Part 16

No patent remedy can be devised for the solution of these grave problems in the industrial world; but we may rest assured that they can be solved at all only if we bring to the solution certain old-time virtues, and if we strive to keep out of the solution some of the most familiar and most undesirable of the traits to which mankind has owed untold degradation and suffering throughout the ages. Arrogance, suspicion, brutal envy of the well-to-do, brutal indifference toward those who are not well-to-do, the hard refusal to consider the rights of others, the foolish refusal to consider the limits of beneficent action, the base appeal to the spirit of selfish greed, whether it take the form of plunder of the fortunate or of oppression of the unfortunate—from these and from all kindred vices this Nation must be kept free if it is to remain in its present position in the forefront of the peoples of mankind. On the other hand, good will come, even out of the present evils, if we face them armed with the old homely virtues; if we show that we are fearless of soul, cool of head, and kindly of heart; if, without betraying the weakness that cringes before wrongdoing, we yet show by deeds and words our knowledge that in such a government as ours each of us must be in very truth his brother’s keeper.

At a time when the growing complexity of our social and industrial life has rendered inevitable the intrusion of the State into spheres of work wherein it formerly took no part, and when there is also a growing tendency to demand the illegitimate and unwise transfer to the government of much of the work that should be done by private persons, singly or associated together, it is a pleasure to address a body whose members possess to an eminent degree the traditional American self-reliance of spirit which makes them scorn to ask from the government, whether of State or of Nation, anything but a fair field and no favor; who confide not in being helped by others, but in their own skill, energy, and business capacity to achieve success. The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight—that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show not only the capacity for sturdy self-help but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.

The Chamber of Commerce, it is no idle boast to say, stands in a preëminent degree for those qualities which make the successful merchant, the successful business man, whose success is won in ways honorable to himself and beneficial to his fellows. There are very different kinds of success. There is the success that brings with it the seared soul—the success which is achieved by wolfish greed and vulpine cunning—the success which makes honest men uneasy or indignant in its presence. Then there is the other kind of success—the success which comes as the reward of keen insight, of sagacity, of resolution, of address, combined with unflinching rectitude of behavior, public and private. The first kind of success may, in a sense—and a poor sense at that—benefit the individual, but it is always and necessarily a curse to the community; whereas the man who wins the second kind, as an incident of its winning becomes a beneficiary to the whole commonwealth. Throughout its history the Chamber of Commerce has stood for this second and higher kind of success. It is therefore fitting that I should come on here as the Chief Executive of the Nation to wish you well in your new home; for you belong not merely to the city, not merely to the State, but to all the country, and you stand high among the great factors in building up that marvelous prosperity which the entire country now enjoys. The continuance of this prosperity depends in no small measure upon your sanity and common-sense, upon the way in which you combine energy in action with conservative refusal to take part in the reckless gambling which is so often bred by, and which so inevitably puts an end to, prosperity. You are men of might in the world of American effort; you are men whose names stand high in the esteem of our people; you are spoken of in terms like those used in the long-gone ages when it was said of the Phœnician cities that their merchants were princes. Great is your power and great, therefore, your responsibility. Well and faithfully have you met this responsibility in the past. We look forward with confident hope to what you will do in the future, and it is therefore with sincerity that I bid you Godspeed this evening and wish for you, in the name of the Nation, a career of ever increasing honor and usefulness.

AT THE BANQUET TENDERED GENERAL LUKE E. WRIGHT, AT MEMPHIS, TENN., NOVEMBER 19, 1902

_Mr. Toastmaster, General Wright, and you, my friends, whose greeting to-night I shall ever remember_:

It is a real and great pleasure to come to this typical city of the southern Mississippi Valley in order to greet a typical American, a citizen of Tennessee, who deserves honor not only from his State, but from the entire country—General Luke E. Wright. We have a right to expect a high standard of manhood from Tennessee. It was one of the first two States created west of the Alleghany Mountains, and it was in this State that the first self-governing community of American freemen was established upon waters flowing into the Gulf. The pioneers of Tennessee were among the earliest in that great westward march which thrust the nation’s border across the continent to the Pacific, and it is eminently fitting that a son of Tennessee should now play so prominent a part in the further movement of expansion beyond the Pacific. There have been Presidents of the United States for but one hundred and thirteen years, and during sixteen of those years Tennesseeans sat in the White House. Hardihood, and daring, and iron resolution are of right to be expected among the sons of a State which nurtured Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston; which sent into the American Navy one of the most famous fighting admirals of all time, Farragut.

