Part 9

Such reserves would be a paying investment, not only in protection to many interests, but in dollars and cents to the Government. The importance to the Southern people of protecting the Southern mountain forests is obvious. These forests are the best defence against the floods which in the recent past have, during a single twelvemonth, destroyed property officially valued at nearly twice what it would cost to buy the Southern Appalachian Reserve. The maintenance of your Southern water powers is not less important than the prevention of floods, because if they are injured your manufacturing interests will suffer with them. The perpetuation of your forests, which have done so much for the South, should be one of the first objects of your public men. The two Senators from North Carolina have taken an honorable part in this movement. But I do not think that the people of North Carolina or of any other Southern State have quite grasped the importance of this movement to the commercial development and prosperity of the South.

The position of honor in your parade to-day is held by the Confederate veterans. They by their deeds reflect credit upon their descendants and upon all Americans, both because they did their duty in war and because they did their duty in peace. Now if the young men, their sons, will not only prove that they possess the same power of fealty to an ideal, but will also show the efficiency in the ranks of industrial life that their fathers, the Confederate veterans, showed that they possessed in the ranks of war, the industrial future of this great and typically American Commonwealth is assured.

The extraordinary development of industrialism during the last half century has been due to several causes, but above all to the revolution in the methods of transportation and communication; that is, to steam and to electricity, to the railroad and the telegraph.

When this Government was founded commerce was carried on by essentially the same instruments that had been in use not only among civilized, but among barbarian, nations, ever since history dawned; that is, by wheeled vehicles drawn by animals, by pack trains, and by sailing ships and rowboats. On land this meant that commerce went in slow, cumbrous, and expensive fashion over highways open to all. Normally these highways could not compete with water transportation, if such was feasible between the connecting points.

All this has been changed by the development of the railroads. Save on the ocean or on lakes so large as to be practically inland seas, transport by water has wholly lost its old position of superiority over transport by land, while instead of the old highways open to every one on the same terms, but of a very limited usefulness, we have new highways—railroads—which are owned by private corporations and which are practically of unlimited, instead of limited, usefulness. The old laws and old customs which were adequate and proper to meet the old conditions need radical readjustment in order to meet these new conditions. The cardinal features in these changed conditions are, first, the fact that the new highway, the railway, is, from the commercial standpoint, of infinitely greater importance in our industrial life than was the old highway, the wagon road; and, second, that this new highway, the railway, is in the hands of private owners, whereas the old highway, the wagon road, was in the hands of the State. The management of the new highway, the railroad, or rather of the intricate web of railroad lines which cover the country, is a task infinitely more difficult, more delicate, and more important than the primitively easy task of acquiring or keeping in order the old highway; so that there is properly no analogy whatever between the two cases. I do not believe in government ownership of anything which can with propriety be left in private hands, and in particular I should most strenuously object to government ownership of railroads. But I believe with equal firmness that it is out of the question for the Government not to exercise a supervisory and regulatory right over the railroads; for it is vital to the well-being of the public that they should be managed in a spirit of fairness and justice toward all the public. Actual experience has shown that it is not possible to leave the railroads uncontrolled. Such a system, or rather such a lack of system, is fertile in abuses of every kind, and puts a premium upon unscrupulous and ruthless cunning in railroad management; for there are some big shippers and some railroad managers who are always willing to take unfair advantage of their weaker competitors, and they thereby force other big shippers and big railroad men who would like to do decently into similar acts of wrong and injustice, under penalty of being left behind in the race for success. Government supervision is needed quite as much in the interest of the big shipper and of the railroad man who want to do right as in the interest of the small shipper and the consumer.

Experience has shown that the present laws are defective and need amendment. The effort to prohibit all restraint of competition, whether reasonable or unreasonable, is unwise. What we need is to have some administrative body with ample power to forbid combination that is hurtful to the public, and to prevent favoritism to one individual at the expense of another. In other words, we want an administrative body with the power to secure fair and just treatment as among all shippers who use the railroads—and all shippers have a right to use them. We must not leave the enforcement of such a law merely to the Department of Justice; it is out of the question for the law department of the Government to do what should be purely administrative work. The Department of Justice is to stand behind and co-operate with the administrative body, but the administrative body itself must be given the power to do the work and then held to a strict accountability for the exercise of that power. The delays of the law are proverbial, and what we need in this matter is reasonable quickness of action.

