Part 1
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
Page numbers are continuous with volume 3.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
The original edition did not include a Table of Contents. For the convenience of the reader one has been created:
Presidential Addresses and State Papers 361
At the Luncheon of the Merchants’ Club, Chicago, Ill., May 10, 1905 361
At the Banquet of the Iroquois Club, Chicago, Ill., May 10, 1905 365
Remarks to Strikers’ Committee, Chicago, Ill., May 10, 1905 374
At the Unveiling of the Statue of General Henry W. Slocum, Brooklyn, N. Y., May 30, 1905 378
At the Naval Branch, Y. M. C. A., Brooklyn, N. Y., May 30, 1905 386
At the Graduating Exercises of the Collegiate Department of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., June 21, 1905 391
At Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass., June 21, 1905 397
At Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., June 22, 1905 398
At Harvard University, June 28, 1905 407
To the National Educational Association, Ocean Grove, N. J., July 7, 1905 422
To the Long Island Medical Society, at Oyster Bay, N. Y., July 12, 1905 429
At Wilkesbarre, Pa., August 10, 1905 433
At Chautauqua, N. Y., August 11, 1905 439
To the Representatives of the Colored Industrial Association, Richmond, Va., October 18, 1905 456
At Capitol Square, Richmond, Va., October 18, 1905 456
At the Luncheon at Richmond, Va., October 18, 1905 465
At Raleigh, N. C., October 19, 1905 467
Remarks in Presenting the Patterson Memorial Cup to Mr. John Charles Mcneill, in the Senate Chamber, Raleigh, N. C., October 19, 1905 477
At Durham, N. C., October 19, 1905 478
At Greensboro, N. C., October 19, 1905 481
At Charlotte, N. C., October 19, 1905 482
At Roswell, Ga., October 20, 1905 485
At Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Ga., October 20, 1905 487
At the Luncheon of the Piedmont Club, Atlanta, Ga., October 20, 1905 500
At Jacksonville, Fla., October 21, 1905 505
At the Florida Baptist College, Jacksonville, Fla., October 21, 1905 510
At Mobile, Ala., October 23, 1905 513
At the Alabama Conference Female College, Tuskegee, Ala., October 24, 1905 518
At Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., October 24, 1905 521
At the Capitol Building, Montgomery, Ala., October 24, 1905 527
At Birmingham, Ala., October 24, 1905 530
Remarks on Being Presented With Two Confederate Badges, at Birmingham, Ala., October 24, 1905 532
At City Park, Little Rock, Ark., October 25, 1905 533
At the Luncheon at Little Rock, Ark., October 25, 1905 538
To a Delegation of the Grand Army of the Republic, at New Orleans, La., October 26, 1905 544
To a Delegation of Confederate Veterans, at New Orleans, La., October 26, 1905 544
At the Luncheon, New Orleans, La., October 26, 1905 545
Speech to the Officers and Crew of the U. S. Flagship “West Virginia,” at Sea, October 29, 1905 552
Remarks to a Delegation of Railway Employees’ Orders—executive Office, Washington, November 14, 1905 556
Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the First Session of the Fifty-ninth Congress, December 5, 1905. 560
“The Children of the Night” 659
To the Central Juvenile Reformatory Committee, at the White House, December 15, 1905 664
To the Board of Education of the District of Columbia and Others, at the White House, December 18, 1905 665
Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress, January 8, 1906 666
To the Members of the Legislative Council of the American Medical Association, at the White House, January 10, 1906 671
To the Members of the Interstate National Guard Association, at the White House, January 22, 1906 673
To the Students of the Manassas, Virginia, Industrial School, at the White House, February 14, 1906 676
Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress, February 19, 1906 678
Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress, March 5, 1906 681
Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress, March 7, 1906 688
To the Consular Reform Association, at the White House, March 14, 1906 691
To the Committee and Assistant Committees on Department Methods, at the Residence of Mr. Pinchot, Washington, March 20, 1906 694
To the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor and the Representatives of Labor Associated With Them, at the Executive Office, March 21, 1906 702
To the Members of the National Playgrounds Councils at the White House, April 12, 1906 708
To the German Veterans, at the White House, April 12, 1906 709
[Illustration: _PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ADDRESSING THE CITIZENS OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA_
_October 20, 1905_ ]
Homeward Bound Edition
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
_May 10, 1905, to April 12, 1906_
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
[Illustration: colophon]
PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
VOLUME IV
=NEW YORK= THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY MCMX
The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president Roosevelt retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes containing these speeches. He feels that the material contained in these addresses has been dedicated to the public, and that it is, therefore, not to be handled as copyrighted material from which Mr. Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