There is another reason why our country should be glad that it was General Wright who rendered this service. General Wright fought with distinguished gallantry among the gallant men who served in the armies of the Confederacy during the Civil War. We need no proof of the completeness of our reunion as a people. When the war with Spain came the sons of the men who wore the blue and the sons of the men who wore the gray vied with one another in the effort to get into the ranks and face a foreign foe under the old flag that had been carried in triumph under Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor and Andrew Jackson. It was my own good fortune to serve under that fearless fighter, old Joe Wheeler, a memory of which I shall always be proud. But if we needed any proof of the unity of our interests it would have been afforded this very year by General Wright, the ex-Confederate, in his administration as Acting Governor of the Philippine Islands. Upon him during the months of summer rested a heavier burden of responsibility than upon any other public servant at that particular time; and not the least of his titles to our regard is the way in which he was able to work on terms of cordial good-will with the head of the army, himself a man who had honored the blue uniform as Wright had honored the gray.

General Wright’s work has been as difficult as it was important. The events of the last four years have definitely decided that whether we wish to or not we must hereafter play a great part in the world. We can not escape facing the duties. We may shirk them if we are built of poor stuff, or we may take hold and do them if we are fit sons of our sires—but face them we must, whether we will or not. Our duty in the Philippine Islands has simply been one of the duties that thus have come upon us. We are there, and we can no more haul down our flag and abandon the islands than we could now abandon Alaska. Whether we are glad or sorry that events forced us to go there is aside from the question; the point is that, as the inevitable result of the war with Spain, we found ourselves in the Philippines and that we could not leave the islands without discredit. The islanders were wholly unfit to govern themselves, and if we had left there would have been a brief period of bloody chaos, and then some other nation would have stepped in to do the work which we had shirked. It can not be too often repeated that there was no question that the work had to be done. All the question was, whether we would do it well or ill; and, thanks to the choice of men like Governor Wright, it has been done well. The first and absolutely indispensable requisite was order—peace. The reign of lawless violence, of resistance to legitimate authority, the reign of anarchy, could no more be tolerated abroad than it could be tolerated here in our own land.

The American flag stands for orderly liberty, and it stands for it abroad as it stands for it at home. The task of our soldiers was to restore and maintain order in the islands. The army had the task to do, and it did it well and thoroughly. The fullest and heartiest praise belongs to our soldiers who in the Philippines brought to a triumphant conclusion a war, small indeed compared to the gigantic struggle in which the older men whom I am addressing took part in the early sixties, but inconceivably harassing and difficult, because it was waged amid the pathless jungles of great tropic islands and against a foe very elusive, very treacherous, and often inconceivably cruel both toward our men and toward the great numbers of peace-loving Filipinos who gladly welcomed our advent. The soldiers included both regulars and volunteers, men from the North, the South, the East, and the West, men from Pennsylvania and from Tennessee, no less than men from the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Slope—and to all alike we give honor, for they acted as American soldiers should. Cruelties were committed here and there. The fact that they were committed under wellnigh intolerable provocation affords no excuse for such cruelties, nor can we admit as justification that they were retaliatory in kind. Every effort has been made to detect and punish the wrongdoers and the wrongdoing itself has been completely stopped. But these misdeeds were exceptional, and their occurrence in no wise alters the fact that the American army in the Philippines showed as a whole not only splendid soldierly qualities but a high order of humanity in dealing with their foes. A hundred thousand of our troops went to the Philippines. Among them were some who offended against the right. Well, are we altogether immaculate at home? I think not. I ask for no special consideration to be shown our friends and kinsmen, our sons and brothers, who during three years so well upheld the national honor in the Philippines. I ask merely that we do the same equal justice to the soldier who went abroad and faced death and lived hard as we show to his fellow who stayed at home and lived easily and in comfort; and if we show that equal justice we will doff our hats to the man who has put the whole country under obligations by the victory he helped to win in the Philippines.