The abuses of which we have a genuine right to complain take many shapes. Rebates are not now often given openly. But they can be given just as effectively in covert form; and private cars, terminal tracks, and the like must be brought under the control of the commission or administrative body which is to exercise supervision by the Government. But in my judgment the most important thing to do is to give to this administrative body power to make its findings effective, and this can be done only by giving it power, when complaint is made of a given rate as being unjust or unreasonable, if it finds the complaint proper, then itself to fix a maximum rate which it regards as just and reasonable, this rate to go into effect practically at once, that is within a reasonable time, and to stay in effect unless reversed by the courts. I earnestly hope that we shall see a law giving this power passed by Congress. Moreover, I hope that by law power will be conferred upon representatives of the Government capable of performing the duty of public accountants carefully to examine into the books of railroads when so ordered by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which should itself have power to prescribe what books, and what books only, should be kept by railroads. If there is in the minds of the Commission any suspicion that a certain railroad is in any shape or way giving rebates or behaving improperly, I wish the Commission to have power as a matter of right, not as a matter of favor, to make a full and exhaustive investigation of the receipts and expenditures of the railroad, so that any violation or evasion of the law may be detected. This is not a revolutionary proposal on my part, for I only wish the same power given in reference to railroads that is now exercised as a matter of course by the national bank examiners as regards national banks. My object in giving these additional powers to the administrative body representing the Government—the Interstate Commerce Commission or whatever it may be—is primarily to secure a real and not a sham control to the Government representatives. The American people abhor a sham, and with this abhorrence I cordially sympathize. Nothing is more injurious from every standpoint than a law which is merely sound and fury, merely pretence, and not capable of working out tangible results. I hope to see all the power that I think it ought to have granted to the Government; but I would far rather see only some of it granted, but really granted, than see a pretence of granting all in some shape that really amounts to nothing.

It must be understood, as a matter of course, that if this power is granted it is to be exercised with wisdom and caution and self-restraint. The Interstate Commerce Commissioner or other Government official who failed to protect a railroad that was in the right against any clamor, no matter how violent, on the part of the public, would be guilty of as gross a wrong as if he corruptly rendered an improper service to the railroad at the expense of the public. When I say a square deal I mean a square deal; exactly as much a square deal for the rich man as for the poor man; but no more. Let each stand on his merits, receive what is due him, and be judged according to his deserts. To more he is not entitled, and less he shall not have.

REMARKS IN PRESENTING THE PATTERSON MEMORIAL CUP TO MR. JOHN CHARLES McNEILL, IN THE SENATE CHAMBER, RALEIGH, N. C., OCTOBER 19, 1905

_Mr. McNeill_:

I feel, and I am sure all good Americans must feel, that it is far from enough for us to develop merely a great material prosperity. I appreciate, and all of us must, that it is indispensable to have the material prosperity as a foundation, but if we think the foundation is the entire building, we never shall rank as among the nations of the world; and therefore, it is with peculiar pleasure that I find myself playing a small part in a movement, such as this, by which one of the thirteen original States, one of our great States, marks its sense of proper proportion in estimating the achievements of life, the achievements of which the Commonwealth has a right to be proud. It is a good thing to have the sense of historic continuity with the past, which we largely get through the efforts of just such historic societies as this, through which this cup is awarded to you. It is an even better thing to try to do what we can to show our pleasure in and approval of productive literary work in the present. Mr. McNeill, I congratulate you and North Carolina.

