Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen:
To-day I wish to speak to you, not merely about the Monroe Doctrine, but about our entire position in the Western Hemisphere—a position so peculiar and predominant that out of it has grown the acceptance of the Monroe Doctrine as a cardinal feature of our foreign policy; and in particular I wish to point out what has been done during the lifetime of the last Congress to make good our position in accordance with this historic policy.
Ever since the time when we definitely extended our boundaries westward to the Pacific and southward to the Gulf, since the time when the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies to the south of us asserted their independence, our Nation has insisted that because of its primacy in strength among the nations of the Western Hemisphere it has certain duties and responsibilities which oblige it to take a leading part thereon. We hold that our interests in this hemisphere are greater than those of anyEuropean power possibly can be, and that our duty to ourselves and to the weaker republics who are our neighbors requires us to see that none of the great military powers from across the seas shall encroach upon the territory of the American republics or acquire control thereover.
This policy, therefore, not only forbids us to acquiesce in such territorial acquisition, but also causes us to object to the acquirement of a control which would in its effect be equal to territorial aggrandizement. This is why the United States has steadily believed that the construction of the great Isthmian Canal, the building of which is to stand as the greatest material feat of the twentieth century—greater than any similar feat in any preceding century—should be done by no foreign nation but by ourselves. The canal must of necessity go through the territory of one of our smaller sister republics. We have been scrupulously careful to abstain from perpetrating any wrong upon any of these republics in this matter. We do not wish to interfere with their rights in the least, but, while carefully safeguarding them, to build the canal ourselves under provisions which will enable us, if necessary, to police and protect it, and to guarantee its neutrality, we being the sole guarantor. Our intention was steadfast; we desired action taken so that the canal could always be used by us in time of peace and war alike, and in time of war could never be used to our detriment by any nation which was hostile to us. Such action, by the circumstancessurrounding it, was necessarily for the benefit and not the detriment of the adjacent American republics.
After considerably more than half of a century these objects have been exactly fulfilled by the legislation and treaties of the last two years. Two years ago we were no further advanced toward the construction of the Isthmian Canal on our terms than we had been during the preceding eighty years. By the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, ratified in December, 1901, an old treaty with Great Britain, which had been held to stand in the way, was abrogated and it was agreed that the canal should be constructed under the auspices of the Government of the United States, and that this Government should have the exclusive right to regulate and manage it, becoming the sole guarantor of its neutrality.
It was expressly stipulated, furthermore, that this guaranty of neutrality should not prevent the United States from taking any measures which it found necessary in order to secure by its own forces the defence of the United States and the maintenance of public order. Immediately following this treaty Congress passed a law under which the President was authorized to endeavor to secure a treaty for acquiring the right to finish the construction of, and to operate, the Panama Canal, which had already been begun in the territory of Colombia by a French company. The rights of this company were accordingly obtained and a treaty negotiated with the Republic of Colombia. This treaty has just been ratifiedby the Senate. It reserves all of Colombia’s rights, while guaranteeing all of our own and those of neutral nations, and specifically permits us to take any and all measures for the defence of the canal, and for the preservation of our interests, whenever in our judgment an exigency may arise which calls for action on our part. In other words, these two treaties, and the legislation to carry them out, have resulted in our obtaining on exactly the terms we desired the rights and privileges which we had so long sought in vain. These treaties are among the most important that we have ever negotiated in their effects upon the future welfare of this country, and mark a memorable triumph of American diplomacy—one of those fortunate triumphs, moreover, which redound to the benefit of the entire world.
About the same time trouble arose in connection with the Republic of Venezuela because of certain wrongs alleged to have been committed, and debts overdue, by this Republic to citizens of various foreign powers, notably England, Germany, and Italy. After failure to reach an agreement these powers began a blockade of the Venezuelan coast and a condition of quasi-war ensued. The concern of our Government was of course not to interfere needlessly in any quarrel so far as it did not touch our interests or our honor, and not to take the attitude of protecting from coercion any power unless we were willing to espouse the quarrel of that power, but to keep an attitude of watchful vigilance and see thatthere was no infringement of the Monroe Doctrine—no acquirement of territorial rights by a European power at the expense of a weak sister republic—whether this acquisition might take the shape of an outright and avowed seizure of territory or of the exercise of control which would in effect be equivalent to such seizure. This attitude was expressed in the two following published memoranda, the first being the letter addressed by the Secretary of State to the German Ambassador, the second the conversation with the Secretary of State reported by the British Ambassador:
“Department of State,“Washington,December 16, 1901.
“His Excellency Dr. von Holleben, etc.:
“Dear Excellency: I inclose a memorandum by way of reply to that which you did me the honor to leave with me on Saturday, and am, as ever,
“Faithfully yours,“John Hay.
“Memorandum.
“The President in his message of the 3d of December, 1901, used the following language:
“The Monroe Doctrine is a declaration that there must be no territorial aggrandizement by any non-American power at the expense of any American power on American soil. It is in no wise intended as hostile to any nation in the Old World.’”
“The President further said:
“‘This doctrine has nothing to do with the commercial relations of any American power, save that it in truth allows each of them to form such as it desires.... We do not guarantee any State against punishment if it misconducts itself, provided that punishment does not take the form of the acquisition of territory by any non-American power.’
“His Excellency the German Ambassador, on his recent return from Berlin, conveyed personally to the President the assurance of the German Emperor that His Majesty’s Government had no purpose or intention to make even the smallest acquisition of territory on the South American continent or the islands adjacent. This voluntary and friendly declaration was afterward repeated to the Secretary of State, and was received by the President and the people of the United States in the frank and cordial spirit in which it was offered. In the memorandum of the 11th of December, His Excellency the German Ambassador repeats these assurances as follows: ‘We declare especially that under no circumstances do we consider in our proceedings the acquisition or the permanent occupation of Venezuelan territory.’
“In the said memorandum of the 11th of December, the German Government informs that of the United States that it has certain just claims for money and for damages wrongfully withheld from German subjects by the Government of Venezuela, and that it proposes to take certain coercive measuresdescribed in the memorandum to enforce the payment of these just claims.
“The President of the United States, appreciating the courtesy of the German Government in making him acquainted with the state of affairs referred to, and not regarding himself as called upon to enter into the consideration of the claims in question, believes that no measures will be taken in this matter by the agents of the German Government which are not in accordance with the well-known purpose, above set forth, of His Majesty the German Emperor.”
Sir Michael Herbert to the Marquis ofLansdowne.“Washington,November 13, 1902.
