If you had exactly the organization, exactly the laws, exactly the system, and yet were yourselves a poor set of men, the system would not save you. I will guarantee that, from time to time, you have men go in to try to serve for the nine months who prove that they do not have the stuff in them out of which you can make good men. You have to have the stuff in you, and, if you have the stuff, you can make out of it a much finer man by means of the association—but you must have the material out of which to make it. So it is in citizenship.
And now let me say a word, speaking not merely especially to the Brotherhood, but to all our citizens. Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor: I fail to see how any American can come to Chattanooga and go over the great battle-fields in the neighborhood—the battle-fields here in this State and just across the border in my mother’s State of Georgia—how any Americancan come here and see evidences of the mighty deeds done by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, and not go away a better American, prouder of the country, prouder because of the valor displayed on both sides in the contest—the valor, the self-devotion, the loyalty to the right as each side saw the right. Yesterday I was presented with a cane cut from the Chickamauga battle-field by some young men of Northern Georgia. On the cane were engraved the names of three Union generals and three Confederate generals. One of those Union generals was at that time showing me over the battle-field—General Boynton. Under one of the Confederate generals—General Wheeler—I myself served. In my regiment there served under me in the ranks a son of General Hood, who commanded at one time the Confederate army against General Sherman. The only captain whom I had the opportunity of promoting to field rank, and to whom the promotion was given for gallantry on the field, was Micah Jenkins, of South Carolina, the son of a Confederate general, whose name you will find recorded among those who fought at Chickamauga.
Two of my best captains were killed at Santiago—one was Allyn Capron, the fifth in line who, from father to son, had served in the regular army of the United States, who had served in every war in which our country had been engaged; the other, Bucky O’Neill. His father had fought under Meagher when, on the day at Fredericksburg, his brigade left moremen under the stone wall than did any other brigade. I had in my regiment men from the North and the South; men from the East and the West; men whose fathers had fought under Grant, and whose fathers had fought under Lee; college graduates, capitalists’ sons, wage-workers, the man of means and the man who all his life had owed each day’s bread to the day’s toil. I had Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and Gentile under me. Among my captains were men whose forefathers had been among the first white men to settle on Massachusetts Bay and on the banks of the James, and others whose parents had come from Germany, from Ireland, from England, from France. They were all Americans, and nothing else, and each man stood on his worth as a man, to be judged by it, and to succeed or fail accordingly as he did well or ill. Compared to the giant death-wrestles that reeled over the mountains round about this city the fight at Santiago was the merest skirmish; but the spirit in which we handled ourselves there, I hope was the spirit in which we have to face our duties as citizens if we are to make this Republic what it must be made.
Yesterday, in passing over the Chickamauga battle-field, I was immensely struck by the monument raised by Kentucky to the Union and Confederate soldiers from Kentucky who fell on that battle-field. The inscription reads as follows: “As we are united in life, and they united in death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and one people, forgetful of all asperities, forever hold in grateful remembranceall the glories of that terrible conflict which made all men free and retained every star on the nation’s flag.” That is a good sentiment. That is a sentiment by which we can all stand. And oh, my friends! what does that sentiment have as its underlying spirit? The spirit of brotherhood!
I firmly believe in my countrymen, and therefore I believe that the chief thing necessary in order that they shall work together is that they shall know one another—that the Northerner shall know the Southerner, and the man of one occupation know the man of another occupation; the man who works in one walk of life know the man who works in another walk of life, so that we may realize that the things which divide us are superficial, are unimportant, and that we are, and must ever be, knit together into one indissoluble mass by our common American brotherhood.
My Fellow-Citizens:
I did not expect to have the chance of speaking to any of you of Virginia on this trip. I only wish it had been my good fortune to be able to go through your grand and beautiful historic State by daylight. But you have not escaped me, gentlemen; I am going to come again.
Yesterday and to-day I spent in Tennessee and North Carolina. I have enjoyed much those two days. It is a good thing for any American, and itis an especially good thing for the American who happens to be President at any time, to go around in the country and meet his fellow-Americans of different sections and different States. The more he sees of his fellow-Americans the more he will realize that the differences which divide them are trivial and that the likenesses which unite them are fundamental. A good American is a good American wherever he is, and a bad American is a poor one wherever he is. If a man is a decent citizen, if he does his duty to his family, to his neighbors, to the State and the nation, as a decent man ought to, then he is a man who has a right to claim kinship and comradeship with every other decent American from one end of this country to the other. If he is a straight man he is a credit to all of us, and if he is a crooked man he is a disgrace to all of us. Fundamentally, for weal or for woe, we are knit together; we shall go up or go down together. If hard times come they come without much regard to State lines. If good times come they come without regard to State lines. Wherever a deed is done by an American which reflects credit upon our country, each of us can walk with his head a little higher in consequence; and wherever anything happens through the fault of any of us that is discreditable it discredits all of us more or less.
Gentlemen and ladies, I thank you greatly for having come down here to greet me. It is a genuine pleasure to see you. No man of the United States, proud of the history of the United States, can failto feel certain associations of reverence and regard awakened when he treads the soil of Virginia, which has taken so leading a part in peace and in war throughout our history.
Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Americans:
I shall ask your attention to what I say to-night, because I intend to make a perfectly serious argument to you, and I shall be obliged if you will remain as still as possible; and I ask that those at the very back will remember that if they talk or make a noise it interferes with the hearing of the rest. I intend to speak to you on a serious subject and to make an argument as the Chief Executive of a nation, who is the President of all the people, without regard to party, without regard to section. I intend to make to you an argument from the standpoint simply of one American talking to his fellow-Americans upon one of the great subjects of interest to all alike; and that subject is what are commonly known as trusts. The word is used very loosely and almost always with technical inaccuracy. The average man, however, when he speaks of the trusts means rather vaguely all of the very big corporations, the growth of which has been so signal a feature of our modern civilization, and especially those big corporations which, though organized in one State, do business in several States, and often have a tendency to monopoly.
