Part 15

It is a privilege for any President to come on board a squadron of American warships such as these, not alone to see the ships, but to see the men who handle them. From the admiral down through the entire ship’s company, every American should be proud of what I have seen aboard this ship; the discipline, the ready subordination of each man, whether officer or enlisted man, to duty; the care taken of the men, and in return the eager, intelligent, self-respecting zeal of each man in doing his work. What must impress especially any observer is how essential it is that every individual on a ship like this should do his whole duty, and in any crisis more than his duty. The result as I see it in this ship is a triumph not only of organization and discipline, but of the ready zeal with which each individual performs his allotted task. At any time some emergency may arise in which the safety of the entire ship will depend upon the vigilance, intelligence, and cool courage of some one man among you, perhaps an officer, perhaps an enlisted man. Any man in the whole ship’s company who does his full duty can claim as his own the honor and repute of the ship and has the right to feel a personal pride in all she does. You and your fellows in the Navy and in its sister service, the Army, occupy a position different from that of any other set of men in our country. Going through the ship yesterday, in the engine rooms, storerooms, turrets, everywhere the thing that impressed me most was the all-importance of each man in his place: the all-importance of that man both knowing his work and feeling it a matter of keen personal pride to do it as well as it could possibly be done. All through the ship I have seen the same purpose, the purpose to learn exactly what the duty to be done was and then to do it; and the power to do presupposes the possession by each of you of intelligence, courage, and physical address. I believe that this attitude of yours is typical of the attitude of the men of our Navy generally and of the Army also. Now on the one hand this should make our country feel toward Uncle Sam’s men in the Army and in the Navy a sense of obligation and gratitude such as they feel toward no others; and on the other hand it should make you feel that no other Americans rest under so great an obligation to do their duty well; for in your hands lies the credit, the honor, and the interest of the entire Nation. You are doing your duty well and faithfully in peace. Remember that if ever, which may Heaven forbid, war comes, it will depend upon you and those like you whether the people of this country are to hold their heads even higher or to hang them in shame. I hope that no such crisis will ever occur, but I have entire faith that if it ever does occur, you will rise level to any demand that may be made upon you, and that by the way you train yourselves and are trained in time of peace, you will fit yourselves to do well should war arise.

Now a special word to the officers. Captain Arnold, as a boy you witnessed a great fight of the “Merrimac” when she came out to Hampton Roads, sank the “Congress” and the “Cumberland,” and the next day met her match in the “Monitor.” That was a fight fraught with great honor for our people. The “Cumberland” sank with her flags flying and her guns firing while her decks were awash, and as the water was shallow, her flag still floated from the mast above them after she had gone down. The captain of the “Congress” met his death in the fight, winning an epitaph which deserves to be remembered forever in the American Navy. His name was Joe Smith, and his father, an old naval officer, was in Washington. When word was brought to him that his son’s ship had surrendered, he answered simply: “Then Joe is dead.” To have earned the right to have his death assumed as a matter of course in such conditions is of itself enough to crown any life, and every American officer should keep ever before him all that is implied therein. Let each of you officers remember, in the event of war, that while a surrender must always be justifiable, yet that a surrender must always be explained, while it is never necessary to explain the fact that you don’t surrender, no matter what the conditions may be.

A tragedy occurred this morning. A man was lost from the “Colorado.” Such cases are from time to time inevitable in a service like ours. Under such circumstances, everything must always be done, as in this instance everything was done, for the rescue of the man. But you men are fitted for fighting because you have the fighting edge. This means that you are willing at all times to face death in the performance of your duty. The man who died this morning was an excellent seaman who had done his duty faithfully and who died in the performance of that duty. Therefore he died in the service of his country exactly as much as if he had died in battle, and deserves as much honor.

What I have said so far applies to the whole Navy. Now a word especially to this squadron and to this ship. No other nation can boast of a better squadron, a squadron composed of more formidable vessels. In the matter of the officers and men, we have no cause to shrink from comparison with any other nation. So far, the “Colorado” has been the one ship that has had the chance to show what she could do in gunnery practice, and her record has been so astonishingly good that the other ships of the squadron will have to do their level best if they expect even to equal it. I need not tell you to remember that battles are decided by gunfire, and that the only shots that count are the shots that hit.

Men, I am glad to have seen you, and I don’t think that anywhere under our flag there could be found a better set of clean-cut, vigorous, self-respecting American citizens of the very type that makes one proudest to be an American.

