It is of course a mere truism to say that the corporation is the creature of the State, that the State is sovereign. There should be a real and not a nominal sovereign, some one sovereign to which the corporation shall be really and not nominally responsible. At present if we pass laws nobody can tell whether they will amount to anything. That has two bad effects. In the first place, the corporation becomes indifferent to the law-making body; and in the next place, the law-making body gets into that most pernicious custom of passing a law not with reference to what will be done under it, but with reference to its effects upon the opinions of the voters. That is a bad thing. When any body of law-makers passes a law, not simply with reference to whether that law will do good or ill, but with the knowledge that not much will come of it, and yet that perhaps the people as a whole will like to see it on the statute books—it does not speak well for the law-makers, and it does not speak well for the people, either. What I hope to see is power given to the National Legislature which shall make the control real. It would be an excellent thing if you could have all the States act on somewhat similar lines so that you would make it unnecessary for the national government to act; but all of you know perfectly well that the States will not act on similar lines. No advance whatever has been made in the direction of intelligent dealing by the Statesas a collective body with these great corporations. Here in Massachusetts you have what I regard as, on the whole, excellent corporation laws. Most of our difficulties would be in a fair way of solution if we had the power to put upon the national statute books, and did put upon them, laws for the nation much like those you have here on the subject of corporations in Massachusetts. So you can see, gentlemen, I am not advocating anything very revolutionary. I am advocating action to prevent anything revolutionary. Now, if we can get adequate control by the nation of these great corporations, then we can pass legislation which will give us the power of regulation and supervision over them. If the nation had that power, mind you, I should advocate as strenuously as I know how that the power should be exercised with extreme caution and self-restraint. No good will come from plunging in without having looked carefully ahead. The first thing we want is publicity; and I do not mean publicity as a favor by some corporations—I mean it as a right from all corporations affected by the law. I want publicity as to the essential facts in which the public has an interest. I want the knowledge given to the accredited representatives of the people of facts upon which those representatives can if they see fit base their actions later. The publicity itself would cure many evils. The light of day is a great deterrer of wrongdoing. The mere fact of being able to put out nakedly, and with the certainty that the statements were true, a given condition ofthings that was wrong, would go a long distance toward curing that wrong; and, even where it did not cure it, would make the path evident by which to cure it. We would not be leaping in the dark; we would not be striving blindly to see what was good and what bad. We would know what the facts were and be able to shape our course accordingly.
A good deal can be done now, a good deal is being done now. As far as the anti-trust laws go they will be enforced. No suit will be undertaken for the sake of seeming to undertake it. Every suit that is undertaken will be begun because the great lawyer and upright man whom we are fortunate enough to have as Attorney-General, Mr. Knox, believes that there is a violation of the law which we can get at; and when the suit is undertaken it will not be compromised except upon the basis that the government wins. Of course, gentleman, no laws amount to anything unless they are administered honestly and fearlessly. We must have such administration or the law will amount to nothing. I believe that it is possible to frame national legislation which shall give us far more power than we now have, at any rate over corporations doing an interstate business. I can not guarantee that, because in the past it has more than once happened that we have put laws on the statute books which those who made them intended to mean one thing, and when they came up for decision by the courts, it was found that the intention had not beensuccessfully put into effect. But I believe that additional legislation can be had. If my belief is wrong, if it proves evident that we can not, under the Constitution as it is, give the national administration sufficient power to deal with these great corporations, then no matter what our reverence for the past, our duty to the present and the future will force us to see that some power is conferred upon the national government. And when that power has been conferred, then it will rest with the national government to exercise it.
My Fellow-Citizens:
Naturally at the home of Secretary Moody I should like to say a word or two about the navy. I think that whenever we touch on the navy we are sure of a hearty response from any American audience; we are just as sure of such a response in the mountains and great plains of the West as upon the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards. The entire country is vitally interested in the navy, because an efficient navy of adequate size is not only the best guarantee of peace, but is also the surest means for seeing that if war does come the result shall be honorable to our good name and favorable to our national interests.
Any really great nation must be peculiarly sensitive to two things: Stain on the national honor at home, and disgrace to the national arms abroad.Our honor at home, our honor in domestic and internal affairs, is at all times in our own keeping, and depends simply upon the possession of an awakened public conscience. But the only way to make safe our honor, as affected not by our own deeds but by the deeds of others, is by readiness in advance. In three great crises in our history during the nineteenth century—in the War of 1812, in the Civil War, and again in the Spanish War—the navy rendered to the nation services of literally incalculable worth. In the Civil War we had to meet antagonists even more unprepared at sea than we were. On both the other occasions we encountered foreign foes, and the fighting was done entirely by ships built long in advance, and by officers and crews who had been trained during years of sea service for the supreme day when their qualities were put to the final test. The ships which won at Manila and Santiago under the Administration of President McKinley had been built years before under Presidents Arthur, Cleveland, and Harrison. The officers in those ships had been trained from their earliest youth to their profession, and the enlisted men, in addition to their natural aptitude, their intelligence, and their courage, had been drilled as marksmen with the great guns and as machinists in the engine rooms, and perfected in all the details of their work during years of cruising on the high seas and of incessant target practice. It was this preparedness which was the true secret of the enormous difference in efficiency between our navy and the Spanish navy. There was no lack ofcourage and self-devotion among the Spaniards, but on our side, in addition to the courage and devotion, for the lack of which no training could atone, there was also that training—the training which comes only as the result of years of thorough and painstaking practice.
Annapolis is, with the sole exception of its sister academy at West Point, the most typically democratic and American school of learning and preparation that there is in the entire country. Men go there from every State, from every walk of life, professing every creed—the chance of entry being open to all who perfect themselves in the necessary studies and who possess the necessary moral and physical qualities. There each man enters on his merits, stands on his merits, and graduates into a service where only his merit will enable him to be of value.
The enlisted men are of fine type, as they needs must be to do their work well, whether in the gun turret or in the engine room; and out of the fine material thus provided the finished man-of-war’s man is evolved by years of sea service.