“I communicated to Mr. Hay this morning the substance of Your Lordship’s telegram of the 11th instant.
“His Excellency stated in reply, that the United States Government, although they regretted that European powers should use force against Central and South American countries, could not object to their taking steps to obtain redress for injuries suffered by their subjects, provided that no acquisition of territory was contemplated.”
Both powers assured us in explicit terms that there was not the slightest intention on their part to violate the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, andthis assurance was kept with an honorable good faith which merits full acknowledgment on our part. At the same time, the existence of hostilities in a region so near our own borders was fraught with such possibilities of danger in the future that it was obviously no less our duty to ourselves than our duty to humanity to endeavor to put an end to that. Accordingly, by an offer of our good services in a spirit of frank friendliness to all the parties concerned, a spirit in which they quickly and cordially responded, we secured a resumption of peace—the contending parties agreeing that the matters which they could not settle among themselves should be referred to The Hague Tribunal for settlement. The United States had most fortunately already been able to set an example to other nations by utilizing the great possibilities for good contained in The Hague Tribunal, a question at issue between ourselves and the Republic of Mexico being the first submitted to this international court of arbitration.
The terms which we have secured as those under which the Isthmian Canal is to be built, and the course of events in the Venezuela matter, have shown not merely the ever growing influence of the United States in the Western Hemisphere, but also, I think I may safely say, have exemplified the firm purpose of the United States that its growth and influence and power shall redound not to the harm but to the benefit of our sister republics whose strength is less. Our growth, therefore, is beneficial to humankindin general. We do not intend to assume any position which can give just offence to our neighbors. Our adherence to the rule of human right is not merely profession. The history of our dealings with Cuba shows that we reduce it to performance.
The Monroe Doctrine is not international law, and though I think one day it may become such, this is not necessary as long as it remains a cardinal feature of our foreign policy and as long as we possess both the will and the strength to make it effective. This last point, my fellow-citizens, is all important, and is one which as a people we can never afford to forget. I believe in the Monroe Doctrine with all my heart and soul; I am convinced that the immense majority of our fellow-countrymen so believe in it; but I would infinitely prefer to see us abandon it than to see us put it forward and bluster about it, and yet fail to build up the efficient fighting strength which in the last resort can alone make it respected by any strong foreign power whose interest it may ever happen to be to violate it.
Boasting and blustering are as objectionable among nations as among individuals, and the public men of a great nation owe it to their sense of national self-respect to speak courteously of foreign powers, just as a brave and self-respecting man treats all around him courteously. But though to boast is bad, and causelessly to insult another, worse, yet worse than all is it to be guilty of boasting, even without insult, and when called to the proof to beunable to make such boasting good. There is a homely old adage which runs: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” If the American Nation will speak softly, and yet build, and keep at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far. I ask you to think over this. If you do, you will come to the conclusion that it is mere plain common-sense, so obviously sound that only the blind can fail to see its truth and only the weakest and most irresolute can fail to desire to put it into force.
In the last two years I am happy to say we have taken long strides in advance as regards our navy. The last Congress, in addition to smaller vessels, provided nine of those formidable fighting ships upon which the real efficiency of any navy in war ultimately depends. It provided, moreover, for the necessary addition of officers and enlisted men to make the ships worth having. Meanwhile the Navy Department has seen to it that our ships have been constantly exercised at sea, with the great guns, and in manœuvres, so that their efficiency as fighting units, both individually and when acting together, has been steadily improved. Remember that all of this is necessary. A warship is a huge bit of mechanism, wellnigh as delicate and complicated as it is formidable. It takes years to build it. It takes years to teach the officers and men how to handle it to good advantage. It is an absolute impossibility to improvise a navy at the outset of war. No recent war between any two nations haslasted as long as it takes to build a battleship; and it is just as impossible to improvise the officers or the crews as to improvise the navy.
To lay up a battleship and only send it afloat at the outset of a war, with a raw crew and untried officers, would be not merely a folly but a crime, for it would invite both disaster and disgrace. The navy which so quickly decided in our favor in the war in 1898 had been built and made efficient during the preceding fifteen years. The ships that triumphed off Manila and Santiago had been built under previous Administrations with money appropriated by previous Congresses. The officers and the men did their duty so well because they had already been trained to it by long sea service. All honor to the gallant officers and gallant men who actually did the fighting; but remember, too, to honor the public men, the shipwrights and steel workers, the owners of the shipyards and armor plants, to whose united foresight and exertion we owe it that in 1898 we had craft so good, guns so excellent, and American seamen of so high a type in the conning towers, in the gun-turrets, and in the engine rooms. It is too late to prepare for war when war has come; and if we only prepare sufficiently no war will ever come. We wish a powerful and efficient navy, not for purposes of war, but as the surest guarantee of peace. If we have such a navy—if we keep on building it up—we may rest assured that there is but the smallest chance that trouble will ever come to this Nation; and we maylikewise rest assured that no foreign power will ever quarrel with us about the Monroe Doctrine.
Gentlemen and Ladies; my Fellow-Citizens of Wisconsin:
You are men and women of Wisconsin, but you are men and women of America first. I am glad of having the chance of saying a few words to you to-day. I believe with all my heart in this Nation playing its part manfully and well. I believe that we are now, at the outset of the twentieth century, face to face with great world problems; that we can not help playing the part of a great world power; that all we can decide is whether we will play it well or ill. I do not want to see us shrink from any least bit of duty. We have not only taken during the past five years a position of even greater importance in this Western Hemisphere than ever before, but we have taken a position of great importance even in the furthest Orient, in that furthest West, which is the immemorial East. We must hold our own. If we show ourselves weaklings we will earn the contempt of mankind, and—what is of far more consequence—our own contempt; but I would like to impress upon every public man, upon every writer in the press, the fact that strength should go hand in hand with courtesy, with scrupulous regard in word and deed, not only for the rights, but for the feelings, of other nations. I want to see a man able to holdhis own. I have no respect for the man who will put up with injustice. If a man will not take his part, the part is not worth taking. That is true. On the other hand, I have a hearty contempt for the man who is always walking about wanting to pick a quarrel, and above all, wanting to say something unpleasant about some one else. He is not an agreeable character anywhere; and the fact that he talks loud does not necessarily mean that he fights hard either. Sometimes you will see a man who will talk loud and fight hard; but he does not fight hard because he talks loud, but in spite of it. I want the same thing to be true of us as a nation. I am always sorry whenever I see any reflection that seems to come from America upon any friendly nation. To write or say anything unkind, unjust, or inconsiderate about any foreign nation does not do us any good, and does not help us toward holding our own if ever the need should arise to hold our own. I am sure you will not misunderstand me; I am sure that it is needless for me to say that I do not believe the United States should ever suffer a wrong. I should be the first to ask that we resent a wrong from the strong, just as I should be the first to insist that we do not wrong the weak. As a nation, if we are to be true to our past, we must steadfastly keep these two positions—to submit to no injury by the strong and to inflict no injury on the weak. It is not at all necessary to say disagreeable things about the strongin order to impress them with the fact that we do not intend to submit to injury. Keep our navy up to the highest point of efficiency; have good ships, and enough of them; have the officers and the enlisted men on them trained to handle them, so that in the future the American navy shall rise level, whenever the need comes, to the standard it has set in the past. Keep in our own hearts the rugged, manly virtues, which have made our people formidable as foes, and valuable as friends throughout the century and a quarter of our national life. Do all that; and having done it, remember that it is a sensible thing to speak courteously of others.
