed to political clubs or party organizations. All of them 
 united in vigorous denunciations of the corruptions of public 
 life and the untrustworthiness of men who held public office. 
 These were conditions which they as a united body could have 
 at any time corrected, but they not only refused to serve, they 
 put a ban upon the professional or business activities of those 
 who were willing to enter upon the duties of public life. 
 
 Mr. Bliss represented an entirely different class of great 
 merchants. Following the injunction to "Be diligent in busi- 
 ness, serving the Lord" meant for him in practice diligence in 
 business as much as any successful man, but he believed the 
 best service he could render to the Lord outside his business 
 duties was active, intelligent and helpful citizenship. He be- 
 lieved that neither his business as a manufacturer and a mer- 
 chant nor any other would be permanently successful unless 
 a protective tariff, a sound currency and the gold standard 
 was part of the law of the land. He .believed that it was his 
 highest duty to labor for the success of the party and the can- 
 didates which would secure this legislation. He recognized, as 
 few men did then, but as everybody does now, the intimate 
 relation there is between business and politics. Almost imme- 
 diately on becoming a resident of our city he joined the local 
 Republican 'organization. Throughout his whole life he was 
 an organization party man and at the same time a practical 
 reformer. Twice during his career, when the county organi- 
 zation seemed inefficient or corrupt, he organized and headed 
 committees which succeeded in bringing about the necessary 
 reform. With rare courage for one whose business could be 
 so easily affected by municipal legislation and municipal offi- 
 cials, he organized and headed committees for the purification 
 of the government of this great city. 
 
 In all this long and active career, extending over half a 
 century, he never was an office seeker. He believed that office
 
 37 
 
 should come to a man and not be solicited. The party wanted 
 at different times so rare a character to strengthen its position 
 by becoming its candidate for the various offices within its 
 gift, but he declined everything except at the earnest solicita- 
 tion of President McKinley of the Secretaryship of the Inte- 
 rior. The unselfishness of his political activities is best illus- 
 trated by the positions which he did take. For four successive 
 Presidential campaigns he was the Treasurer of the National 
 rommittee. There is no place in party work which involves 
 so much labor, so much criticism and so little applause. He 
 accepted the treasurership of the National Committee in the 
 second Harrison campaign because he saw that there had come 
 about one of those revulsions in public feeling which might 
 lead to disaster to the party he loved and to the principles 
 he considered essential for the public welfare. The peo- 
 ple wanted a change and no effort could check their desire. 
 The change came and he saw in its results all the business 
 disasters which he had been predicting his active life. He 
 saw what he regarded as the greatest bulwark of prosperity 
 of business in the tariff assailed and changed. He saw 
 the closing of mills and multitudes thrown out of employ- 
 ment by results brought about by legislation which he abhorred. 
 When the campaign came for the first election of McKinley 
 he again accepted the treasurership, because he believed that a 
 return to old policies was the salvation of his country and of 
 himself in his business relations. No one contributed more to 
 the success of President McKinley and the restoration of 
 Republican policies than did Mr. Bliss. 
 
 We are a peculiar people. We are fond of experiments in 
 every department of life. We take larger chances in business 
 and greater risks in experiment than any industrial nation in 
 the world. Prosperity does not satisfy us; we want more. 
 Within certain almost defined cycles we as a people need to 
 go to school the school of experience. A generation comes 
 upon the stage which has forgotten or is too young to remem- 
 ber the teachings of the past. When these periods arrive, and 
 they will in the future as they have in the past, the lesson 
 which is taught by disasters to business, to employment and 
 to every form of activity, will bring about again the practice of
 
 38 
 
 the principles which have proved successful and they will pre- 
 vail until the period of experiment has again arrived. 
 
 So, Mr. Bliss, feeling that the first four years of McKinley 
 had not yet consolidated into permanency the measures in 
 which he believed, undertook this same difficult and disagree- 
 able task for the third time and in the Roosevelt campaign for 
 the fourth of Treasurer of the National Committee. He ap- 
 plied to this delicate and perilous position principles upon 
 which he had conducted his own business. The books were 
 perfectly kept and the accounting was complete. Not a breath 
 of suspicion, not a charge of any kind, ever assailed the treas- 
 urer in these four great campaigns in which millions were 
 raised, part of it by himself, and all of it passed through his 
 hands. 
 
 There is one place in the Cabinet which is in a measure 
 the despair of every President. All others of his advisers but 
 the Secretary of the Interior can win applause and fame. But 
 the Secretary of the Interior has against him constant pres- 
 sure, and if he is upright, aggressive and intelligent, he will 
 receive the virulent abuse and misrepresentation of the most 
 powerful interests in the country. Land hunger would sacrifice 
 every right of the Indian and take from him the land upon 
 which he lives and the home in which he dwells. If the Secre- 
 tary objects he can expect only investigating committees and 
 unlimited abuse. The exploiters of national resources wish 
 to monopolize them and they form syndicates so powerful and 
 backed by so much newspaper support and Congressional in- 
 fluence that if the Secretary of the Interior fails to yield to 
 their demands he becomes the enemy of progress and the foe of 
 the people. A large number of Indian contractors and Indian 
 agents, who engage in practices which are often corrupt and 
 sometimes inhuman, have powerful friends to protect them and 
 easy ways of reaching the public ear against an uncompromis- 
 ing public official. It was to clean this Augean stable that 
 President McKinley summoned to his aid the great reputation, 
 incorruptible integrity, unsurpassed business judgment and 
 executive ability of Cornelius N. Bliss. When this high but 
 disagreeable task had been completed to the entire satisfaction 
 of the President, the Secretary of the Interior asked to be re-
 
 39 
 
 leased that he might return to his neglected personal affairs, 
 and at the same time give that large measure which he had 
 always so freely bestowed as a private citizen to the public 
 service. 
 
 Gentlemen, we of this Club who met him in the intimacy 
 of this family circle saw in the successful man of business 
 not the uncompromising reformer, not the rigid financier, not 
 the active politician, but the most genial, companionable and 
 lovable of men. Going to his reward when nearing four score, 
 he has left behind him a superb example for American youth 
 and filled a brilliant page in the history of his country.
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Dinner of the New England Society of 
 New York, December 22, 1911, in Response 
 to the Toast : " The Puritan Survival." 
 
 MR. /PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : For over forty years 
 it has been my privilege to attend, more or less frequently, the 
 annual dinners of the New England Society of New York. 
 At these meetings I have heard .many admirable presenta- 
 tions in response to Forefathers' Day, but few, if any of 
 them, reached the high level of the speech just delivered 
 by Dr. Frothingham. He has caught and portrayed the 
 spirit of the founders, and its influence in the development 
 of government in succeeding generations, with a compre- 
 hensive and broad-minded grasp of the situation which will 
 place in our records a classic and a model. Such an oc- 
 casion is suggestive with reminiscence. There have been 
 famous nights with this Society of national and international 
 significance. In that period great orators from all over the 
 country have here sprung into fame, increased their reputa- 
 tions or lost them. The finest original wit of our period, 
 who was President, and a frequent speaker, was William 
 M. Evarts. In variety and genius in portraying and arousing 
 emotions and spontaneous eloquence, we had here Henry Ward 
 Beecher. The list would include nearly every man whose name 
 has been associated with American history during the last half 
 century. 
 
 I recall one night which was significant, dramatic and 
 historical. The passions of the Civil War were not wholly 
 dissipated. It was still possible to arouse enthusiasm and to 
 make political capital upon slavery and disunion. General 
 Sherman in an impromptu speech, full of that nervous fire 
 which was his characteristic, threw a picture on the wall of 
 the disbandment of the Union Army, the triumphant march 
 of the soldiers past the President and the return of the veterans 
 to prosperous homes and their various vocations. It was a 
 picture of grand triumph that equalled the historic description
 
 42 
 
 of the wonderful processions of Roman conquerors down the 
 Appian Way into the imperial city. A young man from the 
 South came next. He drew a most marvelous and pathetic 
 picture of the Confederate soldiers, beaten but undismayed, 
 ragged and foot-sore, going back to farms which had been 
 ravaged by the armies of both sides, the fences down, the 
 houses gone, the stock disappeared, and then, speaking as a 
 young man for the new South, he pictured the regeneration 
 which had come in agriculture, in industries, in the develop- 
 ment of resources, in the creation of cities, towns, hamlets 
 and homes out of all this misery by these heroes of the same 
 race but inspired by different ideas. By that speech Henry W. 
 Grady leaped into national fame. But these ,two addresses, 
 one from the great soldier and the other from the represen- 
 tative of the new South, published everywhere and read in 
 every household, advanced the cause of reunion between the 
 two sections of the country more than could have been accom- 
 plished by half a century of discussion and legislation. 
 
 In a way this night to which I have referred illustrates 
 the effectiveness of the dominant principles of the Pilgrim 
 idea "free speech." The Pilgrims were reformers. They 
 were about the only real ones of their period. Madame 
 Roland, standing at the foot of the scaffold, as she ascended 
 the steps cried out: 
 
 "Oh, Liberty! in thy name what crimes are committed." 
 So reform, which is always popular, is the well-worn 
 ladder of ambition, demagoguery and greed. There is the 
 reformer who quickly grasps the passion of the hour and by 
 fanning it into flame becomes its leader and gets into Congress 
 or higher. There is the other who is part demagogue and 
 part crank and wholly an agitator, who contributes little to the 
 progress of the world; but there is last the man of foresight, 
 courage and patriotism, who is always in advance of his time, 
 not so far ahead but his contemporaries can catch up, but who 
 is far enough to blaze the way and lead them by reason toward 
 light and liberty. To this latter class the Pilgrims preemi- 
 nently belong. They lived in an age when might made right, 
 when it was considered entirely proper to seize the goods of 
 others if you had the power and needed them. But when the
 
 43 
 
 Mayflower anchored off Cape Cod and a boat with the ex- 
 plorers went ashore and the Indians fled leaving behind the 
 corn which they had stored for the winter, it was promptly 
 appropriated and taken on board the ship. This was in accord- 
 ance with the principles of the age. The Pilgrims needed the 
 corn, without it they could not have planted for the next year's 
 harvest, but they left a note saying that they would pay for it 
 whenever the Indians called and presented proper vouchers. 
 The fact that they left no address did not militate against the 
 merit of the case. It was the beginning of that beneficent 
 principle, now recognized everywhere among civilized nations, 
 of the sanctity of property in the hands of the weak. Though 
 the old rule still prevails in the partition of Africa by the 
 great powers thank Heaven, this government of the Pilgrims 
 has no part in that expropriation. 
 
 In the Pilgrim period all governments had one set of laws 
 for kings and nobles and another for the people, one set of 
 rights for caste and privilege and another for those who had 
 neither. But the Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower in 
 their immortal charter said, "We will found a government of 
 just and equal laws." That was a principle which was under- 
 standable, and again the Pilgrims were in advance, but not 
 too far in advance, of the period in which 'they lived and 
 labored. It took a long time, even in our own development, 
 to work out that principle. The Puritan who came afterward 
 to the Massachusetts colonies repudiated it utterly. But there 
 is nothing so dynamic as an idea which has in it the principal 
 of generation and regeneration. Winthrop said, "If all are to 
 be Governors, who is to govern.'' There being no lawyers, 
 New England existed for a hundred years without lawyers, 
 and as they recognized the necessity of government they con- 
 fided it to their ministers and created a theocracy. The gov- 
 ernment of the ministers demonstrated the necessity in the 
 enactment of laws of the assistance of lawyers. They banished 
 Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson because they preached 
 religious toleration, and in banishing them the dynamics of 
 religious toleration began to expand and in less than half a 
 century that had become part of both Pilgrim and Puritan 
 policy.
 
 44 
 
 These hard-headed, hard-working, close-thinking fore- 
 fathers believed in representative government. Though they 
 had the town meeting, a perfect democracy, for their village 
 and local affairs, yet they felt that there should be trained 
 men selected -and elected to make their laws, so they left -it 
 first to the clergy and then selected in their localities the men 
 who could give the time and who were best equipped to be 
 members of the Legislatures and Congress, and to be gov- 
 ernors and judges. 
 
 In some of the newer States they are getting away from 
 this idea. We are told now that the best government is that 
 which goes to the whole people with all its laws and all its 
 legislation, that the initiative, the referendum and the recall 
 place the people in possession of the power which they have 
 lost through selecting men to be their governors, their judges, 
 their legislators, their mayors and their aldermen. 
 
 I met the other night at dinner the Governor of Oregon, 
 the foremost State in putting into practice these policies, a 
 charming, capable and eloquent gentleman. His mission, and 
 that of the Governors, was not political but to make known 
 the products of their States. Of course, one of the most 
 attractive is the Oregon apple. He showed how Oregon re- 
 . versed her new- principle of government by mass meeting in 
 placing apples on the market. The farmers select a committee 
 of experts. The individual farmer is not permitted to market 
 as of old, when his good apples were on top, the moderate 
 ones in the middle and the bad in the rest of the barrel. These 
 experts, representatives of the mass, select the best apples 
 and sell them as such and the second best and sell them as 
 such, and make the rest into hard cider to be drunk in prohibi- 
 tion communities. Now, the distinguished, eloquent and able 
 Senator from Oregon is the best advocate and exponent of 
 the political practices of his State. His view condensed is that 
 the composite citizen, which means the whole mass, is more in- 
 telligent for executive duties than any governor, or for judicial 
 duties than any judge, or for legislation than any legislator, and, 
 therefore, we need only a framework of officers without power 
 or authority to be instructed by this composite man. So, in- 
 stead of having able executives and learned judges and tried
 
 45 
 
 and experienced legislators, these officers are rubber stamps 
 for the composite man. But the composite man, acting as a 
 mass upon subjects that he cannot possibly act upon intelli- 
 gently if he attends to his business, is necessarily composed 
 of the selected apples, the specked apples and the bad apples. 
 His selection of representatives is usually excellent, but his 
 executive acts, judicial decisions and legislation under such 
 conditions are permeated with the inebriating qualities of the 
 headiest hard cider. 
 