It is impossible after the outbreak of war to improvise either the ships or the men of a navy. A war vessel is a bit of mechanism as delicate and complicated as it is formidable. You might just as well expect to turn an unskilled laborer offhand into a skilled machinist or into the engineer of a flyer on one of our big railroad systems as to put men aboard a battleship with the expectation that they will do anything but discredit themselves until theyhave had months and years in which thoroughly to learn their duties. Our shipbuilders and gunmakers must keep ever on the alert so that no rivals pass them by; and the officers and enlisted men on board the ships must in their turn, by the exercise of unflagging and intelligent zeal, keep themselves fit to get the best use out of the weapons of war intrusted to their care. The instrument is always important, but the man who uses it is more important still. We must constantly endeavor to perfect our navy in all its duties in time of peace, and above all in manœuvring in a seaway and in marksmanship with the great guns. In battle the only shots that count are those that hit, and marksmanship is a matter of long practice and of intelligent reasoning. A navy’s efficiency in a war depends mainly upon its preparedness at the outset of that war. We are not to be excused as a nation if there is not such preparedness of our navy. This is especially so in view of what we have done during the last four years. No nation has a right to undertake a big task unless it is prepared to do it in masterful and effective style. It would be an intolerable humiliation for us to embark on such a course of action as followed from our declaration of war with Spain, and not make good our words by deeds—not be ready to prove our truth by our endeavor whenever the need calls. The good work of building up the navy must go on without ceasing. The modern warship can not with advantage be allowed to rust in disuse. It must be used up in active service even in time of peace. Thismeans that there must be a constant replacement of the ineffective by the effective. The work of building up and keeping up our navy is therefore one which needs our constant and unflagging vigilance. Our navy is now efficient; but we must be content with no ordinary degree of efficiency. Every effort must be made to bring it ever nearer to perfection. In making such effort the prime factor is to have at the head of the navy such an official as your fellow-townsman, Mr. Moody; and the next is to bring home to our people as a whole the need of thorough and ample preparation in advance; this preparation to take the form not only of continually building ships, but of keeping these ships in commission under conditions which will develop the highest degree of efficiency in the officers and enlisted men aboard them.
Mr. Mayor, and you, my fellow-citizens, men and women of Maine:
I wish to say a word to you in recognition of great service rendered not only to all our country but to the entire principle of democratic government throughout the world, by one of your citizens. The best institutions are of no good if they won’t work. I do not care how beautiful a theory is, if it won’t fit in with the facts it is of no good. If you built the handsomest engine that ever had been built and it did not go, its usefulness would be limited. Well,that was just about the condition that Congress had reached at the time when Thomas B. Reed was elected Speaker. We had all the machinery, but it didn’t work,—that was the trouble,—and you had to find some one powerful man who would disregard the storm of obloquy sure to be raised by what he did in order to get it to work. Such a man was found when Reed was made Speaker. We may differ among ourselves as to policy. We may differ among ourselves as to what course government should follow; but if we possess any intelligence we must be a unit that it shall be able to follow some course. If government can not go on it is not government. If the legislative body can not enact laws, then there is no use of misnaming it a legislative body; and if the majority is to rule some method by which it can rule must be provided. Government by the majority in Congress had practically come to a stop when Mr. Reed became Speaker. Mr. Reed, at the cost of infinite labor, at the cost of the fiercest attacks, succeeded in restoring that old principle; and now through Congress we can do well or ill, accordingly as the people demand, but at any rate, we can do something—and we owe it more than to any other one man to your fellow-citizen, Mr. Reed. It is a great thing for any man to be able to feel that in some one crisis he left his mark deeply scored for good in the history of his country, and Tom Reed has the right to that feeling.
Governor Burleigh, my fellow-citizens, men and women of Maine:
It would be difficult for any man speaking to this audience and from in front of the house in which Blaine once lived to fail to feel whatever of Americanism there was in him stirred to the depths. For my good fortune I knew Mr. Blaine quite well when he was Secretary of State, and I have thought again and again during the past few years how pleased he would have been to see so many of the principles for which he had stood approach fruition.
One secret, perhaps I might say the chief secret, of Mr. Blaine’s extraordinary hold upon the affections of his countrymen was his entirely genuine and unaffected Americanism. When I speak of Americanism I do not for a minute mean to say, gentlemen, that all the things we do are all right. I think there are plenty of evils to correct and that often a man shows himself all the more a good American because he wants to cut out any evil of the body politic which may interfere with our approaching the ideal of true Americanism. But not only admitting but also emphasizing this, it yet remains true that throughout our history no one has been able to render really great service to the country if he did not believe in the country. Mr. Blaine possessed to an eminent degree the confident hope in the nation’s future which made him feel that she must ever strive to fit herself for a great destiny. He felt that thisRepublic must in every way take the lead in the Western Hemisphere. He felt that this Republic must play a great part among the nations of the earth. The last four years have shown how true that feeling of his was.
He had always hoped that we would have a peculiarly intimate relation with the countries south of us. He could hardly have anticipated—no one could have—the Spanish War and its effects. In consequence of that war America’s interest in the tropic islands to our south and the seas and coasts surrounding those islands is far greater than ever before. Our interest in the Monroe Doctrine is more complicated than ever before. The Monroe Doctrine is simply a statement of our very firm belief that on this continent the nations now existing here must be left to work out their own destinies among themselves and that the continent is not longer to be regarded as colonizing ground for any European power. The one power on the continent that can make that doctrine effective is, of course, ourselves; for in the world as it is, gentlemen, the nation which advances a given doctrine likely to interfere in any way with other nations must possess power to back it up if she wishes the doctrine to be respected. We stand firmly on the Monroe Doctrine.
The events of the last nine months have rendered it evident that we shall soon embark on the work of excavating the Isthmian Canal to connect the two great oceans—a work destined to be, probably, the greatest engineering feat of the twentiethcentury, certainly a greater engineering feat than has ever yet been successfully attempted among the nations of mankind; and as it is the biggest thing of its kind to be done I am glad it is the United States that is to do it. Whenever a nation undertakes to carry out a great destiny it must make up its mind that there will be work and worry, labor and risk, in doing the work. It is with a nation as it is with an individual; if you are content to attempt but little in private life you may be able to escape a good deal of worry, but you won’t achieve very much. The man who attempts much must make up his mind that there will now and then come days and nights of worry; there will come even moments of seeming defeat. But out of the difficulties we wrest success. So it is with the nation. It is not the easy task that is necessarily the best.
My Fellow-Citizens:
I am glad to greet the farmers of Maine. During the century that has closed, the growth of industrialism has necessarily meant that cities and towns have increased in population more rapidly than the country districts. And yet, it remains true now as it always has been, that in the last resort the country districts are those in which we are surest to find the old American spirit, the old American habits of thought and ways of living. Conditions have changed in the country far less than they havechanged in the cities, and in consequence there has been little breaking away from the methods of life which have produced the great majority of the leaders of the Republic in the past. Almost all of our great Presidents have been brought up in the country, and most of them worked hard on the farms in their youth and got their early mental training in the healthy democracy of farm life.