REMARKS TO A DELEGATION OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES’ ORDERS—EXECUTIVE OFFICE, WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 14, 1905

_Gentlemen_:

I have just a word that I want to say to you. In the first place, I trust I need hardly say that no delegation will ever be more welcome at the White House than such a delegation as this. The interests of the wage-worker and the interests of the tiller of the soil must be peculiarly close to all American public men; among other reasons for the reason that if they prosper all other classes will prosper likewise as a matter of course. As I said the other day to the representatives of organized labor at Atlanta, I shall do everything in my power for the laboring man except to do anything wrong; for the man who will do anything wrong in the nominal interest of another man will also do wrong against this same other man if ever it becomes to his own interest to do so. Your associations deserve peculiar regard because you have developed to a marked degree the very qualities that all bodies of wage-workers should develop: the intelligence, the regard for the future, the self-respect mingled with the respect for others, the power of self-restraint, which are absolutely essential to any body of men which is to move upward and onward. Remember always that every man of us must in some shape or other have his passions and appetites governed; and the less of that government there is from within the more there will have to be from without.

With most of the general statements that you make I agree, but I am not sure that I agree with your application of them. There has been comparatively little complaint to me of the railroad rates being as a whole too high. The most serious complaints that have been made to me have been of improper discrimination in railroad rates. For instance, in two recent cases affecting great corporations the complaints that have been made to me have been that they are too low as regards certain big shippers; the complaint in both these cases is about the differential, the difference of treatment of two sets of users of the railways, the difference in favor of one set of shippers as against another set of shippers. Whether this is just or not I am not prepared to say. I very deeply appreciate and sympathize with the feeling you express as to the community of interest between the man who actually does the handling of the trains, at the brakes, in the engine cab, as a fireman, as a conductor, and the man who has to do, as a capitalist or as the higher employee of the capitalist, with the general management of the road. I feel that one of the lessons that can not be overinculcated is the lesson of the identity of interest among our people as a whole. I do not have to tell a body like this something that I do have to tell some other bodies, and that is if you have not got at the head of a railroad a man who can make a success of it, the wage-workers on that railroad can not prosper. You must have at the head the type of ability which can do well; just as you, comrade of the Civil War (turning to an engineer who wore the button of the Grand Army) needed a general who knew his business, or your valor did not avail. You remember that the valor of the best enlisted man that ever was (of course he was the basis of everything; the man who carried the gun and made the army; and you could not get the right stuff out of him if it was not in him) was of no value if there was not a directing power to see that the valor was used aright. The Union Army could have accomplished nothing if the feeling of the enlisted men had been the wish to down Grant and Sherman instead of supporting them heartily in achieving the common work for which all in common were striving.

If you will look at my Raleigh speech and my other recent utterances you will see my principles clearly set forth. I have said again and again that I would not tolerate for one moment any injustice to a railroad any more than I would tolerate any injustice by a railroad. I have said again and again that I would remove a public official who improperly yielded to any public clamor against a railroad, no matter how popular that clamor might be, just as quickly as I would remove a public official who rendered an improper service to the railroad at the expense of the public. But I am convinced that there must be an increased regulatory and supervisory power exercised by the Government over the railways. Indeed, I would like it exercised to a much greater extent than I have any idea of pressing at the moment. For instance, I would greatly like to have it exercised in the matter of overcapitalization. I am convinced that the “wages fund” would be larger if there was no fictitious capital upon which dividends had to be paid. I need hardly say that this does not mean hostility to wealth. If you gentlemen here, in whom I believe so strongly, were all a unit in demanding that some improper action should be taken against certain men of wealth, then, no matter whether I did or did not like those same men of wealth, I would defend them against you, no matter how much I cared for you; and in so doing I would really be acting in your own interest. I would be false to your interest if I failed to do justice to the capitalist as much as to the wage-worker. But I shall act against the abuses of wealth just as against all other abuses. The outcry against rate regulation is of much the same character as that I encountered when I was engaged in putting through that car-coupling business; or in endeavoring to secure certain legislation in which you have all been interested, such as the employers’ liability law.

Most certainly I will join with you in resisting to the uttermost any movement to hurt or damage any railroads which act decently, for I would hold that such damage was not merely to the capitalist, not merely to the wage-worker engaged on the railroads, but to all the country. My aim is to secure the just and equal treatment of the public by those (I trust and believe a limited number) who do not want to give it, just as much as by the larger number who do want to give it. All I want in any rate legislation is to give the Government an efficient supervisory power which shall be exercised as scrupulously to prevent injustice to the railroads as to prevent their doing injustice to the public. Our endeavor is to see that those big railroad men and big shippers who are not responsive to the demands of justice are required to do what their fellows who are responsive to the demands of justice would be glad to do of their own accord.