The whole subject of the trusts is of vital concern to us, because it presents one, and perhaps the most conspicuous, of the many problems forced upon our attention by the tremendous industrial development which has taken place during the last century, a development which is occurring in all civilized countries, notably in our own. There have been many factors responsible for bringing about these changed conditions. Of these, steam and electricity are the chief. The extraordinary changes in the methods of transportation of merchandise and of transmission of news have rendered not only possible, but inevitable, the immense increase in the rate of growth of our great industrial centres—that is, of our great cities. I want you to bring home to yourselves that fact. When Cincinnati was founded news could be transmitted and merchandise carried exactly as has been the case in the days of the Roman Empire. You had here on your river the flat-boat, you had on the ocean the sailing-ship, you had the pack-train, you had the wagon, and every one of the four was known when Babylon fell. The change in the last hundred years has been greater by far than the changes in all the preceding three thousand. Those are the facts. Because of them have resulted the specialization of industries, and the unexampled opportunities offered for the employment of huge amounts of capital, and therefore for the rise in the business world of those master-minds through whom alone it is possible for such vast amounts of capital to be employed with profit. It matters very littlewhether we like these new conditions or whether we dislike them; whether we like the creation of these new opportunities or not. Many admirable qualities which were developed in the older, simpler, less progressive life have tended to atrophy under our rather feverish, high-pressure, complex life of to-day. But our likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the matter. The new conditions are here. You can’t bring back the old days of the canalboat and stagecoach if you wish. The steamboat and the railroad are here. The new forces have produced both good and evil. We can not get rid of them—even if it were not undesirable to get rid of them; and our instant duty is to try to accommodate our social, economic and legislative life to them, and to frame a system of law and conduct under which we shall get out of them the utmost possible benefit and the least possible amount of harm. It is foolish to pride ourselves upon our progress and prosperity, upon our commanding position in the international industrial world, and at the same time have nothing but denunciation for the men to whose commanding position we in part owe this very progress and prosperity, this commanding position.
Whenever great social or industrial changes take place, no matter how much good there may be to them, there is sure to be some evil; and it usually takes mankind a number of years and a good deal of experimenting before they find the right ways in which so far as possible to control the new evil, without at the same time nullifying the new good. I amstating facts so obvious that if each one of you will think them over you will think them trite, but if you read or listen to some of the arguments advanced, you will come to the conclusion that there is need of learning these trite truths. In these circumstances the effort to bring the new tendencies to a standstill is always futile and generally mischievous; but it is possible somewhat to develop them aright. Law can to a degree guide, protect and control industrial development, but it can never cause it, or play more than a subordinate part in its healthy development—unfortunately it is easy enough by bad laws to bring it to an almost complete stop.
In dealing with the big corporations which we call trusts, we must resolutely purpose to proceed by evolution and not revolution. We wish to face the facts, declining to have our vision blinded either by the folly of those who say there are no evils, or by the more dangerous folly of those who either see, or make believe that they see, nothing but evil in all the existing system, and who if given their way would destroy the evil by the simple process of bringing ruin and disaster to the entire country. The evils attendant upon over-capitalization alone are, in my judgment, sufficient to warrant a far closer supervision and control than now exists over the great corporations. Wherever a substantial monopoly can be shown to exist we should certainly try our utmost to devise an expedient by which it can be controlled. Doubtless some of the evils existing in or becauseof the great corporations can not be cured by any legislation which has yet been proposed, and doubtless others, which have really been incident to the sudden development in the formation of corporations of all kinds, will in the end cure themselves. But there will remain a certain number which can be cured if we decide that by the power of the Government they are to be cured. The surest way to prevent the possibility of curing any of them is to approach the subject in a spirit of violent rancor, complicated with total ignorance of business interests and fundamental incapacity or unwillingness to understand the limitations upon all law-making bodies. No problem, and least of all so difficult a problem as this, can be solved if the qualities brought to its solution are panic, fear, envy, hatred, and ignorance. There can exist in a free republic no man more wicked, no man more dangerous to the people, than he who would arouse these feelings in the hope that they would redound to his own political advantage. Corporations that are handled honestly and fairly, so far from being an evil, are a natural business evolution and make for the general prosperity of our land. We do not wish to destroy corporations, but we do wish to make them subserve the public good. All individuals, rich or poor, private or corporate, must be subject to the law of the land; and the government will hold them to a rigid obedience thereof. The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the fundamentallaw. The rich man who does not see that this is in his interest is indeed short-sighted. When we make him obey the law we ensure for him the absolute protection of the law.
The savings banks show what can be done in the way of genuinely beneficent work by large corporations when intelligently administered and supervised. They now hold over twenty-six hundred millions of the people’s money and pay annually about one hundred millions of interest or profit to their depositors. There is no talk of danger from these corporations; yet they possess great power, holding over three times the amount of our present national debt, more than all the currency, gold, silver, greenbacks, etc., in circulation in the United States. The chief reason for there being no talk of danger from them is that they are on the whole faithfully administered for the benefit of all, under wise laws which require frequent and full publication of their condition, and which prescribe certain needful regulations with which they have to comply, while at the same time giving full scope for the business enterprise of their managers within these limits.
Now of course savings banks are as highly specialized a class of corporations as railroads, and we can not force too far the analogy with other corporations; but there are certain conditions which I think we can lay down as indispensable to the proper treatment of all corporations which from their size have become important factors in the social development of the community.