I believe in the Monroe Doctrine. I shall try to see that this Nation lives up to it; and as long as I am President it will be lived up to. But I do not intend to make the doctrine an excuse or a justification for being unpleasant to other powers, for speaking ill of other powers. We want the friendship of mankind. We want to get on well with the other nations of mankind, with the small nations and with the big nations. We want so to carry ourselves that if (which I think most unlikely) any quarrel should arise, it would be evident that it was not a quarrel of our own seeking, but one that was forced on us. If it is forced on us, I know you too well not to know that you will stand up to it if the need comes; but you will stand up to it all the better if you have not blustered or spoken ill of other nations in advance. We want friendship;we want peace. We wish well to the nations of mankind. We look with joy at any prosperity of theirs; we wish them success, not failure. We rejoice as mankind moves forward over the whole earth. Each nation has its own difficulties. We have difficulties enough at home. Let us improve ourselves, lifting what needs to be lifted here, and let others do their own work; let us attend to our own business; keep our own hearthstone swept and in order. Do not shirk any duty; do not shirk any difficulty that is forced upon us, but do not invite it by foolish language. Do not assume a quarrelsome and unpleasant attitude toward other people. Let the friendly expressions of foreign powers be accepted as tokens of their sincere good will, and reflecting their real sentiments; and let us avoid any language on our part which might tend to turn their good will into ill will. All that is mere common-sense; the kind of common-sense that we apply in our own lives, man to man, neighbor to neighbor; and remember that substantially what is true among nations is true on a small scale among ourselves. The man who is a weakling, who is a coward, we all despise, and we ought to despise him. If a man can not do his own work and take his own part, he does not count; and I have no patience with those who would have the United States unable to take its own part, to do its work in the world. But remember that a loose tongue is just as unfortunate an accompaniment for a nation as for an individual.The man who talks ill of his neighbors, the man who invites trouble for himself and them, is a nuisance. The stronger, the more self-confident the nation is, the more carefully it should guard its speech as well as its action, and should make it a point, in the interest of its own self-respect, to see that it does not say what it can not make good, that it avoids giving needless offence, that it shows genuinely and sincerely its desire for friendship with the rest of mankind, but that it keeps itself in shape to make its weight felt should the need arise.
That is in substance my theory of what our foreign policy should be. Let us not boast, not insult any one, but make up our minds coolly what is necessary to say, say it, and then stand to it, whatever the consequences may be.
Mr. Toastmaster, Gentlemen:
To-day I wish to speak to you on the question of the control and regulation of those great corporations which are popularly, although rather vaguely, known as trusts; dealing mostly with what has actually been accomplished in the way of legislation and in the way of enforcement of legislation during the past eighteen months, the period covering the two sessions of the Fifty-seventh Congress. At the outset I shall ask you to remember that I do not approach the subject either from the standpoint of those who speak of themselves as anti-trust or anti-corporationpeople, nor yet from the standpoint of those who are fond of denying the existence of evils in the trusts, or who apparently proceed upon the assumption that if a corporation is large enough it can do no wrong.
I think I speak for the great majority of the American people when I say that we are not in the least against wealth as such, whether individual or corporate; that we merely desire to see any abuse of corporate or combined wealth corrected and remedied; that we do not desire the abolition or destruction of big corporations, but, on the contrary, recognize them as being in many cases efficient economic instruments, the results of an inevitable process of economic evolution, and only desire to see them regulated and controlled so far as may be necessary to subserve the public good. We should be false to the historic principles of our government if we discriminated, either by legislation or administration, either for or against a man because of either his wealth or his poverty. There is no proper place in our society either for the rich man who uses the power conferred by his riches to enable him to oppress and wrong his neighbors, nor yet for the demagogic agitator who, instead of attacking abuses as all abuses should be attacked wherever found, attacks property, attacks prosperity, attacks men of wealth, as such, whether they be good or bad, attacks corporations whether they do well or ill, and seeks, in a spirit of ignorant rancor, to overthrow the very foundations upon which rests our national well-being.
In consequence of the extraordinary industrial changes of the last half century, and notably of the last two or three decades, changes due mainly to the rapidity and complexity of our industrial growth, we are confronted with problems which in their present shape were unknown to our forefathers. Our great prosperity, with its accompanying concentration of population and of wealth, its extreme specialization of faculties, and its development of giant industrial leaders, has brought much good and some evil, and it is as foolish to ignore the good as wilfully to blind ourselves to the evil.
The evil has been partly the inevitable accompaniment of the social changes, and where this is the case it can be cured neither by law nor by the administration of the law, the only remedy lying in the slow change of character and of economic environment. But for a portion of the evil, at least, we think that remedies can be found. We know well the danger of false remedies, and we are against all violent, radical, and unwise change. But we believe that by proceeding slowly, yet resolutely, with good sense and moderation, and also with a firm determination not to be swerved from our course either by foolish clamor or by any base or sinister influence, we can accomplish much for the betterment of conditions.
Nearly two years ago, speaking at the State Fair in Minnesota, I said:
“It is probably true that the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have beenamassed, not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the conferring of great benefits upon the community, and this no matter what may have been the conscious purpose of those amassing them. There is but the scantiest justification for most of the outcry against the men of wealthas such; and it ought to be unnecessary to state that any appeal which directly or indirectly leads to suspicion and hatred among ourselves, which tends to limit opportunity, and therefore to shut the door of success against poor men of talent, and, finally, which entails the possibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack upon the fundamental properties of American citizenship. Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident that the State, and if necessary the Nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and self-restraint; but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises.”