MESSAGE COMMUNICATED TO THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE FIFTY-NINTH CONGRESS, DECEMBER 5, 1905.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

The people of this country continue to enjoy great prosperity. Undoubtedly there will be ebb and flow in such prosperity, and this ebb and flow will be felt more or less by all members of the community, both by the deserving and the undeserving. Against the wrath of the Lord the wisdom of man can not avail; in times of flood or drought human ingenuity can but partially repair the disaster. A general failure of crops would hurt all of us. Again, if the folly of man mars the general well-being, then those who are innocent of the folly will have to pay part of the penalty incurred by those who are guilty of the folly. A panic brought on by the speculative folly of part of the business community would hurt the whole business community. But such stoppage of welfare, though it might be severe, would not be lasting. In the long run the one vital factor in the permanent prosperity of the country is the high individual character of the average American worker, the average American citizen, no matter whether his work be mental or manual, whether he be farmer or wage-worker, business man or professional man.

In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases a straight-dealing man who by his efficiency, by his ingenuity and industry, benefits himself must also benefit others. Normally the man of great productive capacity who becomes rich by guiding the labor of many other men does so by enabling them to produce more than they could produce without his guidance; and both he and they share in the benefit, which comes also to the public at large. The superficial fact that the sharing may be unequal must never blind us to the underlying fact that there is this sharing, and that the benefit comes in some degree to each man concerned. Normally the wage-worker, the man of small means, and the average consumer, as well as the average producer, are all alike helped by making conditions such that the man of exceptional business ability receives an exceptional reward for his ability. Something can be done by legislation to help the general prosperity; but no such help of a permanently beneficial character can be given to the less able and less fortunate, save as the results of a policy which shall inure to the advantage of all industrious and efficient people who act decently; and this is only another way of saying that any benefit which comes to the less able and less fortunate must of necessity come even more to the more able and more fortunate. If, therefore, the less fortunate man is moved by envy of his more fortunate brother to strike at the conditions under which they have both, though unequally, prospered, the result will assuredly be that while damage may come to the one struck at, it will visit with an even heavier load the one who strikes the blow. Taken as a whole, we must all go up or go down together.

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Yet, while not merely admitting, but insisting upon this, it is also true that where there is no governmental restraint or supervision some of the exceptional men use their energies not in ways that are for the common good, but in ways which tell against this common good. The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign—that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole—some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to ensure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct. I am in no sense hostile to corporations. This is an age of combination, and any effort to prevent all combination will be not only useless, but in the end vicious, because of the contempt for law which the failure to enforce law inevitably produces. We should, moreover, recognize in cordial and ample fashion the immense good effected by corporate agencies in a country such as ours, and the wealth of intellect, energy, and fidelity devoted to their service, and therefore normally to the service of the public, by their officers and directors. The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be favored so long as it does good. But each should be sharply checked where it acts against law and justice.

So long as the finances of the Nation are kept upon an honest basis no other question of internal economy with which the Congress has the power to deal begins to approach in importance the matter of endeavoring to secure proper industrial conditions under which the individuals—and especially the great corporations—doing an interstate business are to act. The makers of our National Constitution provided especially that the regulation of interstate commerce should come within the sphere of the General Government. The arguments in favor of their taking this stand were even then overwhelming. But they are far stronger to-day, in view of the enormous development of great business agencies, usually corporate in form. Experience has shown conclusively that it is useless to try to get any adequate regulation and supervision of these great corporations by State action. Such regulation and supervision can only be effectively exercised by a sovereign whose jurisdiction is coextensive with the field of work of the corporations—that is, by the National Government. I believe that this regulation and supervision can be obtained by the enactment of law by the Congress. If this proves impossible, it will certainly be necessary ultimately to confer in fullest form such power upon the National Government by a proper amendment of the Constitution. It would obviously be unwise to endeavor to secure such an amendment until it is certain that the result can not be obtained under the Constitution as it now is. The laws of the Congress and of the several States hitherto, as passed upon by the courts, have resulted more often in showing that the States have no power in the matter than that the National Government has power; so that there at present exists a very unfortunate condition of things, under which these great corporations doing an interstate business occupy the position of subjects without a sovereign, neither any State government nor the National Government having effective control over them. Our steady aim should be by legislation, cautiously and carefully undertaken, but resolutely persevered in, to assert the sovereignty of the National Government by affirmative action.

This is only in form an innovation. In substance it is merely a restoration; for from the earliest time such regulation of industrial activities has been recognized in the action of the lawmaking bodies; and all that I propose is to meet the changed conditions in such manner as will prevent the Commonwealth abdicating the power it has always possessed, not only in this country but also in England before and since this country became a separate Nation.