AT DURHAM, N. C., OCTOBER 19, 1905

_Mr. Mayor, People of Durham, and Undergraduates and Graduates of Trinity College_:

I know that the citizens of Durham will not begrudge my making a special address to the representatives of a great typical Southern college, which, because it is a typical Southern college, is a typical American college. In speaking to-day to you undergraduates and graduates of Trinity (and when I speak to the graduates of Trinity, I speak to both the United States Senators of North Carolina—a pretty good showing for one college—) I speak not only to you, but through you to the college men of the South. I have been more impressed than I can well express by the first article in the constitution of Trinity—the article that sets forth the aims of the college. Not for your sake (for you are familiar with it), but for the sake of all college men, North and South, I am going to read that article:

“The aims of Trinity College are to assert a faith in the eternal union of knowledge and religion set forth in the teachings and character of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; to advance learning in all lines of truth; to defend scholarship against all false notions and ideals; to develop a Christian love of freedom and truth; to educate a sincere spirit of tolerance; to discourage all partisan and sectarian strife, and to render the largest permanent service to the individual, the State, the Nation, and the Church. Unto these ends shall the affairs of this college always be administered.”

I know of no other college which has so nobly set forth as the object of its being the principles to which every college should be devoted, in whatever portion of this Union it may be placed. You stand for all those things for which the scholar must stand if he is to render real and lasting service to the state. You stand for academic freedom, for the right of private judgment, for the duty, more incumbent upon the scholar than upon any other man, to tell the truth as he sees it, to claim for himself and give to others the largest liberty in seeking after the truth. There must be no coercion of opinion if collegiate training is to bring forth its full fruit. You men of this college, you men throughout the South, who have had collegiate training, you men throughout the Union, who have had collegiate training, bear a peculiar burden of responsibility. I want you to have a good time, and I believe you do. I believe in play with all my heart. Play when you play, but work when you work; and remember that your having gone through college does not so much confer a special privilege as it imposes a special obligation on you. We have a right to expect a special quality of leadership from the men to whom much has been given in the way of a collegiate education. You are not entitled to any special privilege, but you are entitled to be held to a peculiar accountability; you have earned the right to be held peculiarly responsible for what you do. Each one of you, if he is worth his salt, wishes, when he graduates, to pay some portion of the debt due to his alma mater. You have received from her, during your years of attendance in her halls, certain privileges in the way of scholarship, in the way of companionship, which makes it incumbent upon you to repay what you have been given. You can not repay that to the college save in one way: by the quality of your citizenship as displayed in the actual affairs of life you can make it an honor to the college to have sent you forth into the great world. That is the only way in which you can repay to the college what the college has done for you. I earnestly hope and believe that you and those like you in all the colleges of this land will make it evident to the generation that is rising that you are fit to take leadership, that the training has not been wasted, that you are ready to render to the state the kind of service which is invaluable, because it can not be bought, because there is no price that can be put upon it. We have the right to expect from college men not merely disinterested service, but intelligent service. The free peoples who exercise self-government always have to war not merely against the knavish man who deliberately does what he knows to be wrong, but against the foolish man, who may mean very well, but who in actual fact turns out the ally of the other man who does not mean well; and we must depend upon you men who have been given special facilities in education to guide our people aright so that they shall neither fall into the pit of folly nor into the pit of knavery.

AT GREENSBORO, N. C., OCTOBER 19, 1905

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

No man could fail to be made a better American by traveling through this great historic State of yours, where, throughout his journey, he sees place after place associated with the historic past, such as this city of yours near the Guilford battleground, commemorating by its name one of Washington’s great generals. North Carolina’s history has ever been high and honorable. It is right that we should remember that the mighty deeds of our forefathers are not to serve to us as excuses for inaction on our part, but as spurs to drive us forward to doing our duty in our turn. We respect the son of a worthy father if he feels that the fact that his father did well makes it incumbent upon him to strive to do better. We despise the boy who treats the fact that his father counted for something as being an excuse for his counting for nothing. So I am glad to note the care that you in this State are giving to education. The greatness of the country in the time immediately to come will depend upon the way in which the young generation of to-day is trained to citizenship in the future. I am sorry to say that there is probably no one here who is not acquainted with some kindly, well-meaning, and most foolish father or mother who, because life has been hard with him or her in the past, takes the view that the children are not to have to face any difficulties. The worst thing that you can do for a child is to bring up him or her to dodge difficulties. The children who will rise up to call their parents blessed are those whom the parents have trained to meet difficulties, not to shirk them; to overcome obstacles, not to get out of the way for them. Neither the individual nor the community is worth anything if it seeks after that which is easy. The thing to do is to find out what is worth doing and do it—to show the manly quality that allows of this being done.