Last fall in speaking at Cincinnati I said:
“The necessary supervision and control, in which I firmly believe as the only method of eliminating the real evils of the trusts, must come through wisely and cautiously framed legislation, which shall aim in the first place to give definite control to some sovereign over the great corporations, and whichshall be followed, when once this power has been conferred, by a system giving to the government the full knowledge which is the essential for satisfactory action. Then, when this knowledge—one of the essential features of which is proper publicity—has been gained, what further steps of any kind are necessary can be taken with the confidence born of the possession of power to deal with the subject, and of a thorough knowledge of what should and can be done in the matter. We need additional power, and we need knowledge.... Such legislation—whether obtainable now or obtainable only after a Constitutional amendment—should provide for a reasonable supervision, the most prominent feature of which at first should be publicity; that is, the making public, both to the government authorities and to the people at large, the essential facts in which the public is concerned. This would give us exact knowledge of many points which are now not only in doubt but the subject of fierce controversy. Moreover, the mere fact of the publication would cure some very grave evils, for the light of day is a deterrent to wrongdoing. It would doubtless disclose other evils with which, for the time being, we could devise no way to grapple. Finally, it would disclose others which could be grappled with and cured by further legislative action.”
In my Message to Congress for 1901 I said:
“In the interest of the whole people the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter, itself also assume power ofsupervision and regulation over all corporations doing an interstate business.”
The views thus expressed have now received effect by the wise, conservative, and yet far-reaching legislation enacted by Congress at its last session. In its wisdom Congress enacted the very important law providing a Department of Commerce and Labor, and further providing therein under the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for a Commissioner of Corporations, charged with the duty of supervision of and of making intelligent investigation into the organization and conduct of corporations engaged in interstate commerce. His powers to expose illegal or hurtful practices and to obtain all information needful for the purposes of further intelligent legislation seem adequate; and the publicity justifiable and proper for public purposes is satisfactory guaranteed. The law was passed at the very end of the session of Congress. Owing to the lateness of its passage Congress was not able to provide proper equipment for the new Department; and the first few months must necessarily be spent in the work of organization, and the first investigations must necessarily be of a tentative character. The satisfactory development of such a system requires time and great labor. Those who are intrusted with the administration of the new law will assuredly administer it in a spirit of absolute fairness and justice and of entire fearlessness, with the firm purpose not to hurt any corporation doing a legitimate business—on the contrary to help it—and,on the other hand, not to spare any corporation which may be guilty of illegal practices, or the methods of which may make it a menace to the public welfare. Some substantial good will be done in the immediate future; and as the Department gets fairly to work under the law an ever larger vista for good work will be opened along the lines indicated. The enactment of this law is one of the most significant contributions which have been made in our time toward the proper solution of the problem of the relations to the people of the great corporations and corporate combinations.
But much though this is, it is only a part of what has been done in the effort to ascertain and correct improper trust or monopolistic practices. Some eighteen months ago the Industrial Commission, an able and non-partisan body, reported to Congress the result of their investigation of trusts and industrial combinations. One of the most important of their conclusions was that discriminations in freight rates and facilities were granted favored shippers by the railroads and that these discriminations clearly tended toward the control of production and prices in many fields of business by large combinations. That this conclusion was justifiable was shown by the disclosures in the investigation of railroad methods pursued in the fall and winter of 1901-1902. It was then shown that certain trunk lines had entered into unlawful agreements as to the transportation of food products from the West to the Atlantic seaboard, giving a few favored shippers rates muchbelow the tariff charges imposed upon the smaller dealers and the general public. These unjust practices had prevailed to such an extent and for so long a time that many of the smaller shippers had been driven out of business, until practically one buyer of grain on each railway system had been able by his illegal advantages to secure a monopoly on the line with which his secret compact was made; this monopoly enabling him to fix the price to both producer and consumer. Many of the great packing house concerns were shown to be in combination with each other and with most of the great railway lines, whereby they enjoyed large secret concessions in rates and thus obtained a practical monopoly of the fresh and cured meat industry of the country. These fusions, though violative of the statute, had prevailed unchecked for so many years that they had become intrenched in and interwoven with the commercial life of certain large distributing localities; although this was of course at the expense of the vast body of law-abiding merchants, the general public, and particularly of unfavored localities.
Under those circumstances it was a serious problem to determine the wise course to follow in vitalizing a law which had in part become obsolete or proved incapable of enforcement. Of what the Attorney-General did in enforcing it I shall speak later. The decisions of the courts upon the law had betrayed weaknesses and imperfections, some of them so serious as to render abortive efforts to apply any effective remedy for the existing evils.
It is clear that corporations created for quasi public purposes, clothed for that reason with the ultimate power of the state to take private property against the will of the owner, hold their corporate powers as carriers in trust for the fairly impartial service of all the public. Favoritism in the use of such powers, unjustly enriching some and unjustly impoverishing others, discriminating in favor of some places and against others, is palpably violative of plain principles of justice. Such a practice unchecked is hurtful in many ways. Congress, having had its attention drawn to the matter, enacted a most important anti-rebate law, which greatly strengthens the interstate commerce law. This new law prohibits under adequate penalties the giving and as well the demanding or receiving of such preferences, and provides the preventive remedy of injunction. The vigorous administration of this law—and it will be enforced—will, it is hoped, afford a substantial remedy for certain trust evils which have attracted public attention and have created public unrest.
This law represents a noteworthy and important advance toward just and effective regulation of transportation. Moreover, its passage has been supplemented by the enactment of a law to expedite the hearing of actions of public moment under the anti-trust act, known as the Sherman law, and under the act to regulate commerce, at the request of the Attorney-General; and furthermore, additional funds have been appropriated to be expended under thedirection of the Attorney-General in the enforcement of these laws.
All of this represents a great and substantial advance in legislation. But more important even than legislation is the administration of the law, and I ask your attention for a moment to the way in which the law has been administered by the profound jurist and fearless public servant who now occupies the position of Attorney-General, Mr. Knox. The Constitution enjoins upon the President that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and under this provision the Attorney-General formulated a policy which was in effect nothing but the rigid enforcement, by suits managed with consummate skill and ability, both of the anti-trust law and of the imperfect provisions of the act to regulate commerce. The first step taken was the prosecution of fourteen suits against the principal railroads of the Middle West, restraining them by injunction from further violations of either of the laws in question.
