Part 6

Thrice fortunate are you to whom it is given to lead lives of resolute endeavor for the achievement of lofty ideals, and, furthermore, to instil, both by your lives and by your teachings, these ideals into the minds of those who in the next generation will, as the men and women of that generation, determine the position which this Nation will hold in the history of mankind.

In closing, I want to speak to you of how certain things, some of which have happened, and some of which have been suggested to me by what has happened, in the past week, emphasize what I have said to you as to the importance to this country of having within its limits men who put the realization of high ideals above any form of money-making.

Within a week this country has lost a great statesman, who was also a great man of letters; a man who occupied a peculiar and unique position in our country; a man of whose existence we could each of us be proud; for the United States as a whole was better because John Hay lived. John Hay entered the public service as a young man just come of age, as the secretary of President Lincoln. He served in the war and was a member of the Loyal Legion. He was trusted by and was intimate with Lincoln as hardly any other man was. He then went on rendering service after service; yet always able (this was one of his great advantages and great merits) at any moment to go back to private life unless he could continue in public life on his own terms. As the climax of his career he served as Secretary of State under two successive administrations, and by what he did and by what he was he contributed in no small degree to achieving for this Republic the respect of the nations of mankind. Such service as that could not have been rendered save by a man who had before him ideals as far apart as the poles from those ideals which have in them any taint of what is base or sordid.

Now I wished to secure as John Hay’s successor the man whom I regarded as of all the men in the country that one best fitted to be such successor. In asking him to accept the position of Secretary of State I was asking him to submit to a very great pecuniary sacrifice; and I never even thought of that aspect of the question, for I knew he would not either. I knew that whatever other considerations he had to weigh for and against taking the position, the consideration of how it would affect his personal fortune would not be taken into account by Elihu Root; and he has accepted.

I am not speaking of Hay and Root as solitary exceptions. On the contrary, I am speaking of them as typical of a large class of men in public life. When we hear so much criticism of certain aspects of our public life and of certain of our public servants, criticism which I regret to state is in many cases deserved, it is well for us to remember also the other side of the picture, to remember that here in America we have and always have had at the command of the Nation in any crisis, in any emergency, the very best ability to be found within the Nation; and this ability has been given with the utmost freedom, given lavishly and generously, although at great pecuniary loss to the man giving it.

There is not in my Cabinet a man to whom it is not a financial disadvantage to stay in the Cabinet. There is not in my Cabinet a man who does not have to give up something substantial, often very much that is substantial, sometimes what it is a very real hardship for him to give up, in order that he may continue in the service of the Nation; and the only reward for which he looks or for which he cares is the consciousness of doing service worth rendering. I hope to see more and more throughout this Nation the spirit grow which makes such service possible. I hope more and more to see the sentiment of the country as a whole become such that each man shall feel borne in on him, whether he is in public life or in private life (and, mind you, some of the greatest public services can be best rendered by those who are not in public life), that the chance to do good work is the greatest chance that can come to any man or any woman in our generation or in any other generation. Let each man feel that if such work can be well done it is in itself the amplest reward and the amplest prize.

TO THE LONG ISLAND MEDICAL SOCIETY, AT OYSTER BAY, N. Y., JULY 12, 1905

_Mr. President, Members of the Association, Friends and Neighbors_:

I needed no invitation to come before you to-day. All I needed was permission. As soon as I learned that this association was to meet in our village I felt that I must take advantage of the opportunity to say a word of greeting to you in person.

Of course it is almost needless to say that there is not and can not be any other lay profession the members of which occupy such a dual position, each side of which is of such importance—for the doctor has on the one hand to be the most thoroughly educated man in applied science that there is in the country, and on the other hand, as every layman knows, and as doubtless many a layman in the circle of acquaintance of each of you would gladly testify, the doctor gradually becomes the closest friend to more people than would be possible in any other profession. The feelings that a man has toward the one human being to whom he turns, either in time of sickness for himself, or, what is far more important, in the time of sickness of those closest and dearest to him, can not but be of a peculiar kind. He can not but have a feeling for him such as he has for no other man. The doctor must, therefore, to the greatest degree develop his nature along the two sides of his duties, although in the case of any other man you would call him a mighty good citizen if he developed only on one side. The scientific man who is really a first-class scientific man has a claim upon the gratitude of all the country; and the man who is a first-class neighbor, and is always called in in time of trouble by his neighbors, has an equal claim upon society at large. But the doctor has both claims. Yet in addition to filling both of those functions he may fill many other functions. He may have served in the Civil War; he may have rendered the greatest possible service to the community along any one of a dozen different lines.