But the soldier’s work as a soldier was not the larger part of what he did. When once the outbreak was over in any place, then began the work of establishing civil administration. Here, too, the soldier did his part, for the work of preparing for the civil authority was often done by the officers and men of the regular army, and well done, too. Then the real work of building up a system of self-government for the people who had become our wards was begun, under the auspices of the Philippine Commission, Judge Taft being made Governor, and I having had the honor myself to appoint General Wright as Vice-Governor. During the critical period when the insurrection was ending and the time was one of transition between a state of war and a state of peace, at the time that I issued a proclamation declaring that the state of war was over and that the civil government was now in complete command, General Wright served as Governor of the archipelago. The progress of the islands both in material well-being and as regards order and justice under the administration of Governor Wright and his colleagues has been astounding.

There is no question as to our not having gone far enough and fast enough in granting self-government to the Filipinos; the only possible danger has been lest we should go faster and further than was in the interest of the Filipinos themselves. Each Filipino at the present day is guaranteed his life, his liberty, and the chance to pursue happiness as he wishes, so long as he does not harm his fellows, in a way which the islands have never known before during all their recorded history. There are bands of ladrones, of brigands, still in existence. Now and then they may show sporadic increase. This will be due occasionally to disaffection with some of the things that our government does which are best—for example, the effort to quarantine against the plague and to enforce necessary sanitary precautions, gently and tactfully though it was made, produced violent hostility among some of the more ignorant natives. Again, a disease like the cattle plague may cause in some given province such want that a part of the inhabitants revert to their ancient habit of brigandage. But the islands have never been as orderly, as peaceful, or as prosperous as now; and in no other Oriental country, whether ruled by Asiatics or Europeans, is there anything approaching to the amount of individual liberty and of self-government which our rule has brought to the Filipinos. The Nation owes a great debt to the people through whom this splendid work for civilization has been achieved, and therefore on behalf of the Nation I have come here to-night to thank in your presence your fellow-townsman, because he has helped us materially to add a new page to the honor roll of American history. General Wright, I greet you, I thank you, and I wish you well.

AT THE RECEPTION TO GENERAL WRIGHT AT MEMPHIS, TENN., NOVEMBER 19, 1902

_Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Americans_:

I am glad indeed to have the honor of coming to-day to your beautiful city in your beautiful State to greet, on behalf of the whole country, a Tennesseean who has rendered high and honorable service to the whole country—a Tennesseean of whom it can be said, as it has been said of the Greek hero:

“Much has he seen and known, cities of men, And manners, climates, councils, governments, Himself not least, but honored of them all; Has drunk delight of battle with his peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.”

We are one people absolutely. The memories of the Civil War are now heritages of honor alike for those whose fathers wore the blue and for those whose fathers wore the gray. There is one curious and not inappropriate coincidence to-day—my mother’s brother served under Mrs. Wright’s father in the Confederate Navy. I am proud of his valor; and I can say this freely, for if I had been old enough I would myself have surely worn the blue uniform.

I come here to-day to greet General Wright because it has been given to him to render a peculiar service to the whole country. A man can render service of the very highest character at home, but owing to the very nature of our system of government, he must, in his election at least, represent particularly a given party. I say in his election at least, for after election, if he is worth anything, he must be a representative of the whole country. But there are certain branches of the public service in which if we are wise and far-seeing we will never allow partisan politics to enter. There must be no partisan politics in the army or the navy of the United States. All that concerns us to know about any general or admiral, about a mighty captain by sea or by land, is whether he is a thoroughly fit commander of men and loyal to the country as a whole. In the same way if we are wise, if we care for our reputation abroad, if we are sensitive of our honor at home, we will allow no question of partisan politics ever to enter into the administration of the great islands which came under our flag as a result of the war with Spain.