About the same time the case against the Northern Securities Company was initiated. This was a corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey with a capital of four hundred million dollars, the alleged purpose being to control the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railroad companies, two parallel and competing lines extending across the northern tier of States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Whatever thepurpose, its consummation would have resulted in the control of the two great railway systems—upon which the people of the Northwestern States were so largely dependent for their supplies and to get their products to market—being practically merged into the New Jersey corporation. The proposition that these independent systems of railroads should be merged under a single control alarmed the people of the States concerned, lest they be subjected to what they deemed a monopoly of interstate transportation and the suppression of competition. The Governors of the States most deeply affected held a meeting to consider how to prevent the merger becoming effective and passed resolutions calling upon the National Government to enforce the anti-trust laws against the alleged combination. When these resolutions were referred to the Attorney-General for consideration and advice, he reported that in his opinion the Northern Securities Company and its control of the railroads mentioned was a combination in restraint of trade, and was attempting a monopoly in violation of the national anti-trust law. Thereupon a suit in equity, which is now pending, was begun by the Government to test the validity of this transaction under the Sherman law.
At nearly the same time the disclosures respecting the secret rebates enjoyed by the great packing house companies, coupled with the very high price of meats, led the Attorney-General to direct an investigation into the methods of the so-called beeftrust. The result was that he filed bills for injunction against six of the principal packing house companies, and restrained them from combining and agreeing upon prices at which they would sell their products in States other than those in which their meats were prepared for market. Writs of injunction were issued accordingly, and since then, after full argument, the United States Circuit Court has made the injunction perpetual.
The cotton interests of the South, including growers, buyers, and shippers, made complaint that they were suffering great injury in their business from the methods of the Southern railroads in the handling and transportation of cotton. They alleged that these railroads, by combined action under a pooling arrangement to support their rate schedules, had denied to the shippers the right to elect over what roads their commodities should be shipped, and that by dividing upon a fixed basis the cotton crop of the South all inducement to compete in rates for the transportation thereof was eliminated. Proceedings were instituted by the Attorney-General under the anti-trust law, which resulted in the destruction of the pool and in restoring to the growers and shippers of the South the right to ship their products over any road they elected, thus removing the restraint upon the freedom of commerce.
In November, 1902, the Attorney-General directed that a bill for an injunction be filed in the United States Circuit Court at San Francisco againstthe Federal Salt Company—a corporation which had been organized under the laws of an Eastern State, but had its main office and principal place of business in California—and against a number of other companies and persons constituting what was known as the salt trust. These injunctions were to restrain the execution of certain contracts between the Federal Salt Company and the other defendants, by which the latter agreed neither to import nor buy or sell salt, except from and to the Federal Salt Company, and not to engage or assist in the production of salt west of the Mississippi River during the continuance of such contracts. As the result of these agreements the price of salt had been advanced about four hundred per cent. A temporary injunction order was obtained, which the defendants asked the court to modify on the ground that the anti-trust law had no application to contracts for purchases and sales within a State. The Circuit Court overruled this contention and sustained the Government’s position. This practically concluded the case, and it is understood that in consequence the Federal Salt Company is about to be dissolved and that no further contest will be made.
The above is a brief outline of the most important steps, legislative and administrative, taken during the past eighteen months in the direction of solving, so far as at present it seems practicable by national legislation or administration to solve, what we call the trust problem. They represent a sum of verysubstantial achievement. They represent a successful effort to devise and apply real remedies; an effort which so far succeeded because it was made not only with resolute purpose and determination, but also in a spirit of common-sense and justice, as far removed as possible from rancor, hysteria, and unworthy demagogic appeal. In the same spirit the laws will continue to be enforced. Not only is the legislation recently enacted effective, but in my judgment it was impracticable to attempt more. Nothing of value is to be expected from ceaseless agitation for radical and extreme legislation. The people may wisely, and with confidence, await the results which are reasonably to be expected from the impartial enforcement of the laws which have recently been placed upon the statute books. Legislation of a general and indiscriminate character would be sure to fail, either because it would involve all interests in a common ruin, or because it would not really reach any evil. We have endeavored to provide a discriminating adaptation of the remedy to the real mischief.
Many of the alleged remedies advocated are of the unpleasantly drastic type which seeks to destroy the disease by killing the patient. Others are so obviously futile that it is somewhat difficult to treat them seriously or as being advanced in good faith. High among the latter I place the effort to reach the trust question by means of the tariff. You can, of course, put an end to the prosperity of the trusts by putting an end to the prosperity of the Nation;but the price for such action seems high. The alternative is to do exactly what has been done during the life of the Congress which has just closed—that is, to endeavor, not to destroy corporations, but to regulate them with a view of doing away with whatever is of evil in them and of making them subserve the public use. The law is not to be administered in the interest of the poor man as such, nor yet in the interest of the rich man as such, but in the interest of the law-abiding man, rich or poor. We are no more against organizations of capital than against organizations of labor. We welcome both, demanding only that each shall do right and shall remember its duty to the Republic. Such a course we consider not merely a benefit to the poor man, but a benefit to the rich man. We do no man an injustice when we require him to obey the law. On the contrary, if he is a man whose safety and well-being depend in a peculiar degree upon the existence of the spirit of law and order, we are rendering him the greatest service when we require him to be himself an exemplar of that spirit.
Mr. Governor, Mr. Lieutenant-Governor, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Legislative Body, Men and Women of Minnesota:
I thank you for greeting me and for giving me the chance to say a word or two in welcome and in acknowledgment of your greeting.
To any American capable of any depth of reflection whatever, it should always be a somewhat solemn thing to come into the presence of two bodies—one a legislative body; the other an educational body; the legislative body, which is not only the method but the symbol of our free government; the educational body, which, using educational in its broadest and truest sense, means the body that fits us for self-government. Self-government is not an easy thing. The nations of antiquity, the nations of the middle ages, that tried the experiment of independent self-government which should guarantee freedom to the individual, and yet safety from without and within to the body politic itself, rarely lasted long, never rose to a pitch of greatness such as ours without having suffered some radical and, as it proved ultimately, fatal change of structure. Until our Republic was founded it had proved impossible in the long run to combine freedom for the individual and greatness for the nation. The republics of antiquity and of the middle ages went one of two lines; either proved fatal. Either the individual’s interests were sacrificed, and, while retaining the forms of freedom, the republic became in effect a despotism, or else the freedom of the individual was kept at the cost of utter impotence either to put down disorder at home or to repel aggression from abroad.
It has been given to us during the century and a quarter of our national life so to handle ourselves as a people that we have escaped both dangers. Wehave been able to escape the leadership of those who feared Scylla so much that they would plunge us into Charybdis, and of those who feared Charybdis so much that they would plunge us into Scylla. We have been able to preserve orderly liberty and strength to grow in greatness among the nations of the earth, while becoming steadily more and more democratic in the truest and broadest sense of the word. I believe with all my heart that we shall continue on the path thus marked out for us; but we shall so continue only if we remember that in the last analysis the safety of the Republic depends upon the high average of individual citizenship.