Take, for instance, just what is being done in one of the great works of this country at the present time—the digging of the Panama Canal. That is a work that only a big nation could undertake or that a big nation could do, and it is a work for all mankind. The condition precedent upon success in that work is having the proper type of medical work as a preliminary, as a basis. That is the first condition, upon the meeting of which must depend our success in solving the engineering and administrative problems of the work itself. I am happy to say that the work is being admirably done, and I am particularly glad to have this chance of saying it. Now and then some alarmist report will come from Panama. Just a couple of weeks ago there seemed to be a succession of people coming up from Panama, each one of whom had some tale of terror to tell. You will always find in any battle, even if it is a victorious battle, that in the rear you will meet a number of gentlemen who are glad that they are not at the front; who, if they have unfortunately gotten at the front, have come away, and who justify their absence from the front by telling tales of how everything has gone wrong there. Now the people that flee from Panama will carry up here just such stories as the people that flee from the forefront of a battle carry to the rear with them. The people to whom this country owes and will owe much are those who stay down there and do not talk, but do their work, and do it well. Of course, in doing a great work like that in the tropics, in a region which until this Government took hold of it was accounted to be a region exceptionally unhealthy, we are going to have trouble, have some yellow fever, have a good deal of malarial fever, and suffer more from the latter than from the yellow fever, although we will hear nothing like the talk about it. We will have every now and then trouble as regards hygiene, just as we will have trouble in the engineering problems, just as occasionally we will have troubles in the administrative work. Whenever any of those troubles come there will be a large number of excellent but timid men who will at once say what an awful calamity it is, and express the deepest sorrow and concern, and be rather inclined to the belief that the whole thing is a failure. It will not be a failure. It will be a success; and it will be a success because we shall treat every little check, not as a reason for abandoning the work, but as a reason for altering and bettering our plans so as to make it impossible that that particular check shall happen again.

What is being done in Panama is but a sample of the things that this country has done during the last few years, of the things in which your profession has borne so prominent a part. Take what we did in Cuba, where we tried the experiment which had not been tried for four hundred years—of cleaning the cities. One of the most important items of the work done by our Government in Cuba was the work of hygiene, the work of cleaning and disinfecting the cities so as to minimize the chance for yellow fever, so as to do away with as many as possible of the conditions that told for disease. This country has never had done for it better work, that is, work that reflected more honor upon the country, or for humanity at large, than the work done for it in Cuba. And the man who above all others was responsible for doing that work so well was a member of your profession, who when the call to arms came himself went as a soldier to the field—the present Major-General Leonard Wood. Leonard Wood did in Cuba just the kind of work that, for instance, Lord Cromer has done in Egypt. We have not been able to reward Wood in anything like the proportion in which services such as his would have been rewarded in any other country of the first rank; and there have been no meaner and more unpleasant manifestations in all our public history than the feelings of envy and jealousy manifested toward Wood. And the foul assaults and attacks made upon him, gentlemen, were largely because they grudged the fact that this admirable military officer should have been a doctor.

AT WILKESBARRE, PA., AUGUST 10, 1905

I am particularly glad to speak to this audience of miners and their wives and children, and especially to speak under the auspices of this great temperance society. In our country the happiness of all the rest of our people depends most of all upon the welfare of the wage-worker and the welfare of the farmer. If we can secure the welfare of these two classes we can be reasonably certain that the community as a whole will prosper. And we must never forget that the chief factor in securing the welfare alike of wage-worker and of farmer, as of everybody else, must be the man himself.

The only effective way to help anybody is to help him help himself. There are exceptional times when any one of us needs outside help, and then it should be given freely; but normally each one of us must depend upon his own exertions for his own success. Something can be done by wise legislation and by wise and honest administration of the laws; that is, something can be done by our action taken in our collective capacity through the State and the Nation.

Something more can be done by combination and organization among ourselves in our private capacities as citizens, so long as this combination or organization is managed with wisdom and integrity, with insistence upon the rights of those benefited and yet with just regard for the rights of others.

But in the last analysis the factor most influential in determining any man’s success must ever be the sum of that man’s own qualities, of his knowledge, foresight, thrift, and courage. Whatever tends to increase his self-respect, whatever tends to help him overcome the temptations with which all of us are surrounded, is of benefit not only to him, but to the whole community.

No one society can do more to help the wage-worker than such a temperance society as that which I am now addressing. It is of incalculable consequence to the man himself that he should be sober and temperate, and it is of even more consequence to his wife and his children; for it is a hard and cruel fact that in this life of ours the sins of the man are often visited most heavily upon those whose welfare should be his one especial care.

For the drunkard, for the man who loses his job because he can not control or will not control his desire for liquor and for vicious pleasure, we have a feeling of anger and contempt mixed with our pity; but for his unfortunate wife and little ones we feel only pity, and that of the deepest and tenderest kind.

Everything possible should be done to encourage the growth of that spirit of self-respect, self-restraint, self-reliance, which if it only grows enough is certain to make all those in whom it shows itself move steadily upward toward the highest standard of American citizenship. It is a proud and responsible privilege to be citizens of this great self-governing Nation; and each of us needs to keep steadily before his eyes the fact that he is wholly unfit to take part in the work of governing others unless he can first govern himself. He must stand up manfully for his own rights; he must respect the rights of others; he must obey the law, and he must try to live up to those rules of righteousness which are above and behind all laws.

This applies just as much to the man of great wealth as to the man of small means; to the capitalist as to the wage-worker. And as one practical point, let me urge that in the event of any difficulty, especially if it is what is known as a labor trouble, both sides show themselves willing to meet, willing to consult, and anxious each to treat the other reasonably and fairly, each to look at the other’s side of the case and to do the other justice. If only this course could be generally followed, the chance of industrial disaster would be minimized.