The forces which made these farm-bred boys leaders of men when they had come to their full manhood are still at work in our country districts. Self-help and individual initiative remain to a peculiar degree typical of life in the country, life on a farm, in the lumbering camp, on a ranch. Neither the farmers nor their hired hands can work through combinations as readily as the capitalists or wage-workers of cities can work.
It must not be understood from this that there has been no change in farming and farm life. The contrary is the case. There has been much change, much progress. The granges and similar organizations, the farmers’ institutes, and all the agencies which promote intelligent co-operation and give opportunity for social and intellectual intercourse among the farmers, have played a large part in raising the level of life and work in the country districts. In the domain of government, the Department of Agriculture since its foundation has accomplished results as striking as those obtained under any other branch of the national administration. By scientific study of all matters connected with theadvancement of farm life; by experimental stations; by the use of trained agents, sent to the uttermost countries of the globe; by the practical application of anything which in theory has been demonstrated to be efficient; in these ways, and in many others, great good has been accomplished in raising the standard of productiveness in farm work throughout the country. We live in an era when the best results can only be achieved, if to individual self-help we add the mutual self-help which comes by combination, both of citizens in their individual capacity and of citizens working through the State as an instrument. The farmers of the country have grown more and more to realize this, and farming has tended more and more to take its place as an applied science—though, as with everything else, the theory must be tested in practical work, and can avail only when applied in practical fashion.
But after all this has been said, it remains true that the countryman—the man on the farm, more than any other of our citizens to-day, is called upon continually to exercise the qualities which we like to think of as typical of the United States throughout its history—the qualities of rugged independence, masterful resolution, and individual energy and resourcefulness. He works hard (for which no man is to be pitied), and often he lives hard (which may not be pleasant); but his life is passed in healthy surroundings, surroundings which tend to develop a fine type of citizenship. In the country, moreover, the conditions are fortunately suchas to allow a closer touch between man and man, than, too often, we find to be the case in the city. Men feel more vividly the underlying sense of brotherhood, of community of interest. I do not mean by this that there are not plenty of problems connected with life in our rural districts. There are many problems; and great wisdom and earnest disinterestedness in effort are needed for their solution.
After all, we are one people, with the same fundamental characteristics, whether we live in the city or in the country, in the East or in the West, in the North or the South. Each of us, unless he is contented to be a cumberer of the earth’s surface, must strive to do his life-work with his whole heart. Each must remember that, while he will be noxious to every one unless he first do his duty by himself, he must also strive ever to do his duty by his fellow. The problem of how to do these duties is acute everywhere. It is most acute in great cities, but it exists in the country, too. A man, to be a good citizen, must first be a good bread-winner, a good husband, a good father—I hope the father of many healthy children; just as a woman’s first duty is to be a good housewife and mother. The business duties, the home duties, the duties to one’s family, come first. The couple who bring up plenty of healthy children, who leave behind them many sons and daughters fitted in their turn to be good citizens, emphatically deserve well of the State.
But duty to one’s self and one’s family does notexclude duty to one’s neighbor. Each of us, rich or poor, can help his neighbor at times; and to do this he must be brought into touch with him, into sympathy with him. Any effort is to be welcomed that brings people closer together, so as to secure a better understanding among those whose walks of life are in ordinary circumstances far apart. Probably the good done is almost equally great on both sides, no matter which one may seem to be helping the other. But it must be kept in mind that no good will be accomplished at all by any philanthropic or charitable work, unless it is done along certain definite lines. In the first place, if the work is done in a spirit of condescension, it would be better never to attempt it. It is almost as irritating to be patronized as to be wronged. The only safe way of working is to try to find out some scheme by which it is possible to make a common effort for the common good. Each of us needs at times to have a helping hand stretched out to him or her. Every one of us slips on some occasion, and shame to his fellow who then refuses to stretch out the hand that should always be ready to help the man who stumbles. It is our duty to lift him up; but it is also our duty to remember that there is no earthly use in trying to carry him. If a man will submit to being carried, that is sufficient to show that he is not worth carrying. In the long run, the only kind of help that really avails is the help which teaches a man to help himself. Such help every man who has been blessed in life should try to give to those who are less fortunate,and such help can be accepted with entire self-respect.
The aim to set before ourselves in trying to aid one another is to give that aid under conditions which will harm no man’s self-respect, and which will teach the less fortunate how to help themselves as their stronger brothers do. To give such aid it is necessary not only to possess the right kind of heart, but also the right kind of head. Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether, in the long run, it works more damage than softness of head. At any rate, both are undesirable. The prerequisite to doing good work in the field of philanthropy—in the field of social effort, undertaken with one’s fellows for the common good—is that it shall be undertaken in a spirit of broad sanity no less than of broad and loving charity.
The other day I picked up a little book called “The Simple Life,” written by an Alsatian, Charles Wagner, and he preaches such wholesome, sound doctrine that I wish it could be used as a tract throughout our country. To him the whole problem of our complex, somewhat feverish modern life can be solved only by getting men and women to lead better lives. He sees that the permanence of liberty and democracy depends upon a majority of the people being steadfast in morality and in that good plain sense which, as a national attribute, comes only as the result of the slow and painful labor of centuries, and which can be squandered ina generation by the thoughtless and vicious. He preaches the doctrine of the superiority of the moral to the material. He does not undervalue the material, but he insists, as we of this nation should always insist, upon the infinite superiority of the moral, and the sordid destruction which comes upon either the nation or the individual if it or he becomes absorbed only in the desire to get wealth. The true line of cleavage lies between good citizen and bad citizen; and the line of cleavage may, and often does, run at right angles to that which divides the rich and the poor. The sinews of virtue lie in man’s capacity to care for what is outside himself. The man who gives himself up to the service of his appetites, the man who the more goods he has the more wants, has surrendered himself to destruction. It makes little difference whether he achieves his purpose or not. If his point of view is all wrong, he is a bad citizen whether he be rich or poor. It is a small matter to the community whether in arrogance and insolence he has misused great wealth, or whether, though poor, he is possessed by the mean and fierce desire to seize a morsel, the biggest possible, of that prey which the fortunate of earth consume. The man who lives simply, and justly, and honorably, whether rich or poor, is a good citizen. Those who dream only of idleness and pleasure, who hate others, and fail to recognize the duty of each man to his brother, these, be they rich or poor, are the enemies of the State. The misuse of property is one manifestation of the same evil spiritwhich, under changed circumstances, denies the right of property because this right is in the hands of others. In a purely material civilization the bitterness of attack on another’s possession is only additional proof of the extraordinary importance attached to possession itself. When outward well-being, instead of being regarded as a valuable foundation on which happiness may with wisdom be built, is mistaken for happiness itself, so that material prosperity becomes the one standard, then, alike by those who enjoy such prosperity in slothful or criminal ease, and by those who in no less evil manner rail at, envy, and long for it, poverty is held to be shameful, and money, whether well or ill gotten, to stand for merit.