We can keep all the forms of free government; and every Fourth of July we can talk possibly a little too boastfully of both the past and the present; and yet it shall not avail us if we do not have in our hearts the spirit that makes for decent citizenship, the spirit that alone counts in the formation of a true republic. And that spirit is essentially the same in public life as in private life. The manifestations of it differ, but the spirit is the same. A public man is as much bound to tell the truth on the stump as off the stump. On the other hand, his critics will do well to remember that truth-telling is a virtue for them to practice also. What we need in public life and in private life is not genius so much as the many-sided development of the qualities which in their sum make good citizenship. In a great crisis we shall need a genius; thrice and thrice over fortunate is the nation which then develops a Lincoln tolead it in peace; a Grant to lead it in war; a Washington to lead it in war and peace.
But what we need as a nation, as an individual, at the ordinary times which are so much larger in the aggregate than the extraordinary times, and upon our conduct in which really depends our conduct in extraordinary times, are the commonplace virtues which we all recognize, and which when we were young we wrote about in copybooks, and which, if we practice, will count for a thousand times more in the long run than any brilliance and genius of any kind or sort whatsoever.
I want to say just a word on the other side of the two great questions, the legislative and educational questions. Education must be twofold. Of course if we do not have education in the school, the academy, the college, the university, and have it developed in the highest and wisest manner, we shall make but a poor fist of American citizenship. One of the things that is most hopeful in our Republic is the way in which the State has taken charge of elementary education; and the way in which, in the East through private gift, here in the West through the wise liberality of the several States, the higher education has been taken care of, as in your own University of Minnesota. But such education can never be all. It can never be more than half, and sometimes not that. Nothing can take the place of the education of the home; and that education must be largely the unconscious influence of character upon character. There is no use in the father trying to instil wisesaws and precepts into the son, if his own character gives the lie to his advice. And unfortunately it is just as true in the education of children as in everything else, that it is almost as harmful to be a virtuous fool as a knave. So often throughout our social structure from the wealthiest down to the poorest you see the queer fatuity of the man or the woman which makes them save their children temporary discomfort, temporary unpleasantness, at the cost of future destruction; you see a great many men, and I am sorry to say a great many women, who say, “I have had to work hard; my boy or my girl shall not do anything.” I have seen it in every rank. I have heard the millionaire say, “I have had to work all my life to make money, let my boy spend it.” It would be better for the boy never to have been born than to be brought up on that principle. On the other hand, I have seen the overworked drudge, the laborer’s wife, who said, “Well, I have had to work my heart out all my days; my daughters shall be ladies”; and her conception of her daughters being ladies was to have them sit around useless and incompetent, unable to do anything, brought up to be discontented cumberers of the earth’s surface. As Abraham Lincoln said: “There is a deal of human nature in mankind.” Fundamentally, virtues and faults are just the same in the millionaire and the day laborer. The man or the woman who seeks to bring up his or her children with the idea that their happiness is secured by teaching them to avoid difficulties is doing them a cruel wrong. To bring upthe boy and girl so sheltered that they can not stand any rough knocks, that they shrink from toil, that when they meet an obstacle they feel they ought to go around or back instead of going on over it—the man or the woman who does that is wronging the children to a degree that no other human being can wrong them. If you are worth your salt and want your children to be worth their salt, teach them that the life that is not a life of work and effort is worthless, a curse to the man or woman leading it, a curse to those around him or her. Teach the boys that if they are ever to count in the world they will count not by flinching from difficulties, but by warring with and overcoming them. What utter scorn one feels for those who seek only the life of ease; the life passed in dexterous effort to avoid all angular corners, to avoid being put in the places where a strong man by blood and sweat and toil and risk wins triumph! What a wretched life is the life of the man passed in endeavoring to shirk his share of the burden laid upon him in this world! And it makes no difference whether that man is a man of inherited wealth or one who has to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; it is equally ignoble in either case. What is true of the individual is true of the nation. The man who counts is not the man who dodges work, but he who goes out into life rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, girding himself for the effort, bound to win and wrest triumph from difficulty and disaster.
So it is with our Nation. No nation which hasbound itself only to do easy things ever yet amounted to anything, ever yet came to anything throughout the ages. We have become a great people. At the threshold of this twentieth century we stand with the future looming large before us. We face great problems within and great problems without. We can not if we would refuse to face those problems. All we can decide is whether we will do them well or ill; for the refusal to face them would itself mean that we were doing them ill. We are in the arena into which great nations must come. We must play our part. It rests with us to decide that we shall not play it ignobly; that we shall not flinch from the great problems that there are to do, but that we shall take our place in the forefront of the great nations and face each problem of the day with confident and resolute hope.
Mr. President; Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am glad to have the chance of greeting you this evening, but I regret that the engagements for me have been so numerous that it will be only a greeting. I wish I could be here to see your beautiful grounds and buildings by daylight, and to see a little of the life of the university.
There are plenty of tendencies for good, and, I am sorry to say, plenty of tendencies for evil in our modern life, and high among the former mustbe placed the rapid growth of the great institutions of learning in this country. There is a twofold side to the work done in any institution of this kind. In the first place the institution is to turn out scholars and men proficient in the different technical branches for which it trains them. It should be the aim of every university which seeks to develop the liberal side of education to turn out men and women who will add to the sum of productive achievement in scholarship; who will not merely be content to work in the fields that have already been harrowed a thousand times by other workers, but who will strike out for themselves and try to do new work that counts; so in each technical school if the institution is worthy of standing in the front rank, it will turn out those who in that particular specialty stand at the head. But in addition to this merely technical work, to the turning out of the scholar, the professional man, the man or woman trained on some special line, each university worthy the name must endeavor to turn out men and women in the fullest sense of the word, good citizens, men and women who will add by what they do to the sum of noble work in the whole community.
It is a good thing that so much attention should be given to physical development. I believe in rough games and in rough, manly sports. I do not feel any particular sympathy for the person who gets battered about a good deal so long as it is not fatal, and if he feels any sympathy for himself I do not like him. I believe thoroughly in the soundand vigorous body. I believe still more in the vigorous mind. And I believe most of all in what count for more than body, for more than mind, and that is character. That is the sum of the forces that make the man or the woman worth knowing, worth revering, worth holding to. Play hard while you play, but do not mistake it for work. If a young fellow is twenty it is a good thing that he should be a crack half-back; but when he is forty I am sorry if he has never been anything else except once at twenty a good half-back. Keep the sense of proportion. Play hard; it will do you good in your work. But work hard and remember that this is the main thing.