Before speaking, however, of what can be done by way of remedy let me say a word or two as to certain proposed remedies which, in my judgment, would be ineffective or mischievous. The first thing to remember is that if we are to accomplish any good at all it must be by resolutely keeping in mind the intention to do away with any evils in the conduct of big corporations, while steadfastly refusing to assent to indiscriminate assault upon all forms of corporate capital as such. The line of demarcation we draw must always be on conduct, not upon wealth; our objection to any given corporation must be, not that it is big, but that it behaves badly. Perfectly simple again, my friends, but not always heeded by some of those who would strive to teach us how to act toward big corporations. Treat the head of the corporation as you would treat all other men. If he does well stand by him. You will occasionally find the head of a big corporation who objects to that treatment; very good, apply it all the more carefully. Remember, after all, that he who objects because he is the head of a big corporation to being treated like any one else is only guilty of the same sin as the man who wishes him treated worse than any one else because he is the head of a big corporation. Demagogic denunciation of wealth is never wholesome and is generally dangerous; and not a few of the proposed methods of curbing the trusts are dangerous chiefly because all insincere advocacy of the impossible is dangerous. It is an unhealthy thing for a community when the appealis made to follow a course which those who make the appeal either do know, or ought to know, can not be followed; and which, if followed, would result in disaster to everybody. Loose talk about destroying monopoly out of hand without a hint as to how the monopoly should even be defined offers a case in point.
Nor can we afford to tolerate any proposal which will strike at the so-called trusts only by striking at the general well-being. We are now enjoying a period of great prosperity. The prosperity is generally diffused through all sections and through all classes. Doubtless there are some individuals who do not get enough of it, and there are others who get too much. That is simply another way of saying that the wisdom of mankind is finite; and that even the best human system does not work perfectly. You don’t have to take my word for that. Look back just nine years. In 1893 nobody was concerned in downing the trusts. Everybody was concerned in trying to get up himself. The men who propose to get rid of the evils of the trusts by measures which would do away with the general well-being, advocate a policy which would not only be a damage to the community as a whole, but which would defeat its own professed object. If we are forced to the alternative of choosing either a system under which most of us prosper somewhat, though a few of us prosper too much, or else a system under which no one prospers enough, of course we will choose the former. If the policyadvocated is so revolutionary and destructive as to involve the whole community in the crash of common disaster, it is as certain as anything can be that when the disaster has occurred all efforts to regulate the trusts will cease, and that the one aim will be to restore prosperity.
A remedy much advocated at the moment is to take off the tariff from all articles which are made by trusts. To do this it will be necessary first to define trusts. The language commonly used by the advocates of the method implies that they mean all articles made by large corporations, and that the changes in tariff are to be made with punitive intent toward these large corporations. Of course if the tariff is to be changed in order to punish them, it should be changed so as to punish those that do ill, not merely those that are prosperous. It would be neither just nor expedient to punish the big corporations as big corporations; what we wish to do is to protect the people from any evil that may grow out of their existence or maladministration. Some of those corporations do well and others do ill. If in any case the tariff is found to foster a monopoly which does ill, of course no protectionist would object to a modification of the tariff sufficient to remedy the evil. But in very few cases does the so-called trust really monopolize the market. Take any very big corporation—I could mention them by the score—which controls, say, something in the neighborhood of half of the products of a given industry. It is the kind of corporation that is alwaysspoken of as a trust. Surely in rearranging the schedules affecting such a corporation it would be necessary to consider the interests of its smaller competitors which control the remaining part, and which, being weaker, would suffer most from any tariff designed to punish all the producers; for, of course, the tariff must be made light or heavy for big and little producers alike. Moreover, such a corporation necessarily employs very many thousands, often very many tens of thousands of workmen, and the minute we proceeded from denunciation to action it would be necessary to consider the interests of these workmen. Furthermore, the products of many trusts are unprotected, and would be entirely unaffected by any change in the tariff, or at most very slightly so. The Standard Oil Company offers a case in point; and the corporations which control the anthracite coal output offer another—for there is no duty whatever on anthracite coal.
I am not now discussing the question of the tariff as such; whether from the standpoint of the fundamental difference between those who believe in a protective tariff and those who believe in free trade; or from the standpoint of those who, while they believe in a protective tariff, feel that there could be a rearrangement of our schedules, either by direct legislation or by reciprocity treaties, which would result in enlarging our markets; nor yet from the standpoint of those who feel that stability of economic policy is at the moment our prime economic need, and that the benefits to be derived from anychange in schedules would not compensate for the damage to business caused by the widespread agitation which would follow any attempted general revision of the tariff at this moment. Without regard to the wisdom of any one of those three positions it remains true that the real evils connected with the trusts can not be remedied by any change in the tariff laws. The trusts can be damaged by depriving them of the benefits of a protective tariff, only on condition of damaging all their smaller competitors, and all the wage-workers employed in the industry. This point is very important, and it is desirable to avoid any misunderstanding concerning it. I am not now considering whether or not, on grounds totally unconnected with the trusts, it would be well to lower the duties on various schedules, either by direct legislation or by legislation or treaties designed to secure as an offset reciprocal advantages from the nations with which we trade. My point is that changes in the tariff would have little appreciable effect on the trusts save as they shared in the general harm or good proceeding from such changes. No tariff change would help one of our smaller corporations, or one of our private individuals in business, still less one of our wage-workers, as against a large corporation in the same business; on the contrary, if it bore heavily on the large corporation it would inevitably be felt still more by that corporation’s weaker rivals, while any injurious result would of necessity be shared by both the employer and the employed in the businessconcerned. The immediate introduction of substantial free trade in all articles manufactured by trusts, that is, by the largest and most successful corporations, would not affect some of the most powerful of our business combinations in the least, save by the damage done to the general business welfare of the country; others would undoubtedly be seriously affected, but much less so than their weaker rivals, while the loss would be divided between the capitalists and the laborers; and after the years of panic and distress had been lived through, and some return to prosperity had occurred, even though all were on a lower plane of prosperity than before, the relative difference between the trusts and their rivals would remain as marked as ever. In other words, the trust, or big corporation, would have suffered relatively to, and in the interest of, its foreign competitor; but its relative position toward its American competitors would probably be improved; little would have been done toward cutting out or minimizing the evils in the trusts; nothing toward securing adequate control and regulation of the large modern corporations. In other words, the question of regulating the trusts with a view to minimizing or abolishing the evils existent in them is separate and apart from the question of tariff revision.