All this does not mean condemnation of progress. It is mere folly to try to dig up the dead past, and scant is the good that comes from asceticism and retirement from the world. But let us make sure that our progress is in the essentials as well as in the incidentals. Material prosperity without the moral lift toward righteousness means a diminished capacity for happiness and a debased character. The worth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its centre. When this man lacks moral rectitude, material progress only makes bad worse, and social problems still darker and more complex.
My Fellow-Citizens:
Here near the seat of the summer school for young men founded by Dwight L. Moody, I naturally speak on a subject suggested to me by the life of Mr. Moody and by the aims sought for through the establishment of the summer school.
In such a school—a school which is to equip young men to do good in the world—to show both the desire for the rule of righteousness and the practical power to give actual effect to that desire—it seems to me there are two texts specially worthy of emphasis: One is, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only”; and the other is, “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” A republic of freemen is pre-eminently a community in which there is need for the actual exercise and practical application of both the milder and the stronger virtues. Every good quality—every virtue and every grace—has its place and is of use in the great scheme of creation; but it is of course a mere truism to say that at certain times and in certain places there is pre-eminent need for a given set of virtues. In our own country, with its many-sided, hurrying, practical life, the place for cloistered virtue is far smaller than is the place for that essential manliness which, without losing its fine and lofty side, can yet hold its own in the rough struggle with the forces of the world round about us. It would be a very bad thing for this country if it happened that the men of righteousliving tended to lose the robust, virile qualities of heart, mind and body, and if, on the other hand, the men best fitted practically to achieve results lost the guidance of the moral law. No one-sided development can produce really good citizenship—as good citizenship is needed in the America of to-day. If a man has not in him the root of righteousness—if he does not believe in, and practice, honesty—if he is not truthful and upright, clean and high-minded, fair in his dealings both at home and abroad—then the stronger he is, the abler and more energetic he is, the more dangerous he is to the body politic. Wisdom untempered by devotion to an ideal usually means only that dangerous cunning which is far more fatal in its ultimate effects to the community than open violence itself. It is inexcusable in an honest people to deify mere success without regard to the qualities by which that success is achieved. Indeed there is a revolting injustice, intolerable to just minds, in punishing the weak scoundrel who fails, and bowing down to and making life easy for the far more dangerous scoundrel who succeeds. A wicked man who is wicked on a large scale, whether in business or in politics, of course does many times more evil to the community than the man who only ventures to be wicked furtively and in lesser ways. If possible, the success of such a man should be prevented by law, and in any event he ought to be made to feel that there is no condonation of his offences by the public. There is no more unpleasant manifestation of public feeling than the deification ofmere “smartness,” as it is termed—of mere successful cunning unhampered by scruple or generosity or right feeling. If a man is not decent, is not square and honest, then the possession of ability only serves to render him more dangerous to the community; as a wild beast grows more dangerous the stronger and fiercer he is.
But virtue by itself is not enough, or anything like enough. Strength must be added to it, and the determination to use that strength. The good man who is ineffective is not able to make his goodness of much account to the people as a whole. No matter how much a man hears the word, small is the credit attached to him if he fails to be a doer also; and in serving the Lord he must remember that he needs to avoid sloth in his business as well as to cultivate fervency of spirit. All around us there are great evils to combat, and they are not to be combated with success by men who pride themselves on their superiority in taste and in virtue, and draw aside from the world’s life. It matters not whether they thus draw aside because they fear their fellows or because they despise them. Each feeling—the fear no less than the contempt—is shameful and unworthy. A man to be a good American must be straight, and he must also be strong. He must have in him the conscience which will teach him to see the right, and he must also have the vigor, the courage, and the practical, hard-headed common-sense which will enable him to make his seeing right result in some benefit to his fellows.
Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens:
There are two or three things that I should like to say to this audience, but before beginning what I have to say on some of the problems of the day, I wish to thank for their greeting, not only all of you, my fellow-citizens here, but particularly the men of the great war, and second only to them my comrades of a lesser war, where, I hope, we showed that we were anxious to do our duty, as you had done yours, only the need did not come to us.
We have great problems before us as a nation. I will not try to discuss them at length with you to-day, but I can speak a word as to the manner in which they must be met if they are to be met successfully. All great works, though they differ in the method of doing them, must be solved by substantially the same qualities. You who upheld the arms of Lincoln, who followed the sword of Grant, were able to do your duty not because you found some patent device for doing it, but by going down to the bedrock principles which had made good soldiers since the world began.
There was no method possible to devise which would have spared you from heart-breaking fatigue on the marches, from hardships at night, from danger in battle. The only way to overcome those difficulties and dangers was by drawing on every ounce of hardihood, of courage, of loyalty, and of iron resolution. That is how you had to win out. Youhad to win as the soldiers of Washington had won before you, as we of the younger generation must win if ever the call should be made upon us to face a serious foe. Arms change, tactics change, but the spirit that makes the real soldier does not change. The spirit that makes for victory does not change.
It is just so in civic life. The problems change, but fundamentally the qualities needed to face them in the average citizen are the same. Our new and highly complex industrial civilization has produced a new and complicated series of problems. We need to face those problems and not to run away from them. We need to exercise all our ingenuity in trying to devise some effective solution, but the only way in which that solution can be applied is the old way of bringing honesty, courage, and common-sense to bear upon it. One feature of honesty and common-sense combined is never to promise what you do not think you can perform, and then never fail to perform what you have promised. And that applies in public life just as much as in private life.
If some of those who have seen cause for wonder in what I have said this summer on the subject of the great corporations, which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as trusts, would take the trouble to read my messages when I was Governor, what I said on the stump two years ago, and what I put into my first message to Congress, I think they would have been less astonished. I saidnothing on the stump that I did not think I could make good, and I shall not hesitate now to take the position which I then advocated.