 Our forefathers in developing the country left the largest 
 freedom of action to the individual citizen. The common law 
 was the spirit of their jurisprudence and judicial decisions. 
 Their legislation was to promote agriculture and industries and 
 develop resources. They were not equal to the enactment of a 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Law, and would not have understood it 
 if they had been. Shakespeare says, "Some are born great, 
 some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 
 them." John Sherman was an excellent Senator and a distin- 
 guished Secretary of the Treasury, but he would have dropped 
 into the oblivion of Senators and Secretaries of the Treasury 
 out of office and been forgotten except that the trust law which 
 bears his name has kept him before the public more than any 
 statesman of his period and made him immortal. Now comes 
 a few days ago ex-Senator Edmunds, the distinguished Chair- 
 man of the Judiciary Committee which had charge of that 
 bill, perfected, reported and passed it, who informs us that 
 there is not in it one single line of John Sherman. This is not 
 going to take away the fame of Sherman ; resting solely 
 upon a myth it is in no more danger than the name of America 
 though not discovered by Amerigo Vespucci. There is not a 
 single thing about that law which is not Pilgrim or Puritan, 
 but while it affects every industry in the country, it has lain 
 practically dormant for twenty years. The main reason being 
 that nobody really understood it. National Conventions of 
 both parties in their platforms resolved that it must be 
 amended, but it was such a feitish in the public mind that one 
 party was afraid to touch it and the other daren't. It was 
 interpreted at one time to prohibit all big business and restore 
 the country to the retail store, the windmill and the mill pond.
 
 46 
 
 That would have prevented all development. It has at other 
 times been differently interpreted. So far as doing business 
 under it was concerned during these twenty years, the business 
 man felt thai they were in a position which was described by 
 that famous revivalist at the beginning of the last century, 
 Lorenzo Dow. He preached a sermon in Peekskill, which was 
 a strong Calvinistic neighborhood, the echo of which still 
 lingers in the hills and valleys. In this he said in regard to 
 predestination that its practical effect was "You will and you 
 won't ; you shall and you shan't ; you can and you can't ; you 
 will be damned if you do, and you will be damned if you 
 don't." Happily, now the Supreme Court of the United States 
 has shown that it has more courage and more wisdom than 
 Congress, and has declared that the shackles shall be taken 
 away from legitimate and rightful business by interpreting the 
 law according to the light of reason, which means the common 
 law, and so we get back to the foundation of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers. 
 
 It is unfortunate for business that we not only legislate 
 after the horse is stolen, but we permit and encourage first 
 the stealing of the horse. Take the formation of the steel 
 trust, for instance, and I am neither advocating nor defending 
 that corporation. There never was so much publicity with 
 any business. Its magnitude attracted the attention and fired 
 the imagination not only of this country but of the world. 
 The newspapers daily had columns describing the processes 
 of organization, the plants belonging to other corporations and' 
 to individuals and firms which were bought and how much 
 was paid for them and what the profits were to the seller and 
 the purchasers. Even Mr. Carnegie, going out of business as 
 he was by that merger, suspended his usual rule of reticence 
 and told the world how much he received for his interests and 
 what, at five per cent, the income would be per year. The 
 subscriptions to the syndicate were public and universally 
 understood and largely participated in. There were no protests 
 in the press; there was not a voice raised in Congress ; the judi- 
 cial machinery of the government was motionless, the calen- 
 dars of the courts were clean of law suits, and the Sher- 
 man Law was on the statute books the same as it is to-day.
 
 47 
 
 Now after this great business machinery has got into working 
 order and the stocks are distributed among hundreds of thou- 
 sands of investors, and nearly three hundred thousand laborers 
 are dependent for the living of themselves and their families 
 upon its operations, it is discovered that it is under the con- 
 demnation of the Sherman Law and must be disbanded. 
 
 A Yankee, with Puritan ancestors, who was a stockholder 
 in the Standard Oil Company, came to me the other day for 
 advice. He said, "I hold ten shares in the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany. I now discover that I was at that time a monopolist and 
 a bad citizen. The company has been purged of sin by a reor- 
 ganization under the direction of the court. It has been divided 
 into thirty-seven different corporations. The interests of the 
 stockholders are widely different in each of these corporations. 
 I have received a notice from one of them that I have a one 
 hundred and seventy-four three hundred and five one thou- 
 sandth interest in a share of stock in that corporation, and 
 upon it they have declared a dividend of two dollars a share. 
 Now, I can't figure out what ought to be the size of the check 
 which they will send me or whether it will be right when it 
 arrives. The only thing that I do know is that now I am an 
 honest man and patriotic citizen." 
 
 My friends, the spirit of Pilgrim liberty is that it recog- 
 nizes the rewards which come to ability, industry and thrift 
 and has no fear of bigness, unless that bigness is used to 
 monopolize, to restrain or to oppress the little fellow. The 
 true way to meet that situation, the spirit of Pilgrim liberty 
 in which it can be met and must be met if it is to be properly 
 solved, has already been demonstrated in the treatment of the 
 railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission at Wash- 
 ington and the Public Service Commission in the State of 
 New York. They do not disband the corporations and create 
 confusion, they do not disturb the business world by uncer- 
 tainties, but vested with the supreme power of the people, 
 they prevent oppression, wrongdoing and favoritism, and pro- 
 mote publicity and enforce a square deal for everybody. The 
 watchword of the future must be this demonstrated principle 
 of government regulation of all great industries.
 
 48 
 
 The safety valve of free institutions is discussion, pub- 
 licity and free speech. 
 
 I read recently an account of a meeting in some western 
 city of a convention in which they complained by resolution 
 that the west and the south have not a proper place in Ameri- 
 can history because the Yankees have written all the histories. 
 Well, why? Because they could write histories which people 
 would read. Ink and paper is just as cheap and as plentiful 
 in every part of the country as in New England or New York. 
 Culture is not wholly confined to New England. They have a 
 Browning Society in Chicago. There used to be a weekly 
 luncheon at Parker's Hotel in Boston and around the table 
 were gathered Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 Longfellow, Whittier, Judge Rockwell Hoar, Theodore Parker, 
 Hawthorne. The contributions of these authors have made 
 American literature classic and apparently they have no suc- 
 cessors. I cannot help thinking that environment and tradition 
 had much to do with their development. 
 
 Nothing so promotes and accelerates the expansion of a 
 good idea as persecution. I remember a public meeting in 
 New York addressed by Wendell Phillips. On account of 
 enormous trade interests with the South and prejudice against 
 the negro, there was very little sentiment anywhere in the 
 North for abolition of slavery. Wendell Phillips was the 
 greatest orator to whom I ever listened, and I have heard 
 most of them. Captain Rynders, a Tammany brave of that 
 period, organized a mob to break up that meeting, and suc- 
 ceeded. The story of that riot and the suppression of Phillips' 
 speech promoted a discussion of slavery all over the country 
 which advanced by more than a half century Lincoln's Procla- 
 mation of Emancipation. 
 
 There is not much popular feeling in the United States 
 on behalf of this movement for peace and arbitration, so hap- 
 pily and wisely inaugurated by President Taft. We are too 
 near our war of sentiment for Cuba, and too much absorbed 
 in our business affairs and too distant from any possibility 
 of attack upon ourselves for the people to give much thought 
 to the subject, but when four hundred naturalized citizens, 
 inspired by European and not American politics, broke up the
 
 49 
 
 meeting in Carnegie Hall the other evening they gave an 
 irresistible impulse to the demand of the American people for 
 the ratification of these arbitration treaties. The men who 
 broke up that meeting with a riot and suppressed the speeches 
 of our most eminent citizens failed to understand the true 
 meaning of American liberty, free speech and open discussion. 
 A man complained to his neighbor that another neighbor 
 greeted him with a slap on the breast that -broke the cigars in 
 his pocket, and he was prejudiced against that sort of affection, 
 but he said, "I'll fix him so he will never do it again. I 
 have replaced the cigars with two sticks of dynamite." 
 
 The dynamic force of American liberty is before the 
 world most conspicuously to-day in the young American 
 Shuster, who has been appointed treasurer of the dying king- 
 dom of Persia. The great powers were pacifying Persia 
 apparently to divide her territory when her difficulties became 
 insoluble, but this young American makes a contract with 
 Persia to manage her finances, and soon finds that the country 
 is rich enough with stability to pay its debts and have orderly 
 government. That means a revival of the Empire of Cyrus 
 the Great under the auspices of a twenty-eight-year-old Ameri- 
 can. The Russian bear growls, the Cossacks occupy the 
 country, the Czar's ministers say "Shuster must quit or war," 
 and then 'Shuster, without army, without Cossacks, simply 
 says, "I stand by my contract, and in America such things are 
 respected." In the Persian is revived a spark of patriotism 
 which has lain dormant for five hundred years and he says, 
 "We stand by Shuster no matter what happens," and the 
 English public, who when fully informed admire courage and 
 fair play, are gradually getting behind Shuster. 
 
 The cable in this evening's papers is that the Russian 
 Army has forced Persia to dismiss Shuster. It will do more 
 than anything else to keep alive national spirit in Persia and 
 win for her the sympathy of the world. 
 
 Now, my friends, how much have we changed? During 
 the Revolutionary War the Duke de Lauzun arrived in 
 Lebanon, Connecticut, with his Hussars, a brilliant company 
 composed of young French noblemen. His Lieutenants were 
 the Marquis de Chastellux and the Baron de Montesquieu. It
 
 50 
 
 was the home of Governor Trumbull. They were there for 
 months. The Yankee girls got up for them picnics, sleigh 
 rides, toboggan slides, skating and every form of New England 
 amusement. The French noblemen enjoyed every minute of 
 it intensely, except .that at the banquets Governor Trumbull, 
 according to the Puritan custom, insisted on a half hour of 
 grace before meat. The curious thing about it all is that though 
 these young Frenchmen were the most attractive men of their 
 time and in brilliant uniform and made love as the Yankee 
 never could have done, they did not capture a single American 
 girl. These Yankee girls had only one absorbing idea and 
 that was the success of the revolution and the formation of the 
 Republic, and they became the mothers of the future governors 
 and legislators and congressmen and judges of New England 
 and of the country. The only difference if conditions were, 
 reversed to our time would be that the entertainments would 
 have a different style and be equally enjoyable, but the girls 
 would marry the noblemen. At the same time Sheldon's cavalry 
 passed through Litchfield, Connecticut, on its way to join 
 General Washington. The Reverend Judah Champion imme- 
 diately opened the Litchfield Church and invited the cavalry 
 in and offered a prayer which he was so proud of that he 
 recorded it in the register. It is too long to repeat entire, but 
 I will give you its spirit. At that time General Howe was on 
 the ocean with reinforcements for General Clinton in New 
 York. The minister petitioned: 
 
 Oh! Lord, we view with terror and dismay the enemies 
 of Thy holy religion. Wilt Thou send storm and tempest 
 to toss them upon the sea and to overwhelm them in the 
 mighty deep and scatter them to the uttermost parts of the 
 earth ! But, peradventure, should any escape Thy vengeance, 
 collect them again together, Oh ! Lord, as in the bottom of Thy 
 hand, and let Thy lightnings play upon them. We beseech 
 Thee, moreover, that Thou do gird up the loins of these, Thy 
 servants, who are going forth to fight Thy battles. Make 
 them strong men, that one shall chase a thousand, two shall 
 put ten thousand to flight! 
 
 If conditions should be the same in our time would our 
 clergy repeat that prayer? I think not. Instead they might
 
 have the same feeling, but they would pray for speedy and 
 honorable peace and a recognition of the efforts of the Red 
 Cross Society. 
 
 Gentlemen, to-night the old and the new, the founders 
 and the descendants, commune together. We differ only from 
 our ancestors in the changed conditions of the times, but. 
 happily for the country, for its present and its future, the ideas 
 of the Pilgrims are still a constructive force in American 
 progress. The schoolhouse and the church are not yet 
 divorced, but they go together wherever American citizens 
 settle and organize communities. We welcome the stranger 
 fleeing from oppression as our fathers did, but now with the 
 government land exhausted and our population increasing we 
 ask that the barriers be raised higher and higher that there 
 may be no contamination of American citizenship.
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Annual Dinner of the Society of the 
 Genesee, at the Hotel Knickerbocker, New 
 York City, on Saturday Evening, January 
 20, 1912. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : This meeting with the 
 Society of the Genesee is charming both in its relations to the 
 present and the past. In my own varied experience I have 
 found that more pleasure can be had out of a political stump- 
 ing tour than from any other exercises. For years it was my 
 habit to take my vacation in this way, and start out to inter- 
 view and inform my fellow citizens of my views of the policies 
 necessary for the safety of the country from the early autumn 
 until the frost was on the pumpkin. Sometimes indeed I have 
 spoken in the early morning to a crowd gathered about the 
 platform of the car in the biting air of Northern New York, 
 with the snow beating upon us all. It was not cold enough, 
 however, to equal the experience of one of Charles Lever's 
 stories who, in making a speech to his shipmates and to the 
 Esquimaux, found that his words froze and fell upon the 
 ground as they were uttered until he stood up to his chin in 
 a bank of his own eloquence. 
 
 But the great value of this contact with the people is the 
 knowledge it gives one of the varying conditions in his State 
 of the different ideas of hospitality and conditions in the 
 commonwealth. It is the best school in the world to study 
 human nature. I have been a guest on these trips in the pala- 
 tial home of the banker and the manufacturer, in the farm 
 house of the farmer and the cottage of the artisan, the hos- 
 pitality of each making the welcome just as agreeable and the 
 hospitality just as enjoyable in one place as the other. It is 
 these trips, continued at intervals for half a century, which 
 have made me believe that the most delightful section through 
 which to travel is the Genesee Valley. There is a finish about 
 its farms ; there is a comfort about its homes ; there is a gen- 
 eral air of contentment and prosperity which is full of inspira- 
 tion. There is a genuineness in its hospitality which leaves
 
 54 
 
 the stump speaker with delightful recollections of people who 
 have entertained him which he rejoices to recall and can never 
 forget. 
 
