Part 11

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 have changed 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 the advancement 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 such as 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 not exclude 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 in a 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 spirit which, 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.

AT NORTHFIELD, MASS., SEPTEMBER 1, 1902

_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 righteous living 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 of mere “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.

AT FITCHBURG, MASS., SEPTEMBER 2, 1902

_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. You had 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 said nothing 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 industries of 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 handling itself 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.