I am even more anxious that you who hear what I say should think of it than that you should applaud it. I am not going to try to define with technical accuracy what ought to be meant when we speak of a trust. But if by trust we mean merely a big corporation, then I ask you to ponder the utter folly of the man who either in a spirit of rancor or in a spirit of folly says “destroy the trusts,” without giving you an idea of what he means really to do. I will go with him if he says destroy the evil in the trusts, gladly. I will try to find out that evil, I will seek to apply remedies, which I have already outlined in other speeches; but if his policy, from whatever motive, whether hatred, fear, panic or just sheer ignorance, is to destroy the trusts in a way that will destroy all our property—no. Those men who advocate wild and foolish remedies which would be worse than the disease are doing all in their power to perpetuate the evils against which they nominally war, because, if we are brought face to face with the naked issue of either keeping or totally destroying a prosperity in which the majority share, but in which some share improperly, why, as sensible men, we must decide that it is a great deal better that some people should prosper too much than that no one should prosper enough. So that the man who advocates destroying the trusts by measures which would paralyze the industriesof the country is at least a quack, and at worst an enemy to the Republic.
In 1893 there was no trouble about anybody making too much money. The trusts were down, but the trouble was that we were all of us down. Nothing but harm to the whole body politic can come from ignorant agitation, carried on partially against real evils, partially against imaginary evils, but in a spirit which would substitute for the real evils evils just as real and infinitely greater. Those men, if they should succeed, could do nothing to bring about a solution of the great problems with which we are concerned. If they could destroy certain of the evils at the cost of overthrowing the well-being of the entire country, it would mean merely that there would come a reaction in which they and their remedies would be hopelessly discredited.
Now, it does not do anybody any good, and it will do most of us a great deal of harm, to take steps which will check any proper growth in a corporation. We wish not to penalize but to reward a great captain of industry or the men banded together in a corporation who have the business forethought and energy necessary to build up a great industrial enterprise. Keep that in mind. A big corporation may be doing excellent work for the whole country, and you want, above all things, when striving to get a plan which will prevent wrongdoing by a corporation which desires to do wrong, not at the same time to have a scheme which will interfere with a corporation doing well, if that corporation is handlingitself honestly and squarely. What I am saying ought to be treated as simple, elementary truths. The only reason it is necessary to say them at all is that apparently some people forget them.
I believe something can be done by national legislation. When I state that I ask you to note my words. I say I believe. It is not in my power to say I know. When I talk to you of my own executive duties I can tell you definitely what will and what will not be done. When I speak of the actions of any one else I can only say that I believe something more can be done by national legislation. I believe it will be done. I think we can get laws which will increase the power of the Federal Government over corporations; if we can not, then there will have to be an amendment to the Constitution of the nation conferring additional power upon the Federal Government to deal with corporations. To get that will be a matter of difficulty, and a matter of time.
Let me interrupt here by way of illustration. You of the great war recollect that about six weeks after Sumter had been fired on there began to be loud clamor in the North among people who were not at the front that you should go to Richmond; and there were any number of people who told you how to go there. Then came Bull Run, and a lot of those same people who a fortnight before had been yelling “On to Richmond at once,” turned around and said the war was over. All the hysteric brotherhood said so. But you didn’t think so. The war was not over. It was not over for three yearsand nine months, and then it was over the other way. And you got it over by setting your faces steadily toward the goal, by not relying upon anything impossible, but by each doing everything possible that came in his line to do, by each man doing his duty. You did not win by any patent device; you won by the generalship of Grant and Sherman and Thomas and Sheridan, and, above all, by the soldiership of the men who carried the muskets and the sabres. It did not come as soon as you wanted, and the men who said it would come at once did not help you much either.
In dealing with any great problem in civil life, be it the trusts or anything else, you are going to get along in just about the same fashion. There is not any patent remedy for all the ills. All we can do is to make up our minds definitely that we intend to find some method by which we shall be able to tell, in the first place, what are the real evils and what of the alleged evils are imaginary; in the next place, what of those real evils it is possible to cure by legislation; and then to cure them by legislation and by an honest administration of the laws after they have been enacted. That statement of the problem will never be attractive to the man who thinks that somehow, by turning your hand, you are going to get a complete solution at once.
Grant’s plan of fighting it out on that line, if it took all summer, was not attractive to the men who wanted it done in a week. But it was the only planthat won. The only way we can ever work out even an approximately satisfactory solution of these great industrial problems, of which this so-called problem of the trusts is but one, is by approaching them in a spirit which shall combine equally sanity and self-restraint on the one hand and resolute purpose on the other.
It is not given to me or to any one else to promise a perfect solution. It is not given to me or to any one else to promise you even an approximately perfect solution in a short time. But I think that we can work out a very great improvement over the present conditions, and the steps taken must, I am sure, be along these lines—along the lines, in the first place, of getting power somewhere so that we shall be able to say, the nation has power, let it use that power—and not as it is at present, where it is out of the question to say exactly where the power is.
We must get power first, then use that power fearlessly, but with moderation. Let me say that again—with moderation, with sanity, with self-restraint. The mechanism of modern business is altogether too delicate and too complicated for us to sanction for one moment any intermeddling with it in a spirit of ignorance, above all in a spirit of rancor. Something can be done, something is being done now. Much more can be done if our people resolutely but temperately will that it shall be done. But the certain way of bringing great harm upon ourselves, without in any way furthering the solution of theproblem, but, on the contrary, deferring indefinitely its proper solution, would be to act in a spirit of ignorance, of violence, of rancor, in a spirit which would make us tear down the temple of industry in which we live because we are not satisfied with some of the details of its management.
I want you to think of what I have said, because it represents all of the sincerity and earnestness that I have, and I say to you here, from this platform, nothing that I have not already stated in effect, and nothing I would not say at a private table with any of the biggest corporation managers in the land.
Governor Crane, and you, my Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
It seems to me that in a town like this we not only have but ought to have a better standard of citizenship and a more thorough appreciation of the rights and duties of the individual citizen and of the possibilities of government than in almost any other community. Here is a town where you have both farming and manufacturing, where you have on a small scale all the elements that go to make up the industrial life of the nation as a whole—the capitalist and wage-earner, the farmer and hired man, merchant, men of the professions, you have them all; you see the forces that have built up the nation and that are at work in the nation, in play round about you in the farms, in the factories, in the houses, rightamong your neighbors and friends. When men live in a big city they lose touch with one another; they tend to lose intimate touch with the government, and they get to speak of the state, of the government, as something entirely apart from them. Now the government is us, here, you and me, and that ought to make us understand on the one hand what we have a right to expect from the government, and on the other hand what it is foolish to expect from the government. We have a right to expect from it that it will secure us against injustice; that so far as is humanly possible it will secure for each man a fair chance; that it will do justice as between man and man, and that it will not respect persons; that in that division of the government dealing with justice each man shall stand absolutely on his merits, not being discriminated for or against because of his wealth or his poverty, because of anything but his own conduct.