 But, then, every section of the State has its peculiarities 
 and subjects in which it is most interested. Along the north- 
 ern counties, it is politics; by the Hudson, it is scenery 
 and land speculation ; through the Mohawk Valley, it is manu- 
 factures ; along the southern tier, it is politics again, but in the 
 Genesee Valley when the public exercises are over and the 
 intimate conversation occurs between the close of the meeting 
 and retiring to bed it is generally the old families of the neigh- 
 borhood. I became familiar with the characteristics, peculiari- 
 ties, distinguishing traits and achievements of all the pioneer 
 families of the Genesee Valley, and the narrator always claimed 
 to be one of them. The idea of old families which has furnished 
 so much material for the reformer and the jester is that the 
 best of them is below ground. This, however, applies in no 
 respect to the old families of Western New York. A royal 
 personage once said to me, "I am told in regard to your coun- 
 trymen and countrywomen that I may recognize these because 
 of their family and others must be barred because they have 
 no family. Families with us date away back to early historical 
 times from achievements in arms, from domains won by valor, 
 from leaders of the crusades and from an unbroken ancestry 
 of nobility running back hundreds of years before the discov- 
 ery of America, while for the life of me I cannot make any 
 distinction among you Americans, except to the extent to 
 which you are companionable and agreeable. On that basis 
 1 love to meet and to entertain your countrymen and country- 
 women and enjoy their talent, their wit, their humor, their 
 conversational power, the agreeableness of your men and the 
 charm of your women." But there is an old family distinction 
 with us of which we may be proud. It is of the pioneers who 
 settled among the Indian confederacy of the Six Nations and 
 carved out of the wilderness the estates which by their energy 
 and ability they turned into productive farms which added to 
 the wealth and prosperity of the commonwealth. With them 
 the rule of three generations from shirt-sleeve to shirt-sleeve 
 did not prevail. They reared large families of energetic sons
 
 55 
 
 and of spirited and fascinating daughters. While some re- 
 mained upon the farms, others built up the cities and the vil- 
 lages, developed the water powers and created manufactories 
 or went into the professions and became ministers, doctors, 
 lawyers, judges, journalists, legislators and members of Con- 
 gresses and the Cabinets of Presidents. 
 
 I remember being entertained by the local banker in one 
 of- these charming places along the Genesee nearly fifty years 
 ago. His conversation was of these pioneer families. He said, 
 "One of the leaders recently died and it is a great loss to our 
 community." He was original in every way and his originality 
 was one of the sources of his great success. I went in to see a 
 widow of another one of these pioneers, and she commenced 
 lamenting the loss of her friend. She said, "You do not know 
 how I mi'ss him now that nearly every one of the people with 
 whom I was intimate are dead and gone. He used to come 
 in here nearly every evening and place his chair in front of the 
 fireplace and put his feet on the mantelpiece and light his pipe 
 and talk and sleep and snore and be so sociable." 
 
 But what would the Genesee Valley be without its capital 
 at Rochester, in many respects the most beautiful city in the 
 world? The sons and daughters of these pioneers, who had 
 been brought up with plenty of fresh air upon the farm when 
 they established their homes at Rochester, made that city 
 unique in so laying out their lots and building their houses that 
 there was land and a garden about each residence. "The city 
 in the country, and the country in the city" is the evidence of 
 the genius of the founders of Rochester. I always loved in 
 these campaign excursions to wind up in your city. There 
 was something about the dinner beforehand, with the leading 
 men of all parties, in the responsiveness of the audience and 
 in the reception and the supper afterward which made the 
 entertainment the crowning event of the campaign. 
 
 The natural pride of the Rochester citizens is always 
 delightful. I remember as we stood on the bank of the gorge 
 where the Genesee flows, when it flows, that the local enthusi- 
 ast said, "Here is a gorge finer than Niagara. Here is a 
 waterfall of greater height than Niagara. It would in all 
 respects be superior to Niagara if it had. water," This re-
 
 56 
 
 minded me of a story which was told me by that most delight- 
 ful of wits and raconteurs, the late Mr. William M. Evarts. 
 He said that stopping at Cape Cod one summer the guests were 
 always complaining of the fishy flavor of the ducks, and .the 
 indignant landlord finally said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the 
 Cape Cod duck is a finer duck than the canvasback; its 
 plumage is handsomer; it weighs more; it can fly higher; it 
 can dive deeper, and it would taste just as good if it would 
 eat the wild celery, but, damn him, he won't eat it." 
 
 It is the habit of the young graduate to take Rome for 
 his comparisons in all civic addresses. So, what is the differ- 
 ence between Rome, New York, and Rochester? It took 
 ancient Rome five hundred years to annex Attica, to con- 
 quer Palmyra and lead her Queen Zenobia at the chariot 
 wheels of the Emperor, to have its legions tramp over the 
 plains of Ilion and to make contributary to its greatness 
 Syracuse and Utica. Ancient Rome made these conquests 
 by the sacrifice of millions of lives and slaughter and de- 
 vastation which make the most ghastly volumes of history, 
 but Rochester has, within fifty years almost, by methods of 
 peace and regeneration, drawn to her marts of trade and her 
 centers of commerce the production and the citizens of Attica 
 and Palmyra and Ilion, and even drawn from the commercial 
 walls which surround Syracuse and Utica a part of their 
 commerce and their trade and annexed to her triumphal car 
 even Rome itself. Happily the engineer who surveyed the 
 wilderness of western New York was a classical scholar. He 
 saw in imagination the glories of the ancient world reproduced 
 in America. So he dotted his map with these classic names 
 for future cities, and they are all within a hundred miles of 
 Rochester. 
 
 Rochester has a distinct connection with my relations to 
 one of the episodes and tragedies of American public life. I 
 allude to the candidacy and the tragic death of Horace 
 Greeley. I had retired from politics in 1872 with the deter- 
 mination to make up in my profession what I had lost in office 
 when Mr. Greeley, who was my neighbor in the country, came 
 one night to my house. He said, "Chauncey, I have been nom- 
 inated for President by the Liberal Republicans. I cannot win
 
 57 
 
 except I get the indorsement of the Democrats. I am told 
 that if I can demonstrate, which I believe to be true, that the 
 majority of the Republican party is with me, that then I will 
 receive the Democratic indorsement and will be elected Presi- 
 dent by the largest vote ever cast since Washington. In order 
 to demonstrate my Republican following, my friends have 
 organized a mass meeting at Rochester which they say will be 
 entirely Republican, and will include all the leaders of that 
 overwhelmingly Republican section of our State, Western New 
 York. Now, it is necessary to have a speaker of State and 
 National reputation, and they have selected you." "Well," I 
 said, "Mr. Greeley, I have retired from politics ; besides, it goes 
 tremendously against me to break with my party, and I never 
 have done it." He said, "Chauncey, I have supported you 
 every time you were elected to the Legislature and while there 
 and while Secretary of State and in all your ambitions with 
 all my strength in the Tribune, and I did not think I would 
 be treated in this way." That was too much for me. I said, 
 "Very well, Mr. Greeley, I will go." The meeting was held 
 in that auditorium with the bes: acoustics in the country, 
 Corinthian Hall. The crowds jammed the streets for blocks. 
 The meeting was presided over by Judge Henry R. Selden of 
 the Court of Appeals, one of the best loved Republicans in 
 our commonwealth. There were a hundred Vice-Presidents 
 and a hundred Secretaries whom I had met in every campaign 
 since '56 as the Republican leaders in all the counties in West- 
 ern New York. The meeting was such a phenomenal success 
 that Mr. Greeley 's friends secured without trouble the Demo- 
 cratic indorsement for his nomination as a Liberal Republican. 
 In October, North Carolina went Republican. In November, 
 all of these men went back to their allegiance to the Republican 
 candidate. General Grant was elected by the largest majority 
 known up to that period. That was the first progressive move- 
 ment in the great parties of our country since the organization 
 of the government. History so frequently repeats itself that 
 what happened once is most likely to occur again. I com- 
 mend this instance to the cheerful consideration of our guest 
 of honor here to-night, President Taft. 
 
 When I recall your attractive city, the exquisite beauty of
 
 58 
 
 your valley, and particularly the homelikeness of your villages 
 and farms, I wonder how so many of you escaped and came 
 to New York. Is it the fascination of Wall Street, or the 
 attractions of the Great White Way? I know from my own 
 experience as a country boy that there is no escape once within 
 the sphere of their influence, of the lure of the crowd and 
 the lights of the Metropolis. But I think that you rather have 
 come here upon philanthropic missions in order that the lambs 
 of our city may be fed upon the invigorating fodder the 
 stocks and bonds of your trolley, your water power and your 
 electric light companies. 
 
 We are here of all politics, and of no politics, but as a 
 retired statesman calmly surveying the field and holding the 
 scales in equipoise for the present, I must say that it seems 
 to me inexcusable cruelty that the peace-loving, distinguished 
 and erudite college professor Woodrow Wilson should be 
 assailed at the same time on either side by two of the most 
 militant colonels in the country, Colonel Roosevelt and Colonel 
 Bryan. 
 
 We are business men here to-night, away from its cares 
 and responsibilities to dwell a while in imagination in our 
 rural homes. As business men, without regards to politics, 
 present or future, with the President of the United States here 
 as the guest of honor, we can thank him for many things 
 which he has done in the best interests of the country. Upon 
 the tariff rests all our industries. Any disturbance of it is 
 sure to lead to uncertainty and uncertainty ends in panics, 
 and yet in the changing conditions of our industrial life, 
 changes of the tariff are inevitable and must come. I have 
 gone through one struggle in the Senate in tariff framing 
 or tariff measure, and know that it is not a scientific re- 
 vision of schedules but a game of chance and governed 
 largely by the ability and the power of the various interests 
 of the country. We can thank the President that in spite of 
 the opposition of high protectionists and of free traders he 
 has secured a Tariff Board of experts; that he has appointed 
 such a board without regard to political associations or affilia- 
 tions, and that now in the revision of the tariff we can have the 
 recommendations of this expert commission upon different
 
 59 
 
 schedules as the question arises instead of a general disturb- 
 ance of the whole business of the country upon every item of 
 manufacture and production. As business men we are inter- 
 ested in finance and currency. We know that millions are 
 locked up in secret places in the homes of the people because 
 they fear the banks, and there that currency becomes the prey 
 of robbers and of fires. We know also that foreigners work- 
 ing here and not understanding our institutions transmit many 
 more millions of currency a year to their homes. We can 
 thank President Taft that by unremitting effort and against 
 the objections of localities that want every dollar kept where 
 it was produced he has secured the Postal Savings Banks, 
 which will not only aid the people, but keep at the service of 
 the government millions, mounting higher every year, which 
 before were never available. 
 
 We have had upon the statute book for twenty years the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Law. It has received various interpreta- 
 tions. The lawyers could not agree upon it and business men 
 were in doubt as to whether they were violating the law or 
 living up to its requirements. With the ability of a great 
 lawyer, with the calmness of a great judge, with the courage 
 of a great executive, the President has forced through the 
 courts to an ultimate decision from our highest tribunal an 
 interpretation of the Sherman Anti-Trust law, which is prac- 
 ticable and sensible. Now business knows what it can do and 
 what it cannot do, and business does not care so. much what 
 it is prevented from doing or what it is permitted to do so 
 long as it knows the law. We of all parties can thank the 
 President, also that in no respect has he shown so much that 
 lie is the President of the whole people as in the selections 
 which he has made for that highest tribunal upon which 
 depends more than in any other department of our government 
 the strength and stability of our institutions and the prosperity 
 of the country. I mean the Supreme Court. He has had 
 the courage, because he was best fitted for the place, to make 
 a Democrat and a Confederate soldier Chief Justice. He 
 has had the courage and open-mindedness to place both Demo- 
 crats and Republicans upon that bench, governed only by their 
 qualifications and their ability to fill this great place.
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Celebration of the Treaty of Peace 
 between France and the United States, made 
 February 6, 1778, being the First Treaty 
 Ever Made by the United States, on Tues- 
 day, February 6, 1912, at Cafe Martin, New 
 York City. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : It is characteristic of 
 the dramatic gift peculiarly possessed by the French that you 
 should gather here to-night to bridge the interval of one hun- 
 dred and twenty-four years between 1778 and 1912. The in- 
 terval comprises the best history of the world. It has con- 
 tributed more to civil and religious liberty, to the elevation of 
 peoples, to popular sovereignty, to advancement in the arts and 
 sciences by invention and discovery, than all the preceding ages 
 of recorded time. 
 
 For our purpose to-night, and I think legitimately for con- 
 clusions anywhere, the inception of this marvelous age can be 
 traced to 1778. We touch the button, and the cinematograph 
 begins to develop the figures of the immortals. There pass in 
 review Washington and Lafayette, Rochambeau and General 
 Greene, de Grasse and John Paul Jones, while standing beyond 
 are the French Foreign Minister de Vergennes and Benjamin 
 Franklin preparing the treaty which made possible the inde- 
 pendence of the American Colonies and the creation of the 
 Republic of the United States. We turn from the films of the 
 cinematograph to the pages of history. All Europe at that 
 time was governed by the principle of absolutism in the throne. 
 While in the American Colonies the struggle for two years 
 had been characterized by a succession of defeats for the 
 patriots, the loss of the Atlantic seaboard, with New York and 
 Philadelphia ; the flight of the Continental Congress to sit first 
 in one village and then another ; the credit of the young nation 
 hopelessly impaired, its currency worthless, its treasury empty, 
 its munitions of war almost exhausted and the army under
 
 62 
 
 Washington encamped at Valley Forge, the blood-stained 
 tracks of the feet of the shoeless soldiers upon the snow illus- 
 trating the desperate state of affairs. While the victory at 
 Saratoga the year before had helped us with many continental 
 nations and had greatly encouraged our people, yet without 
 assistance from abroad the revolution was practically ended. 
 The story of nations as well as of individuals demonstrates that 
 God in his infinite wisdom tries men by fire before trusting 
 them with power. The trial had demonstrated the stuff of 
 which our forefathers were made and showed that capacity for 
 sacrifice without which there can be neither manhood nor 
 patriotism. Said Lord North to Benjamin Franklin, our com- 
 missioner at that time in London, "How can so wise a man as 
 you advise your countrymen to engage in this hopeless revolu- 
 tion when we have the power to burn down all your towns and 
 destroy your industries?" Franklin answered, "My Lord, all 
 I possess in the world is in houses in those towns. You can 
 set fire to them and burn them to the ground to-morrow, and 
 you will only strengthen my determination to advise my coun- 
 trymen to fight if you continue in your present policy." That 
 was the spirit which reached France and brought about the 
 famous treaty of February, 1778. The effect of that treaty 
 was extraordinary. The English Cabinet heard of it and im- 
 mediately sent proposals of the most liberal kind to Governor 
 Tryon of New York to be presented to the Continental Con- 
 gress. The Governor sent them to General Washington with a 
 request that they be presented to Congress and also placed in 
 the hands of every soldier in the army. That was so trans- 
 parent an effort to sap the patriotism of the Continental troops 
 by the prospect of peace that Washington, confident on his side, 
 wrote back to the Governor, "Every soldier has a copy of 
 your proposition and Congress is considering it." Congress 
 said to Washington, "What do you advise?" Washington's 
 answer was characteristic: "No negotiations and no com- 
 munications until the army and the fleet are withdrawn and 
 our independence recognized." The treaty with France arrived 
 and was immediately ratified by the Continental Congress. 
 The French under Count de Grasse appeared in our waters 
 and the French army, under Rochambeau, was soon afoot
 
 63 
 
 on our land. Munitions of war were furnished and a credit 
 supplied by France which brought the revolution to a success- 
 ful close two years afterward. 
 