Now, my friends, I want to read you an extract from a letter I have just received from a Catholic priest whom I know well and whom I know to be as stanch a friend of the laboring man as there is to be found in this country. Now and then—not too often—it is a good thing for all of us to hear what is not perhaps altogether palatable, provided only that the person who tells the truth is our genuine friend, knows what he is talking about (even though he may not see all sides of the case), and tells us what he has to say, not with a desire to hurt our feelings, but with the transparent purpose to do us good. With this foreword, here is a part of the letter:

“I would humbly recommend that you lend your entire weight to the cause which the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America represents, and especially so in its relation to the working classes of this country, for whom it is doing so much good. You know that the temperance movement is a potent auxiliary to the institutions of our country in building up a better manhood and a truer Christianity among our citizens. It played a very important part in the two coal strikes of 1900 and 1902, respectively, by keeping the men sober, and thus removing the danger of riotous and unbecoming conduct. There is one discouraging feature connected with the upward tendency of the wage scale among the workmen of this country. The higher the wages, the more money they spend in saloons. The shorter the hours, the more they are inclined to absent themselves from home. An apparent disregard for family ties is growing among the poorer classes which will eventually lead to a disregard for the blessings our country affords them. Hence, with an increase of wages a corresponding movement for better manhood, nobler citizenship, and truer Christianity should be set on foot. The dignity of labor should be maintained, which can be done only through the love that a man should have for his work, and through the intelligence which he puts into it. A steady hand and sober mind are necessary for this. Hence, the necessity of the temperance cause and of the efforts which organized abstainers are putting into the movement.”

Now, in what is here written this priest does not mean that the tendency is to grow worse; but he means that with shorter hours and increased wages there is a tendency to go wrong which must be offset by movements such as this great temperance movement and similar efforts for social and civic betterment, or else the increase in leisure and money will prove a curse instead of a blessing. I strive never to tell any one what I do not thoroughly believe, and I shall not say to you that to be honest, and temperate, and hardworking, and thrifty will always bring success.

The hand of the Lord is sometimes heavy upon the just as well as upon the unjust, and in the life of labor and effort which we must lead on this earth it is not always possible either by work, by wisdom, or by upright behavior to ward off disaster. But it is most emphatically true that the chance for leading a happy and prosperous life is immensely improved if only the man is decent, sober, industrious, and exercises foresight and judgment. Let him remember above all that the performance of duty is the first essential to right living, and that a good type of average family life is the cornerstone of national happiness and greatness. No man can be a good citizen, can deserve the respect of his fellows, unless first of all he is a good man in his own family, unless he does his duty faithfully by his wife and children.

I strongly believe in trades unions wisely and justly handled, in which the rightful purpose to benefit those connected with them is not accompanied by a desire to do injustice or wrong to others. I believe it the duty of capitalist and wage-worker to try to seek one another out, to understand each the other’s point of view, and to endeavor to show broad and kindly human sympathy one with the other.

I believe in the work of these great temperance organizations, of all kindred movements like the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, in short in every movement which strives to help a man by teaching him how to help himself. But most of all I believe in the efficacy of the man himself striving continually to increase his own self-respect by the way in which he does his duty to himself and to his neighbor.

AT CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y., AUGUST 11, 1905

To-day I wish to speak to you on one feature of our national foreign policy and one feature of our national domestic policy.

The Monroe Doctrine is not a part of international law. But it is the fundamental feature of our entire foreign policy so far as the Western Hemisphere is concerned, and it has more and more been meeting with recognition abroad. The reason why it is meeting with this recognition is because we have not allowed it to become fossilized, but have adapted our construction of it to meet the growing, changing needs of this hemisphere. Fossilization, of course, means death, whether to an individual, a government, or a doctrine.

It is out of the question to claim a right and yet shirk the responsibility for exercising that right. When we announce a policy such as the Monroe Doctrine we thereby commit ourselves to accepting the consequences of the policy, and these consequences from time to time alter.

Let us look for a moment at what the Monroe Doctrine really is. It forbids the territorial encroachment of non-American powers on American soil. Its purpose is partly to secure this Nation against seeing great military powers obtain new footholds in the Western Hemisphere, and partly to secure to our fellow-republics south of us the chance to develop along their own lines without being oppressed or conquered by non-American powers. As we have grown more and more powerful our advocacy of this doctrine has been received with more and more respect; but what has tended most to give the doctrine standing among the nations is our growing willingness to show that we not only mean what we say and are prepared to back it up, but that we mean to recognize our obligations to foreign peoples no less than to insist upon our own rights.

We can not permanently adhere to the Monroe Doctrine unless we succeed in making it evident in the first place that we do not intend to treat it in any shape or way as an excuse for aggrandizement on our part at the expense of the republics to the south of us; second, that we do not intend to permit it to be used by any of these republics as a shield to protect that republic from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations; third, that inasmuch as by this doctrine we prevent other nations from interfering on this side of the water, we shall ourselves in good faith try to help those of our sister republics, which need such help, upward toward peace and order.