The government can take hold of certain functions which are in the interest of the people as a whole. More than this the government can not do or else does at the risk of doing it badly. The government can not supply the lack in any man of the qualities which must determine in the last resort the man’s success or failure. Instead of “government” say “the town.” Now what can the town do for you? A good deal; but not nearly as much as you can do for it, not nearly as much as you must do for yourself. The government can not make a man a success in life. If we would rememberthat and remember that when we use the large terms of the government and nation, we only mean the town on a large scale, there would be much less danger in our thinking that perhaps by some queer patent device or some scheme, the state, the government, the town, can supply the lack of individual thrift, energy, enterprise, resolution. It can not supply such lack. Something can be done by government, that is, by all of us acting together to protect the rights of all, to accomplish certain things for all. Something can be accomplished by helping one another. He is a poor creature who does not give help generously when the chance comes. But finally in the last resort the man who wins now will be the man of the type who has won always, the man who can win for himself. Do not make the mistake of thinking that it is possible ever to call in any outside force to take the place of the man’s own individual initiative, the man’s individual capacity to do work worth doing.
My Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
It is a pleasure to come here to your city. I wish to thank the Mayor, and through the Mayor all of your citizens, for the way in which, upon your behalf, he has greeted me; and I wish to state that it is a special pleasure to be introduced by my friend, Senator Scott. I have known the Senator for some time, and I like him, because when he gives you his word you don’t have to think about it again.
I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words here in this great industrial centre in one of those regions which have felt to a notable degree the effects of the period of prosperity through which we are now passing. Probably never before in our history has the country been more prosperous than it is at this moment; and it is a prosperity which has come alike to the tillers of the soil and to those connected with our great industrial enterprises.
Every period has its own troubles and difficulties. A period of adversity, of course, troubles us all; but there are troubles in connection with a period of prosperity also. When all things flourish it means that there is a good chance for things that we don’t like to flourish also, just exactly as things that we do like. A period of great national material well-being is inevitably one in which men’s minds are turned to the way in which those flourish who are interested in the management of the gigantic capitalistic corporations, whose growth has been so noted a feature of the last half century—the corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts—accepting the word in its usual and common significance as a big corporation usually doing business in several States at least, besides the State in which it is incorporated, and often, though not always, with some element of monopoly in it.
It seems to me that in dealing with this problem of the trusts—perhaps it would be more accurateto say the group of problems which come into our minds when we think of the trusts—we have two classes of our fellow-citizens whom we have to convert or override. One is composed of those men who refuse to admit that there is any action necessary at all. The other is composed of those men who advocate some action so extreme, so foolish, that it would either be entirely non-effective, or, if effective, would be so only by destroying everything, good and bad, connected with our industrial development.
In every governmental process the aim that a people capable of self-government should steadfastly keep in mind is to proceed by evolution rather than revolution. On the other hand, every people fit for self-government must beware of that fossilization of mind which refuses to allow of any change as conditions change. Now, in dealing with the whole problem of the change in our great industrial civilization—in dealing with the tendencies which have been accentuated in so extraordinary a degree by steam and electricity, and by the tremendous upbuilding of industrial centres which steam and electricity have been the main factors in bringing about—I think we must set before ourselves the desire not to accept less than the possible, and at the same time not to bring ourselves to a complete standstill by attempting the impossible. It is a good deal as it is in taking care, through the engineers, of the lower Mississippi River. No one can dam the Mississippi. If the nation started to dam it, the nationwould waste its time. It would not hurt the Mississippi, but it would not only throw away its own means, but would incidentally damage the population along the banks. You can’t dam the current. You can build levees to keep the current within bounds and to shape its direction. I think that is exactly what we can do in connection with these great corporations known as trusts. We can not reverse the industrial tendency of the age. If you succeed in doing it, then all cities like Wheeling will have to go out of business. Remember that. You can not put a stop to or reverse the industrial tendencies of the age, but you can control and regulate them and see that they do no harm.
A flood comes down the Mississippi—you can’t stop it. If you tried to build a dam across it, it would not hurt the flood, and it would not benefit you. You can guide it between levees so as to prevent its doing injury, and so as to ensure its doing good. Another thing: you don’t build those levees in a day or in a month. A man who told you that he had a patent device by which in sixty days he would solve the whole question of the floods along the lower Mississippi would not be a wise man; but he would be a perfect miracle of wisdom compared to the man who tells you that by any one patent remedy he can bring the millennium in our industrial and social affairs.
We can do something; I believe we can do a good deal, but our accomplishing what I expect to see accomplished is conditioned upon our setting towork in a spirit as far removed as possible from hysteria—a spirit of sober, steadfast, kindly—I want to emphasize that—kindly determination not to submit to wrong ourselves and not to wrong others, not to interfere with the great business development of the country, and at the same time so to shape our legislation and administration as to minimize, if we can not eradicate, the unpleasant and vicious features connected with that industrial development. I have said that there can be no patent remedy. There is not any one thing which can be done to remove all of the existing evils. There are a good many things which, if we do them all, will, I believe, make a very appreciable betterment in the existing conditions. To do that is not to make a promise that will evoke wild enthusiasm, but a promise that can be kept; and in the long run it is much more comfortable only to make promises that can be kept than to make promises which are sure of an immense reception when made, but which entail intolerable humiliation when it is attempted to carry them out.
I am sufficiently fortunate to be advocating now, as President, precisely the remedies that I advocated two years ago—advocating them not in any partisan spirit, because, gentlemen, this problem is one which affects the life of the nation as a whole—but advocating them simply as the American citizen who, for the time being, stands as the Chief Executive and, therefore, the special representative of his fellow-American citizens of all parties.
A century and a quarter ago there had been nodevelopment of industry such as to make it a matter of the least importance whether the nation or the State had charge of the great corporations or supervised the great business and industrial organizations. A century and a quarter ago, here at Wheeling, commerce was carried on by pack train, by wagon train, by boat. That was the way it was carried on throughout the whole civilized world—oars and sails, wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden—those were the means of carrying on commerce at the end of the eighteenth century, when this country became a nation.
There had been no radical change, no essential change, in the means of carrying on commerce from the days when the Phœnician galleys plowed the waters of the Mediterranean. For four or five thousand years, perhaps longer, from the immemorial past when Babylon and Nineveh stood in Mesopotamia, when Thebes and Memphis were mighty in the valley of the Nile—from that time on through the supremacy of Greece and of Rome, through the upbuilding of the great trading cities like Venice and Genoa in Italy; like the cities of the Rhine and the Netherlands in Northern Europe—on through the period of the great expansion of European civilization which followed the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, down to the time when this country became a nation—the means of commercial intercourse remained substantially unchanged. Those means, therefore, limited narrowly what could bedone by any corporation, the growth that could take place in any community.