 Just now there is a wide spirit of agitation, fomented by 
 flaming oratory, against leaders and organization. We are 
 told that progress has been impeded, delayed and at times para- 
 lyzed by reliance at different periods upon so-called great men. 
 There is nothing new under the sun. It is only another pic- 
 ture, suited to another period, by a twist of the kaleidoscope 
 with the same old glass inside. We had in this very year, 1778, 
 an experiment. It is known in history as the "Conway Cabal." 
 It had its origin in hatred of the demonstrated superiority in 
 every element of leadership of General Washington. It pro- 
 posed to subject him to the referendum and recall. Its pur- 
 pose was to put in his place General Gates and a staff com- 
 posed of the malcontents. Gates, as was proven when subjected 
 to trial, was a monumental egotist of showy but not substantial 
 ability. The battle of Saratoga, which gave him his fame, had 
 been won by the careful preparations of General Schuyler 
 (who was removed by the machinations of Gates) and by the 
 desperate bravery of Benedict Arnold. If the conspiracy had 
 succeeded, and the referendum and the recall had removed 
 Washington and put Gates and Conway and Lee in supreme 
 charge, we would not be here to-night. But, happily, it failed, 
 and the whole world now recognizes that there was one su- 
 preme leader who could have carried us safely through the 
 revolution, and that was George Washington. 
 
 Our country has reached its present position of peace, 
 power and happiness because trained statesmen have been 
 deemed by our people to be better fitted to enact our laws 
 with the deliberation, the study and experience which are 
 the characteristics of representative government, than to have 
 them made by the passion of the hour and the voice of the 
 agitator willing to fire the Temple of Ephesus if it may lead 
 to power and fame for himself. 
 
 But how came France, absolutely ruled by aristocratic 
 power, to give assistance at this critical hour to a revolt against 
 kingly authority? Again comes to the mind the man of born 
 leadership. This time it is the man of ideas. No man con-
 
 64 
 
 tributed so much to the creation of government as it is to-day 
 as Jean Jacques Rousseau, a genius with marvelous gifts. 
 His teachings proved that no matter how wonderful the power 
 or attractive the presentation of false ideas 
 
 "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again ; 
 The eternal years of God are hers ; 
 While error, wounded, writhes with pain, 
 And dies among its worshipers." 
 
 Rousseau caught on to the questioning spirit of the age 
 and presented atheism in more fascinating garb than ever 
 before, but the resistless force of the truths of Christianity 
 crushed his crusade. He brought all his powers to the propa- 
 gation of the doctrine of free love and the lack of obligation 
 in the marriage tie, but the eternal foundations of the family 
 remained unchanged. He proclaimed the truth, then unknown 
 and unrecognized, that government can exist only by consent 
 of the governed. This was the dynamite which had lain dor- 
 mant for ages. It led to the French Revolution, until it worked 
 its way to the creation of republican France of to-day. The 
 court of Louis, tired of frivolity and wearied of gayety, turned 
 to this idea of Rousseau as a toy to give freshness to fagged 
 intellects and interest to vapid conversation, but in many minds 
 it found lodgment, even at the court, and sent Lafayette to the 
 United States. But there was another figure whose presence, 
 whose equipment, whose marvelous sense, helped beyond de- 
 scription Rousseau's idea at the court, and that was Benjamin 
 Franklin. Printer, writer, statesman, Quaker, he is the most 
 picturesque character of this period of revolution. The prin- 
 ciple of non-resistance which lies at the foundation of the 
 faith of the Quaker is often the most dangerous weapon of 
 offense and defense. When Franklin, representing the colo- 
 nies in London, was summoned before the Privy Council, Lord 
 Widdeburne assailed him with abuse, ribaldry, and insult, 
 which was received by the peers in the Privy Council with 
 loud shouts of laughter and approval. Franklin, who had 
 been doing wonderful service in the effort to reconcile the 
 difference between the mother country and the colonies, and
 
 65 
 
 had met every rebuff with explanation of the conditions exist- 
 ing in America, which turned out afterward to be true, felt that 
 he had this time been pressed beyond endurance. Instead of 
 fighting or giving insult for insult he simply remarked that he 
 had just bought a court suit, but he had never put it on and he 
 would never wear it until he felt assured of the absolute inde- 
 pendence of the colonies. He went home and did more than 
 any other man to bring the colonies together to act in unison 
 for the creation of an independent government. He laid the 
 suit away in camphor, but ten years afterward, when he had 
 won the support of France, he wore it at the French court in 
 celebration of the treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, 
 which had just been signed and which assured the indepen- 
 dence of the colonies. 
 
 Franklin was welcomed by the philosophers, then popular 
 at court, because he was the discoverer of electricity and had 
 brought lightning from the clouds. He was welcomed by the 
 ladies of the court because, though seventy years of age, he 
 was himself a dynamo of resistless attraction. The young 
 wits made fun of him ; the young litterateurs caricatured him ; 
 the fops made him the butt of their sallies at the suppers and 
 over the wine, but found to their amazement that this man of 
 three score and ten in the tournament of love had unhorsed 
 them all, and all the women were anxious to receive from him 
 the crown of love and beauty. Franklin, the printer's appren- 
 tice, found his reward and fame in his own time and, illus- 
 trating the dynamic power and resistless force of the idea 
 which we are considering, Bunyan, the tinker, after more than 
 a century, goes from Bedford Jail to Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Now, I said there was nothing new under the sun. The 
 Continental Congress were so elated by the treaty and the 
 arrival of the French forces by land and sea that they turned 
 aside from the war measures which had been their sole occu- 
 pation to send this message to the Legislatures of the several 
 States, on October 12, 1778, advising them to take measures 
 for the suppression of theatrical entertainments, horse racing, 
 gaming and such other diversion as were producing dissipa- 
 tion and general depravity of principles and morals. It is 
 needless to say none of the Legislatures acted upon this
 
 66 
 
 advice. General Washington, after he retired from the Presi- 
 dency, left Mount Vernon to attend a horse race at Phila- 
 delphia at which he had entered one of his blooded steeds. 
 Theatrical entertainments are now more popular than ever, but 
 gambling has been placed under the ban of the law, and, in 
 our State, horse racing was abolished two years ago. 
 
 Another illustration : The movement for the emancipa- 
 tion of women, beginning in laws affecting their separate prop- 
 erty in 1848, has continued until now, there is a wide and 
 almost successful effort to grant them equal rights with men 
 in the suffrage, in office holding, in jury duty, and, in Ger- 
 many this year in militarism, and in every duty of the citizen. 
 It was in this pregnant twelve months which constitute 1778 
 that at the Battle of Monmouth Molly Pitcher was carrying 
 water to her husband, who was a gunner of a battery of one 
 piece of artillery. He was killed and the lieutenant proposed 
 to remove the piece out of danger, when Molly said, "I can do 
 everything that my husband could," and she performed her 
 husband's duties with that old gun better than he could have 
 done. The next morning she was taken before General Wash- 
 ington, her wonderful act was reported and its influence upon 
 the fate of the battle, which was a victory, and Washington 
 made her at once a sergeant in the army to stand on the rolls 
 in that rank as long as she lived. 
 
 Eloquence has been exhausted and poetry has received its 
 finest inspiration in portraying the heroism of La Tour 
 D'Auvergne, the first grenadier of France, who fell on his 
 one hundredth battlefield, having won as a private soldier 
 the title of the bravest of the brave. He won more a decree 
 that forever at the roll call his name should be called and a 
 sergeant should step forward and say, "Dead upon the field 
 of honor." 
 
 It seems appropriate now for us to place among the im- 
 mortals and in the Hall of Fame this only woman sergeant of 
 the United States Army who won her title fighting for her 
 country upon the field of battle and who is the evangel of 
 woman's rights and woman's enfranchisement. 
 
 Our celebration of this treaty here to-night, with the pres- 
 ence of the distinguished Ambassador of France, has its charm
 
 67 
 
 and significance. But the first celebration of the treaty was 
 more dramatic and more significant. Every American school- 
 boy knows the story of the horrors of that winter of famine 
 and of cold at Valley Forge. The spring and summer make 
 of that beautiful valley a Paradise on earth. The treaty was 
 ratified on the second of May by the Congress, and on the sixth 
 it was celebrated at Valley Forge by the Continental Army 
 with a grand banquet, the army having come out of the winter 
 of despair into the bright sunshine not only of hope, but of 
 certainty through the friendship of France. The feasts in 
 those days began at twelve or three o'clock, and that for a 
 century afterward was the dinner hour in the United States 
 in the best circles. There were toasts and speeches. They 
 could afford to waste ammunition in salute, because plenty was 
 coming from France. At five o'clock Washington retired with 
 his staff. The cheers followed him for a quarter of a mile and 
 were frequently returned by the Commander-in-Chief and the 
 officers wheeling about and responding with cheers. 'The 
 words shouted by the army and the toasts of that day have, 
 happily, been preserved. The first toast responded to with the 
 wildest enthusiasm was "Long live the King of France," 
 "Long live friendly European powers," "Huzza! for the 
 American States," and then, the whole army rising, "Long 
 live General Washington !" 
 
 There is a growing feeling in our country against the con- 
 tinuance of ambassadors and ministers abroad. It is alleged 
 that with the cable all critical matters are discussed and set- 
 tled between the foreign ministers of the several countries 
 without the intervention of our representatives. I do not .think 
 that ambassadors will ever be abolished. The impersonal can 
 never take the place of the personal. Everything in the end 
 comes back to the man and his fitness for the particular duty 
 which he has assigned to him. The ambassador is the repre- 
 sentative not only of his government but of his people. He 
 has the power, and if he possesses the ability, he promotes as 
 the cold type of the formal message never could, friendship 
 and good fellowship between the people of his country and the 
 people of the country to which he is accredited. The ambas- 
 sador generally represents his period in his own land. In
 
 68 
 
 Washington's time France sent here Citizen Genet ; in our 
 day, Ambassador Jusserand. Citizen Genet represented the 
 spirit of the terror in the French Revolution. He proceeded 
 to stir up the country by speeches at banquets and town meet- 
 ings in favor of an alliance with France against Great Britain 
 in the long journey that he made before he arrived at Phila- 
 delphia and presented his credentials. He demanded of Wash- 
 ington an alliance, offensive and defensive, and a declaration 
 of war against Great Britain. Washington saw that such an 
 act at that time, with France fully engaged in a battle with all 
 Europe, would only lead to forces coming over from Canada 
 and ships entering our ports when our young Republic had 
 no money, very little credit and had been exhausted by the 
 Revolutionary War. But the memory of the friendship of 
 France stirred up popular enthusiasm for Citizen Genet's prop- 
 osition. When he found Washington could not be moved, he 
 tried a referendum to the American people and a recall. If at 
 that time these two propositions had been in existence there is 
 no doubt but what by an enormous majority war would have 
 been declared against England, an alliance would have been 
 made with the leaders of the French Revolution and Washing- 
 ton would have been recalled from the presidency, and the 
 most violent of men placed in the presidential chair. How- 
 ever, the referendum and recall had not then materialized into 
 laws and Washington summarily dismissed the minister by 
 demanding his immediate recall. Within six months the whole 
 country, with greater unanimity even, had recovered from the 
 craze which Citizen Genet had created and stood solidly behind 
 the policy of General Washington. 
 
 A century and a quarter have passed and the French 
 Republic has here again a citizen who represents the genius of 
 the institutions of his country, the aspirations of his people 
 and their sentiments toward us. He carries his mission to the 
 President. If he succeeds both nations rejoice. If he fails, he 
 has not attempted to recall by a referendum either Roosevelt 
 or Taft. But his failures are only delays. In the end he always 
 wins. Writing histories in English which become classics of 
 our literature, and speaking in our tongue, with the eloquence, 
 aptness and finish which make his addresses a model for the
 
 69 
 
 American student, Ambassador Jusserand is that happy com- 
 bination which is the supremest result of gifted diplomacy 
 an American in America and yet always a Frenchman. 
 
 A living memorial of President Taft's administration will 
 be the arbitration treaties he so happily conceived. For their 
 acceptance the President has had no more efficient co-worker 
 than the French Ambassador. 
 
 Gentlemen, may it be the good fortune of France and 
 the United States to always have at Washington such an Am- 
 bassador. May this celebration inaugurated here to-night be 
 followed by the passage by the Senate of the treaty of per- 
 petual arbitration with France, and may this day find happy 
 expression in public celebrations for all the future both in 
 France and the United States.
 