MAY 10, 1905 TO APRIL 12, 1906
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
AT THE LUNCHEON OF THE MERCHANTS’ CLUB, CHICAGO, ILL., MAY 10, 1905
_Mr. President and Gentlemen_:
This country of ours is pre-eminently a business country, and we can succeed only if as a country we carry on the national business as the typical member of this association carries on his business; that is, in an entirely practical spirit, in a spirit which desires and commands success, but which desires it and commands it as an incident to acting with decency toward all our fellow-citizens. No business community can permanently succeed if the average member of it does not possess a certain quantity of high ideals; and, gentlemen, there is not a business man of large experience here who will not agree with me when I say that. Permanent success will come to the business community where the average man’s word can be trusted, where the average man himself can be trusted in dealing with his fellows. Just as that is true of the average business community, so it is true of the Nation as a whole.
The Nation must act in a spirit which gives full recognition to the national demands, which is not in the least Quixotic, which sees the need of working for the interests of the average individual of the Nation, but in a spirit which recognizes duties as well as rights, which recognizes this in our internal affairs, which recognizes it in our external affairs.
This leads me up to a subject concerning which I wish not merely to congratulate, but on behalf of the Nation to thank those present; the part played by the Merchants’ Club in initiating, and with the aid of the Commercial Club in carrying to a successful conclusion, the movement which resulted in the establishment of a naval training station here on Lake Michigan. I need not say to those of you who know anything at all about me that I believe in a big navy; and I hope I need not say that I believe in it not as a provocative to war, but as a guarantee of peace. I want to see every section of this country realize that the navy stands for the whole country, and that the people of the seacoast are not a particle more interested in it than the people of the Mississippi Valley. There were two sides to the establishment of that naval station here, where it was established. In the first place, we get, as perhaps some of you know, a peculiarly valuable class of recruit for the navy from the Mississippi Valley and the region adjoining the Great Lakes. In the next place, I wanted to see part of the establishment of the navy have its local habitation and name here in the great West. So I feel that this organization conferred a favor not only upon the city of Chicago, but an advantage to the whole country in what it did toward securing the establishment of that station here where it has been established.
I do not think that it is now very necessary to make an argument for an efficient navy. We are so fortunate that in this country we can get along with a very small army, an army which relatively to the population of the country is smaller than the police force of many of our great cities. With the navy the case is different We have not the choice, gentlemen, as to whether or not this country will play a great part in the world. We can not help playing a great part. All we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill. That is the decision we have to make. We can decide whether we will do badly or well, but we can not decide whether the part is to be played. We have got to play it. We can not abandon our position on the Monroe Doctrine. We can not abandon the Panama Canal. We can not abandon the duties that have come to us from the mere fact of our growth as a Nation, from the growth of our commercial interests in the East and in the West, on the Atlantic and in the Pacific. I earnestly hope that with the added responsibility will come not merely a growth of power to meet that responsibility, but a growth of mental attitude on our part toward these new duties. If there is one thing that ought to be more offensive to every good American than almost anything else it is the habit of speaking with a loose tongue, speaking offensively about foreign nations, or adopting an ill-considered and irritating attitude toward any one of them. In private life there is no one to whom we rightly object more than to the man who is continually offending and insulting his neighbors; except to the man who in addition to doing that then fails to make good. I hope to see our foreign policy conducted always in a spirit not merely of scrupulous regard for the rights of others, but of scrupulous courtesy toward others; and at the same time to see us keep prepared so that there is no position that we take in either hemisphere that once taken we can not stand on. With this in order not only is it important that the Government officials should behave themselves, but it is also important that private citizens should. The public speaker, the writer in the press, the legislator, the public servant, all owe it to this country to behave with the courtesy toward others which we would like to have extended toward us; but to behave with that courtesy whether it is extended in return or not. Outsiders can not hurt us by being insolent so long as we behave