Suddenly, during our own lifetime as a nation—a lifetime trivial in duration compared to the period of recorded history—there came a revolution in the means of intercourse which made a change in commerce, and in all that springs from commerce, in industrial development, greater than all the changes of the preceding thousands of years. A greater change in the means of commerce of mankind has taken place since Wheeling was founded, since the first settlers built their log huts in the great forests on the banks of this river, than in all the previous period during which man had led an existence that can be called civilized.
Through the railway, the electric telegraph, and other developments, steam and electricity worked a complete revolution. This has meant, of course, that entirely new problems have sprung up. You have right in this immediate neighborhood a very much larger population than any similar region in all the United States held when the Continental Congress began its sessions; and the change in industrial conditions has been literally immeasurable. Those changed conditions need a corresponding change in the governmental agencies necessary for their regulation and supervision.
Such agencies were not provided, and could not have been provided, in default of a knowledge of prophecy by the men who founded the Republic. In those days each State could take care perfectlywell of any corporations within its limits, and all it had to do was to try to encourage their upbuilding. Now the big corporations, although nominally the creatures of one State, usually do business in other States, and in a very large number of cases the wide variety of State laws on the subject of corporations has brought about the fact that the corporation is made in one State, but does almost all its work in entirely different States.
It has proved utterly impossible to get anything like uniformity of legislation among the States. Some States have passed laws about corporations which, if they had not been ineffective, would have totally prevented any important corporate work being done within their limits. Other States have such lax laws that there is no effective effort made to control any of the abuses. As a result we have a system of divided control—where the nation has something to say, but it is a little difficult to know exactly how much, and where the different States have each something to say, but where there is no supreme power that can speak with authority. It is, of course, a mere truism to say that every corporation, the smallest as well as the largest, is the creature of the State. Where the corporation is small there is very little need of exercising much supervision over it, but the stupendous corporations of the present day certainly should be under governmental supervision and regulation. The first effort to make is to give somebody the power to exercise that supervision, that regulation. We havealready laws on the statute books. Those laws will be enforced, and are being enforced, with all the power of the National Government, and wholly without regard to persons. But the power is very limited. Now I want you to take my words at their exact value. I think—I can not say I am sure, because it has often happened in the past that Congress has passed a law with a given purpose in view, and when that law has been judicially interpreted it has proved that the purpose was not achieved—but I think that by legislation additional power in the way of regulation of at least a number of these great corporations can be conferred. But, gentlemen, I firmly believe that in the end power must be given to the National Government to exercise in full supervision and regulation of these great enterprises, and, if necessary, a Constitutional amendment must be resorted to for this purpose.
That is not new doctrine for me. That is the doctrine that I advocated on the stump two years ago. Some of my ultra-conservative friends have professed to be greatly shocked at my advocating it now. I would explain to those gentlemen, once for all, that they err whenever they think that I advocate on the stump anything that I will not try to put into effect after election. The objection is made that working along these lines will take time. So it will. Let me go back to my illustration of the Mississippi River. It took time to build the levees, but we built them. And if we have the proper intelligence, the proper resolution, and the properself-restraint, we can work out the solution along the lines that I have indicated. Thus, the first thing is to give the National Government the power. All the power that is given, I can assure you, will be used in a spirit as free as possible from rancor of any kind, but with the firmest determination to make big man and little man alike obey the law.
What we need first is power. Having gotten the power, remember the work won’t be ended—it will be only fairly begun. And let me say again and again and again that you will not get the millennium—the millennium is some way off yet. But you will be in a position to make long strides in advance in the direction of securing a juster, fairer, wiser management of many of these corporations, both as regards the general public and as regards their relationship among themselves and to the investing public. When we have the power I most earnestly hope, and should most earnestly advocate, that it be used with the greatest wisdom and self-restraint.
The first thing to do would be to find out the facts. For that purpose I am absolutely clear that we need publicity—that we need it not as a matter of favor from any one corporation, but as a matter of right, secured through the agents of the Government, from all the corporations concerned. The mere fact of the publicity itself will tend to stop many of the evils, and it will show that some other alleged evils are imaginary, and finally in making evident the remaining evils—those that are notimaginary and that are not cured by the simple light of day—it will give us an intelligent appreciation of the methods to take in getting at them. We should have, under such circumstances, one sovereign to whom the big corporations should be responsible—a sovereign in whose courts a corporation could be held accountable for any failure to comply with the laws of the legislature of that sovereign. I do not think you can accomplish that among the forty-six sovereigns of the States. I think that it will have to be through the National Government.
Mr. Grand Master, Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor, my Brothers, my Fellow-Citizens:
I am glad to be here to-day. I am glad to come as the guest of the Brotherhood. Let me join with you, the members of the Brotherhood of this country, in extending a most cordial welcome to our fellows from Canada and Mexico. The fact that we are good Americans only makes us all the better men, all the more desirous of seeing good fortune to all mankind. I needed no pressing to accept the invitation tendered through you, Mr. Hannahan, and through Mr. Arnold, to come to this meeting. I have always admired greatly the railroad men of the country, and I do not see how any one who believes in what I regard as the fundamental virtuesof citizenship can fail to do so. I want to see the average American a good man, an honest man, and a man who can handle himself, and does handle himself, well under difficulties. The last time I ever saw General Sherman, I dined at his house, and we got to talking over the capacity of different types of soldiers, and the General happened to say that if ever there were another war, and he were to have a command, he should endeavor to get as many railway men as possible under him. I asked him why, and he said, “Because on account of their profession they have developed certain qualities which are essential in a soldier.” In the first place, they are accustomed to taking risks. There are a great many men who are naturally brave, but who, being entirely unaccustomed to risks, are at first appalled by them. Railroad men are accustomed to enduring hardship; they are accustomed to irregular hours; they are accustomed to act on their own responsibility, on their own initiative, and yet they are accustomed to obeying orders quickly. There is not anything more soul-harrowing for a man in time of war, or for a man engaged in a difficult job in time of peace, than to give an order and have the gentleman addressed say “What?” The railroad man has to learn that when an order is issued there may be but a fraction of a second in which to obey it. He has to learn that orders are to be obeyed, and, on the other hand, that there will come plenty of crises in which there will be no orders to be obeyed, and he will have to act for himself.
Those are all qualities that go to the very essence of good soldiership, and I am not surprised at what General Sherman said. In raising my own regiment, which was raised mainly in the Southwest, partly in the Territory in which Mr. Sargent himself served as a soldier at one time—in Arizona—I got a number of railroad men. Of course, the first requisite was that a man should know how to shoot and how to ride. We were raising the regiment in a hurry, and we did not have time to teach him either. He had to know how to handle a horse and how to handle a rifle, to start with. But given the possession of those two qualities, I found that there was no group of our citizens from whom better men could be drawn to do a soldier’s work in a tight place and at all times than the railroad men.