 (Stenographically Reported) 
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Twenty-sixth Annual Lincoln Dinner 
 of the Republican Club of the City of New 
 York, in Commemoration of the Birth of 
 Abraham Lincoln, at the Waldorf-Astoria, 
 February 12, 1912. 
 
 MR. BANNARD, President of the Club: About four hours 
 ago I was informed that both General Wood and Colonel 
 Goethals had been detained in Washington by the Committee 
 on Military Affairs, and could not possibly be with us. You 
 can imagine what I did. I rang up a certain gentleman than 
 whom no one is better known in the United States, and told 
 him that our mortality of speakers was forty per cent. I 
 threw myself on his neck, so far as the telephone would permit 
 (laughter), and when he said he would consider it, I could have 
 hugged him, if the telephone had indulged me. I shall be his 
 friend for life, and I want to introduce the best speaker in the 
 world, and I will give you just one guess as to who it is. Sena- 
 tor Depew. (Great cheers and applause.) 
 
 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 
 
 Mr. President, for a man who congratulated himself that 
 he was going to attend a dinner and hear the President and 
 great orators, that he had no responsibilities, that he should 
 enjoy what was offered, both in the solid and fluid, without 
 stint, when he is sitting preliminary to that, alongside of his 
 wife as she is taking her tea at six o'clock, to receive a tele- 
 phone message like the one which has just been reported by 
 our presiding officer to speak within an hour in the place of 
 two of the most distinguished men in the country, is enough 
 to disturb a nervous man. (Laughter.) 
 
 General Garfield once said to me, " You cannot take too 
 many chances without hurting your reputation." (Laughter.)
 
 72 
 
 " No man who has made a reputation should attempt to speak 
 unless he has been notified long before and had ample op- 
 portunity for preparation, and some day, if you keep this 
 up, you will make a speech, on a short call, and the failure 
 of it will be so phenomenal that it will end the reputation 
 of a lifetime." (Laughter.) Remembering that, last sum- 
 mer I called a classmate of mine, and he compiled eight vol- 
 umes of my speeches, and so I can say, as did Daniel Webster, 
 or somebody else I don't remember who " The past, at 
 least, is secure." (Great laughter and applause.) 
 
 When a man speaks extemporaneously, he is apt to be 
 apologizing for it for some time afterwards. There have been 
 distinguished examples of that in our recent history. (Laugh- 
 ter.) I remember the charming lady who was doing the best 
 she could, distributing tracts before she got on the platform 
 to speak, and in handing one to a cabby, he said to her, " Ex- 
 cuse me, Miss, I am happily married, and I don't believe in 
 divorce"; and the tract was "Abide with me." (Great 
 laughter.) 
 
 I was pleased with the speech of our President, Mr. Ban- 
 nard, in which, after complimenting everybody who came here 
 to this entertainment, he said that " without the inspiration 
 of the woman, where would we be?" Look at him, look at 
 him, at his time of life, and he is not married yet! (Laughter 
 and applause.) 
 
 Now, an occasion like this necessarily leads to a com- 
 parison between the past and- the present. The first speech 
 I ever heard Mr. Lincoln make, was the one that he did not 
 make. It was at Peekskill. (Laughter.) The whole popula- 
 tion had gathered for the ten minutes in which he was to 
 address us on his way to Washington. The local celebrity, 
 who had been in Congress with him, represented the people 
 for the welcoming speech, and before the welcoming speech 
 was concluded, the train moved off with Mr. Lincoln laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 In 1864, there devolved upon me, as Secretary of State, 
 the duty of collecting soldiers' votes, because the Legislature 
 was Republican, and the Governor, Horatio Seymour, was a 
 Democrat, and so they didn't give it to the Governor. I
 
 73 
 
 stayed three months' in Washington, and Stanton, Secretary 
 of War, refused to give me the information necessary to reach 
 the New York soldiers in the field with ballots. New York 
 had over 300,000 soldiers scattered over the South. In great 
 rage, after being roughly turned down by Stanton, I was 
 going out of the War Office one afternoon, when I met Elihu 
 B. Washburn, who at that time was the special representative 
 and most intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln. I told him what 
 was the matter, and he said, "What are you going to do ? " 
 I said, " I have got to clear my own skirts. I am going to 
 New -York to publish in the papers that the administration 
 will not give me the localities where the New York troops 
 are, and so they cannot vote." He said, " Look here, Depew, 
 that beats Lincoln." " Well," I said, " then give me the voters' 
 addresses." He said, " You don't know Abe. He is a great 
 President, but he is also a great politician, and if there was 
 no other way of getting those votes, he would go around with 
 a carpet bag, and collect them himself." (Laughter.) Within 
 an hour I was summoned into the presence of a changed 
 Secretary of War, so polite that I didn't know him, and on 
 the midnight train I went off with the locations of the troops. 
 The cause of this quick transformation was the sudden ap- 
 pearance of the President in the War Office with a message 
 so emphatic that the roaring Lion became the most serviceable 
 of Lambs. 
 
 There has been much criticism about a President work- 
 ing, while he is in office, for reelection, but here is the 
 example, after fifty years, of the man whom we are celebra- 
 ting here to-night, who would have gone around with a carpet 
 bag to collect the votes if there was no other way of getting 
 them. And I am sure our President, Mr. Taft, is justified 
 in doing what he can in that line, as he did so magnificently 
 in his speech here to-night. (Great applause.) It certainly 
 is dramatic for one who has that recollection of the year pre- 
 ceding the presidential election of Mr. Lincoln, to again, nearly 
 fifty years afterwards, be in the hall with a President, the 
 year before his reelection (great applause), with the condi- 
 tions virtually unchanged. It reminds me that possibly nothing 
 changes in this world. Certainly, in my long experience in
 
 74 
 
 public life, I have found that nothing changes in the funda- 
 mentals; the change is only in the scenery, the surroundings, 
 and the dramatic effect. 
 
 We celebrated in December, the landing of the May- 
 flower. Why? Because, in the cabin of the Mayflower, was 
 enunciated that charter which first gave the principle of equal- 
 ity of all men before the law. We celebrated here, this last 
 week, the first treaty ever made by the United States, the 
 treaty with France which gave to us Lafayette, Rochambeau, 
 and DeGraff, and the French army and the French navy, 
 and the credit and munitions of war, which enabled us to win 
 our independence. We celebrate to-night Mr. Lincoln and 
 his administration of fifty years ago, and we will celebrate, 
 on the twenty-second of this month, Washington's Birthday, 
 with all that it means. Last summer I was in France, and 
 I went out one Sunday to Versailles, where all Paris goes, 
 and I accompanied the- crowd as they walked through that 
 marvelous palace of Louis XIV, and as they paused in the 
 rooms, full of memories of Napoleon, the Empress Josephine, 
 and Marie Antoinette. What struck me more than anything 
 else, accustomed as I have been, all my life, to go to historic 
 places in America where there was enthusiasm and reverence, 
 was that those people went by as sightseers and tourists, be- 
 cause Versailles, with its memories of the Bourbon kings, and 
 Napoleon, of an absolute autocracy, and an empire, conveyed 
 nothing to them. Their memories were only of the thirty-odd 
 years of the republic. 
 
 But we are what we are to-day because of our tradi- 
 tions, and our traditions never change : the traditions of 
 equality before the law enunciated in the cabin of the May- 
 flower, the traditions of" the Declaration of Independence in 
 Independence Hall, the traditions of Washington and what 
 he stood for and what he accomplished, and to-night, the tra- 
 ditions of what Lincoln stood for. We are here now as a 
 Republican club, and Lincoln was a Republican President. 
 All sides of him have been superbly presented. The tribute 
 which President Taft paid was finely said and deserved, that 
 he was the President of all parties; and that beautiful tribute, 
 so eloquent and appreciative, by the orator of the evening,
 
 75 
 
 as to Lincoln's characteristics, from a Southern man, was 
 equally deserved. But Lincoln was a partisan, and a Re- 
 publican. We are here to-night as partisans and Republicans, 
 most of us. 
 
 Lincoln stood for what? For the question of his day. 
 Have they changed? They have changed only in form. We 
 have not the slave labor question any longer, but we have 
 labor questions which are to be decided upon broad prin- 
 ciples, as Lincoln would have decided them if they had arisen 
 in his time. He had to provide revenue for the purpose of 
 supporting the army and navy and carrying on the Government. 
 He had to develop the resources of the country which would 
 support the people here, if we won, and while we were fight- 
 ing. Now, what did he do? He inaugurated and carried 
 through the most drastic measure of protection of American' 
 industries that any President ever suggested. It was full 
 protection, not so high but that it furnished revenue, and yet 
 high enough to cause the development of one industry after 
 another, and to continue to the laboring man of this country 
 that measure of wage which makes him more independent, 
 and with greater possibilities and hopefulness than ever existed 
 before in any country in the world. (Applause.) 
 
 We come down to our own time, and we have meeting 
 us, and meeting President Taft, very much the same things 
 that met Lincoln, so far as the fundamentals are con- 
 cerned, or the principles upon which we fight. And I want to 
 say, as a veteran campaigner who has stumped this country 
 for different Presidents for fifty-six years (applause), that 
 the speech of forty minutes made here to-night by President 
 Taft will be the text-book of the campaign. We will all 
 copy from it, we will all take texts from it, and we will make 
 the welkin ring all over the country with the achievements 
 of the Taft Administration which it merits and the promises 
 it contains, and if it results, as it ought to, in his election 
 next November, we will say, "Taft, you did it!" (Great 
 cheers and applause, and cries of " Hear, hear! ") 
 
 I was reading to-night in an English paper the speech 
 made by Shuster in London (applause), and it was a re- 
 newal of faith in the great principles for which Lincoln
 
 7 6 
 
 stood, for which Washington stood, and for which every 
 statesman in America who is successful must stand. He 
 says, in effect, " I went to Persia, commissioned to put her 
 finances in order. I found universal corruption. I found 
 the money was ample, but it was all diverted to the personal 
 use of grafters, from royalty down. I said to the first con- 
 stituent assembly, elected by the people, that Persia ever had 
 in all her history, from the time of Cyrus the Great, ' Will 
 you give me power to do as I have a mind to ? ' And they 
 said, ' Yes ' unanimously." " Then," he said, " I found there 
 was money enough for all purposes, and I began to collect 
 it, and to apply it to the legitimate purposes of the resur- 
 rection of Persia, so that she could stand upon her liberal 
 principles, and go ahead, when Russian suddenly said, 'That 
 is not what you are here for ; what we want is demoralization 
 and bankruptcy, because that is our opportunity to seize 
 Persia.' " 
 
 Well, my friends, contrast that with the principles that 
 have been at the bottom of American policies in treating 
 with other countries. Contrast it with our treatment of the 
 Philippines, of Cuba, of Hawaii, contrast it with what we did 
 when one of the greatest of our secretaries of state, our own 
 club member, Elihu Root, made his famous visit, as Secretary 
 of State, to the Southern Republics. (Applause.) 
 
 Somebody says I don't know who ; Governor Black, 
 with his marvelous memory will recall it that there will 
 never be anything but war tumult and revolution south of 
 the Gulf of Mexico, but the policy of the American Govern- 
 ment, under Roosevelt, and under Taft, is giving to those 
 American republics on the Isthmus and in South America, 
 greater stability than ever before, because we stand behind 
 them and say, "We don't want your territory, we don't want 
 an inch of your land, we don't want any influence with you 
 except to protect you under the Monroe Doctrine, but what 
 we do demand is that you shall work out your own salvation 
 on the eternal principles of our Declaration of Independence 
 and of the charter of equal laws of the Mayflower and due 
 regard for your international obligations." (Applause.) And 
 that is dollar diplomacy!
 
 77 
 
 Lincoln was President fifty years ago; Taft is Presi- 
 dent to-night. Lincoln was a candidate for reelection fifty 
 years ago; Taft to-night is a candidate for reelection. What 
 is. the difference between the two 'men? Mr. Taft is the 
 product of the school and the college. He is the product of 
 the best culture America can . give. He is the product of 
 the training which has given him that judicial mind which 
 has enabled him to decide more questions than almost any 
 other President in my time, and decide them right; which has 
 enabled him to present more constructive and progressive 
 legislation, and secure it, than most Presidents, and yet, as 
 a scholar and a judge, he lacks the faculty of advertisement 
 and a brass band. (Laughter and applause.) If he had those 
 two qualities, he would be resistless. Every dead wall in the 
 country, and every farmer's fence, and every home, would 
 be filled with pictures and flaming eloquence which would in- 
 dicate that the salvation of every man, woman and child, had 
 been secured, built up and riveted, and with another term 
 would be fenced in and whitewashed over head, and nothing 
 more could be done by any human being. (Laughter.) 
 