You must face the fact that only harm will come from a proposition to attack the so-called trusts in a vindictive spirit by measures conceived solely with a desire of hurting them, without regard as to whether or not discrimination should be made betweenthe good and evil in them, and without even any regard as to whether a necessary sequence of the action would be the hurting of other interests. The adoption of such a policy would mean temporary damage to the trusts, because it would mean temporary damage to all of our business interests; but the effect would be only temporary, for exactly as the damage affected all alike, good and bad, so the reaction would affect all alike, good and bad. 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 which shall 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. Our Constitution was framed when the economic conditions were so different that each State could wisely be left to handle the corporations within its limits as it saw fit. Nowadays all the corporations which I am considering do whatis really an interstate business, and as the States have proceeded on very different lines in regulating them, at present a corporation will be organized in one State, not because it intends to do business in that State, but because it does not, and therefore that State can give it better privileges, and then it will do business in some other States, and will claim not to be under the control of the States in which it does business; and of course it is not the object of the State creating it to exercise any control over it, as it does not do any business in that State. Such a system can not obtain. There must be some sovereign. It might be better if all the States could agree along the same lines in dealing with these corporations, but I see not the slightest prospect of such an agreement. Therefore, I personally feel that ultimately the nation will have to assume the responsibility of regulating these very large corporations which do an interstate business. The States must combine to meet the way in which capital has combined; and the way in which the States can combine is through the National Government. But I firmly believe that all these obstacles can be met if only we face them, both with the determination to overcome them, and with the further determination to overcome them in ways which shall not do damage to the country as a whole; which on the contrary shall further our industrial development, and shall help instead of hindering all corporations which work out their success by means that are just and fair toward all men.
Without the adoption of a constitutional amendment, my belief is that a good deal can be done by law. It is difficult to say exactly how much, because experience has taught us that in dealing with these subjects, where the lines dividing the rights and duties of the States and of the Nation are in doubt, it has sometimes been difficult for Congress to forecast the action of the courts upon its legislation. 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 governmental 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.
Remember, I advocate the action which the President can only advise, and which he has no power himself to take. Under our present legislative and constitutional limitations the national executive can work only between narrow lines in the field of action concerning great corporations. Between those lines, I assure you that exact and even-handed justicewill be dealt, and is being dealt, to all men, without regard to persons.
I wish to repeat with all emphasis that desirable though it is that the nation should have the power I suggest, it is equally desirable that it should be used with wisdom and self-restraint. The mechanism of modern business is tremendous in its size and complexity, and ignorant intermeddling with it would be disastrous. We should not be made timid or daunted by the size of the problem; we should not fear to undertake it; but we should undertake it with ever-present in our minds dread of the sinister spirits of rancor, ignorance, and vanity. We need to keep steadily in mind the fact that besides the tangible property in each corporation there lies behind the spirit which brings it success, and in the case of each very successful corporation this is usually the spirit of some one man or set of men. Under exactly similar conditions one corporation will make a stupendous success where another makes a stupendous failure, simply because one is well managed and the other is not. While making it clear that we do not intend to allow wrongdoing by one of the captains of industry any more than by the humblest private in the industrial ranks, we must also in the interests of all of us avoid cramping a strength which, if beneficently used, will be for the good of all of us. The marvelous prosperity we have been enjoying for the past few years has been due primarily to the high average of honesty, thrift, and business capacity among our people as a whole;but some of it has also been due to the ability of the men who are the industrial leaders of the nation. In securing just and fair dealing by these men let us remember to do them justice in return, and this not only because it is our duty, but because it is our interest; not only for their sakes, but for ours. We are neither the friend of the rich man as such, nor the friend of the poor man as such; we are the friend of the honest man, rich or poor; and we intend that all men, rich and poor alike, shall obey the law alike and receive its protection alike.
Mr. Mayor, and you, my Comrades, and all of you, my Fellow-Americans, Men and Women of Detroit:
While the war with Spain was easy enough, the tasks left behind, though glorious, have been hard. You, the men of the Spanish War, and your comrades in arms who fought in Cuba and Porto Rico and in the Philippines, won renown for the country, added to its moral grandeur and to its material prosperity; but you also left duties to be done by those who came after you. In Porto Rico the duty has been merely administrative, and it has been so well done that very little need be said about it.
I speak in the presence not only of the men who fought in the Spanish War and in the PhilippineWar, which was its aftermath, but in the presence of those who fought in the great Civil War; and more than that, I speak here in a typical city of the old Northwest, what is now the Middle West, in a typical State of our Union. You men of Michigan have been mighty in war and mighty in peace. You belong to a country mighty in war and mighty in peace—a country of a great past, whose great present is but an earnest of an even greater future. The world has never seen more marvelous prosperity than that which we now enjoy, and this prosperity is not ephemeral. We shall have our ups and downs. The waves at times will recede, but the tide will go steadily higher. This country has never yet been called upon to meet a crisis in war or a crisis in peace to which it did not eventually prove equal. I preach the gospel of hope to you men of the West who in thought and life embody this gospel of hope, this gospel of resolute and confident belief in your own powers and in the destiny of this mighty Republic. I believe in the future—not in a spirit which will sit down and look for the future to work itself out—but with a determination to do its part in making the future what it can and shall be made. We are optimists. We spurn the teachings of despair and distrust. We have an abiding faith in the growing strength, the growing future of the mighty young nation, still in the flush of its youth, and yet with the might of a giant, which stands on a continent and grasps an ocean with either hand.