ourselves. What they say is of no consequence to us compared to what we say to them. Hard words will not hurt us if we will only disregard them. Let them say anything; but let us go on and build up the navy. That will be a much greater provocative to friendship and respect than any amount of recrimination. I have a right to appeal to the men here before me, to the men who in so many different walks take the lead in this great city, to aid in consistently building up just that type of foreign policy, a foreign policy under which we shall make the name of the United States Government a symbol on the one hand, as it ought to be, for the just and proper insistence upon its own rights, but also a symbol for a disinterested and generous willingness to treat all other nations, all other powers, with just and with frank courtesy and good-will, and to make it evident that in this country’s foreign policy it recognizes its duty toward the weak just as much as its responsibility to the strong.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE IROQUOIS CLUB, CHICAGO, ILL., MAY 10, 1905
_Mr. President, Mr. Toastmaster, and you, my Hosts_:
Our country is governed, and under existing circumstances can only be governed, under the party system, and that should mean, and that will mean, when we have a sufficient number of people who take the point of view that Judge Dickinson takes, that there shall be a frank and manly opposition of party to party, of party man to party man, combined with an equally frank refusal to conduct a party contest in any such way as to give good Americans cause for regret because of what is said before election, when compared with what is said after election. The frankest opposition to a given man or a given party on questions of public policy not only can be, but almost always should be, combined with the frankest recognition of the infinitely greater number of points of agreement than of the points of difference. I have accepted your kind and generous invitation to come before you this evening, because the longer I am in public life the more firmly I am convinced that the great bulk of the questions of most importance before us as a people are questions which we can best decide not from the standpoint of republicanism or democracy, but from the standpoint of the interests of the average American citizen, whether Republican or Democrat.
This is true of both foreign and domestic questions. Our political differences should, and in the great majority of cases do, disappear at the water’s edge. When I had to choose a man to represent to a peculiar degree the interests of this Government in one of the most important foreign negotiations of recent years—that concerning the Alaskan boundary—I chose the best lawyer, one of the ablest public men, and one of the most fair-minded patriots that could be found in the country; and the fact that he was of opposite political faith did not interfere with Judge Dickinson’s doing that work well. That was a question that concerned the United States—all of the United States. Most questions that come up in Washington are questions that go much deeper than party, are questions that affect the whole country, and the man would be indeed unfit for the position of President who did not feel that when he held that office he held it in the most emphatic sense as the representative of all the people.
One of the works that Uncle Sam has on hand just at present is digging the Panama Canal; and it is going to be dug. It is going to be dug honestly and as cheaply as is compatible with efficiency; but with the efficiency first. I wanted Congress to give me power to remodel the commission. It did not do it. So I remodeled it anyhow, purely in the exercise of my executive functions. I made up my mind this time that I was not going to make the slightest effort to represent different sections of the country on that commission, that I was going to have the whole country represented, by putting the best man I could get in any given position, without the slightest regard to where he came from; and while it was an accident, still I may mention it as a fortunate accident that the two most important positions were filled from Illinois—Shonts and Wallace are both from Illinois.
These are external questions, as regards which the interests of the whole country and not the interests of any party or any section of the country must be considered by the President. So it is with certain of our great internal policies.
Among the vital questions that have come up for solution, because of the extraordinary industrial development of this country, as of all the modern world, are the questions affecting capital and labor as regards each other, and the questions resulting from the effect upon the public of the organization into great masses of both capital and labor. I believe thoroughly in each kind of organization, but I recognize that if either kind of organization does what is wrong, the increase in its power for efficiency that has resulted from the combination means the increase in its power to do harm; and that, therefore, corporation—that is, organized capital—and union—that is, organized labor—must alike be held to a peculiar responsibility to the public at large, and that from each alike we have the right to demand not only obedience to the law, but service to the public.