 We come to Lincoln. He was a different man. No 
 one in any country ever started life so unpromisingly as 
 Abraham Lincoln. Nothing equals the poverty and hopeless- 
 ness of a poor white cabin in the South, and especially at 
 that time. And yet he came out of that, for there was in him 
 the wonderful genius which nobody can account for. You 
 can't account for Milton or Shakespeare. You can't account for 
 Lincoln. The first books he got hold of, he read over and over. 
 First was the Bible, next " Pilgrim's Progress," and next 
 " ./Esop's Fables," and next Weem's " Life of Washington." 
 Those made him a story teller, because Weem's " Life of 
 Washington " has probably within its pages more stories that 
 never happened to Washington, than any book ever written. 
 (Loughter.) In Weem's " Life of Washington," you find the 
 cherry tree story, and nowhere else. (Laughter.) And yet that 
 lie has done infinite good to all the youths of the country (laugh- 
 ter), because it was a fundamental lie in the defense of the 
 truth. " yEsop's Fables " furnished him with stories. I found 
 out this about Lincoln, that he never argued anything. He sim-
 
 ply told a story, or else cracked a joke, but it met the thing on 
 all fours, so that if you were on the opposite side, you had 
 nothing to say. (Laughter.) My old friend, John Ganson, 
 the ablest lawyer we had in Western New York, was a war 
 Democrat, and he supported Mr. Lincoln. He was a -fine 
 looking, very dignified man, with a very impressive appear- 
 ance and way of talking, and he had not a spear of hair on 
 his head or anywhere about his face. He went up one day, 
 he told me, to Mr. Lincoln, when things looked very bad at 
 the front, and everybody was discouraged, and he said, " Mr. 
 President, you know, sir, that I am a war Democrat. I am 
 leaving my party to support your measures, because I be- 
 lieve in the country first and the party next. Now, things 
 look very bad at the front, and I think, with this relation to 
 you and your administration, I ought to know just how things 
 are. How are they, sir ? " Mr. Lincoln looked at him for 
 a minute, and then said, in his quizzical way, " Ganson, how 
 clean you shave!" (Great laughter.) There was a party 
 of New York financiers who went down to Washington, and 
 the New York financier is a mighty able man in Wall Street. 
 But he sees the present, and he wants to provide for that. 
 The financial situation was frightful, because gold was so re- 
 duced in volume and at an unprecedented premium. They said : 
 "Mr. President, we are here representing the financial interests 
 in the financial center of the country, and we think that the best 
 thing to do is to take the gold out of the treasury and give it to 
 the people." But Mr. Lincoln knew that what little gold there 
 was in the treasury was all the basis the country had for its 
 credit, and the enormous volume of paper currency which had 
 been put out. Did he argue that question with those financiers ? 
 No, he knew they would beat him out of sight in an argu- 
 ment, but he said to them : " Gentlemen, out in Illinois, when 
 I was practicing law, the farmers were troubled because of 
 a disease among the hogs that was carrying them off and 
 likely to destroy the whole of that industry. Someone sug- 
 gested that the way to cure the hogs was to cut off their tails. 
 So they cut them off, and they were cured. The next year 
 the same disease came back, but they all died because they 
 had no tails." (Great laughter and applause.)
 
 79 
 
 No man recovers from his environment and the influences 
 of his birth, and the associations of his childhood, no matter 
 how great may be his opportunities afterwards, no matter how 
 wonderful the culture that has come to him, nor how supreme 
 his ability to take advantage of them. The environment of his 
 humble home will always cling to him, and always be in evi- 
 dence. Lincoln passed the whole of that formative period of 
 his life among a frontier people. He had singular and original 
 experiences. He loved to be down at the country store, or the 
 bar room of the village tavern, although he never drank, and 
 there exchange stories and listen to stories among those adven- 
 turous and original people. That bar room was the neighbor- 
 hood club in those days. He loved to go around the circuit, 
 and when they reached the country towns, they all stopped at 
 the same hotel, and they stayed up all night the judge and the 
 lawyers and the witnesses, and the grand and petit jury men 
 swapping these experiences. I asked him once, " Where do 
 you get so many stories ? " And he told me that it was in this 
 way that I have just described. So he got into the habit, much 
 to the disgust of Chase, who was a " turvy drop," and of other 
 people around him, of meeting questions with these stories, 
 most of which are not in print. (Laughter.) 
 
 On the other side, there was another Lincoln formed on 
 his daily reading of the Bible, which he knew by heart, and 
 Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," which he knew by heart. 
 The English language, in its noblest form as it is to-day, has 
 been formed by the King James version of the English Bible. 
 It has been literature, pure and undefiled, which has given to 
 our writers, in the English tongue, their distinction, and in- 
 spiration. That formed Lincoln's style. It also formed the 
 basis from which he built up those principles of eternal truth 
 which led to the Emancipation Proclamation, which led also 
 to his infinite charity, which would have eradicated many 
 evils had he lived to go through his second term. It was the 
 education from this foundation which gave to the world those 
 two imperishable productions, that oration which will live 
 forever, the Gettysburg speech, and that finest State paper 
 ever written by a President, and which never can be copied, 
 Lincoln's second inaugural address. (Great applause.)
 
 SPEECH BY HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Celebration by the New York State 
 Society of the Cincinnati of the One Hun- 
 dred and Eightieth Birthday of George 
 Washington, at the Waldorf-Astoria, Feb- 
 ruary 22, 1912. 
 
 COMRADES OF THE CINCINNATI : It is eminently fitting 
 that this Society should celebrate the birthday of its founder, 
 General George Washington. One hundred and eighty years 
 have passed since his birth. The story of that century and 
 three-quarters, or at least the last century of it, is the most 
 illuminating and inspiring cycle of recorded time. It is our 
 pride and satisfaction as Americans that to marvelous devel- 
 opment, uplift and progress of civil and religious liberty in this 
 century no one contributed so much as George Washington. 
 
 It is a happy result of the continuance of this patriotic 
 order that there has been a revival of the study of the origin 
 of our institutions, of the formation of the Republic and of 
 the lives and characters of the founders. 
 
 There are many other patriotic societies celebrating this 
 day who have come into existence within the last half century, 
 and who are doing admirable work in the education of the 
 citizen by furnishing him with the inspirations of the past. In 
 my close connection for many years with education, as Regent 
 of the University of the State of New York for thirty years, 
 and a member of the Corporation of Yale University for 
 twelve years, I have been deeply interested in the work of the 
 common schools, academies and colleges. I have found that 
 one great defect is in the inadequate attention given to Ameri- 
 can history. Many of the wild theories, which now attract the 
 young and in the guise of reform seem to promise far better 
 results than any which have been secured in the past, would 
 never have taken such hold upon the imagination if there had 
 been careful and systematic instruction in the history of our 
 Republic and of the principles which lay at its foundation. I
 
 82 
 
 doubt if the majority in any high school or college of the 
 country, if called upon on this day to pass an examination upon 
 the life, character and achievements of General Washington, 
 or Hamilton, or Jefferson, or Madison, could succeed. I 
 doubt if even a small minority know that in those early days 
 and during the experimental stage, questions of Federal au- 
 thority, State rights, checks to prevent hasty and ill-considered 
 action, of independence of the courts, and of representative 
 government, were all thrashed out. 
 
 To-night fashionable society is having many balls and 
 dances because this is a national holiday. General Washington 
 was exceedingly fond of dancing, and was noted as being the 
 most expert and graceful dancer of his day, but he knew noth- 
 ing of the "Turkey Trot" or the "Bunny Hug" or the "Grizzly 
 Bear." If these young people should be asked at the supper 
 what is the significance of this day and what the place of Gen- 
 eral Washington in history, I doubt if they would be able to 
 respond. They would return to the "Turkey Trot." 
 
 A very brilliant and highly cultured and traveled young 
 woman said to me, "Why bother about those old times and the 
 great people of that day? What they did is of no interest to 
 us, though undoubtedly it was important then. I have no use 
 for the ancients." 
 
 It is the distinction of the Society of the Cincinnati that 
 it has lived with content and satisfaction for nearly two hun- 
 dred years without being disturbed in its organization by the 
 cataclysms which have occurred during that long period. Poli- 
 tics have never entered its councils, nor have religious factions 
 or disputes disturbed its membership. It has lived through 
 and survived every Presidency in our history. 
 
 It has become the fashion now for men distinguished in 
 any department of life before they die to write their auto- 
 biographies or print their diaries. If the recorder of the Cin- 
 cinnati had kept a close diary of the inner councils of each 
 Presidential administration, beginning with Washington, and 
 the troubles in their cabinets, it would be a wonderful con- 
 tribution to the history of the times. As the past recedes and 
 the men and events grow more dim, we need this personal 
 revelation to show the supreme authority exercised for the
 
 83 
 
 creation and afterward for the salvation of the young Republic 
 until it was put upon a firm basis by George Washington. 
 The value of such a contribution is brought emphatically to 
 our attention by- the diary of Gideon Welles, who was a mem- 
 ber of President Lincoln's Cabinet. It was my fortune to be 
 officially in Washington during much of the Lincoln Adminis- 
 tration and to know of the gossip which filtered from the 
 White House as to the motives and ambitions of the President's 
 official family. There are few now living who had the oppor- 
 tunity or who knew any of these events, but here from the 
 pen of this hard-headed Yankee who had but one ambition, 
 and that was to serve his chief and save the country, comes a 
 diary written day by day, showing the intrigues for power, for 
 influence with the President, for replacing him for their own 
 ambitions, for succession among the members of his cabinet. 
 The great value of the revelation is that while these great men 
 were" most efficient in their several departments of the State 
 and Foreign Affairs, or the Treasury and Finance, or War, or 
 the Navy, or the Post Office, they were bitterly antagonistic 
 to each other. But they were compelled to use their great 
 abilities in their several ways for the government and its sal- 
 vation. They were compelled to suppress and keep under 
 cover their machinations and their conspiracies against each 
 other and against their chief, and they presented a united 
 front to the enemy on the one hand and the country on the 
 other because of the tact, the diplomacy, the genius and the 
 magnetic power of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 We know that Washington, the soldier, was the only one 
 of the generals of the time who could have carried on success- 
 fully the Revolutionary War, and so he was "The Father of 
 his Country." We know that in the trials and experiments of 
 bringing a confederacy of independent governments into a 
 federation of sovereign states, and yet with supreme power in 
 the Federal Government, no man and no combination of men 
 had so much influence as General Washington. We know 
 that in securing the ratification of the Constitution, framed by 
 a convention of the several States, he used with wonderful 
 effect the officers and soldiers of his army who were prominent 
 citizens in their several States and who had taken the oath of
 
 8 4 
 
 the Society of the Cincinnati to preserve and perpetuate the 
 Union. We know that during his eight years as President 
 only his commanding influence and courage with the people, 
 who knew that he was serving tliem and longing for the oppor- 
 tunity to retire to private life, prevented our young Republic 
 becoming an ally of the French Revolution and involved in a 
 war with all Europe when we had neither credit, nor money, 
 nor arms. We all know that except for his commanding in- 
 fluence the revolutions which were started in various States 
 would have culminated into a dissolution of the Union. We 
 all know that at the end of eight years he, and he alone, had 
 so consolidated our institutions that they could be entrusted 
 safely to other hands because behind the politicians were the 
 people, educated to the benefits of government, of the Consti- 
 tution and the laws. Now, this could have been brought out 
 much more clearly if there had been a Gideon Welles in the 
 cabinet of General Washington. The two ablest men, the 
 greatest rivals and bitterest enemies of that period, were mem- 
 bers of his official family, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas 
 Jefferson. Each represented antagonistic views of government. 
 Each had tremendous following among the people, but they 
 worked together and subordinated their views to the general 
 good, and how they did it is left to the imagination. And yet 
 it requires no diary of a member of that cabinet ; it requires 
 no stretch of the imagination to draw from the records of the 
 times', meager as they are in this respect, the daily story of 
 Washington and his official family. We can see towering 
 above them all the great master builder, keeping each in his 
 place and performing the work for which he was fitted beyond 
 all other men in the country, and at the same time making 
 it impossible for their individual jealousies and ambitions to 
 disturb the creative and consolidating work of their chief. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, nothing more astonishes the careful 
 reader of history than the few men who have controlled the 
 destinies of nations and of mankind. Julius Caesar came into 
 power when wealth and corruption had so undermined the 
 Republic and enervated its virility that its dissolution into its 
 original elements with universal warfare was imminent. By 
 the creation of imperial authority he kept together that empire
 
 85 
 
 for a thousand years. Outside its boundaries travel was im- 
 possible ; within its boundaries there was Roman law and 
 protection on the highway. This made possible the dissemina- 
 tion of Christianity through the whole Roman world, an event 
 which would have been impossible under the old savage rela- 
 tions of contiguous nations, and this made possible modern 
 Christendom. 
 
 The French Revolution would have failed except for the 
 genius of Napoleon. His aims were not republican, nor the 
 dissemination of liberty, but in the name of liberty he over- 
 threw thrones and spread liberal ideas and overturned nearly 
 all autocracy and absolutism and despotism except his own. 
 Waterloo ended him but placed no barrier to the progress of 
 Democracy. England, with a Parliamentary government more 
 quickly responsive to the people than any in the world, France 
 a republic, all other European nations with a Parliament, and 
 most of them a responsible ministry, Turkey and ancient 
 Persia feeling the thrill of these ideas, are all the results of 
 the work, genius, conquests and triumphs of Napoleon. So, 
 for liberty, as we understand it, and as we enjoy it, the abso- 
 lute sovereignty of the people, the equality of all men before 
 the law, the freedom of opportunity for every child, all these 
 are due to the character, courage, unselfish patriotism and 
 genius of George Washington. Caesar was inspired by ambi- 
 tion, Napoleon by craze for power both utterly selfish. Wash- 
 ington's labors were for his country. In the purity of his 
 motive he stands the foremost man of all the centuries. 
 
 We have problems which seem to us full of peril, but they 
 are not so difficult as those which he successfully solved. We 
 are passing through an acute struggle, common not only to us, 
 but to the whole world, between labor and capital. We have 
 greater general prosperity, a higher standard of living and more 
 universal conditions of comfort than has ever existed among 
 any people, or our own people before, and yet there never 
 was such a wide-spread spirit of unrest. We are entering upon 
 a presidential election, and the different candidates are pre- 
 senting to us their methods for solving these difficulties and 
 allaying this unrest. In the meantime, business halts, enter- 
 prises are suspended and the movement of the mighty forces
 
 86 
 
 which give employment and opportunity is checked. Fre- 
 quently I hear a cry of anger and despair. Gentlemen, so 
 long as we can celebrate in proper spirit the birthday of Gen- 
 eral Washington, so long as we can read and re-read his 
 Farewell Address, so long as we can remember and cherish the 
 memory of Abraham Lincoln, so long as we can repeat his 
 Gettysburg speech and his second inaugural, there will come 
 into the Presidency and into the Cabinet, and into Congress, 
 and into the courts, the wisdom which has guided us mar- 
 velously in the past and will surely take care of us in the 
 future.
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Dinner Given by the United Swedish 
 Societies and the John Ericsson Memorial 
 Association, March g, 1912, at the Park 
 Avenue Hotel, New York City, in Celebra- 
 tion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle 
 between Monitor and Merrimac. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : In an age of anni- 
 versaries and their celebration, yours is unique. It is a tribute 
 to a genius so modest that the immortality due him for his 
 invaluable invention has never been accorded. 
 