But, gentlemen, the period of war is but a fractional part of the life of our Republic, and I earnestly hope and believe that it will be an even smaller part in the future than it has been in the past. It was the work that you have done in time of peace that especially attracted me to you, that made me anxious to come down here and see you, and that made me glad to speak to you, not for what I can tell you, but for the lesson it seems to me can be gained by all of our people from what you have done.
At the opening of the twentieth century we face conditions vastly changed from what they were in this country and throughout the world a century ago. Our complex industrial civilization under whichprogress has been so rapid, and in which the changes for good have been so great, has also inevitably seen the growth of certain tendencies that are not for good, or at least that are not wholly for good; and we in consequence, as a people, like the rest of civilized mankind, find set before us for solution during the coming century problems which need the best thought of all of us, and the most earnest desire of all to solve them well if we expect to work out a solution satisfactory to our people, a solution for the advantage of the nation. In facing these problems, it must be a comfort to every well-wisher of the nation to see what has been done by your organization. I believe emphatically in organized labor. I believe in organizations of wage-workers. Organization is one of the laws of our social and economic development at this time. But I feel that we must always keep before our minds the fact that there is nothing sacred in the name itself. To call an organization an organization does not make it a good one. The worth of an organization depends upon its being handled with the courage, the skill, the wisdom, the spirit of fair dealing as between man and man, and the wise self-restraint which, I am glad to be able to say, your Brotherhood has shown. You now number close upon 44,000 members. During the two years ending June 30 last you paid in to the general and beneficiary funds close upon a million and a half dollars. More than six and one-half millions have been paid in since the starting of the insurance clause inthe constitution—have been paid to disabled members and their beneficiaries. Over fifty per cent of the amount paid was paid on account of accidents. Gentlemen, that is a sufficient commentary upon the kind of profession which is yours. You face death and danger in time of peace, as in time of war the men wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform must face them.
Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you? No; not a bit. I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. The law of worthy work well done is the law of successful American life. I believe in play, too—play, and play hard while you play; but don’t make the mistake of thinking that that is the main thing. The work is what counts, and if a man does his work well and it is worth doing, then it matters but little in which line that work is done; the man is a good American citizen. If he does his work in slip-shod fashion, then no matter what kind of work it is, he is a poor American citizen.
I speak to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, but what I say applies to all railroad men—not only to the engineers who have served an apprenticeship as firemen, to the conductors, who, as a rule, have served an apprenticeship as brakemen, but to all the men of all the organizations connected with railroad work. I know you do not grudge my saying that, through you, I am talking to all therailroad men of the country. You, in your organization as railroad men, have taught two lessons: the lesson of how much can be accomplished by organization, by mutual self-help of the type that helps another in the only way by which, in the long run,—that is, by teaching him to help himself. You teach the benefits of organization, and you also teach the indispensable need of keeping absolutely unimpaired the faculty of individual initiative, the faculty by which each man brings himself to the highest point of perfection by exercising the special qualities with which he is himself endowed. The Brotherhood has developed to this enormous extent since the days, now many years ago, when the first little band came together; and it has developed, not by crushing out individual initiative, but by developing it, by combining many individual initiatives.
The Brotherhood of Firemen does much for all firemen, but I firmly believe that the individual fireman since the growth of the Brotherhood has been more, not less, efficient than he was twenty years ago. Membership in the Brotherhood comes, as I understand it, after a nine months’ probationary period; after a man has shown his worth, he is then admitted and stands on his footing as a brother. Now, any man who enters with the purpose of letting the Brotherhood carry him is not worth much. The man who counts in the Brotherhood is the man who pulls his own weight and a little more. Much can be done by the Brotherhood. I have justhinted in the general figures I gave you, at how much has been done, but it still remains true in the Brotherhood, and everywhere else throughout American life, that in the last resort nothing can supply the place of the man’s own individual qualities. We need those, no matter how perfect the organization is outside. There is just as much need of nerve, hardihood, power to face risks and accept responsibilities, in the engineer and the fireman, whether on a flyer or a freight train, now as there ever was. Much can be done by the Association. A great deal can be accomplished by working each for all and all for each; but we must not forget that the first requisite in accomplishing that is that each man should work for others by working for himself, by developing his own capacity.
The steady way in which a man can rise is illustrated by a little thing that happened yesterday. I came down here over the Queen and Crescent Railroad, and the General Manager, who handled my train and who handled yours, was Mr. Maguire. I used to know him in the old days when he was on his way up, and he began right at the bottom. He was a fireman at one time. He worked his way straight up, and now he is General Manager.
I believe so emphatically in your organization because, while it teaches the need of working in union, of working in association, of working with deep in our hearts, not merely on our lips, the sense of Brotherhood, yet of necessity it still keeps, as your organization always must keep, to the forefront theworth of the individual qualities of a man. I said to you that I came here in a sense not to speak to you, but to use your experience as an object-lesson for all of us, an object-lesson in good American citizenship. All professions, of course, do not call for the exercise to the same degree of the qualities of which I have spoken. Your profession is one of those which I am inclined to feel play in modern life a greater part from the standpoint of character than we entirely realize. There is in modern life, with the growth of civilization and luxury, a certain tendency to softening of the national fibre. There is a certain tendency to forget, in consequence of their disuse, the rugged virtues which lie at the back of manhood; and I feel that professions like yours, like the profession of the railroad men of the country, have a tonic effect upon the whole body politic.
It is a good thing that there should be a large body of our fellow-citizens—that there should be a profession—whose members must, year in and year out, display those old, old qualities of courage, daring, resolution, unflinching willingness to meet danger at need. I hope to see all our people develop the softer, gentler virtues to an ever increasing degree, but I hope never to see them lose the sterner virtues that make men men.
A man is not going to be a fireman or an engineer, or serve well in any other capacity on a railroad long if he has a “streak of yellow” in him. You are going to find it out, and he is going to be painfully conscious of it, very soon. It is a fine thingfor our people that we should have those qualities in evidence before us in the life-work of a big group of our citizens.
In American citizenship, we can succeed permanently only upon the basis of standing shoulder to shoulder, working in association, by organization, each working for all, and yet remembering that we need each so to shape things that each man can develop to best advantage all the forces and powers at his command. In your organization you accomplish much by means of the Brotherhood, but you accomplish it because of the men who go to make up that brotherhood.