Succeed? Of course we shall succeed! How can success fail to come to a race of masterful energy and resoluteness, which has a continent for the base of its domain, and which feels within its veins the thrill that comes to generous souls when their strength stirs in them, and they know that the future is theirs? No great destiny ever yet came to a people walking with their eyes on the ground and their faces shrouded in gloom. No great destiny ever yet came to a people who feared the future, who feared failure more than they hoped for success. With such as these we have no part. We know there are dangers ahead, as we know there are evils to fight and overcome, but we feel to the full the pulse of the prosperity which we enjoy. Stout of heart, we see across the dangers the great future that lies beyond, and we rejoice as a giant refreshed, as a strong man girt for the race; and we go down into the arena where the nations strive for mastery, our hearts lifted with the faith that to us and to our children and our children’s children it shall be given to make this Republic the mightiest among the peoples of mankind.
Fellow-Citizens:
I am going to ask you to take what I say at its exact face value, as I like whatever I say to be taken. It is suggested by coming to this great Western State and speaking to one of its thrivingcities. We believe that the American business man is of a peculiar type; and probably the qualities of energy, daring, and resourcefulness which have given him his prominence in the international industrial world find their highest development here in the West. It is the merest truism to say that in the modern world industrialism is the great factor in the growth of nations. Material prosperity is the foundation upon which every mighty national structure must be built. Of course there must be more than this. There must be a high moral purpose, a life of the spirit which finds its expression in many different ways; but unless material prosperity exists also there is scant room in which to develop the higher life. The productive activity of our vast army of workers, of those who work with head or hands, is the prime cause of the giant growth of this nation. We have great natural resources, but such resources are never more than opportunities, and they count for nothing if the men in possession have not the power to take advantage of them. You have built up in the West these cities of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes; as all the region round about them has been built up—that is, because you had the qualities of heart and brain, the qualities of moral and physical fibre, which enabled you to use to the utmost advantage whatever you found ready to your hands. You win, not by shirking difficulties, but by facing and overcoming them.
In such development laws play a certain part, but individual characteristics a still greater part. Agreat and successful commonwealth like ours in the long run works under good laws, because a people endowed with honest and practical common-sense ultimately demands good laws. But no law can create industrial well-being, although it may foster and safeguard it, and although a bad law may destroy it. The prime factor in securing industrial well-being is the high average of citizenship found in the community. The best laws that the wit of man can devise would not make a community of thriftless and idle men prosperous. No scheme of legislation or of social reform will ever work good to the community unless it recognizes as fundamental the fact that each man’s own individual qualities must be the prime factors in his success. Work in combination may help and the State can do a good deal in its own sphere, but in the long run each man must rise or fall on his own merits; each man must owe his success in life to whatever of hardihood, of resolution, of common-sense and of capacity for lofty endeavor he has within his own soul. It is a good thing to act in combination for the common good, but it is a very unhealthy thing to let ourselves think for one moment that anything can ever supply the want of our own individual watchfulness and exertion.
Yet given this high average of individual ability and invention, we must ever keep in mind that it may be nullified by bad legislation, and that it can be given a chance to develop under the most favorable conditions by good legislation. Probably themost important aid which can be contributed by the National Government to the material well-being of the country is to ensure its financial stability. An honest currency is the strongest symbol and expression of honest business life. The business world must exist largely on credit, and to credit confidence is essential. Any tampering with the currency, no matter with what purpose, if fraught with the suspicion of dishonesty, in result is fatal in its effects on business prosperity. Very ignorant and primitive communities are continually obliged to learn the elementary truth that the repudiation of debts is in the end ruinous to the debtors as a class; and when communities have moved somewhat higher in the scale of civilization they also learn that anything in the nature of a debased currency works similar damage. A financial system of assured honesty is the first essential.
Another essential for any community is perseverance in the economic policy which for a course of years is found best fitted to its peculiar needs. The question of combining such fixedness of economic policy as regards the tariff, while at the same time allowing for a necessary and proper readjustment of duties in particular schedules, as such readjustment becomes a matter of pressing importance, is not an easy one. It is perhaps too much to expect that from the discussion of such a question it would be possible wholly to eliminate political partisanship. Yet those who believe, as we all must when we think seriously of the subject, that theproper aim of the party system is after all simply to subserve the public good, can not but hope that where such partisanship on a matter of this kind conflicts with the public good it shall at least be minimized. It is all right and inevitable that we should divide on party lines, but woe to us if we are not Americans first, and party men second. What we really need in this country is to treat the tariff as a business proposition from the standpoint of the interests of the country as a whole, and not from the standpoint of the temporary needs of any political party. It surely ought not to be necessary to dwell upon the extreme unwisdom, from a business standpoint, from the standpoint of national prosperity, of violent and radical changes amounting to the direct upsetting of tariff policies at intervals of every few years. A nation like ours can adjust its business after a fashion to any kind of tariff. But neither our nation nor any other can stand the ruinous policy of readjusting its business to radical changes in the tariff at short intervals. This is more true now than ever it was before, for owing to the immense extent and variety of our products, the tariff schedules of to-day carry rates of duty on more than four thousand articles. Continual sweeping changes in such a tariff, touching so intimately the commercial interests of the nation which stands as one of the two or three greatest in the whole industrial world, can not but be disastrous. Yet on the other hand where the industrial needs of the nation shift as rapidly as they do with us, it is amatter of prime importance that we should be able to readjust our economic policy as rapidly as possible and with as little friction as possible to these needs.