Finally, in closing, I think it is a safe thing to take a motto that I heard from the lips of an old football player once: “Don’t flinch, don’t foul, and hit the line hard.”
My Fellow-Citizens:
At the special session of the Senate held in March the Cuban reciprocity treaty was ratified. When this treaty goes into effect, it will confer substantial economic benefits alike upon Cuba, because of the widening of her market in the United States, and upon the United States, because of the equal widening and the progressive control it will give to our people in the Cuban market. This treaty is beneficial to both parties and justifies itself on severalgrounds. In the first place we offer to Cuba her natural market. We can confer upon her a benefit which no other nation can confer; and for the very reason that we have started her as an independent republic and that we are rich, prosperous, and powerful, it behooves us to stretch out a helping hand to our feebler younger sister. In the next place, it widens the market for our products, both the products of the farm and certain of our manufactures; and it is therefore in the interests of our farmers, manufacturers, merchants, and wage-workers. Finally, the treaty was not merely warranted but demanded, apart from all other considerations, by the enlightened consideration of our foreign policy. More and more in the future we must occupy a preponderant position in the waters and along the coasts in the region south of us; not a position of control over the republics of the south, but of control of the military situation so as to avoid any possible complications in the future. Under the Platt amendment Cuba agreed to give us certain naval stations on her coast. The Navy Department decided that we needed but two, and we have specified where these two are to be. President Palma has concluded an agreement giving them to us—an agreement which the Cuban legislative body will doubtless soon ratify. In other words, the Republic of Cuba has assumed a special relation to our international political system, under which she gives us outposts of defence, and we are morally bound to extend to her in a degree the benefit of our owneconomic system. From every standpoint of wise and enlightened home and foreign policy the ratification of the Cuban treaty marked a step of substantial progress in the growth of our nation toward greatness at home and abroad.
Equally important was the action on the tariff upon products of the Philippines. We gave them a reduction of twenty-five per cent, and would have given them a reduction of twenty-five per cent more had it not been for the opposition, in the hurried closing days of the last session, of certain gentlemen who, by the way, have been representing themselves both as peculiarly solicitous for the interests of the Philippine people and as special champions of the lowering of tariff duties. There is a distinctly humorous side to the fact that the reduction of duties which would benefit Cuba and the Philippines as well as ourselves was antagonized chiefly by those who in theory have been fond of proclaiming themselves the advanced guardians of the oppressed nationalities in the islands affected and the ardent advocates of the reduction of duties generally, but who instantly took violent ground against the practical steps to accomplish either purpose.
Moreover, a law was enacted putting anthracite on the free list and completely removing the duties on all other kinds of coal for one year.
We are now in a condition of prosperity unparalleled not merely in our own history but in the history of any other nation. This prosperity is deeprooted and stands on a firm basis because it is due to the fact that the average American has in him the stuff out of which victors are made in the great industrial contests of the present day, just as in the great military contests of the past; and because he is now able to use and develop his qualities to best advantage under our well-established economic system. We are winning headship among the nations of the world because our people are able to keep their high average of individual citizenship and to show their mastery in the hard, complex, pushing life of the age. There will be fluctuations from time to time in our prosperity, but it will continue to grow just so long as we keep up this high average of individual citizenship and permit it to work out its own salvation under proper economic legislation.
The present phenomenal prosperity has been won under a tariff which was made in accordance with certain fixed and definite principles, the most important of which is an avowed determination to protect the interests of the American producer, business man, wage-worker, and farmer alike. The general tariff policy, to which, without regard to changes in detail, I believe this country is irrevocably committed, is fundamentally based upon ample recognition of the difference between the cost of production—that is, the cost of labor—here and abroad, and of the need to see to it that our laws shall in no event afford advantage in our own market to foreign industries over American industries, to foreign capital over American capital, to foreign labor overour own labor. This country has and this country needs better-paid, better-educated, better-fed, and better-clothed workingmen, of a higher type, than are to be found in any foreign country. It has and it needs a higher, more vigorous, and more prosperous type of tillers of the soil than is possessed by any other country. The business men, the merchants and manufacturers, and the managers of the transportation interests show the same superiority when compared with men of their type abroad. The events of the last few years have shown how skilfully the leaders of American industry use in international business competition the mighty industrial weapons forged for them by the resources of our country, the wisdom of our laws, and the skill, the inventive genius, and the administrative capacity of our people.
It is, of course, a mere truism to say that we want to use everything in our power to foster the welfare of our entire body politic. In other words, we need to treat the tariff as a business proposition, from the standpoint of the interests of the country as a whole, and not with reference to the temporary needs of any political party. It is almost as necessary that our policy should be stable as that it should be wise. A nation like ours could not long stand the ruinous policy of readjusting its business to radical changes in the tariff at short intervals, especially when, as now, owing to the immense extent and variety of our products, the tariff schedules carry rates of duty on thousands of different articles.Sweeping and violent changes in such a tariff, touching so vitally the interests of all of us, embracing agriculture, labor, manufactures, and commerce, would be disastrous in any event, and they would be fatal to our present well-being if approached on the theory that the principle of the protective tariff was to be abandoned. The business world, that is, the entire American world, can not afford, if it has any regard for its own welfare, even to consider the advisability of abandoning the present system.
Yet, on the other hand, where the industrial conditions so frequently change, as with us must of necessity be the case, it is a matter of prime importance that we should be able from time to time to adapt our economic policy to the changed conditions. Our aim should be to preserve the policy of a protective tariff, in which the Nation as a whole has acquiesced, and yet wherever and whenever necessary to change the duties in particular paragraphs or schedules as matters of legislative detail, if such change is demanded by the interests of the Nation as a whole.
In making any readjustment there are certain important considerations which can not be disregarded. If a tariff law has on the whole worked well, and if business has prospered under it and is prospering, it may be better to endure some inconveniences and inequalities for a time than by making changes to risk causing disturbance andperhaps paralysis in the industries and business of the country. The fact that the change in a given rate of duty may be thought desirable does not settle the question whether it is advisable to make the change immediately. Every tariff deals with duties on thousands of articles arranged in hundreds of paragraphs and in many schedules. These duties affect a vast number of interests which are often conflicting. If necessary for our welfare, then of course Congress must consider the question of changing the law as a whole or changing any given rates of duty, but we must remember that whenever even a single schedule is considered some interests will appear to demand a change in almost every schedule in the law; and when it comes to upsetting the schedules generally the effect upon the business interests of the country would be ruinous.