 The latter part of the Nineteenth Century with us was 
 full of centennials, commencing with that of the Declaration 
 of Independence and, continuing through the various battles 
 of the Revolution, they ended with the adoption of the Con- 
 stitution, the inauguration of the first President and the forma- 
 tion of the Supreme Court of the United States. We celebrate 
 still with appropriate ceremonies the recurring birthdays of 
 Washington and Lincoln. The educational value of these 
 memorial exercises cannot be overestimated. Each celebra- 
 tion is a university education completed in a single day an 
 education in the best history of one's country, and an inspira- 
 tion for patriotism. The Bunker Hill Monument gave to the 
 world the oration of Daniel Webster, which, appearing there- 
 after in the school books, did more to inform the youth of the 
 United States of the virtues and achievements of their fore- 
 fathers and of the principles underlying the institutions of 
 their country than all the histories in existence. 
 
 It is interesting to glance over the speeches in and out of 
 Congress during the first fifty years after the formation of the 
 Government. They show that the orator understood that he 
 must appeal to lively recollections among his constituents of 
 the great revolution with which they were all familiar. During 
 the subsequent fifty years commercialism and industrialism, 
 attendant upon the marvelous progress and development of the
 
 country, practically obliterated both memory and influence in 
 regard to the story of the creation of our government, or of the 
 soldiers and statesmen whose valor and wisdom made the 
 struggle triumphant. 
 
 In estimating the value of the reproduction of the events 
 or the retelling of the story of heroes and statesmen, I think 
 that the interest centers around the individual. Events are 
 innumerable. The mind, with the ordinary pursuits, struggles, 
 successes and failures of life, has no time to grasp them all, 
 or to study the details necessary to understand the signifi- 
 cance of the results. But the romance of the hero has a per- 
 petual charm. If the boy and the girl are thoroughly familiar 
 with George Washington, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lin- 
 coln they will grasp most that it is necessary to know in regard 
 to the story of American independence and evolution, of crises 
 and how they were overcome successfully, of American valor, 
 of the constitution and of representative government and the 
 value for yesterday, to-day and forever of American liberty. 
 
 To understand what this day signifies we must in imag- 
 ination throw a picture upon the wall of conditions in the 
 United States, and between the United States and the world, 
 in 1862. Happily, in the fraternizing of the combatants, in 
 their equal share in the benefits of this most beneficent of 
 governments and equal power and responsibility in its admin- 
 istration, the bitterness of that period has passed away, the 
 flame of its passionate resentment has died out and we can 
 calmly, from either side, study the heroic picture of men of 
 the same blood, differently trained and with different ideals, 
 fighting and dying as only such men can, for what they deemed 
 to be right. 
 
 I remember that year as if it were yesterday. The Civil 
 War had been a drawn battle between the North and the 
 South, a free labor or a slave holding republic. Mr. Lincoln 
 and his administration had, in their efforts to save the Union, 
 an interior line of eleven thousand miles to defend and a 
 sea coast of three thousand miles to blockade. The United 
 States Navy had at that time only forty effective men-of-war. 
 The conspirators in the government, knowing that they were 
 to bring about secession, had sent the best and strongest of
 
 8 9 
 
 these battleships to China and the coast of Africa and the 
 Pacific Ocean. There were only eleven -ships, carrying only 
 one hundred and thirty-one guns, upon our Atlantic coast. 
 Less than a year before the appearance of the Monitor, an 
 American naval officer had taken off the British steamship 
 Trent Mason and Slidell and their secretaries who were going 
 to Europe as ambassadors of the Southern Confederacy, one 
 to England and the other to France, to endeavor to secure 
 recognition for their government. This had brought us to the 
 verge of war with Great Britain, which was only averted by 
 the diplomacy, skill and adroitness of Secretary of State Will- 
 iam H. Seward. The sympathies of the governments of the 
 Old World were wholly with the government of the Southern 
 Confederacy. All these governments were either absolute 
 monarchies or constitutional ones under the control of an 
 aristocratic oligarchy. Tremendous immigration to the United 
 States had carried back such ideas of American liberty as 
 were endangering thrones and old institutions. If this Civil 
 War should be successful that danger would be averted for 
 a generation, so the ruling classes in all Europe were anxious 
 for any excuse to interfere and to break up the American 
 Republic. On the other hand, a notion had got abroad that the 
 slaveholders of the South were a privileged and aristocratic 
 class, while the North was a nation of shopkeepers. So 
 the sympathies of the hereditary rulers were with what they 
 deemed to be a part of the country whose governing people 
 were more nearly affiliated with themselves. If the Southern 
 Confederacy could be recognized by the great powers of Europe 
 and arms and munitions of war poured in through the many 
 harbors of the Atlantic coast, even the superior population, 
 the greater wealth and the larger resources of the North could 
 scarcely have been sufficient to save the Union. 
 
 In the summer of 1861 the President, Congress and the 
 country were informed that at the Norfolk Navy Yard, which 
 had fallen into Confederate hands, a new and most formidable 
 ship of war was being constructed on original lines. Some of 
 the ablest officers of the American Navy had gone with their 
 States into the rebellion. They had taken the old frigate 
 Merrimac which was at Norfolk when it was seized, and with
 
 90 
 
 wonderful skill and ingenuity were transforming her into an 
 ironclad impenetrable to any ordnance then in existence. 
 There was alarm all over the country. It was fully thought 
 that if the reports in regard to this formidable vessel were 
 true she could destroy the eleven ships of the American fleet, 
 and, as our harbors were then wholly unprotected against such 
 a battleship, could enter and levy tribute upon Philadelphia, 
 New York and Boston. Delegations of bankers and commer- 
 cial men were constantly going to Washington beseeching the 
 President to save them from this peril. I recall Mr. Lincoln 
 telling me in his whimsical way of the arrival of such a com- 
 mittee. They were from New York. There were a hundred 
 of them. He said that all had Prince Albert coats and top 
 hats. Their several spokesmen detailed the enormous amount 
 of wealth which they represented and the millions which each 
 of them individually possessed. They pictured how this war- 
 ship could sail unimpeded to their docks and burn the entire 
 city or else levy tribute sufficient to carry the war on indefi- 
 nitely. They claimed that they were entitled to protection be- 
 cause of the liberality with which they had subscribed to the 
 government bonds. Mr. Lincoln said that he had never heard 
 or dreamed of so much money being owned or represented by 
 so few people. He said to them, "Gentlemen, we have no ships 
 to send to New York; we have no guns to mount on your 
 forts ; we have no money, and the whole credit and means of 
 the government are exhausted in doing what we can to protect 
 the Capital and this tremendous interior and coast line. But," 
 he said, "if I had as much money as you say you have," and 
 then in his quaint way of pronouncing, "and was as 'skeered' 
 as you are, I think I would find means with which to protect 
 my own town." Then this delegation went to Congress, and 
 Congress appropriated one million five hundred thousand dol- 
 lars to invite proposals for the construction of any kind of a 
 ship which would be able to meet and resist the attack of the 
 Merrimac as had been described. Of course, the President 
 was immediately flooded with plans from every cracked- 
 brained inventor in the country, and the Navy Department was 
 kept nights, days and Sundays in the investigation of these 
 schemes. Fortunately, Captain John Ericsson had a reputation
 
 of previous achievement. He had been the inventor of the 
 screw propeller which had revolutionized the commerce of the 
 world and the battleships of all nations. He finally secured a 
 contract for his device, in which the experts had no faith, and 
 a small part of this appropriation and commenced work at 
 Green Point, Long Island. He completed his little Monitor in 
 one hundred days, and then, with Lieutenant Worden and a 
 crew, this nondescript craft, which was practically a raft with 
 a revolving turret, armed with two eleven-inch guns, started 
 for Hampton Roads. The country knew nothing of the ship, 
 and the few who did had no faith in her, but regarded the 
 experiment as only a desperate chance. On the 8th of March, 
 1862, the dread moment arrived when the Merrimac sailed out 
 into Chesapeake Bay. She immediately attacked the two 
 American frigates which were there to watch her, the Cumber- 
 land and the Congress. She sunk the Cumberland and drove 
 the Congress ashore, and then returned to Norfolk to come 
 out the next day and complete her work. Such a night and 
 such a morning this country has seldom seen. There was little 
 sleep anywhere; in the South wild elation, and in the North 
 a frenzy of despair. The news, flashed by electric wires, filled 
 the journals everywhere. There was but one ray of light, and 
 that was a light of which to be proud. The Cumberland, re- 
 fusing to surrender, had gone down in fifty-four feet of water, 
 her flag still flying, her commander preferring that it should be 
 buried with himself in the ocean rather than surrendered to 
 the enemy. The morning of the Qth of March found the coun- 
 try in a thrill of expectancy, of hope on one side and of alarm 
 on the other. In the early morning the Monitor had come into 
 the bay. As the Merrimac started for the third ship, the Min- 
 nesota, this nondescript craft came out from under the shadow 
 of the huge side of the Minnesota and made directly for the 
 Merrimac. The veterans on both sides looked at her in 
 amazement, the skilled and trained officers of the Merrimac 
 bursting with laughter. Some shouted, "Here comes a Yankee 
 tin can on a shingle," and others, "Here's a Yankee cheesebox 
 on a raft," but the revolving cheesebox began to hurl from its 
 eleven-inch guns solid shot against the armor of the Merrimac 
 which broke the iron, though it could not pierce the twenty-
 
 9 2 
 
 four inches of solid oak underneath, while the raft and the 
 cheesebox proved invulnerable to the Merrimac guns. After 
 several hours of this fighting, in which the Merrimac could 
 not with her huge bulk ram her agile and small antagonist, 
 in which she had suffered injuries that needed investigation, 
 the Merrimac withdrew up the river to the Norfolk Navy 
 Yard and never came out. Again language is inadequate to 
 describe the wild excitement in every city, village and hamlet 
 in the land which followed this most dramatic and spectacular 
 fight. 
 
 The possibilities of the great nations of Europe recog- 
 nizing the Southern Confederacy were over, the danger to the 
 American Navy was past, the hope of a Confederate Navy 
 was blasted, but an event occurred that day which challenged 
 the cabinets, the navy departments and the admiralties of every 
 nation in the world. They all saw that their fleets were 
 doomed; they all saw that to preserve their positions on the 
 ocean or protection for their coasts, there must be such a 
 feverish haste, as never was known before, to burn, to bury or 
 break up their wooden ships and secure ironclads. 
 
 There is no study more interesting than the one which 
 would develop how much property has been suddenly destroyed 
 by invention or discovery or the opening of new channels of 
 trade. Quite as large fortunes as have ever been piled up by 
 the possessors of new and remunerative ideas, have on the 
 other hand been lost because the revolutionary character of 
 these ideas have sent the old ships or coaches or machinery to 
 the scrap heap. One of the greatest fortunes in the world 
 is due to the sagacity and courage of its maker who would 
 sell at any price or break up and destroy the machinery which 
 he had installed at enormous expense yesterday if a better 
 one came on the market to-day. 
 
 The Monitor could make six knots an hour; the dread- 
 naught makes twenty-one. The Monitor had a displacement 
 of seven hundred and seventy-six tons ; the dreadnaught twen- 
 ty-five thousand tons. The Monitor took its chance of hitting 
 its target as it came in sight of its revolving turret, but even 
 then it was obscured by clouds of black smoke, and the range 
 of its guns was a few hundred yards. Its shot weighed only
 
 93 
 
 one hundred and sixty pounds, while the dreadnaught with 
 entire accuracy, even in a heavy sea, will send a shot or a shell 
 weighing nine hundred pounds for six miles, with a possible 
 range of ten. The resisting power of the soft iron which pro- 
 tected the Merrimac and the Monitor alike differed as much 
 from the Harveyized steel armor of the dreadnaught as one 
 inch is to fifty, while the energy of the projectile from the 
 great gun of the dreadnaught is fifty thousand times greater 
 than that which went from the muzzle of the gun in the 
 Monitor. 
 
 Ericsson said, as his little craft was launched, "I name you 
 the Monitor." His thought went back to his school days when 
 the monitor checked the bad boy or told the teacher. "I call 
 you the Monitor," he said, "because you will admonish the 
 leaders of the Southern rebellion that the batteries on the banks 
 of their rivers can no longer present barriers to the entrance of 
 the Union forces. I call you the Monitor as a warning to 
 Great Britain to stop at once the building of the three battle- 
 ships now under construction which are to cost three million 
 five hundred thousand dollars apiece. I call you the Monitor 
 because you are to warn all nations that they must abandon 
 their navies and build new ones on your suggestion." 
 
 Before Ericsson's invention of the screw propeller, the 
 paddle wheels on either side of the ship were thought to be the 
 greatest progress possible for the propulsion of a vessel. To 
 see what has been the effect of this product of Ericsson's 
 genius, one has only to picture what would happen to the tow- 
 ering sides of the Olympic with paddle boxes sufficient, if 
 they could be constructed, to enable them to move at all. 
 What would happen to those floating fortresses, the twenty- 
 five-thousand-ton dreadnaughts, if they were dependent upon 
 this suggestion of the motive power in the mill wheel of our 
 ancestors ? 
 
 The battle which had been fought in the waters of Hamp- 
 ton Roads when the sun went down fifty years ago to-night 
 has its lesson to-day. If the government, when the rebellion 
 broke out, could have had the full strength of its navy, or if it 
 had possessed an adequately equipped army, or, in other words, 
 if in time of peace it had been prepared for war, the rebellion
 
 94 
 
 would have been quickly ended and we would have been spared 
 the horrors of four years of the bloodiest civil strife in all 
 history. There is a mighty preachment now which finds its 
 echo in Congress, that we can save money by reducing the effi- 
 ciency of the army and denying the battleships necessary for 
 the navy. "War is out of date," cry these mistaken advocates 
 of peace. There was a time when the world was made up of 
 nations seeking to gain power and wealth by conquering their 
 weaker neighbors, when the possibilities of conflict were ever 
 present because of the grasping avarice of power. The pos- 
 sibilities of conflict are ever present for us. With the strained 
 relations existing between Great Britain and Germany, nothing 
 but the invincible strength of the British navy prevented war 
 last summer. With the ambition for a larger place in the sun 
 which characterized diplomacy about Morocco, nothing pre- 
 vented one of the bloodiest wars of modern times except the 
 efficiency of the French army, united with the overwhelming 
 strength of the British navy. Conditions in Mexico, with the 
 enormous sums of foreign money invested in that country, and 
 the great numbers of the citizens of various nations doing 
 business and living there, are full of peril to the Monroe Doc- 
 trine of which we are the guardian. At any hour all Europe 
 may plump to us the question, "Shall we rely on your interpre- 
 tation of the Monroe Doctrine or protect ourselves, as we are 
 amply able to do?" If we had a lesser navy they would not 
 ask that question. They would protect themselves, which they 
 would much prefer to do. War with Turkey would not have 
 occurred if Turkey had possessed a navy.equal to that of Italy. 
 It came upon every cabinet suddenly as the explosion of a stick 
 of dynamite. 
 