We need a scheme which will enable us to provide a reapplication of the principle to the changed conditions. The problem therefore is to devise some method by which these shifting needs can be recognized and the necessary readjustments of duties provided without forcing the entire business community, and therefore the entire nation, to submit to a violent surgical operation, the mere threat of which, and still more the accomplished fact of which, would probably paralyze for a considerable time all the industries of the country. Such a radical action might very readily reproduce the conditions from which we suffered nine years ago, in 1893. It is on every account most earnestly to be hoped that this problem can be solved in some manner into which partisanship shall enter as a purely secondary consideration, if at all; that is, in some manner which shall provide for an earnest effort by non-partisan inquiry and action to secure any changes the need of which is indicated by the effect found to proceed from a given rate of duty on a given article; its effect, if any, as regards the creation of a substantial monopoly; its effect upon domestic prices, upon the revenue of the government, upon importations from abroad, upon home productions, and upon consumption. In other words, we need to devise some machinery by which, while persevering in the policyof a protective tariff, in which I think the nation as a whole has now generally acquiesced, we would be able to correct the irregularities and remove the incongruities produced by changing conditions, without destroying the whole structure. Such machinery would permit us to continue our definitely settled tariff policy, while providing for the changes in duties upon particular schedules which must inevitably and necessarily take place from time to time as matters of legislative and administrative detail. This would secure the needed stability of economic policy which is a prime factor in our industrial success, while doing away with any tendency to fossilization. It would recognize the fact that, as our needs shift, it may be found advisable to alter rates and schedules, adapting them to the changed conditions and necessities of the whole people; and this would be in no wise incompatible with preserving the principle of protection, for belief in the wisdom of a protective tariff is in no way inconsistent with frankly admitting the desirability of changing a set of schedules, when from any cause such change is in the interests of the nation as a whole—and our tariff policy is designed to favor the interests of the nation as a whole and not those of any particular set of individuals save as an incident to this building up of national well-being. There are two or three different methods by which it will be possible to provide such readjustment without any shock to the business world. My personal preference would be for action which should be taken only after preliminaryinquiry by and upon the findings of a body of experts of such high character and ability that they could be trusted to deal with the subject purely from the standpoint of our business and industrial needs; but, of course, Congress would have to determine for itself the exact method to be followed. The Executive has at its command the means for gathering most of the necessary data, and can act whenever it is the desire of Congress that it should act. That the machinery for carrying out the policy above outlined can be provided I am very certain, if only our people will make up their minds that the health of the community will be subserved by treating the whole question primarily from the standpoint of the business interests of the entire country, rather than from the standpoint of the fancied interests of any group of politicians.
Of course in making any changes we should have to proceed in accordance with certain fixed and definite principles, and the most important of these is an avowed determination to protect the interests of the American producer, be he business man, wage-worker, or farmer. The one consideration which must never be omitted in a tariff change is the imperative need of preserving the American standard of living for the American workingman. The tariff rate must never fall below that which will protect the American workingman by allowing for the difference between the general labor cost here and abroad, so as at least to equalize the conditions arising from the difference in thestandard of labor here and abroad—a difference which it should be our aim to foster in so far as it represents the needs of better educated, better paid, better fed, and better clothed workingmen of a higher type than any to be found in a foreign country. At all hazards, and no matter what else is sought for or accomplished by changes of the tariff, the American workingman must be protected in his standard of wages, that is, in his standard of living, and must be secured the fullest opportunity of employment. Our laws should in no event afford advantage to foreign industries over American industries. They should in no event do less than equalize the difference in conditions at home and abroad. The general tariff policy to which, without regard to changes in detail, I believe this country to be irrevocably committed, is fundamentally based upon ample recognition of the difference in labor cost here and abroad; in other words, the recognition of the need for full development of the intelligence, the comfort, the high standard of civilized living and the inventive genius of the American workingman as compared to the workingman of any other country in the world.
Mr. President, Gentlemen, and you, the Guests, whom we welcome here this evening:
I do not wish to speak to you in the language of idle compliment, and yet it is but a bare statement of fact to say that nowhere in our country could there be gathered an audience which would stand as more typically characteristic than this of all those qualities and attributes which have given us of the United States our commanding position in the industrial world. There is no need of my preaching to this gathering the need of combining efficiency with upright dealing, for as an American and as a citizen of New York I am proud to feel that the name of your organization carries with it a guarantee of both; and your practice counts for more than any preaching could possibly count. New York is a city of national importance, because its position toward the Nation is unique, and the Chamber of Commerce of New York must of necessity be an element of weight in the commercial and industrial welfare of the entire people. New York is the great port of entry for our country—the port in which centres the bulk of the foreign commerce of the country—and her welfare is therefore no matter of mere local or municipal, but of national, concern. The conduct of the Government in dealing with all matters affecting the financial and commercial relationsof New York must continually take into account this fact; and it must be taken into account in appreciating the importance of the part played by the New York Chamber of Commerce.
This body stands for the triumphs of peace both abroad and at home. We have passed that stage of national development when depreciation of other peoples is felt as a tribute to our own. We watch the growth and prosperity of other nations, not with hatred or jealousy, but with sincere and friendly good-will. I think I can say safely that we have shown by our attitude toward Cuba, by our attitude toward China, that as regards weaker powers our desire is that they may be able to stand alone, and that if they will only show themselves willing to deal honestly and fairly with the rest of mankind we on our side will do all we can to help, not to hinder, them. With the great powers of the world we desire no rivalry that is not honorable to both parties. We wish them well. We believe that the trend of the modern spirit is ever stronger toward peace, not war; toward friendship, not hostility, as the normal international attitude. We are glad indeed that we are on good terms with all the other peoples of mankind, and no effort on our part shall be spared to secure a continuance of these relations. And remember, gentlemen, that we shall be a potent factor for peace largely in proportion to the way in which we make it evident that our attitude is due, not to weakness, not to inability to defend ourselves, but to a genuine repugnance to wrongdoing, a genuinedesire for self-respecting friendship with our neighbors. The voice of the weakling or the craven counts for nothing when he clamors for peace; but the voice of the just man armed is potent. We need to keep in a condition of preparedness, especially as regards our navy, not because we want war, but because we desire to stand with those whose plea for peace is listened to with respectful attention.