AT CHARLOTTE, N. C., OCTOBER 19, 1905

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

I have enjoyed more than I can say passing through this great State to-day. I entered your borders a pretty good American, and I leave them a better American. I have rejoiced in the symptoms of your abounding material prosperity. I am here in a great centre of cotton manufacturing. Within a radius of a hundred miles of this city probably half of the cotton manufacturing of the United States is done. I realize to the full, as every good citizen should realize, that there must be a foundation of material prosperity upon which to build the welfare of State or Nation; but I realize also, as every good citizen should, that material prosperity, material well-being, can never be anything but the foundation. It is the indispensable foundation; but if we do not raise upon it the superstructure of a higher citizenship then we fail in bringing this country to the level to which it shall and will be brought.

So, though I congratulate you upon what you have done in the way of material growth, I congratulate you even more upon the great historic memories of your State. It is not so far from here that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was made; the declaration that pointed out the path along which the thirteen united colonies trod but a few months later. As I got off the train here I was greeted by one citizen of North Carolina (and I know that neither the Governor, the Mayor, nor the Senators will blame me for what I am going to say) whose greeting pleased and touched me more than the greeting of any man could have touched me. I was greeted by the widow of Stonewall Jackson. We, of this united country, have a right to challenge, as part of the heritage of honor and glory of each American, the renown bought by all Americans who fought in the Civil War, whether they wore the blue or whether they wore the gray. The valor shown alike by the men of the North and by the men of the South, as they battled for the right as God gave them to see the right, is now part of what we all of us keep with pride. It was my good fortune to appoint to West Point the grandson of Stonewall Jackson. As I came up your streets I saw a monument raised to a fellow-soldier of mine who fell in the Spanish War at Santiago—Shipp, of North Carolina. We, who went to war in ’98, had the opportunity only to fight in a small war, and all that we would claim is that we hope we showed a spirit not entirely unworthy of the men who faced the mighty and terrible days from ’61 to ’65. If there again comes a war I know I can count on the men of the National Guard, like my escort, because the memory of what your fathers did will make you ashamed not to rise level to the demands of the new time as they rose level to the demands of their time.

In civil life each generation has its problems. The tremendous industrial development of the past half century, the very development which has produced cities such as this, has brought great problems with it; problems connected with corporations; problems connected with labor; problems connected with both the accumulation and the distribution of wealth. The problems are new, but the spirit in which we must approach their solution is old. We must face the work we have to do as our fathers faced their work, if we wish to be successful. This is an age of organization, the organization of capital, the organization of labor. Each type of organization should be welcomed when it does good, and fearlessly opposed when it does evil. Our aim should be to strive to keep the reign of justice alive in this country so that we shall above all things avoid the chance of ever dividing on the lines that separate one class from another, one occupation from another. The man who would preach to either wage-worker or capitalist that the other was his foe is a bad citizen and faithless American. We can afford to divide along lines that represent honest difference of opinion, but we can not afford to divide on the fundamental lines of cleavage that separate good citizens from bad citizens. We must remember, if we intend to keep this Republic in its position of headship among the nations of mankind, that we can never afford to deviate from the old American doctrine of treating each man on his worth as a man, of paying heed, not to whether he is rich or poor, but only to whether he acts as a decent citizen.

AT ROSWELL, GA., OCTOBER 20, 1905

_Senator Clay; and you, My Friends, whom it is hard for me not to call My Neighbors, for I feel as if you were_:

You can have no idea of how much it means to me to come back to Roswell, to the home of my mother and of my mother’s people, and to see the spot which I already know so well from what my mother and my aunt told me. It has been exactly as if I were revisiting some old place of my childhood.