One point we must steadily keep in mind. The question of tariff revision, speaking broadly, stands wholly apart from the question of dealing with the trusts. No change in tariff duties can have any substantial effect in solving the so-called trust problem. Certain great trusts or great corporations are wholly unaffected by the tariff. Practically all the others that are of any importance have as a matter of fact numbers of smaller American competitors; and of course a change in the tariff which would work injury to the large corporation would work not merely injury but destruction to its smaller competitors; and equally of course such a changewould mean disaster to all the wage-workers connected with either the large or the small corporations. From the standpoint of those interested in the solution of the trust problem such a change would therefore merely mean that the trust was relieved of the competition of its weaker American competitors, and thrown only into competition with foreign competitors; and that the first effort to meet this new competition would be made by cutting down wages, and would therefore be primarily at the cost of labor. In the case of some of our greatest trusts such a change might confer upon them a positive benefit. Speaking broadly, it is evident that the changes in the tariff will affect the trusts for weal or for woe simply as they affect the whole country. The tariff affects trusts only as it affects all other interests. It makes all these interests, large or small, profitable; and its benefits can be taken from the large only under penalty of taking them from the small also.
To sum up, then, we must as a people approach a matter of such prime economic importance as the tariff from the standpoint of our business needs. We can not afford to become fossilized or to fail to recognize the fact that as the needs of the country change it may be necessary to meet these new needs by changing certain features of our tariff laws. Still less can we afford to fail to recognize the further fact that these changes must not be made until the need for them outweighs the disadvantageswhich may result; and when it becomes necessary to make them they should be made with full recognition of the need of stability in our economic system and of keeping unchanged the principle of that system which has now become a settled policy in our national life. We have prospered marvelously at home. As a nation we stand in the very forefront in the giant international industrial competition of the day. We can not afford by any freak or folly to forfeit the position to which we have thus triumphantly attained.
Fellow-Citizens:
There are many, many lesser problems which go to make up in their entirety the huge and complex problems of our modern industrial life. Each of these problems is, moreover, connected with many of the others. Few indeed are simple or stand only by themselves. The most important are those connected with the relation of the farmers, the stock growers and soil tillers, to the community at large, and those affecting the relations between employer and employed. In a country like ours it is fundamentally true that the well-being of the tiller of the soil and the wage-worker is the well-being of the State. If they are well off, then we need concern ourselves but little as to how other classes stand, for they will inevitably be well off too; and, on the other hand, there can be no real general prosperity unlessbased on the foundation of the prosperity of the wage-worker and the tiller of the soil.
But the needs of these two classes are often not the same. The tiller of the soil has been of all our citizens the one on the whole the least affected in his ways of life and methods of industry by the giant industrial changes of the last half century. There has been change with him, too, of course. He also can work to best advantage if he keeps in close touch with his fellows; and the success of the national Department of Agriculture has shown how much can be done for him by rational action of the Government. Nor is it only through the Department that the Government can act. One of the greatest and most beneficent measures passed by the last Congress, or indeed by any Congress in recent years, is the Irrigation Act, which will do for the States of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain region at least as much as ever has been done for the States of the humid region by river and harbor improvements. Few measures that have been put upon the statute books of the Nation have done more for the people than this law will, I firmly believe, directly and indirectly accomplish for the States in question.
The Department of Agriculture devotes its whole energy to working for the welfare of farmers and stock growers. In every section of our country it aids them in their constantly increasing search for a better agricultural education. It helps not only them, but all the nation, in seeing that our exports of meats have clean bills of health, and that there isrigid inspection of all meats that enter into interstate commerce. Thirty-eight million carcasses were inspected during the last fiscal year. Our stock growers sell forty-five million dollars’ worth of live stock annually, and these animals must be kept healthy or else our people will lose their trade. Our export of plant products to foreign countries amounts to over six hundred million dollars a year, and there is no branch of its work to which the Department of Agriculture devotes more care. Thus the Department has been successfully introducing a macaroni wheat from the headwaters of the Volga, which grows successfully in ten inches of rainfall, and by this means wheat growing has been successfully extended westward into the semi-arid region. Two million bushels of this wheat were grown last year; and being suited to dry conditions it can be used for forage as well as for food for man.
The Department of Agriculture has been helping our fruit men to establish markets abroad by studying methods of fruit preservation through refrigeration and through methods of handling and packing. On the Gulf coasts of Louisiana and Texas, thanks to the Department of Agriculture, a rice suitable to the region was imported from the Orient and the rice crop is now practically equal to our needs in this country, whereas a few years ago it supplied but one-fourth of them. The most important of our farm products is the grass crop; and to show what has been done with grasses, I need only allude to thestriking change made in the entire West by the extended use of alfalfa.
Moreover, the Department has taken the lead in the effort to prevent the deforestation of the country. Where there are forests we seek to preserve them; and on the once treeless plains and the prairies we are doing our best to foster the habit of tree planting among our people. In my own lifetime I have seen wonderful changes brought about by this tree planting here in your own State and in the States immediately around it.
There are a number of very important questions, such as that of good roads, with which the States alone can deal, and where all that the National Government can do is to co-operate with them. The same is true of the education of the American farmer. A number of the States have themselves started to help in this work and the Department of Agriculture does an immense amount which is in the proper sense of the word educational, and educational in the most practical way.
It is therefore clearly true that a great advance has been made in the direction of finding ways by which the Government can help the farmer to help himself—the only kind of help which a self-respecting man will accept, or, I may add, which will in the end do him any good. Much has been done in these ways, and farm life and farm processes continually change for the better. The farmer himself still retains, because of his surroundings and the nature of his work, to a pre-eminent degree thequalities which we like to think of as distinctly American in considering our early history. The man who tills his own farm, whether on the prairie or in the woodland, the man who grows what we eat and the raw material which is worked up into what we wear, still exists more nearly under the conditions which obtained when the “embattled farmers” of ’76 made this country a nation than is true of any others of our people.
But the wage-workers in our cities, like the capitalists in our cities, face totally changed conditions. The development of machinery and the extraordinary change in business conditions have rendered the employment of capital and of persons in large aggregations not merely profitable but often necessary for success, and have specialized the labor of the wage-worker at the same time that they have brought great aggregations of wage-workers together. More and more in our great industrial centres men have come to realize that they can not live as independently of one another as in the old days was the case everywhere, and as is now the case in the country districts.