There are two sides to what I have said, and we are very apt to hear only insistence upon one side—sometimes insistence upon one side, sometimes insistence upon the other, but not as often as we should insistence upon both sides.
I take up first the question of organized capital. When this Nation was created, such a thing as a modern corporation not only did not exist, but could not be imagined. This is especially true of the great modern corporations engaged in interstate commerce. A century ago the highways of commerce were exactly such as they had been from the days of the dawn of civilization on the banks of the Nile and in Mesopotamia. All that could be done by waterways and by roads for wheeled vehicles drawn by animal power had been developed to a very marked degree; but sails, oars, wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden were, as they had been for many thousands of years, the only means of commerce, the only methods by which individuals or corporations engaged in commerce could act. Under such circumstances the fathers and founders of this Republic could not foresee, and therefore, doubly, could not provide for, the conditions of the present day. We now have the great highways of commerce of an entirely different kind. The waterway, the road for wheeled vehicles, have sunk into absolute insignificance compared with the railway. We therefore have for the first time in history a highway for the commerce of all the people under the control of a private individual or private corporation. Now, gentlemen, let me in the first place insist upon this fact, that we should keep ever before us that the men who have built up the great railroad systems of this country, like the men who have built up the other great industries of this country, have as a rule (there are exceptions, but as a rule) made their fortunes as incidents to benefiting and not to harming the country. As a rule benefit and not harm has come from their efforts, and in making fortunes for themselves they have done good to all of us. We have all benefited by the talents of the great captains of industry. I am speaking, as I say, as a rule, with full knowledge of the exceptions to what I say, but disregarding those exceptions in making a general statement. We can not afford to do damage to those men or to those corporations, because in the first place we can not afford to do injustice to any man, rich or poor; in the next place, because to do such damage to them would mean widespread damage among the wage-workers and among the general public. All of this that I have said I wish kept in mind steadily in appreciating what I am about to say; for while acknowledging in the frankest manner the benefits that have come from the development of these great industrial enterprises, I also feel that we must recognize that the time has now come when it is essential in the interests of the public that there should be, and be exercised, an effective power of supervision and regulation over them in the interests of the public.
The State can properly deal with the corporations doing business within its own limits. The State can not deal at all with corporations doing business in many different States, and it is an absurdity at once ludicrous and harmful to leave it in the power of one State to create a corporation of gigantic size which shall do all its work in a number of other States, and perhaps with the scantiest regard for their laws.
Personally, I believe that the Federal Government must take an increasing control over corporations. It is better that that control should increase by degrees than that it should be assumed all at once. But there should be, and I trust will be, no halt in the steady progress of assuming such national control. The first step toward it should be the adoption of a law conferring upon some executive body the power of increased supervision and regulation of the great corporations engaged primarily in interstate commerce of the railroads. My views on that subject could not have been better expressed than they were expressed yesterday by Secretary Taft in Washington, and as they were expressed by the Attorney-General in his communication to the Senate Committee a couple of weeks ago. I believe that the representatives of the Nation—that is, the representatives of all the people—should lodge in some executive body the power to establish a maximum rate, the power to have that rate go into effect practically immediately, and the power to see that the provisions of the law apply in full to companies owning private cars and private tracks, just as much as the railroads themselves. The courts will retain, and should retain, no matter what the Legislature does, the power to interfere and upset any action that is confiscatory in its nature. I am well aware that the action of such a body as I have spoken of may stop far short of confiscation, and yet do great damage. In other words, I am well aware that to give this power means the possibility that the power may be abused. That possibility we must face. Any power strong enough, any power which could be granted sufficiently great to be efficient, would be sufficiently great to be harmful if abused. That is true of the power of taxation. It is perfectly possible for the body that has the power of taxation intrusted to it to use it viciously and harmfully against certain interests or certain classes. Nevertheless, the power must exist. The power must be lodged in the representatives of the people. So it is with the power of which I speak. It must exist; it must be lodged in some body which is to give expression to the needs of the people as a whole. The fact that it is possible that the power may be abused is not, and can not be, an argument against placing it where we shall have a right to expect that it will be used fairly toward all.