Important though it is that we should have peace abroad, it is even more important that we should have peace at home. You, men of the Chamber of Commerce, to whose efforts we owe so much of our industrial well-being, can, and I believe surely will, be influential in helping toward that industrial peace which can obtain in society only when in their various relations employer and employed alike show not merely insistence each upon his own rights, but also regard for the rights of others, and a full acknowledgment of the interests of the third party—the public. It is no easy matter to work out a system or rule of conduct, whether with or without the help of the lawgiver, which shall minimize that jarring and clashing of interests in the industrial world which causes so much individual irritation and suffering at the present day, and which at times threatens baleful consequences to large portions of the body politic. But the importance of the problem can not be overestimated, and it deserves to receive the careful thought of all men such as those whom I am addressing to-night. There should be no yielding to wrong; but there should most certainly be notonly desire to do right but a willingness each to try to understand the viewpoint of his fellow, with whom, for weal or for woe, his own fortunes are indissolubly bound.
No patent remedy can be devised for the solution of these grave problems in the industrial world; but we may rest assured that they can be solved at all only if we bring to the solution certain old-time virtues, and if we strive to keep out of the solution some of the most familiar and most undesirable of the traits to which mankind has owed untold degradation and suffering throughout the ages. Arrogance, suspicion, brutal envy of the well-to-do, brutal indifference toward those who are not well-to-do, the hard refusal to consider the rights of others, the foolish refusal to consider the limits of beneficent action, the base appeal to the spirit of selfish greed, whether it take the form of plunder of the fortunate or of oppression of the unfortunate—from these and from all kindred vices this Nation must be kept free if it is to remain in its present position in the forefront of the peoples of mankind. On the other hand, good will come, even out of the present evils, if we face them armed with the old homely virtues; if we show that we are fearless of soul, cool of head, and kindly of heart; if, without betraying the weakness that cringes before wrongdoing, we yet show by deeds and words our knowledge that in such a government as ours each of us must be in very truth his brother’s keeper.
At a time when the growing complexity of oursocial and industrial life has rendered inevitable the intrusion of the State into spheres of work wherein it formerly took no part, and when there is also a growing tendency to demand the illegitimate and unwise transfer to the government of much of the work that should be done by private persons, singly or associated together, it is a pleasure to address a body whose members possess to an eminent degree the traditional American self-reliance of spirit which makes them scorn to ask from the government, whether of State or of Nation, anything but a fair field and no favor; who confide not in being helped by others, but in their own skill, energy, and business capacity to achieve success. The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight—that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show not only the capacity for sturdy self-help but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.
The Chamber of Commerce, it is no idle boast to say, stands in a preëminent degree for those qualities which make the successful merchant, the successful business man, whose success is won in ways honorable to himself and beneficial to his fellows. There are very different kinds of success. There is the success that brings with it the seared soul—the success which is achieved by wolfish greed and vulpine cunning—thesuccess which makes honest men uneasy or indignant in its presence. Then there is the other kind of success—the success which comes as the reward of keen insight, of sagacity, of resolution, of address, combined with unflinching rectitude of behavior, public and private. The first kind of success may, in a sense—and a poor sense at that—benefit the individual, but it is always and necessarily a curse to the community; whereas the man who wins the second kind, as an incident of its winning becomes a beneficiary to the whole commonwealth. Throughout its history the Chamber of Commerce has stood for this second and higher kind of success. It is therefore fitting that I should come on here as the Chief Executive of the Nation to wish you well in your new home; for you belong not merely to the city, not merely to the State, but to all the country, and you stand high among the great factors in building up that marvelous prosperity which the entire country now enjoys. The continuance of this prosperity depends in no small measure upon your sanity and common-sense, upon the way in which you combine energy in action with conservative refusal to take part in the reckless gambling which is so often bred by, and which so inevitably puts an end to, prosperity. You are men of might in the world of American effort; you are men whose names stand high in the esteem of our people; you are spoken of in terms like those used in the long-gone ages when it was said of the Phœnician cities that their merchants were princes. Great is your power and great,therefore, your responsibility. Well and faithfully have you met this responsibility in the past. We look forward with confident hope to what you will do in the future, and it is therefore with sincerity that I bid you Godspeed this evening and wish for you, in the name of the Nation, a career of ever increasing honor and usefulness.
Mr. Toastmaster, General Wright, and you, my friends, whose greeting to-night I shall ever remember:
It is a real and great pleasure to come to this typical city of the southern Mississippi Valley in order to greet a typical American, a citizen of Tennessee, who deserves honor not only from his State, but from the entire country—General Luke E. Wright. We have a right to expect a high standard of manhood from Tennessee. It was one of the first two States created west of the Alleghany Mountains, and it was in this State that the first self-governing community of American freemen was established upon waters flowing into the Gulf. The pioneers of Tennessee were among the earliest in that great westward march which thrust the nation’s border across the continent to the Pacific, and it is eminently fitting that a son of Tennessee should now play so prominent a part in the further movementof expansion beyond the Pacific. There have been Presidents of the United States for but one hundred and thirteen years, and during sixteen of those years Tennesseeans sat in the White House. Hardihood, and daring, and iron resolution are of right to be expected among the sons of a State which nurtured Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston; which sent into the American Navy one of the most famous fighting admirals of all time, Farragut.