 But, gentlemen, let this night have other lessons more 
 intimate and personal. Let it be the commencement of a move- 
 ment for an instruction which shall put in his proper place in 
 the Temple of Fame one who deserves to stand among the 
 immortal few who have been the benefactors of mankind in 
 different ages of the world, your countryman and our natural- 
 ized fellow-citizen, Captain John Ericsson.
 
 SPEECH OF HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 at the Dinner Given by the Lotos Club of 
 New York to Mr. Justice Pitney, of the 
 Supreme Court, Thursday, May 2, 1912. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : It is fortunate for the 
 stability of our institutions and the preservation of our Union 
 that the Justices of the Supreme Court are not subject, like 
 our candidates for the Presidency, to an open primary. The 
 necessity of this new system compels the President and an ex- 
 Presi'dent of the United States, Governors of States who are 
 candidates, and all others who aspire to the great position, to 
 spend nearly every day of the months preceding the convention 
 in living on sleeping cars by night and making rear platform 
 speeches to crowds at stations by day in order to impress upon 
 the constituencies their several claims for the nomination of 
 their party. While the candidates are criticised, it is not their 
 fault, but it is the exigency of the new system which compels 
 them to appear as far as possible in every locality and before 
 all the people of our vast country. 
 
 There are about two hundred thousand lawyers in the 
 United States, and it is the legitimate ambition, I might say 
 the absorbing desire, of every one of them to attain the highest 
 honor possible in their profession, and that is to be one of the 
 nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. If 
 we had, as is now advocated for filling vacancies in that 
 court, the open primary, there would be at least twenty-five 
 thousand lawyers traveling the country, speaking wherever 
 they could secure an audience and making heroic efforts to 
 attain the first page of the daily press. They would be appeal- 
 ing for votes, not because of their knowledge of the law or 
 of their ability to interpret statutes according to the Consti- 
 tution or of their fearlessness in holding the scales of justice 
 evenly for the strong and the weak, for the rich and the 
 poor, regardless of popular passion or temporary excitement 
 and enthusiasm, but they would be assuring the people of each
 
 96 
 
 of our forty-eight States that their diverse views on questions 
 of currency and of tariff, of war and of peace, of State boun- 
 dary lines and State claims to authority against that of the 
 Federal Government, the candidate could be relied upon to 
 stand by the views of the people he was addressing without 
 any weak reverence for an antiquated constitution or laws 
 which had ceased to meet the popular will. 
 
 What sort of a bench would result from this process is 
 a question on par with the famous dictum about the verdict of 
 the petit jury that no one but divinity could foreknow, and 
 even he might be in doubt. Happily, those wise founders of our 
 government decided that the Justices of the Supreme Court 
 should be appointed by the President and confirmed by the 
 Senate. It is a remarkable tribute to this method of selection 
 that the historian can find no criticism upon any choice thus 
 made during the one hundred and twenty years of the exist- 
 ence of the Court. Whatever may be our views or our pref- 
 erences on the Presidency, there is one question on which there 
 is no divided opinion, and that is by his wonderful training 
 as a judge and his accurate knowledge of the qualities neces- 
 sary to meet all the requirements of the highest court in our 
 land, no President, no citizen, is better fitted, or has more 
 admirably demonstrated his ability and his fairness than Presi- 
 dent Taft. He has never considered whether the best man 
 was a Democrat or a Republican; he has never considered 
 what his religion might be, but with the opportunity that has 
 come to him to appoint a majority of the Court, he has in a 
 most extraordinary degree elevated and strengthened it. 
 
 In view of the honor conferred upon us this evening by 
 having the most recent appointment to this great tribunal as 
 our guest, I am reminded of the beginnings of the Court. 
 After the Judges had been appointed by Washington and sworn 
 in, they opened court in the rooms of the Merchants' Exchange 
 in this city. There being no precedent as to the robing of the 
 Judges, as there had been none for the formation of the 
 court, Chief Justice Jay appeared in a gorgeous cloak presented 
 to him when he received a degree as Doctor of Laws from the 
 University of Dublin, while the other Judges wore the plain, 
 black gown which is still the uniform of the Court. They
 
 97 
 
 met every day for three days in succession, but not a case was 
 placed upon the calendar, nor did a litigant nor a lawyer ap- 
 pear before them. Then they accepted as a body an invita- 
 tion to a dinner. This was the first official action of the 
 court. It is a precedent which they have followed, not col- 
 lectively, but individually, with the greatest success for one 
 hundred and twenty years. When a hostess in Washington 
 wishes to make her dinner a success, her first effort is not 
 the Cabinet, nor the Senate, nor the House of Representatives, 
 nor the Diplomatic Corps, but the Justices of the Supreme 
 Court. If she can secure one of them, and generally there 
 are only two or three available on account of the immense 
 labor which devolves upon them, her dinner is a success. She 
 simply builds around the Justice her Diplomatists, her Cabinet 
 Ministers, her Senators and her members of the House, and 
 the central figure, like Abou Ben Adam, leads all the rest. 
 
 It is another curious incident connected with the begin- 
 nings of the court that this dinner was given by the Grand 
 Jury of the County. The court was wholly unknown because 
 entirely new, and the Grand Jury believing and saying that 
 they were the oldest institution under the Common Law and 
 its guardian and protector, were the proper hosts to pay the 
 first honors to the new Court. From being wholly unknown, 
 as at the beginning, the Supreme Court is to-day the best 
 known, the most respected, the most authoritative and the 
 most august tribunal in the world. I have tried, but my imag- 
 ination fails me, to create a scene where the Marshal of the 
 District of Columbia should, in a similar way, convey from 
 the Grand Jury an invitation to the court as a body to offi- 
 cially accept their invitation for dinner. 
 
 It illuminates the present situation and discussion and the 
 claim for nobility of the ideas which are now so eloquently and 
 vigorously presented in regard to the courts to recall the pro- 
 ceedings of the convention which framed the Constitution. This 
 was no ordinary gathering. Its members had passed through 
 the fires of revolution. They had broken ties with the Mother 
 Country to which they were bound by tradition, history and 
 education. They were educated men, profound students and 
 familiar with every trial of government which history dis-
 
 98 
 
 closed and of every theory which philosophers had propounded. 
 They were trying upon the ruins 'of the Confederacy, where 
 the central government had no power and the States flouted 
 its decrees, its orders and its statutes, to build a safe and per- 
 manent republic, which should preserve for all liberty and 
 law. They debated as to the powers of the States and as to 
 the powers which should be granted by the States to the 
 Federal Government. They were guided by the spirit of 
 Washington's v/ise advice to "give up a share of liberty in 
 order to preserve the rest." After they had formed their 
 Congress and created their presidency, there still existed the 
 danger of a popular and arbitrary Executive becoming all pow- 
 erful or of a radical Congress defying both the President and 
 the Constitution. Then was originated the idea of the Su- 
 preme Court with power to hold both the Executive and the 
 Legislative branches of the Government within the limits of 
 the Constitution a court which Washington, with one of his 
 terse phrases, designated, what is has been ever since and al- 
 ways will be, "The Keystone of the Arch of Union." 
 
 In those debates these great lawyers, statesmen, philoso- 
 phers and soldiers canvassed thoroughly and exhaustively the 
 questions of appointment and of removal or, in other words, 
 recall, which are now agitating the public mind. While there 
 was a great debate and many votes upon other provisions of 
 the Constitution, the vote upon the establishment of the Su- 
 preme Court, and the great and sweeping powers which were 
 to be granted to it, was unanimous. There was a proposition 
 that the Judges should be removed by a majority vote of the 
 two Houses of Congress, but as against the present provision 
 that their tenure shall be for life and during good behavior 
 and their removal only by impeachment and trial before the 
 Senate, there was but one vote in favor of the removal by a 
 majority vote of the two Houses of Congress. 
 
 There was another feature of this debate which illumines 
 the present political situation the agitation now to create con- 
 ditions which will make Judges more politicians than Judges, 
 more legislators than interpreters of the law and the Constitu- 
 tion. A proposition was offered in the Convention that the 
 Court should have the power to revise acts passed by Congress
 
 99 
 
 before they were submitted to the President, but the unanimous 
 judgment upon this proposition was that the function of the 
 Court was not legislative, it was not executive, it was not to 
 make laws, but to interpret the laws according to the written 
 Constitution. Now, however, we are told that it is essential 
 to liberty and to a quick response to the popular will that 
 judicial decisions shall be submitted to a vote by the people, 
 or, more drastic, that if the Judges' decisions of the Court are 
 not popular the Judge shall be recalled. All of this reduced 
 to its last analysis means that justice shall be administered by 
 the mob. 
 
 Judge Grover was one of the ablest jurists who ever occu- 
 pied a seat upon our Court of Appeals. He was a rough dia- 
 mond. It was my good fortune to know him intimately. I 
 remember that when the Court of Appeals sat at Saratoga 
 Springs some one met him in the United States Hotel, and 
 said, "Judge, are you staying here?" He said, "No, I can't 
 stand what they call a course dinner, with twenty different 
 things and an hour to serve it. I stay at a boarding house 
 where my victuals are all on the table at once." 
 
 He was the author of the famous phrase that when a 
 lawyer is defeated in the highest court he has no remedy but 
 to go down to the tavern and curse the Court. 
 
 But the statesmen of the hour propose now that the at- 
 torney shall have a new remedy, and that is by petition remove 
 the Court and secure one which will decide according to his 
 brief and retainer. 
 
 Within the last year there have been two trials where 
 passion and not justice occupied the bench. In each it was 
 discovered after the victims were killed that they were inno- 
 cent. Col. Roosevelt tells an admirable story of his experience 
 while a rancher in the West, when a citizen was hung as a 
 horse thief. It was found shortly afterward that he was inno- 
 cent and one of the court which condemned and executed him 
 was appointed to gently break the news to his wife. He said, 
 on being greeted as he entered the house, "Excuse me, madam, 
 but where is your husband?" She said, "He is down in the 
 village." Sard he, "No, he ain't, I have got him in a box out 
 in the wagon. He is dead. The boys made a mistake and
 
 IOO 
 
 hung him, but they want me to tell you for your comfort and 
 consolation that they have found since that he was innocent." 
 
 Any one who has had a large experience in State Legis- 
 latures or in the National Congress knows that many acts be- 
 come laws under popular clamor or to gratify particular inter- 
 ests of capital or labor which the courts afterward declare to 
 be unconstitutional, but every lawyer knows that the court in 
 rendering its decisions points out how the things sought for by 
 the legislative body can be attained and still be within the pro- 
 visions of the Constitution. The court does not legislate, the 
 court does not pretend to say whether the acts are wise or 
 unwise. Then, why this clamor against the decision and for 
 its recall, or against the court and its destruction? It is be- 
 cause of impatience and cowardice. All politicians who have 
 engineered the law wish to get immediate benefit from the 
 people who desire it, and therefore think that the recall would 
 be a shorter method and that it would be a club which would 
 intimidate the court in deciding against its convictions and its 
 conscience. The other reason is cowardice. The promoters 
 of such a statute do not wish to confess that they did not know 
 how to prepare it. They are afraid to go before the legisla- 
 tive body of which they are members and acknowledge the 
 error which they committed in the original act. They are 
 afraid to say to that legislative body, "We have now prepared a 
 bill which accomplishes the same purpose we originally in- 
 tended, but it is strictly within the provisions of the Consti- 
 tution and will be approved by the court." To make such a 
 declaration and such an admission would lead to the charge 
 that they were half-baked statesmen, and they would lose credit 
 with their constituency and authority with the body to which 
 they belong. Therefore, it is safer, and, properly presented, 
 infinitely more popular to ask for the overthrow of the court. 
 
 During my years as a Senator the question would often 
 be discussed in the free intercourse of the committee rooms 
 what position under the government was most desirable. Of 
 course, the Presidency was the first ambition of all, and yet I 
 have known Presidents who would be glad to exchange the 
 White House for the Supreme Court. But, the Presidency 
 aside, the opinion always was that for a man who was com-
 
 IOI 
 
 petent and fit, there was no office in the world which presented 
 such opportunities, which granted such independence, from 
 which could be derived so much pleasure and in which there 
 were so many opportunities for usefulness and permanent fame 
 as to be a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
 The traditions of that great tribunal are an inspiration 
 to every member. Great men have preceded them and their 
 decisions have made possible the perpetuity of the Union 
 of the States and the preservation of a government of liberty, 
 law and order. The court has expanded to apply by interpre- 
 tation the general principles of the Constitution to meet and 
 permit the marvelous growth of the country and the develop- 
 ment of its resources. That our institutions which were framed 
 when our country consisted of thirteen States and three mil- 
 lions of people are elastic enough for all the needs of forty- 
 eight States and a hundred millions of people is due to the 
 wisdom, the courage, the learning and the genius of the 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 We here to-night congratulate the Supreme Court that to 
 succeed one of the greatest Justices who ever honored that 
 tribunal the President has appointed and the Senate has con- 
 firmed so great a lawyer, so profound a jurist, so wise and 
 broad a man as our guest, Mr. Justice Pitney. 
 
 THE TROW PRESS 
 NEW YORK
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 JUN 9 1952 
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALli OK*i* 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 178.6 
 
 D44 1 Later speeches