Hence I say that General Wright, like Governor Taft and his associates, has rendered a peculiar service to every man jealous of the honor of the American name in what he has done in administering the Philippine Islands. For fourteen months it has been part of my business to see how the work there was done. I am not speaking exaggeratedly, I am speaking literally, telling the naked truth, when I say that never during that time has a question of party politics entered into even the smallest action of those in control of the Philippine Islands.

My fellow-Americans, we can not afford to have the honor of the Nation in any way smirched in connection with our dependencies. We can not afford to have it smirched anywhere; but if we wrong ourselves here at home we are to blame and we pay the penalty, while if we allow wrong in connection with the islands not only the islands suffer, but an indelible stigma of shame comes to the American name. I am earnestly desirous that the administration of the Philippine Islands shall be put and kept upon such a plane of patriotic efficiency that no change will be made in it owing to any change of party here at home. Party feeling should of course stop at the water-line. The inestimable service rendered by Governor Wright in the Philippine Islands has been because he has so conducted the government of those islands as to make it not only of signal benefit to them, but of signal honor to every citizen of our country; that he has so handled the administration of affairs as to make us feel a justifiable confidence that hereafter the storms of party politics in the United States shall never touch the government of the Philippine Islands, and that whatever changes of administration there are here in the Union, there shall not be a ripple of change in the course of conduct in the Philippines marked out by Governor Wright and his associates. The man of whom that can be truthfully said is a man entitled to honor from his fellow-countrymen; and of Governor Wright it can be truthfully said.

AT THE FOUNDERS’ DAY BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE, PHILADELPHIA, PA., NOVEMBER 22, 1902

_Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Union League_:

Forty years ago this club was founded, in the dark days of the Civil War, to uphold the hands of Abraham Lincoln and give aid to those who battled for the Union and for human liberty. Two years ago President McKinley came here as your guest to thank you, and through you all those far-sighted and loyal men who had supported him in his successful effort to keep untarnished the national good faith at home and the national honor abroad, and to bring back to this country the material well-being which we now so abundantly enjoy. It was no accident which made the men of this club who stood as in a peculiar sense the champions and upholders of the principles of Lincoln in the early sixties stand no less stoutly for those typified in the person of McKinley during the closing years of the century. The qualities apt to make men respond to the call of duty in one crisis are also apt to make them respond to a similar call in a crisis of a different character. The traits which enabled our people to pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal of the Civil War were the traits upon which we had to rely in the less serious, but yet serious, dangers by which we were menaced in 1896, 1898, and 1900.

From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the possession of the other of small value. Mere ability to achieve success in things concerning the body would not have atoned for the failure to live the life of high endeavor; and, on the other hand, without a foundation of those qualities which bring material prosperity there would be nothing on which the higher life could be built. The men of the Revolution would have failed if they had not possessed alike devotion to liberty and ability (once liberty had been achieved) to show common-sense and self-restraint in its use. The men of the great Civil War would have failed had they not possessed the business capacity which developed and organized their resources in addition to the stern resolution to expend these resources as freely as they expended their blood in furtherance of the great cause for which their hearts leaped. It is this combination of qualities that has made our people succeed. Other peoples have been as devoted to liberty, and yet, because of lack of hard-headed common-sense and of ability to show restraint and subordinate individual passions for the general good, have failed so signally in the struggle of life as to become a byword among the nations. Yet other peoples, again, have possessed all possible thrift and business capacity, but have been trampled under foot, or have played a sordid and ignoble part in the world, because their business capacity was unaccompanied by any of the lift toward nobler things which marks a great and generous nation. The stern but just rule of judgment for humanity is that each nation shall be known by its fruits; and if there are no fruits, if the nation has failed, it matters but little whether it has failed through meanness of soul or through lack of robustness of character. We must judge a nation by the net result of its life and activity. And so we must judge the policies of those who at any time control the destinies of a nation.