There is another reason why our country should be glad that it was General Wright who rendered this service. General Wright fought with distinguished gallantry among the gallant men who served in the armies of the Confederacy during the Civil War. We need no proof of the completeness of our reunion as a people. When the war with Spain came the sons of the men who wore the blue and the sons of the men who wore the gray vied with one another in the effort to get into the ranks and face a foreign foe under the old flag that had been carried in triumph under Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor and Andrew Jackson. It was my own good fortune to serve under that fearless fighter, old Joe Wheeler, a memory of which I shall always be proud. But if we needed any proof of the unity of our interests it would have been afforded this very year by General Wright, the ex-Confederate, in his administration as Acting Governor of the Philippine Islands. Upon him during the months of summer rested a heavier burden of responsibility than upon any other public servant at that particulartime; and not the least of his titles to our regard is the way in which he was able to work on terms of cordial good-will with the head of the army, himself a man who had honored the blue uniform as Wright had honored the gray.
General Wright’s work has been as difficult as it was important. The events of the last four years have definitely decided that whether we wish to or not we must hereafter play a great part in the world. We can not escape facing the duties. We may shirk them if we are built of poor stuff, or we may take hold and do them if we are fit sons of our sires—but face them we must, whether we will or not. Our duty in the Philippine Islands has simply been one of the duties that thus have come upon us. We are there, and we can no more haul down our flag and abandon the islands than we could now abandon Alaska. Whether we are glad or sorry that events forced us to go there is aside from the question; the point is that, as the inevitable result of the war with Spain, we found ourselves in the Philippines and that we could not leave the islands without discredit. The islanders were wholly unfit to govern themselves, and if we had left there would have been a brief period of bloody chaos, and then some other nation would have stepped in to do the work which we had shirked. It can not be too often repeated that there was no question that the work had to be done. All the question was, whether we would do it well or ill; and, thanks to the choice of men like Governor Wright, it has beendone well. The first and absolutely indispensable requisite was order—peace. The reign of lawless violence, of resistance to legitimate authority, the reign of anarchy, could no more be tolerated abroad than it could be tolerated here in our own land.
The American flag stands for orderly liberty, and it stands for it abroad as it stands for it at home. The task of our soldiers was to restore and maintain order in the islands. The army had the task to do, and it did it well and thoroughly. The fullest and heartiest praise belongs to our soldiers who in the Philippines brought to a triumphant conclusion a war, small indeed compared to the gigantic struggle in which the older men whom I am addressing took part in the early sixties, but inconceivably harassing and difficult, because it was waged amid the pathless jungles of great tropic islands and against a foe very elusive, very treacherous, and often inconceivably cruel both toward our men and toward the great numbers of peace-loving Filipinos who gladly welcomed our advent. The soldiers included both regulars and volunteers, men from the North, the South, the East, and the West, men from Pennsylvania and from Tennessee, no less than men from the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Slope—and to all alike we give honor, for they acted as American soldiers should. Cruelties were committed here and there. The fact that they were committed under wellnigh intolerable provocation affords no excuse for such cruelties, nor can we admit as justification that they were retaliatory in kind. Every effort hasbeen made to detect and punish the wrongdoers and the wrongdoing itself has been completely stopped. But these misdeeds were exceptional, and their occurrence in no wise alters the fact that the American army in the Philippines showed as a whole not only splendid soldierly qualities but a high order of humanity in dealing with their foes. A hundred thousand of our troops went to the Philippines. Among them were some who offended against the right. Well, are we altogether immaculate at home? I think not. I ask for no special consideration to be shown our friends and kinsmen, our sons and brothers, who during three years so well upheld the national honor in the Philippines. I ask merely that we do the same equal justice to the soldier who went abroad and faced death and lived hard as we show to his fellow who stayed at home and lived easily and in comfort; and if we show that equal justice we will doff our hats to the man who has put the whole country under obligations by the victory he helped to win in the Philippines.
But the soldier’s work as a soldier was not the larger part of what he did. When once the outbreak was over in any place, then began the work of establishing civil administration. Here, too, the soldier did his part, for the work of preparing for the civil authority was often done by the officers and men of the regular army, and well done, too. Then the real work of building up a system of self-government for the people who had become our wards was begun, under the auspices of the PhilippineCommission, Judge Taft being made Governor, and I having had the honor myself to appoint General Wright as Vice-Governor. During the critical period when the insurrection was ending and the time was one of transition between a state of war and a state of peace, at the time that I issued a proclamation declaring that the state of war was over and that the civil government was now in complete command, General Wright served as Governor of the archipelago. The progress of the islands both in material well-being and as regards order and justice under the administration of Governor Wright and his colleagues has been astounding.
There is no question as to our not having gone far enough and fast enough in granting self-government to the Filipinos; the only possible danger has been lest we should go faster and further than was in the interest of the Filipinos themselves. Each Filipino at the present day is guaranteed his life, his liberty, and the chance to pursue happiness as he wishes, so long as he does not harm his fellows, in a way which the islands have never known before during all their recorded history. There are bands of ladrones, of brigands, still in existence. Now and then they may show sporadic increase. This will be due occasionally to disaffection with some of the things that our government does which are best—for example, the effort to quarantine against the plague and to enforce necessary sanitary precautions, gently and tactfully though it was made, produced violent hostility among some of the more ignorantnatives. Again, a disease like the cattle plague may cause in some given province such want that a part of the inhabitants revert to their ancient habit of brigandage. But the islands have never been as orderly, as peaceful, or as prosperous as now; and in no other Oriental country, whether ruled by Asiatics or Europeans, is there anything approaching to the amount of individual liberty and of self-government which our rule has brought to the Filipinos. The Nation owes a great debt to the people through whom this splendid work for civilization has been achieved, and therefore on behalf of the Nation I have come here to-night to thank in your presence your fellow-townsman, because he has helped us materially to add a new page to the honor roll of American history. General Wright, I greet you, I thank you, and I wish you well.
Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Americans:
I am glad indeed to have the honor of coming to-day to your beautiful city in your beautiful State to greet, on behalf of the whole country, a Tennesseean who has rendered high and honorable service to the whole country—a Tennesseean of whom it can be said, as it has been said of the Greek hero: