A Square DealandIdealsofCitizenship
Mankind goes ahead but slowly, and it goes ahead mainly through each of us trying to do the best that is in him and to do it in the sanest way. We have founded our Republic upon the theory that the average man will, as a rule, do the right thing, that in the long run the majority will decide for what is sane and wholesome. If our fathers were mistaken in that theory, if ever the times become such—not occasionally but persistently—that the mass of the people do what is unwholesome, what is wrong, then the Republic cannot stand, I care not how good its laws, I care not what marvelous mechanism its Constitution may embody. Back of the laws, back of the administration, back of the system of government lies the man, lies the average manhood of our people, and in the long run we are going to go up or go down accordingly as the average standard of citizenship does or does not wax in growth and grace.
¶¶The first requisite of good citizenship is that the man shall do the homely, every-day, hum-drum duties well. A man is not a goodcitizen, I do not care how lofty his thoughts are about citizenship in the abstract, if in the concrete his actions do not bear them out; and it does not make much difference how high his aspirations for mankind at large may be, if he does not behave well in his own family those aspirations do not bear visible fruit. He must be a good breadwinner, he must take care of his wife and his children, he must be a neighbor whom his neighbors can trust, he must act squarely in his business relations,—he must do all these every-day, ordinary duties first, or he is not a good citizen. But he must do more.
¶In this country of ours the average citizen must devote a good deal of thought and time to the affairs of the State as a whole or those affairs will go backward; and he must devote that thought and time steadily and intelligently. If there is any one quality that is not desirable, whether in a nation or in an individual, it is hysterics, either in religion or anything else. The man or woman who makes up for ten days’ indifference to duty by an eleventh-day morbid repentance about that duty is of scant use in the world. Now in the same way it is of no possible use to decline to go through all ordinary duties of citizenshipfor a long space of time and then suddenly to get up and feel very angry about something or somebody, not clearly defined, and demand reform, as if it was a concrete substance to be handed out forthwith.[4]
¶We cannot keep too clearly before our minds the facts that for the success of our civilization what is needed is not so much brilliant ability, not so much unusual genius, as the possession by the average man of the plain, homely, work-a-day virtues that make that man a good father, a good husband, and a good friend and neighbor—a decent man with whom to deal in all relations of life.
¶We need good laws, we need honest administration of the laws, and we cannot afford to be contented with less, but more than aught else we need that the average man shall have in him the root of righteous living; that the average man shall have in him the feeling that will make him ashamed to do wrong or to submit to wrong, and that will make him feel his bounden duty to help those that are weaker, to help those especially that are in a way dependent upon him, and while not in any way losing his power of individual initiative, to cultivate without ceasing the further power of acting in combination with his fellows for a commonend of social uplifting and of good government.
¶One word upon success in life, upon the success that each of us should strive for. It is a great mistake—oh, such a great mistake—to measure success merely by that which glitters from without, or to speak of it in terms which will mislead those about us, and especially the younger people about us, as to what success really is.
¶There must of course be for success, a certain material basis, I should think ill of any man who did not wish to leave his children a little better and not a little worse off materially than he was, and I should not feel that he was doing his duty by them; and if he cannot do his duty by his own children he is not going to do his duty by any one else.
¶But after that certain amount of material prosperity has been gained then the things that really count most are the things of the soul rather than the things of money, and I am sure that each of you if he will really think of what it is that made him most happy, of what it is that made him most respect his neighbors will agree with me.
¶¶Look back in your own lives, see what the things are that you are proudest of as you look back, and you will in almost every case and on every occasion find that those memories of pride are associated, not with days of ease, but with days of effort, the day when you had to do all that was in you for some worthy end, and the worthiest of all worthy ends is to make those that are closest and nearest to you—your wife and your children, and those near you—happy and not sorry that you are alive.
¶And after that has been done, to be able so to handle yourself that you can feel when the end comes that on the whole your community, your fellow men, are a little better off and not a little worse off because you have lived.
¶This kind of success is open to every one of us. The great prizes come more or less by accident, and no human being knows that better than any man who has won one of them. The great prizes come more or less by accident, but to each man there comes normally the chance so to lead his life that at the end of his days his children, his wife, those that are dear to him shall rise up and call him blessed, and so that his neighbors and those who have been brought into intimate association with him, may feel that he has done hispart as a man in a world which sadly needs that each man should play his part well.[1]
¶¶Treat each man according to his worth as a man. Don’t hold for or against him that he is either rich or poor. But if he is rich and crooked, hold it against him; if not rich but crooked, then hold it against him. But if he is a square man, stand by him. Distrust all who would have any one class placed before any other. Other republics have fallen because of the unscrupulous rich or the unscrupulous poor who gained ascendancy, who substituted loyalty to class for loyalty to the people as a whole.
¶Abolish the insolence and arrogance of the rich who look down upon the poor; if they lost their wealth they would be ready to plunder the rich. The unscrupulous man who becomes rich would oppress the poor. The man who is true to you is ultimately righteous, and the man who will steal for you will steal from you. The man who will seek to persuade you that he will benefit you by wronging any one else will wrong you when it will benefit him.
¶What we must do as a Nation is to stand for the immutable principles of decency and virtue, regarding vice with abhorrence. If wemake any artificial divisions we have done irreparable injury to the people.[2]
¶Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of locality than it does of class or creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and greater throughout the ages.
¶I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I believe that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people. Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and not worse, andthis is as true of one part of the country as it is of another.
¶For weal or woe we are knit together and we shall go up or go down together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the common-sense of all my countrymen.
¶Fundamentally our people are the same throughout this land; the same in qualities of heart and brain and hand which have made this Republic what it is in the great to-day; which will make it what it is to be in the infinitely greater to-morrow. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, can best prove our fealty to the Nation’s past by the way in which we do the Nation’s work in the present; for only thus can we be sure that our children’s children shall inherit Abe Lincoln’s single-hearted devotion to the great unchanging creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation.”[3]